CONTENTS
Foreword When Did We Forget This?
Preface The Origin of the PeerSpirit Circle Process
Chapter 1 Where Circle Comes From and Where
It Can Take Us
The circle is an ancient lineage of collaboration that has informed society for thousands of years. The circle way integrates this lineage with a modern understanding of group dynamics and broad applications for organizational settings.
Chapter 2 The Components of Circle
Every conversation has an infrastructure, an understood pattern of participation. The conversational structure of PeerSpirit Circle Process is outlined here through a map known as the Components of Circle.
Part II Circles at Work in the World
Chapter 3 The Power of Preparation, Invitation, Intention,
and Center
Circle meetings call the right people into the room, inform participants as to why they have gathered, and offer people ways to contribute. Placing a visual representation of shared purpose in the center creates a focus for the group.
Chapter 4 Rotating Positions of Leadership in the Circle
A PeerSpirit circle is an all-leader group, in which positions of responsibility change and adapt as needed. The three most identifiable positions of host, guardian, and scribe stabilize the progress of a circle session while all participants hold the infrastructure.
Chapter 5 Accountability Through Agreements,
Practices, and Principles
In any group process, there are skills for participating and norms for functioning. In circle, the skills are the practices and the agreements are the norms for operating. The principles provide the energetic movement in an all-leader system.
Chapter 6: Circle, Step by Step
The overall flow of a circle meeting is directed by the components of start-point, check-in, and check-out. These three components set a social container for a clear beginning, a path of conversation, and a clear ending. They are easy to explain and can stand alone or serve as a transition to the full use of circle process.
Part III The Art of Presence in Circle
Chapter 7 Story as Core Communication
Story is a map of human experience. Circle provides the strong social container for catching stories and helping each other understand how the narratives of our lives can influence our professional and personal environments.
Chapter 8 Activating and Responding in a Social Container
Circle is a social container in which people’s greatest clarity and deepest confusion show up. Nonverbal cues of communication are magnified in a circle meeting. Every person brings an energetic presence to circle as well as a verbal contribution. Understanding energetics enables circle leaders to work holistically with the challenges of circle interaction and thereby strengthen group confidence.
Chapter 9 Why Circle Takes Us to the Shadow
The Jungian concept of the “shadow”—the unknown parts of the self—provides a way for people to understand the drive for increased wholeness that comes into the circle process and to trust the structure to hold them and language to speak about what’s happening in moments of distress.
Chapter 10 Circle as Support for Collective Healing
Circle can transform familial, community, and societal issues by receiving stories in a community of listeners. Three stories in this section illustrate the intergenerational healing of afamily, the healing provided by addressing issues of race and gender in a southern city, and the ability of traumatized citizens to shift their reactions to organized violence in the midst of social turmoil.
Part IV Circle as Paradigm Shift
Chapter 11 Organizational Experiments in
Circle Governance
This chapter features three organizations that use circle for their governance: the national board of the Financial Planning Association; the True North Health Care Center in Falmouth, Maine; and the Ridge and Valley Charter School in New Jersey.
Chapter 12 Circle as a Way of Life
Circle is a meaningful addition to quality relationships with family and friends. Anecdotal stories illustrate the power of circle to create healthy intimacy. Circle also prepares us to maintain societal calm and self-organization in times of transition, emergency, and social change.