dear to them, or a personal issue. State from the outset that the purpose is to share and listen to each other.
Discuss with a friend: why do we sometimes not want to be open
with others? Is there a way of getting around this difficulty?
Exercise: draw a line to symbolise your life so far. Put little marks
above the line for times in your life when you’ve felt really happy,
and marks below for when you’ve struggled. Is the picture balanced
or tending one way more than the other? If you do this with a friend
you could share as much of your pictures as you feel able to with
each other.
Discuss with a friend: what qualities do you value in a friend when
you are sharing from your heart, and what things do people do whilst
you are sharing which hurt?
Discuss with a group: why is trusting the person you are talking to
so crucial when you want to share?
Exercise: write down how you feel during a day and then draw a picture of how it changes, from high, to ok, to low. Share it with
someone you know well and ask them if this is what you are normally like.
Level 5: complete openness – which speaks for itself. We tell it as it
is. We don’t hide anything from the person we are with. It’s a situation we rarely achieve as it usually takes so long to trust someone
with all of our heart. In a level 5 exercise it isn’t a level we encourage people to step into, but by raising its existence it helps us to
encourage and promote it. As leaders it also provokes us to ask the
question – who do we have that we can be completely open with?
For some the answer may be no one…yet! Now that we are aware