The Everyone Talks Activity

Everyone Talks is a quick, simple, and effective sharing strategy for groups to process a recent experience with everyone’s participation.

This is a very powerful strategy because it provides a structure for the conversation, allowing everyone a chance to say something, i.e. it handles domineering or loud personalities quite well. It also gives you a chance to take a quick look at what everyone is thinking.

Ask your group to form a circle because this is often the best way to see and hear each other, and then simply ask your question(s). You can invite a designated person to respond first (for example, the person immediately to your left) or ask for a volunteer to get started.

Continue to invite responses one at a time around the circle.

Allow people to ‘pass’ if they would prefer not to respond, or simply cannot think of anything to say. If appropriate, return to these folk once all others have spoken to check if they now have something to contribute.

The primary aim of this technique is to invite a brief contribution from everyone. Therefore, actively manage the length of time each each person speaks, interrupting those who speak for too long.

Carefully listen to the individual responses, and keep people on track if they begin to stray from the topic. A classic example of this is when you ask people to share something about themselves, yet they quickly start talking about the group or other people.

Sharing thoughts and beliefs from an experience can speak to the benefits of mindfulness and responsibility because participants are invited to reflect on a particular topic and then share it in a public forum.

The topics of this publication: reflection, self, mindfulness, emotions, interactions, empathy, responsibility