Day five was about the two skills that sound easy and almost nobody actually does well: listening and asserting yourself. We opened with active listening, and instead of lecturing about it, we made people practice. The reflective listening circle came first one person tells a short story, the person next to them has to repeat back what they heard, not paraphrase it or interpret it, just say it back. Sounds simple. It’s not. Almost everyone added their own spin, missed key details, or jumped to conclusions. That’s the point to make visible how rarely we actually hear what’s being said.
Then we took the group outside for a listening walk in nature. No talking. Just walking and listening to the wind, to footsteps, to birds, to your own breathing. It’s a strange experience in a group, but it resets your attention in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve done it. When we came back inside, we did a storytelling circle where one person told a story and the listeners had only one job: ask open-ended questions that helped the storyteller go deeper. No advice, no judgment, no “that reminds me of when I…” Just curiosity. By the end, people were having conversations they’d never had with anyone.
The afternoon was the big one the negotiation simulation. Participants were paired up and given conflicting roles and viewpoints on paper, without knowing what the other person was working with. Their job was to negotiate their way to a solution, using everything they’d learned over the week active listening, paraphrasing, identifying underlying needs, assertive communication, NVC framing. Some pairs cracked it. Some pairs hit a wall and had to start over. A few discovered, halfway through, that their positions weren’t actually as opposed as they’d thought they just hadn’t asked the right questions. The debrief afterwards was rich. People talked about how hard it is to stay calm when you feel attacked, how easy it is to slip back into old patterns under pressure, and how powerful it is when someone actually listens to you.
We wrapped up with reflection, and then the evening was deliberately free. After five intense days, the group needed it. Some people went into Zagreb, some stayed in and slept, some sat in small groups talking about everything and nothing. Sometimes the best programme item is no programme item.
