How Empathy and the Empathy Circle practice changed my life.

Speaker: Alissa Stover (15 min)

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Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/SrFGBQiVhztVVpyy8CRibzWEGaE?view=summary

Alissa Stover shared her transformative journey with empathy circles, which improved her personal and professional life. Initially struggling with listening at UC Berkeley, she co-created an empathy course. Through empathy circles led by Edwin, she learned to truly listen without judgment, leading to profound personal and relational growth. This practice enhanced her relationships, deepened friendships, and improved her work as a product manager by fostering better understanding and collaboration. Stover emphasized the importance of listening to understand, not to respond, and creating space for others' authentic experiences, which can significantly impact relationships and work dynamics.

Action Items

• [ ] Reflect back what you hear in your next conversation, rather than responding with your own ideas.

• [ ] Try participating in empathy circles to experience the transformative power of truly listening.
  
  

Outline

Empathy Circles and Personal Transformation

• Alissa Stover introduces herself and explains her absence due to her baby's first birthday.

• She shares her initial struggle with empathy and listening, noting that people often listen to respond rather than understand.

• Alissa discusses her journey at UC Berkeley, where she struggled with human connection despite studying neuroscience.

• She describes the creation of an empathy course with a fellow student and their initial skepticism about teaching empathy.
  
  

Discovering Empathy Circles

• Alissa recounts how a student introduced her to Edwin from the Empathy Center and the concept of empathy circles.

• She describes her initial discomfort and skepticism about the simplicity of the empathy circles.

• Alissa explains the basic rules of empathy circles: taking turns speaking and listening without problem-solving or advice-giving.

• She shares her initial resistance to the method but acknowledges the need to improve her listening skills.
  
  

The Power of True Listening

• Alissa reflects on the profound impact of truly listening without judgment or interruption.

• She notes that people often just want to be heard and that empathy circles helped her understand this.

• Alissa discusses how her initial approach to empathy involved projecting her own experiences onto others.

• She emphasizes the importance of setting aside personal biases to create space for others' truths to emerge.
  
  

Personal Relationships and Empathy

• Alissa shares how empathy circles transformed her personal relationships, particularly with her partner.

• She describes how asking what her partner needed rather than jumping to solutions deepened their connection.

• Alissa explains how her friendships became more meaningful by being curious and reflecting back what friends shared.

• She discusses how empathy circles helped her understand and resolve conflicts with her family and friends.
  
  

Professional Impact of Empathy

• Alissa describes how empathy circles revolutionized her approach to work and problem-solving.

• She explains how focusing on understanding rather than jumping to solutions improved her productivity and relationships at work.

• Alissa shares how her role as a product manager is now anchored in people closer to the problems they solve.

• She highlights the importance of involving those closest to the problems in designing solutions.
  
  

Broader Personal and Professional Benefits

• Alissa discusses how empathy circles helped her develop stronger, more authentic relationships.

• She notes that people began seeking her out for conversations because of her improved listening skills.

• Alissa reflects on how empathy circles enriched her life and helped her resolve mental health challenges.

• She emphasizes the importance of listening to one's own needs with the same compassionate attention used for others.
  
  

Empathy in a Divided World

• Alissa shares how empathy circles helped her feel more connected to humanity during times of division.

• She recounts how Edwin's empathy circles helped her and her classmates understand different perspectives during the 2016 riots at UC Berkeley.

• Alissa emphasizes the transformative power of empathy in building bridges and finding common ground.

• She concludes by encouraging others to try empathy circles and reflect back what they hear in their next conversation.

How a simple concept changed my life: Why empathy is a core skill that comes with incredible benefits

https://alissastover.substack.com/p/how-a-simple-concept-changed-my-life 

One of the most transformative experiences of my life has been discovering empathy circles through The Empathy Center.

What began as curiosity about a simple concept has fundamentally changed how I connect with others and navigate both personal and professional relationships  

In this article, I share how learning to truly listen (not just hear) has led to deeper relationships, more effective work, and a genuinely happier life. I’ll explore two core principles that emerged from this journey:

 Most people just want to be heard. Listening to understand differs from listening to respond.

 True empathy isn’t about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, it’s about creating space for their authentic experience.

Sometimes the most profound changes come from the simplest practices.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I never expected that sitting in a circle with strangers would fundamentally change how I move through the world. But that’s exactly what happened when Edwin Rutsch introduced me to empathy circles.

At first, the concept seemed almost too simple: people taking turns speaking and listening, with no advice-giving, no problem-solving, just pure witnessing. I was skeptical. How could something so basic create meaningful change?

I showed up to my first session with all the usual defenses. I was prepared to help, to fix, to offer solutions. After all, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? When someone shares a problem, don’t we show we care by trying to solve it?

But Edwin was clear, that my job was simply to listen and reflect back what I heard. To be present with whatever the speaker chose to share.

Simple? Yes. Easy? Absolutely not.

As I sat there, fighting every instinct to jump in with advice or relate back to my own experiences, I began to notice something I hadn’t understood before: what happens when people feel truly heard without judgment or interruption.

The answer became clear within my first few empathy circle sessions. As I watched people light up when they felt truly heard, I began to understand something profound about human connection that I’d been missing my entire life.

Most people just want to be heard.

In our everyday conversations, I realized I was constantly preparing my response while the other person was still speaking. I was listening to reply, not to understand. My mind would race ahead, formulating advice, crafting counterarguments, or simply waiting for my turn to speak.

But in empathy circles, with no opportunity to respond or fix or solve, something magical happened. When I truly listened (not to judge, not to help, not to relate it back to my own experience) people would often have their own breakthroughs right there in the moment.

They didn’t need my solutions. They needed my presence  

This insight would soon revolutionize every relationship in my life. But first, I had to confront how wrong I’d been about empathy itself.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I used to think empathy meant imagining myself in someone else’s situation.

“Put yourself in their shoes,” everyone said. So I did. And I was terrible at it.

Empathy circles taught me why: When I “put myself in their shoes,” I was actually just projecting my own experiences, values, and reactions onto their story. I wasn’t seeing them, I was seeing myself in their circumstances.

Real empathy, I learned, requires something much harder: setting aside everything I think I know and creating space for someone else’s truth to emerge. It means getting curious instead of certain. It means asking questions that help someone explore their own experience rather than validating my assumptions about what they must be feeling.

Time and again, I was surprised by how wrong my initial impressions were. The colleague who seemed angry was actually scared. The friend who appeared to have it all together was struggling with profound loneliness. The family member whose choices frustrated me was operating from a completely different set of priorities and constraints than I’d imagined.

The most powerful realization? When you really listen, you’ll be surprised by how much you assume and get wrong. True empathy isn’t about projection, it’s about making space to hear from people closest to their own problems before you start trying to “help.”

This principle would soon transform how I approached every relationship and challenge in my life.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Armed with these new insights about listening and empathy, I began experimenting with how I showed up in my personal relationships.

The changes were immediate and profound.

With my partner: Instead of immediately jumping into problem-solving mode when they shared something difficult, I started asking, “What would be most helpful right now? Do you want me to listen, or are you looking for suggestions?” My partner began opening up more, sharing deeper concerns and feelings they’d previously kept to themselves.

With friends: I stopped trying to match every story with one of my own. Instead of waiting for my turn to speak, I got curious about their experiences. “What was that like for you?” became my go-to question. Friendships deepened as people felt genuinely seen rather than just heard as a setup for my own stories.

With family: Those frustrating family dynamics began to shift when I stopped assuming I knew what motivated difficult relatives. Instead of getting defensive, I started asking questions that helped me understand their perspective. Even when I disagreed with their choices, understanding their reasoning created space for more compassionate conversations.

Even with difficult conversations: When conflicts arose, I focused on understanding rather than being understood. “Help me understand your perspective” became more powerful than any argument I could make.

The most surprising result? People started seeking me out for conversations. When you become someone who truly listens, you become someone people actually want to talk to.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

These empathy principles didn’t just transform my personal relationships…they revolutionized how I approached my work and professional interactions.

 Before jumping to solutions: I learned to pause and ask, “Have I really heard what this person is trying to tell me?” This simple question prevented countless hours of solving the wrong problems or addressing surface-level symptoms instead of root causes.

 In team meetings: Instead of immediately sharing my ideas, I started spending more time in discovery. “What’s your experience been with this?” and “What would success look like from your perspective?” became my most valuable questions.

 When designing solutions: I began involving the people closest to problems in creating fixes rather than developing solutions from a distance. This meant spending more time with different stakeholders than I had in the past before making assumptions about what they needed.

  During conflicts: Difficult conversations at work became more productive when I focused on understanding different perspectives rather than defending my position. “Help me understand why this approach feels problematic to you” opened doors that arguments never could.

 With leadership: I recognized that my good intentions didn’t matter if I was solving the wrong problem. I started asking more questions about impact and outcomes, making space for voices that might see blind spots I was missing.

The result? More effective solutions, stronger team relationships, and work that actually moved the needle on problems that mattered to the people affected by them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

What surprises me most about this journey is how these changes have enriched my own life in ways I never expected.

Deeper satisfaction: When I stopped trying to be the person with all the answers, I became someone people actually wanted to collaborate with. My work became more meaningful because I was solving problems that actually mattered to the people affected by them.

Richer relationships: My connections are more authentic now because they’re built on genuine understanding rather than assumptions. I’ve discovered how much more complex and interesting the world actually is when I stop projecting my own experiences onto everyone else’s stories.

Better self-relationship: Perhaps most surprisingly, I’ve learned to listen to my own needs with the same compassionate attention I try to bring to others. Instead of immediately jumping to self-criticism or quick fixes, I’ve gotten curious about my own experiences and emotions. (However - this is a CONSTANT work in progress!)

A more connected world: In a time when everything feels increasingly divided, these simple practices have become my north star for building bridges and finding common ground. When you truly listen to someone, it’s much harder to dismiss or demonize them.

The empathy circles at The Empathy Center gave me something I didn’t even know I was missing: the skills to truly connect with other human beings. Sometimes the most transformative experiences come in the simplest packages. You just have to be willing to listen.

If you’re looking for a way to create more meaningful connections in your life, I can’t recommend exploring empathy practices highly enough. The two principles I’ve shared (listening to understand and making space for others’ authentic experiences) are available to anyone, anywhere, starting with your very next conversation.

The Empathy Center has upcoming events and summits for you to explore to do just that, if you’re looking for a supportive space to get started.

What would change in your life if people felt truly heard when they talked to you?