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the conversation, what was meaningful, important, distressing, helpful, etc. (The direction in which you pass is taken from Native American traditions.)

Experiment with good listening. Conversations rely on good listening, and this is one skill we may have forgotten completely. One helpful means is to ask people to listen for the differences in what people are saying. Instead of trying to find those who agree with you, listen for who is saying something new and different.

Another means is to ask people to try and notice when they've stopped listening, when they've wandered off in their attention, and to just bring themselves back to the conversation.

That's all you need to start a good conversation. You will know it's been a good conversation if:

People move toward the center of the circle. They lean into the conversation.Voices become quieter. The entire room grows more quiet.People don't want to stop. Time passes very quickly.People express surprise over how quickly they moved into deep conversation, even among strangers, and how satisfying that felt people want to do this again.

Continuing the Conversation

If your group continues, and you will be in conversation over time, you will benefit by exploring techniques to deepen and grow the conversation. We recommend the work of Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, found at http://www.peerspirit.com/. We have used their work at The Berkana Institute and found it to be a very powerful means for deepening conversation. At their website, you can download a "Basic Guidelines for Hosting a Circle" booklet. Their method works for groups up to about 30 people.

Conversation among large groups

Intimate conversations can be hosted for very large groups (1200 people is the current benchmark) using The World Caf process. This is a superb process for developing intimate conversations among a large group of people, and weaving those conversations into collective knowledge and wisdom. We have used this process many times in Berkana's work. See http://www.theworldcafe.com/. This site provides guidelines and principles for hosting a caf, information about many different types of cafs, and links to many other conversation projects and resources

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