Arrange & group to show relationships between:

…Jackals, Observations, Feelings, Needs, Priority Markers, Strategies, and Requests.

Group these elements by arranging them, in your mind or on the Game Board:   near each other, touching, overlapping, highlighting, or by noting.

This creates a Map-of-the-Heart, giving us more clarity & understanding, allowing us to go deeper into ourseleves and each other.

Try to play in order of steps: Observations, Jackals, Feelings, Needs, Priority Markers, Strategies, and Requests

…but you can play in any order, being true to what is going on inside you at anytime.

Good Listener Techniques:

The Speaker is always the expert on themselves…   because we never know what another person is thinking or feeling… Therefore we can only guess at what’s going on inside them.

By guessing at their Feelings and Needs, we as Listeners can guide and incorage others to have more clarity and to go deeper.

We want to rephrase by using other words and fewer of them, to say something we or others have already said…   but only when it contributes to more compassion and clarity.

If we have correctly received the other persons message, our paraphrasing will confirm this for them.   If our rephrase is wrong, we give the speaker an opportunity to correct us.   It also saves time.

The message we send is not always the message they receive !

If we’re not sure that our message was received as we wanted, we need to clearly request a response that tells us how the message was heard…   to be able to correct any misunderstanding.

We might ask others to repeat back, in their own words, what they heard us say.   repeating a message back also offers the other person time to repeat on what they’ve said and an opportunity to delve deeper into themselves.

Ackknowldge Vulnerability –repeat back messages we hear that are emotionally charged.

Speakers expressing intensely emotional messages appreciate our Repeating these back to them…

…it can help them feel understood and heard.

Dont think too much.

Our thoughts are not our feelings… we must not confuse the two.

Many times its best to go with our first impression and don’t think too much or analyze.

When deciding if a Feeling or Need is alive in us, we can just use our “gut”.   We can decide “NO”, something’s not alive, if we’re unsure and must really think about it… its probably not alive inside now.