The Courageous Listener: Bearing Our Own Discomfort

About the workshop

Listening is a core skill in the work of a peacemaker. True listening involves the whole self in ways that can have a profound effect on the listener. Harrowing stories and events can touch us at deep and unpredictable levels and can be detrimental to our health, wellbeing and our work.

In the peacebuilding world there is a need to create more space for self-care and we believe that inner listening plays such a supportive role when used as a tool for self-assessment, inspiration, direction and aligning action to values.

Through interactive methods, participants will explore:

• personal challenges and consequences of listening to challenging content
• triggers and areas of discomfort that need further exploration and support
• strategies for listening deeply while also managing the impact of listening on ourselves and others
• the link between inner and outer listening, and personal sustainability in the peacebuilding work

Trainers

Agnes Otzelberger is a trainer and researcher supporting change-makers in finding their resilience, power and wisdom. Coming from a background of ten+ years in the not-for-profit sector and international development, with a focus on climate change and social inequality, she began to work on the connection between 'inner'/personal and 'outer'/system change in these demanding and volatile times. In 2017 she founded The Good Jungle which exists to connect beyond-profit organisations and people working for the greater good with cutting edge insights and practices from the emerging meeting place between modern psychology & science and ancient wisdom - resourcing those whose work on global challenges has led them to doubt, anxiety, hopelessness, and frustration about the planet's declining health, persistent injustices and collective responses to them. As part of this, Agnes offers training and support for those experiencing 'compassion fatigue'/empathic distress/vicarious trauma, anxiety, grief, moral injury and other symptoms resulting from their work in a change making role for people, animals or planet. Another area of focus is a deeper examination of our desire to help and change the world, and the not-for-profit world’s complicated relationship with money.

Neil Oliver spent most of his career running a facilitation business in the UK. During this time he worked with large public and voluntary sector organizations, including the UK National Health Service. He developed specific expertise in helping to resolve conflict within teams and it was this work that led him to Initiatives of Change’s conference Center in Caux, Switzerland, in 2011. He has since been involved in organising conferences in Caux and currently is part of the core team of Initiatives of Change’s programme, Tools for Changemakers. Neil lives in a lovely part of Somerset in South West England, where as well as learning pottery, he is involved in a number of local initiatives.

• When: 5 November 2020, 12:30 – 13:45 CET (part of Geneva Peace Week 2020’s live sessions agenda)
• Where: online
• This session is offered FREE of charge.
• REGISTER HERE