• Encouraging empathic behavior.
• Connecting with your needs as well as the others’ needs.
• Acknowledging that we all have different needs; even in the same situation, our way of feeling and needing won’t be the same.
• Understanding that the satisfaction or unsatisfaction of our needs is personal and may be different from the others.

Duration : 30 minutes

Divide the participants in 3 groups of 9 persons each.

In each group, ask a volunteer to share with the others a personal experience where the interpersonal communication was not satisfying. For 5 minutes, he/she will picture the situation, explain the context, who was there, what happened, etc. Arriving at the climax, he/she will express 2 feelings about how he/she felt, that you (the facilitator) will write on a whiteboard.

The others have 2 minutes to connect with the story and to the needs they think were not satisfied for the person in that specific situation and to write them down on a paper (one need per paper, 3 proposals maximum per person).

One by one, invite them to go towards the person who shared the story to give her the piece(s) of paper on which they wrote, meanwhile saying: “When you share this story, do you feel … (they choose here one of the feelings on the whiteboard) because your need of … (their proposition) was not satisfied? Is that it?”. (In case they have several propositions, they should start a new sentence for each needs).

The person receiving cannot answer; he/she just receives the propositions.

Once the round is over, he/she will express which are the needs (among those that were shared) that he/she felt the more connected to.

Start then a new round, when the participants will reflect on the needs of the other person involved in the situation. They will go again to the story-teller (who will still stand in the middle of the circle) to give him/her the piece(s) of paper they wrote on, meanwhile saying : “When I listen to this story, I think that his/her need of (proposition) was not satisfied. Don’t you think?”.

When the round is over, the person receiving will again share the propositions she thinks are the most likely to be true for his/her counterpart in the story that he/she shared.

Close the session with a feedback on how the person who shared the situation felt during the whole process.

• Small papers to write down the propositions
• 3 whiteboards (1 per group)