Non-violent communication (NVC) is the brain child of Marshall Rosenberg. Although he would point out that NVC contains nothing new. All that NVC is, has been known for centuries. However, he created the framework with an aim to enable us to 'express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectul and empathetic attention'. By it's very definition NVC is not only about how we speak but also how we listen.
The most exciting thing about NVC, to my mind, is that it allows us to perceive our relationships in a new light by allowing us to hear our own deeper needs and those of others.
NVC comprises four main components:
Observations
Feelings
Needs
Requests
The two parts of NVC require us to express honestly through the four components and receive empathetically through the four components.
An example of NVC communication might be "We agreed to leave the house at 9am. It is now 9.30am. I feel anxious. It is important to me to support my brother today, so I want to arrive in time to help out. Would you be willing to finish mowing the lawn later so we can leave as soon as possible?". Simple right. Not always. Perhaps the hardest part is now hearing the response to this empathetically :-)
I'd like to write lots more about NVC but trying to keep these blogs bitesized at the moment. So my invitation to you this week is to look out for these non-NVC ways of communicating and perhaps to ponder about whether they block connection in your experience:
- One-upping
- Educating
- Consoling
- Story-telling
- Sympathising
- Explaining
- Correcting
- Interrogating
- Changing topic
Now I'm not saying there is never a place for communicating in these ways but it is worth being mindful of the way you are communicating and impact these ways of communicating can have.
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