Non-Violent Communication

Transcript

I was thinking again about nonviolent communication. I mentioned this the other day when I was talking to Will Etchison in our interview about how we can use this form of communication to express ourselves without blaming or judging. Not a very easy thing to do. Yesterday I just started listening to an audio course from Marshall Rosenberg.

If you look on Spotify there are many of Rosenberg’s courses available so if you have Spotify free or premium, you can access it on there already.

He is great, when I did that interview with Eze Sanchez, and yes I have to second his recommendation. This is obviously very talented, very precise thinker and communicator of course.

To review the basics of this method, the formula, it goes something like this:

First, mention the behavior you notice in the other person. You might say “Hey I notice sometimes there are dishes left in the sink and then we move into our feelings. How do I feel when I notice that? When I see that I feel frustrated.”

Its very important when you listen to these Rosenberg recordings he says “Well a lot of people, they will say something like I feel intimidated. I feel betrayed. I feel attacked.”

These are sneaky words, he calls the Jackal language or I might call it weasel words because what you are doing is saying you feel something but indirectly you are giving an accusation. Very difficult to avoid actually, if you start practicing it.

I was rehearsing some situations in my head, when were some situations I could have used this? And I found this desire was so strong to tell these people what I think.

And thinking normally means evaluations, judgement, blaming. Such a strong impulse but the more we tell people what we think, the less they are likely to listen to us. He repeats it over and over again in his course, if you are going to judge you probably are not going to get what you want.

So, firstly the observation notice there are dishes left in the sink. The feeling, frustration. When I see that I feel frustrated. And then the needs, well in nonviolent communication we call them needs. I guess you might call them deep desires.

I have an aversion to using the word need. Do I really need that? I need food and water and sleep, do I really need trust? Its a deep desire.

We would put it on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, lets call it a need. What I normally say “What I would really like is to have a clean house, to have something that is aesthetically pleasing. It is something very important to me so in the future I would ask that you eat your food, please clean up the dishes and put them away.”

That’s how it goes. Observation, feeling, need and finally the suggestion. As I said, it’s not easy to set aside our egos and not tell people what we think but if we would like them to adapt their behavior, we can give them this space where they don’t have to worry about defending themselves, they can just accept our suggestion.

I think a lot of people will accept our suggestion.

I am going to keep trying this, I love these techniques, I still haven’t fully implemented them in my life because they are awesome.

Thanks so much have a wonderful day.