The UNMUTE Method — Five Steps to Safe Dialogue in Any Organisation

Step one — the arrival

The first ten minutes of a chapter are not warm-up. They are the whole thing in miniature. As each person arrives, the facilitator meets them at the door with eye contact and a single sentence — welcome, you are exactly on time. Phones go into a basket. Shoes, if the space allows, come off. There is warm water, dates, a soft light.

Nobody is asked to introduce themselves yet. The arrival is silent, and the silence is a gift, because it says — you do not have to earn your seat here.

Step two — the empty chair

The circle is set with one more chair than there are people. When the room has settled, the facilitator speaks the ritual — this chair is for the friend who could not come, the version of you that you left at the door, the story that is not yet ready to be told. It stays empty all evening.

This is the whole of the safety. From this moment on, every person in the room knows that they are allowed to bring their absent, their unfinished, their unspoken parts. The chair holds what the words cannot yet.

Step three — the five soft questions

The facilitator asks five questions, one at a time, with long silences in between. Each person may speak or pass. There is no crosstalk, no advice, no fixing. Only listening.

The five questions are — What is your name, and where does your name come from? What is one small joy you are carrying tonight? What is one heaviness you are carrying tonight? Who taught you how to listen? What is the story you have never quite finished telling?

That is it. That is the curriculum. It has taken me fourteen years to trust that these five questions, in this order, are enough.

Step four — the witnessing

After the fifth question, the facilitator invites a short silence. Then a single sentence from each person in the room — one thing you heard tonight that you will carry home. Not a summary, not a compliment. A carrying.

This step is where the community forms. Because when a person says — I will carry Sarah's story about her father, I will carry Ahmed's small joy about his daughter's laugh — the room becomes a mesh. Nobody leaves alone.

Step five — the seal

The facilitator closes the room with the same sentence every UNMUTE chapter ends with, in every country — what was said in this room belongs to this room. What was heard in this room belongs to us. What was carried from this room belongs to the world.

Then the light is turned back up. The phones come out of the basket. People do not usually leave quickly. They stand in small groups, they laugh softly, they hold each other. The evening does its second life in the doorway.

Five steps. Ninety minutes. One empty chair. If you hold a chapter this month, anywhere in the world, in a language I will never speak, we are already family. Send us a photograph of the chair. That is how UNMUTE grows.

— Dr S Pujah

Questions people ask

Can I run an UNMUTE chapter without being trained?

You can hold something like it, and we would rather you did than didn't. But if you want to call it an UNMUTE chapter and hold it under our name, we ask that at least one facilitator in the room is trained through us. The training is one day, and free for community and school facilitators in the UAE.

How large should the circle be?

Between eight and twenty-four people. Below eight and the vulnerability is too concentrated. Above twenty-four and each voice does not get enough room. Sixteen is the number I dream of when I set a room.

Where do I sign up to be trained?

Write to us through the Handbooks page, or WhatsApp Dr S Pujah on +971 58 556 5111. We hold facilitator training rounds every season in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.