Clarity Groups for Peer Mentoring: with thx to Quakers

Growing up, I always thought the Quakers were a bit boring. Not the brand of oats, but the Christian group. “What, they sit in silence in a circle? How dull!” That’s what I thought when I was first told about them. I wasn’t that much into singing old hymns either, but I imagined that their silent circles would be “unproductive”. And I imagined I would feel it to be “awkward” silence, and shy about speaking up, or “knowing what to say”. Now I realise that reveals how much I was experiencing my culture’s thoughts and feelings: the assumption that pausing and being still is wasting time, that ‘wasting time’ is bad, and that it is embarrassing to not have something ‘appropriate’ to say. However, recently I discovered that 350 years ago the Quakers first developed a method for peer mentoring that I have been using for years! Learning their philosophy that shaped the development of their mentoring practice is deepening my understanding of it. And it might even heal some of my sense of separation from the Christian culture I grew up within. I will explain the practice first, and then come back to its Quaker origin, and why that matters. 

Back in 2018 in Bali, my Bulgarian friend and life coach Zori Tomova introduced me to a practice she called “masterminding”. Zori had been organising a community of people to share various methods for personal connection and transformation. The process was new to me, and seemed so useful that I brought it into my leadership courses as well as the Deep Adaptation Forum which I founded the following year. But “masterminding” had sounded a bit macho and serious to us, so my colleagues decided to rename them “Wisdom Circles”. But as that term is used elsewhere for larger circles with different guidelines, rather than small groups of three (+/- 1), I’ve started using a different name for them. 

‘Clarity Groups’ rest on a deceptively simple yet radical philosophical foundation: that the deepest wisdom for any issue or challenge already resides within the person who holds it. The structure is not a problem-solving workshop but a friendly container for generative sharing and listening. 

At its core, the method rejects the widespread human impulse to “fix.” In normal conversation, have you noticed how, when someone shares a difficulty, others immediately offer advice, personal stories, or, um, premature ‘solutions’? This reflex, however well-intentioned, often bypasses the speaker’s own clarity and implies their incapacity and dependency. In Clarity Groups, the process inverts that social pathology. The first five minutes of uninterrupted monologue invites personal sovereignty and authority in relation to their lived experience. No interruptions, murmurs, cross-talk, or steering questions are allowed. Even major emotional expressions from the listeners are discouraged. 

Then come two distinct layers of reflective mirroring, without advice. First, a paraphrase. This is not mimicry but an act of validation. For instance, a listener might summarise “You said your team resists your leadership because they see you as too directive.” One aim is to show the speaker that the listener understands what has been shared. Another aim is for the speaker to hear what their situation sounds like from another source, without judgement, projection or advice. The speaker is not expected to elaborate anything after hearing the paraphrasing. However, in some cases, the person paraphrasing might need to ask one question of clarification before they attempt to paraphrase what they heard. 

Next up, a third participant in a Clarity Group offers some observations about the speaker’s tone, body language, or emotional shifts, which they noticed during the speaker’s monologue. They can also choose to include some emotional impact on themselves, but without further story. For instance, “When you mentioned the board meeting, I think I noticed your voice went higher, and I felt a knot in my own stomach.” Here the philosophy of this peer mentoring method uses ‘phenomenology’: we try to report on observed phenomena, rather than bringing our interpretations. Seen that way, our own emotional responses to another’s truth are neither “about us”, nor “made by them”, but are simply extra data for the speaker to hear. In other words, my fear, sadness, or anger in response to your story is a potential gift you may choose to use or discard.

These steps in the process are not just prelude to advice giving — they are its main benefit. The speaker gains some clarity through the process of choosing what to say and hearing themselves say it. They gain additional clarity from hearing their explanation paraphrased, as well as how they appeared to others when sharing it. With that greater clarity the person sharing might begin to see some provisional answers, remedies, or revalidations. 

Only after those steps, and only if the speaker explicitly agrees, does the third round invite advice. This consent transforms advice from intrusion into offering. Without consent, even brilliant counsel can be experienced as a form of dismissal or domination. But with consent, advice becomes a voluntary resource the speaker can sift, accept, adapt, or refuse. 

The minimum fifteen minutes per person ensures that no step is rushed. It also means that in a group of three, a Clarity Group can conclude within an hour, with a little leeway for welcoming and concluding discussions. The participants agree to full confidentiality where they won’t share anything they heard with people outside the group. In addition they agree not to follow up with a participant on the nature of their situation other than to offer further availability and support, if that is invited. Therefore, each person is meant to feel emotionally released from the process after participating. The only deviation from that situation is if an urgent risk of harm has arisen; in which case, a participant can encourage someone to seek professional support and provide relevant contact details. 

I think this simple method has worked well for centuries because it embodies important values that aren’t always supported in normal life. I’ll briefly describe some of those values before giving instructions on running your own Clarity Group.

What’s really important is that the trio of a Clarity Group is not a hierarchy of smarter peers trying to fix a broken one. There is no hint of the ‘drama triangle’ where ‘victims’ of circumstances need saving. Each group is a meeting of equals. What helps for that is to know that anyone in the trio will accept our general understanding and experience of the world, without prejudice or judgement, and where we don’t risk triggering their own worries or traumas. In our case, it is helpful that we know that everyone participating already accepts we are living within a global ecological disaster with many maladaptive responses. Upon that basis, we can benefit from participants in our Clarity Groups being very different from the types of people we meet in our normal life. 

In our era of relentless interruption and quick answers, the slow, mirrored attention in a Clarity Group is not merely polite — it is a philosophical rebellion. We practice supportive listening because we know that being truly heard is often more transformative than any advice could be. That is because we trust in the potential of each other, when supported, to find our inner insight and resolve.

As participants, we trust that every one of us has some level of commitment to become wiser, kinder, happier, less harmful, and more useful, to others, and to all sentient beings. We trust that by making this innate drive explicit in membership of a group, we can affirm and support it. We also trust in the idea that most answers to the deepest questions in our lives lie within us. That is because we hold within us an original wisdom that can be brought out, within the right conditions. Some of us think such wisdom arises from our biology, whereas others believe it comes from a metaphysical aspect of our being. That view echoes the spiritual philosophy which inspired people to use this method well before we did. 

Although there may be origins elsewhere in the world, a key source for this practice were the “clearness committees” that have been used by Quakers for centuries. Also called the Religious Society of Friends, they emerged in 17th-century England, with George Fox teaching that direct experience of the divine is available to all people. Today, the global community includes diverse branches. Unprogrammed meetings are common in the UK and parts of the US, involving the silent ‘waiting worship’ that I’d scoffed at decades ago. Most Quakers I know are cautious, or even suspicious, of fixed creeds. Instead, they encourage more contemplative and mystical approaches to faith. They recognise an “inner light” in everyone that can spiritually guide us as our “inner voice.” 

Some Quaker scholars have explained that the role of the religious community should be to help each other rediscover our original, yet hidden, wholeness. The use of a circle, or facing benches, is widespread in Quaker communities. That reflects a commitment to equality and shared listening that arises from a deep trust in the potential wisdom of us all. It is this philosophy which led them to naturally create the ‘clearness committees’ which then influenced multiple similar practices around the world including, now, our Clarity Groups. 

For years the only experience I had of the Quakers were non-religious events in their meeting houses. In Lancaster, I spoke about climate change and advocacy. Then somewhere in Cumbria I chanted and danced in a circle. Outside of their nice old buildings, I did not know that Quakerism was influencing my life in major ways, including while living on the other side of the world. Yes, those ideas related to deep truths can appear separately around the world. But the truth of such ideas means they also travel through purpose networks to far away lands, and can eventually return home, re-freshed. 

Today, my attitude to being in circles could not be more different to how it was. By sitting with the group Circling Europe, I learned more about myself and interpersonal dynamics than in any other setting, or from any book or teacher. I distilled and adapted that experience with Katie Car to design the ‘deep relating’ methodology for use in collapse-aware communities. In addition, I had my first transpersonal experience of melding consciousness with three other people in my first ever authentic relating circle. As I experienced for myself that consciousness is not separately contained in my own head, I did not need to force myself to believe what was written about that. Whenever I host retreats, courses, kirtans, sacred dances, or cacao ceremonies, we gather in circles. When I see people gathering in rows, I think “how boring.” It is funny that is the exact opposite of how I felt decades ago. Clearly the Quakers were on to something!

In the third meeting of the peer mentoring in the Metacrisis Initiative, we will be using this Clarity Group methodology. Therefore, this short essay is the background reading for that meeting. In keeping with the philosophy of Metacritical Mentoring, I encourage you to share any thoughts on the assumptions, pros, and cons, of this methodology. There’ll be space for that in the meetings, and I also leave comments open below. 

For members of the Metacrisis Initiative, what follows below is an outline of how to run your own Clarity Group process, as well as the reflection exercise that is part of the prep for meeting three. If you aren’t in a peer mentoring group, but would like to be, then make sure you are a paid subscriber to this blog, so you will receive the invite to apply for the next cohort (in August 2026). 

Thx, Jem

Group Facilitation on Societal Disruption and Collapse: Insights from Deep Adaptation (Paper by Bendell and Carr).

An Ancient Quaker Practice Whose Wisdom Prevails Today | Psychology Today

A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, 20th Anniversary Edition, Edition 2 by Parker J. Palmer