The Empathy Circle Game was created to enrich your listening and communication skills through a series of engaging in-person group activities. The free download includes a printable game board and instructions for 13 “mini games.”
For people of any age and walk of life, it can be played at parties, in classrooms, or with your family. Everyone benefits from being heard—all you need to play is a willingness to listen. You can use the suggested progression of mini games or simply repeat a few of your favorites, adding new ones as you see fit.
Why a game to teach empathy?
Growing up, the games we played were “winner takes all.” There was one winner and everyone else was a “loser.” In The Empathy Circle Game, everyone wins or no one wins! Through exercises that foster communication, listening, and memory skills, the game is designed to develop abilities that help us overcome many challenges we face today—problems that can’t be solved through conflict or domination, but by finding common goals and working together. While having fun, players will develop a sharper memory, more insight, and become better communicators.
To everyone who tries to listen and understand, you are an essential part of the healing of our world. Humanity faces an uphill climb. There’s no time to lose, so start playing!
This game is currently in beta release. If you have questions or feedback, please email William Filler at [email protected]
More about the Culture of Empathy
William Filler, the developer of The Empathy Circle Game, has been working with Edwin Rutsch and others to help build a culture of empathy since 2017. Edwin developed the Empathy Circle practice, based on Carl Rogers’ Reflective Listening.
Most of us are conditioned to respond to others, asserting their own ideas. In an Empathy Circle, we reflect what the other person has said in order to understand them. Empathy Circle practitioners go to political rallies, both Right and Left, to listen to everyone, and attempt to get both sides to listen to each other.
We have also developed an online training that we’ve conducted since 2020 (empathycircle.com). During the height of the pandemic, the first trainees were medical workers in Brooklyn, NY, who were dealing with overwhelming sickness and death. They reported that even five minutes of reflective listening as they changed shifts had a profound positive effect on the rest of their day. Since then, we have trained over 500 people from all over the world and have made over 500 new friends.
Instead of finding intractable differences between people from different cultures, we found that we all share a common humanity. Empathy doesn’t mean that everyone agrees on everything, but, through reflective listening, we find that we share many of the same core values, such as love of family and community. The Empathy Circle practice seeks to create a foundation of trust on which to build inventive solutions to the problems we face today.
