21 March 2001 NI Meeting

"Nonviolent Communication"

21 March 2001

Tamesis Sailing Club, Teddington

Thank you for a really interesting day.

Jo and Pat plunged boldly and quickly into our experience.I was learning rather than being taught.

I thought the strengths of the process are the focus on working with the present in the situation at hand and asking the individuals involved to look at feeling and the underlying need and formulating that into a request that has the possibility of being received in an open way.

Overall it was a very thought provoking and engaging day. We did connect in the present.

This account of the day by Tony Page is followed by reflections received from 4 other participants: Julia Hutson, Tessa Bradon, Bill Tate and Jan Carter.

Background and Purpose

What is NVC about? Nonviolent Communication is a way of communicating effective in situations where communication really matters: for example, where differences between people might damage relationships or turn into destructive conflicts. This simple but profound process enables us to express and receive strong feelings in safety.

The purpose of the day was to introduce and demonstrate the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) process by working with our own case material, then to explore the role of NVC in organisational change.

Pat Dannahy - a certified NVC Trainer - and Jo McHale recently formed a partnership together called Touchstones. They will be running a two day NVC in Organisations workshop in May (contact them direct for details at jomchale@cableol.co.uk).

We were asked to come prepared to work on a situation in which:
a.. there is conflict between you and another person(s)
b.. you would like to express how you are feeling in a way that allows you to keep, or even improve, your relationship.

Present

This was our first meeting attended by a dog, Cinna (short for Cinnamon)! Also present were Bill Tate, Jan Morgan, Jan Carter (a friend of Jo and Pat), Julia Hutson (introduced by Terri), Terri McNerney, Tessa Bradon, Tony Page and of course Jo McHale and Pat Dannahy.

What sort of vehicle is NVC?

Pat kicked us off with each person sharing something significant about themselves and something that had recently enriched their life. I remembered my 80 year old aunt's birthday cake arriving in the post that morning, and I suppose we all quickly remembered and learnt some significant bits and pieces that made us feel fairly comfortable together.

Pat continued giving us a sense of what NVC is. She defined it as a way of communicating when communication really matters and stated how much it means to her (big benefit in her life, work and family, feeling more alive, better and broader specturm of connections across age and race, still growing with it). I think Bill or was it Jan asked a question that really brought the session to life. Soon we were into it: discussing questions like the courage needed to express feelings, life as a series of close misses, talking past people and how you can make direct connections more quickly with people. We learned that NVC although seeming simple is not easy, comfortable or soft. That the approach constantly challenges you and those around to you express both positives and negatives.

The INTENTION of NVC was to connect with others and enrich life. The FOCUS of NVC is in the here and now, the present. How you do this is to focus on what FEELINGS and NEEDS are alive in the other person and in you right now, to recognise unmet needs and the validity of the other person's experience. It is all based on mutuality and an underlying assumption that people are fundamentally good.

We discussed how a method like this could be manipulative at which Jo highlighted that NVC depends on the opposite of manipulation: making yourself vulnerable.

We were to use "classical NVC" during the day: a precise form of words, and we were warned: "this might jar a bit".

Case Example 1: Slicing Carrots

The time up to lunch was then taken up with working on two case examples. The first case arose from a situation between sisters, one of whom was chopping carrots, helping to prepare Christmas dinnner. The host sister said something like "careful that knife is sharp" which set off an intense reaction that became the subject of our case work. Pat and Jo working with the case "owner" and the group helped us through the NVC framework which covered roughly the following ground:

STIMULUS/OPSBSERVATION: That knife is sharp
Q. What do you FEEL now when you remember this? A. I feel distress, confusion, shock....
Q. What unmet NEED is giving rise to this feeling? A... because I need to make my own choices.
Q. What would you like to REQUEST from your sister to complete this? A. For her to tell me back that she has heard my feelings and needs. "Would you tell me back what you just heard me say?"

In working through this framework we discussed:

How observations need to be clean and not containing interpretation, judgement or making the other person wrong
How difficulty in expressing feelings can be helped with questions like "Where in your body are you feeling it?" "If you could express the feeling what would it be?" Jan M suggested this difficulty may be linked with Myers Briggs introverted F, and this really seemed to help the case "owner" understand herself better
How the framework is used accurately, with precision, following through on a specfic present feeling that was generated by a particular stimulus, not drifting between other feelings that might or might not sometimes be there
How keeping the focus on the feeling that person is experiencing NOW, and maintaining connection while working the method, keeps people really present and out of their heads.
How the Request step is important. Until the request is made a person is left unzipped, raw, vulnerable. The request gives a closure and indicates how the other person is best able to respond if they wish to maintain connection.

There were 3 MODES in which NVC can be used: expressing ourselves, receiving someone else, giving oursleves empathy. In the case example the case "owner" was expressing herself, and Pat/Jo were receiving. These are the spoken modes. The self-empathy is a silent mode in which you take a brief moment to get in touch with your own feelings and needs.

One surprising feature of NVC was the way in which the receiver is able to prompt the person expressing. A striking example of this was a daughter telling her father good news about her new boyfriend which prompted the father to blurt abruptly: "We're no good at relationships in this family!". The daughter found this remark rather hard to understand or respond to but then went into prompting for feelings: "Are you feeling worried that the relationship might not work and I'll get hurt?" This produced an unexpected response from father: "No, I'm feeling jealous that I'll not see so much of you now!". Suddenly the remark made sense to the daughter and the connection with father was maintained.

With this example in mind we were seeing the difference from the open ended questioning ("How are you feeling?") many of us have had drilled into us in previous training. In NVC it's OK to lead the witness in the pursuit of the feeling that is true. Prompting overcomes a sort of blockage to NVC where people lack a rich "feeling" vocabulary. Interestingly we learned from Jan C that the prompting style is also used in selling to get quickly from a bland, avoidance response such as "I'm feeling OK about it" to the specific and accurate "No I'm not feeling cross but I am feeling disappointed".

Case Example 2: Cancelled Meeting

In the second case a coach had her meeting cancelled at the last minute by her client. It was a bit of a struggle getting through this using the framework, and with this case owner some of the difficulties of prompting became apparent. But we ended up with something like this.

STIMULUS/OBSERVATION: When I heard you had cancelled our meeting tomorrow...
...I FELT some irritation, anxiety and doubt...
Underlying my irritation I NEED respect for my time, and for you to honour your commitments. I need you to recognise the impact of this on me in order for me to be effective and competent and to make my best contribution to you.
I REQUEST that you repeat back to me what you just heard me say.

We learnt alot about using NVC through certain difficulties that occurred in the "feeling" and "needs" steps: being involved directly in a process of unravelling the owner's needs from her client's. As a coach the case owner wanted/needed to challenge her client's tendency to treat his own needs as less important that his clients. The conversation started to reveal a workaholic's pecking order that put his own client, ahead of his coach, perhaps ahead of his colleagues, then his family and perhaps then him. It was this chain of one way relationships that seemed to be a core pattern the coach wanted to challenge. Cancelling the meeting denied her this opportunity.

The NVC framework showed that the means to challenge this pattern was through the coach asserting her own needs directly in the situation and letting go, at least for a little while, of any intellectual justification for this (ie. Not "I'm doing this because it is core for you"). This was a risk for the coach and I'm not sure if it was one she was prepared to take. (... and beware, this interpretation goes a little beyond the discussion we actually had in the session so it may not be accurate!). What was clear was that this case owner felt a little uncomfortable with being prompted, preferred working quite slowly and would have appreciated a little more time to find the words herself.

We learned that learning the NVC framework can be learned in a "5 chair method" which involves the speaker moving from their starting chair back and forth between 4 other chairs each representing one step in the NVC method.

Then it was lunch: bread, cheese, sardines and salad provided by Jo with help from Sainsburys.

Jo and Pat's Role Play

After lunch Jan asked whether Jo and Pat could do a role play to sort of put it all together. We had gained a one-sided understanding of the method in the morning, and bringing it to life in a real conversation would help deepen our undertanding and integrate our new knowledge. And they said yes and then delivered to us a brief, spontaneous and wonderful double act, that achieved just what we asked for.

The situation was Jo and Pat running a workshop and Pat coming back late from a tea break to the annoyance of Jo. Pat enters the room, notices Jo is annoyed, pauses for a moment (talking in an aside to us the audience to explain that she is giving herself empathy, using the 4 steps to get in touch with her own feelings and needs, thus creating just enough mental/emotional space to then focus on Jo). Then Pat uses the 4 step method to remain in connection with Jo, finding out that about her annoyance. Prompting repeatedly to identify and check out Jo's feelings seemed to take the anger out of her. We learnt about Jo's need for professionalism and for her colleague to buy-in and support her in this when they are working together with a group. It all seemed so real: revealing to us something rather close to the truth probably. And Jo's request was to put the matter on hold until the end of the day's session. We then whizzed forward in time to a meeting after the workshop. Pat referred back to the incident, checked how Jo was feeling, and the feeling had moved on from annoyance to something else, and Pat's job was to reconnect with what the feeling was now, and what the need was now. Anyway NVC saved the day of course and it was a brilliant performance!

Case Example 3: Self-empathy with scary client

This was mine and I find this makes it a little harder to write about. I'm only able to give the briefest of details but it went something like this:

OBSERVATION: a client, ex senior level military man, asked me to introduce myself and explain the work I had been doing with their organisation. I was struck dumb - unable to strong a coherent sentence together.
FEELINGS: I felt embarrassment. Fear. Anxiety.
NEEDS: Underpinning my anxiety was a strong need to be able to trust the client, and to be able contribute positively to a client organisation which badly needed help

Thus far it emerged fairly easily, then I found myself a bit stuck over the Request step. Did I want to actually say anthing, ask anything or the client here? No, not really. I wanted to overcome my own stuckness. I wanted insight into what was blocking me. I wanted to be able to become effective, involved and connected again. So I learned that I needed to be in self-empathy mode, rather as Pat was for a moment in the previous role play. By taking a moment for myself, while counting to ten or just pausing, my request to myself was to remember my own strengths, skills and successes, then, equipped with this self-empathy to re-enter the discussion with the client.

This put me in touch with some personal stuff, reminding me of difficulties I can have with authority, and how my projecting onto a figure like this client can in some way become crippling at a critical moment when I need to perform. NVC is a way of reminding me how to dispel my fears, get centred and strong again in situations which deeply challenge me. I realised I want to be in a confident personal state from which I can improvise, being natural, spontaneous and skilful.

At this point we had a discussion in the group about how others deal with scary authoritarian figures. This produced a couple of really bizarre but interesting suggestions:

think of the person on the toilet while you're talking to them. This reminds you they're just like you, human too
shrink them in your minds eye to an ant or something small. When I do this it makes me smile each time I see them.

As I dashed out to catch my plane to Aberdeen, the others continued to discuss connections between models and uses for NVC in organisations. I missed most of this part but Pat sent me her notes of the organisational uses identified:

Teams in conflict
Appraisal - moving feedback into the present
Negotiating
Mediation - including legal profession
Meeting - bogged down - making an intervention
Customer service
Call centres
Negotiating
Communicating across cultures

Pat also sent me this NVC proverb which reminds us of the joyful and generous spirit of NVC:

NVC proverb: only do something if you can do it with the joy of children feeding ducks

Thanks again to Pat, Jo, Cinna and Tamesis!

Tony Page
April 2001

Some reflections on the work last Wednesday. I thought the strengths of the process are the focus on working with the present in the situation at hand and asking the individuals involved to look at feeling and the underlying need and formulating that into a request that has the possibility of being received in an open way. I do think it demands a lot of practice and awareness of feeling and need in each individual and so will need time to develop a facility with the process. The intention is positive and I appreciated the way the structure aimed at cutting through baggage and reaching greater clarity.

It has led me to reflect on how I could use it and I am aware that somehow a context needs to be created in which the structure can sit. I was also struck by the fact that Jo and Pat underlined that this can be used with other tools in one's repertoire and for me that would probably be necessary. For those of us who need other ways to express our needs and feelings or indeed ways to find out what they are, then non verbal techniques would be useful in conjunction with this and I did feel that it would be helpful if the parties using this structure were both familiar with it otherwise it might feel artificial and "unnatural".

I am still reflecting on it and think it is a worthwhile process to investigate further.

On a separate note, I just wanted to say thank you to the network for your hospitality last week and that I enjoyed it. Julia Hutson

Thank you for a really interesting day. You managed the boundaries well, (eg confidentiality). It felt a safe environment.

I noticed the difficulty people experience in expressing feelings - (especially those of us who are introverted feelers, I find my strong values can sometimes be hard to articulate and also very private). When I did articulate them, it was helpful to have them recorded. I also needed them in my own choice of words to connect with them again.

I felt some resistance to the process (I expect you noticed!), because I feel wary of models that are offered as 'the one answer'. However I know that I always need to challenge an idea before I take it on board. So my wish is to live with NVC and experiment with it, 'try it on'. I have already started doing that in small ways and noticed that it is helpful.

Useful interventions
a.. 'What is the now for you around this journey?
b.. Receiving - Offering questions/guesses / intuitions, gives permission to disclose feelings eg "Are you feeling angry?"
c.. 'There is a common confusion between needs and a strategy to get needs met.'

We made lots of connections with Dialogue, Appreciative Enquiry, NLP, Nancy Kline's Thinking Environments, & Will Schutz' Interpersonal needs (FIRO-B). NLP was useful for getting 'stuck' with feelings 'If you did know, what would it look like / where in your body would you feel it?' (Gets you out of your head and back to your body)

There was a theme in the issues we worked on, of the challenges for consultants in getting their needs met when dealing with clients. (I was reminded of Peter Block's observations in Flawless Consulting, that it is not possible to have a successful consulting relationship where the needs of the consultant are not respected.)

We brainstormed some suggested uses for NVC in an organisation
a.. Teams in conflict
b.. Appraisal
c.. Feedback in the moment
d.. Meetings
e.. Negotiation / consultation
f.. Mediation
g.. Facilitation

Overall it was a very thought provoking and engaging day. We did connect in the present. A great 'taster' for the process.

Warmest wishes, Tessa

My feedback is based on comparisons with previous NVC Introductions - by Jo and Pat, Marshall Rosenberg and another NVC trainer.

In the past I have felt I was being taught NVC. This occasion felt like I was learning rather than being taught. It was more us and our experience and how NVC related to that, rather than the other way round.

Related to this, I liked their strategy of eg/rule in place of the more common rule/eg. I know that the choice between rule/eg or eg/rule doesn't exactly fit this case, but if you substitute 'our experience' for 'eg/example', it serves to make the point. In other words, I was expecting an exposition of NVC followed by how it applies. Jo and Pat reversed that and plunged boldly and quickly into our experience. They then drew out the NVC model from that. Having experienced the reverse process from them previously, I initially wondered what was going on ("where is the explanation of NVC?", "where are their visuals?"). But it worked a dream.

There is a big difference between classical NVC and colloquial NVC. The first seems very difficult and artificial, but you know you are encountering something different. The second feels natural, but can seem so everyday in tone that it loses its distinctive brand. I have the sense in hindsight that we struck a middle chord, and might have benefited from seeing both forms pushed to extremes.

I think these sessions are crying out for a few cameos on video.

I liked the seamless, comfortable partnership between Jo and Pat.

Regards Bill Tate

I would like to add my feedback as I too want Jo and Pat to succeed because NVC is giving me the ability to respond to and handle difficult situations with more confidence and less personal angst.

I was delighted with the emphasis in the session on the practical rather than theory though I appreciate that this fits well with my personal learning style and may not be appropriate for everyone. I also had the benefit of previous exposure to NVC via a two day workshop and reading Marshall's book which is influencing my view.

I particularly enjoyed hearing Pat and Jo demonstrating the use of NVC in their role play after lunch.

My request is that they develop a more practice based series of sessions for people who want, like me, to grow and develop their skills with the benefit of having experienced coaches on hand to help.

Hope this helps, Regards, Jan