Huddles Season 2.5: Sign Up to Make More Connections while Applying Listener Skills!

Hi everyone,

After 2 successful Huddle seasons, we have upgraded our Huddles structures and protocol and are excited to announce 2 Huddles for the season’s holidays.

What are Huddles?

A Huddle is a closed group where 10-20 participants regularly chat to provide continuous support and social connection to each other over 6 weeks.

Structure of a Huddle

Each huddle group will have access to a private group chat and forum community with weekly discussion topics. Huddlers also get access to the Common Room (another group chat) to connect with other Huddlers from other groups. Each huddle will also have 5+ listeners.

Huddles Topics

• Wellness Huddle

• Self-Care Huddle

The Role of a Listener in a Huddle

As a listener, you’ll be applying your active listening skills within a group environment and with other listeners. It’s a chance to amplify your impact and reach more people.

An effective listener promotes group discussions, encourages members to share, and asks open questions that make it easier for members to more deeply explore the topic at hand.

Listeners are not expected to be experts in the chosen topic. The primary role of a listener is to ensure a safe and open environment for participants to interact and explore a shared topic. This will look like:

• Using active listening skills and empathy in the private group chat and forum space.

• Getting to know users and asking questions that help them explore the topic, their concerns and situations.

• Building powerful supportive relationships with your group and sharing your own thoughts on weekly agenda topics. Prompting new conversations and activities that you think will benefit the group.

In addition, you will get to work closely with our admin team and receive mentorship and support.

What is Deeper Exploration?

Deeper exploration is about trying to further understand what each person is experiencing and why. It is also about exploring how the experiences of Huddlers relate to each other and learning from these connections. It is not about diagnosing a problem, giving advice or stating your views on another Huddler’s experience.

Here are some great ways of exploring topics more deeply:

• Descriptions - asking users to describe and clarify in more detail

• Emotions - how did it make you feel? Why did it make you feel that way?

• Analysing the experience - was there a trigger point that made you feel differently? What do you think caused this to happen?

• Be inclusive - direct questions to the whole group where possible. How do we all feel about [topic]?

In general, the key is to be interested and curious. Asking further questions and discussing what's going on is encouraged in Huddles!

Interested? Listeners can sign up here