Circling Guide

Learn the group conversation practice that will transform all of your relationships and bring you the love, friendship and community that you want

Circling Guide (3rd Edition), Chapter 3: The Minimum Viable Circle

Table of Contents

  1. Preface: My Agenda
  2. My Story
  3. How to Use this book
  4. Part 1: Circling
  5. Chapter 1: First Orientation to Circling
  6. Chapter 2: NVC and Circling; how they complement each other
  7. Chapter 3: The Minimum Viable Circle (this page)

Chapter 3: The Minimum Viable Circle

Thank you for reading me so far. This is conceptually quite dense material, especially for those of us (most of us) who have never received any formal relational education, or who were raised in conventional households in which the very idea of a “need” is somehow shameful. If you have internally overcome this idea, you are already ahead of the pack. So let’s move on.

Before we get into the actual practice guide, I want to teach you a practice which I call “the minimum viable circle”, because it encapsulates the two main dimensions of circling: vulnerability, and impact / empathy / appreciation.

The minimum viable circle is something that you can do with anyone you have an issue with, want a deeper connection, or just looking for fun; and will most likely create spectacular results. It is more of an “in the wild” practice (i.e. you would not normally do this in a formal group), but it will probably require that your partner be trained in AR. If you have such a partner (or partners), you can do it in the car, at a restaurant, waiting in line for a movie, or whenever you are having a fight.

It is a fairly simple communication pattern, which, despite its simplicity, is something that you will encounter quite rarely in the world. If people would just do this, every day and all the time (and skillfully, which is not always easy), it would change the world as we know it.

It looks like this:

  1. [Sender] Vulnerable share, a “feelings and needs” statement, optionally followed by a request
  2. [Receiver] An impact statement (we’ll explain this below), empathy statement, or appreciation
  3. Sender and receiver either repeat steps 1 and 2, or else reverse roles (i.e. the Receiver becomes the Sender and offers a vulnerable share, etc)

Repeat until there is complete love and clarity between the two parties, or until they agree to disagree and pursue their separate interests

I will spend a moment unpacking the two roles here. This is actually foundational to understanding how Circling works.

Vulnerable sharing

Vulnerable sharing is the first role. As an aside, Brené Brown has built a huge platform based on this idea alone, vulnerability. It’s a very powerful idea.

Here is why vulnerability is so powerful: until you let people know what you want, they can’t help you. Letting people know what you really think and feel, provided you do so skillfully, is always a gift to them, because it gives them an opportunity to care for you and contribute to you, which is very probably what they want. How to do this skillfully can be a real problem, however: such as when you are feeling angry at people and blaming them for their failure to meet your needs (which is a very human thing to do). We return to this problem (and its solution) in the next chapter, in the section called “Own your experience.”

A side-note here: Circling does not value “feeling” over “thinking.” Both are aspects of our humanity and are very important. If you want to become an effective relational leader you do, however, need to increase your awareness of how your communications, your thoughts and feelings, “land” on other people. And from there, tailor your communications in a way that can, hopefully, increase their impact. Vulnerability is really an art. To do this effectively, both your head and your heart need to be engaged.

Sharing impacts, empathy, and appreciations

Sharing Impacts

How you respond to a vulnerable share from another person – even an unskillful vulnerable share in which someone is telling you all the things you are doing wrong in meeting their needs, and perhaps what a horrible person you are as a well because of this, is the second important role in Authentic Relating and Circling.

In Circling, an “impact” is defined as anything that occurs in your experience in relation to another person. It could be a thought, feeling, body sensation, a visual/auditory image, or whatever. Expressing impacts skillfully can be as challenging as expressing vulnerability skillfully. You want to make it about you, as much as possible, rather than about the other person.

I will mention here two specific forms of “impact”: empathy and appreciation. Those two communication structures are the most powerful in the entire Authentic Relating arsenal, and you really – really – need to amplify them. It is almost impossible to overdo the expression of empathy and appreciation.

Empathy

An empathy statement is a  response to something the other person says which you can relate to, that speaks to your condition as well, and that makes you feel less alone (because another person has shared an experience that applies directly to your life). It lets the other person know that you are hearing them, that you value their feelings and care for them.

Alternatively, an empathy statement is a communication that lets another person know that you understand how they are feeling and that you approve of them as such. The first form of empathy is called somatic empathy, while the second form is called cognitive empathy. Both are excellent.

Appreciations

An appreciation is similar, and can also be divided into somatic or cognitive. Typically, it has to do with an acknowledgement of the value that the other person is offering, to you and others. It relates to your seeing and expressing the positive aspects of what they are bringing: their courage, their heart or caring, their intelligence or clear-thinking or expressiveness or emotional attunement, their relative sanity and resilience in the face of difficult circumstances, etc. Appreciations are also very powerful. Dale Carnegie wrote most of a book about that (“How to win friends and influence people”) which is a very good read.

Authentic Relating is profound and complex, however there is a simple formula that will very probably make you a winner right out the gate: double (or maybe quadruple) your empathy statements and appreciations. Appreciation in particular is dead-simple, for the most part. Anybody can do it. It’s actually 90% probable that your appreciating a stranger, your waitress or cashier, will make them feel better, maybe even make their day – let alone should you send empathy or appreciate your significant other, your child, or your boss.

In the next chapter, I lament that our social conditioning often causes us to resist giving impacts and appreciations. My simple advice: Get over it.

Continue reading: Chapter 4: Circling Best Practices, and Chapter 5: The “True Joy of Life” on the Circling Guide (3rd Edition)