RCS Speaker Meeting February 11, 2025 with Tilman Rieger

On February 11th, Rotarians met for their first meeting of the Chinese New Year of the Snake. The meeting started with banner exchanges. Beatrice had been away for two months, which gave her many opportunities to visit Rotary clubs worldwide. She brought back banners from her hometown of Florence and Berlin. Then, Terri brought a banner from Hong Kong. This was a great reminder for Rotarians of what a truly international organization Rotary is.

It was then birthday time. This month’s birthdays are those of Andreas and Thomas Rauss. With only Andreas being there, he had the chance to have the birthday celebration all to himself! The meeting continued with discussions about what has been happening recently. President Christian shared that 19,702.36 RMB has been raised for the ‘End Polio’ campaign. Connected to this, we learned that our member Salman has been giving polio shots in his home country of Pakistan. It is wonderful to see RCS fight polio in different ways, both through raising funds and taking action on the ground.

Then, we moved on to hear from our main speaker, Tilman Rieger. Tilman has established himself as an executive coach, offering seminars in nonviolent communication and leadership for multinational corporations. He is leading one of our Peacebuilding Committee’s projects, which involves teaching empathy and conflict management to Rotary clubs across China. RCS had the privilege of being the first club to receive this training at this meeting!

In this presentation, we first learned about the concept of positive peace. It may seem strange to hear that there can be such a thing as negative peace, but Tilman explained that peace is simply the absence of violence, whereas positive peace is about creating institutions and fostering attitudes for the maintenance of long-lasting peace. This really impressed upon us that peacebuilding cannot simply come from the absence of violence; we have to go a lot deeper.

Tilman then went on to discuss empathy. He asked Rotarians to rate themselves on their empathy. Those who rated themselves higher were asked to listen to the person next to them share a personal challenge and give them empathy. After this exercise, Tilman shared with us the dos and don’ts of giving empathy. Many of us who had rated ourselves highly learned that we weren’t as empathetic as we thought! There are many classic mistakes in giving empathy that many of us made.

For many of us, saying ‘I understand’ seems like an obvious way to convey empathy. However, we have learned that this can come across as overly rational. Additionally, we discovered that offering a silver lining is a significant mistake, as it may lead the person to feel that their emotions are being invalidated. It is essential to mirror the energy of the other person; if they are angry, responding with more passion can be helpful.

Rotarians greatly appreciated this opportunity to learn about the vital life skill of giving empathy. It was an engaging and informative evening. It was also wonderful to see one of our members deliver a presentation and share his knowledge with us. A fun night was enjoyed by all.

Written by Secretary Rohit Ballal