Non-Violent Communication

Language and behaviour play a central role in the generation, escalation and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Miscommunication lies at the heart of many a conflict; a judgemental or inflammatory comment can escalate what looked like a trivial disagreement, or a respectful, articulate request for action that will meet one's needs can open the way to resolving a conflict.  Appropriate intentions expressed in well-chosen language or skilful action can contribute enormously to constructive handling of conflict.  Maintaining clear language and effective behaviour is even more difficult in a conflicted situation and we need to learn ways of communicating which hold up for us under such stressful conditions.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC), sometimes called Compassionate Communication, demonstrates how working on our language and behaviour greatly enhances our chances of both resolving our conflicts and improving our relationships.   This form of communication emphasises how you are rather than who or what you are.  The distinction is critical.  The former leads to heightened awareness, connectedness and compassionate response while the latter encourages guilt, judgmental labelling, stereotyping that both violate and alienate us from one another.

NVC theory suggests that any kinds of punishment, coercion, shaming or guilt inducement are highly likely to result in escalatory retaliation, overt or covert, and are therefore best avoided.  Such control and protection mechanisms are endemic in our social, institutional and organisational cultures and are thus often difficult to identify and avoid.  Close attention to language, e.g. request rather than demand, minimises the cultural undertow that so often distorts communication and triggers retaliation or even revenge. 

NVC offers "Giraffe" (the land animal with the biggest heart) as a simple metaphor representing Life-supporting speaking and listening.  Life-alienating communication such as judgemental criticism, labelling and stereotyping are represented by  "Jackal". Jackals are really Giraffes with a communication problem. i.e. life-alienating behaviour or language usually hides frustrated, asocial or ineffective ways of getting genuine needs met.  NVC can be a powerful tool in transforming our "Jackal" tendencies endemic in our language, forms and culture.

Emotions indicate satisfied or unfulfilled needs. NVC emphasises awareness of feelings and the meeting of needs and also aims to get rid of escalating factors such as guilt inducement, punishment, shame or coercion from the communication process.  It seeks to highlight personal responsibility for one's feelings and needs, to be life-supporting and promote co-operation.  It aims at deepening compassion as well as meeting needs.

Inquiring into "How I am" and discovering "How you are" are fundamental to the discipline of compassionate communication.  We cannot hope to be consciously connected to one another if we do not experience connectedness to ourselves.  Paradoxically it is often through discovering our projections on to others that we learn about ourselves.  Learning to observe without evaluation or judgements may seem simple enough but often proves exceedingly difficult.  It is the cornerstone of discovering how rather than who you and I are - the starting point of compassionate communication.

Emotional competence and language are core to NVC.  We all have a variety of bodily states and visceral responses to which we have learned to associate certain emotional labels.     Most of us have a very limited and even crude vocabulary to ascribe to the immense variety of such states. Some times we even discover these associations are distorted, confusing or unrepresentative of the state they are intended to portray.  It can be a continuing struggle for some to tune into their emotional or feeling responses and to communicate them effectively.  It clearly improves with practice and enhances our ability to deal with conflict.

NVC helps separate out needs from the action that might be taken to meet these needs.   For example "I need you to get us out of the mess" might be phrased as  "I need help to get out of this mess and I would like you to do ...XYZ".   This shift in language belies quite complex and potentially difficult internal, feeling and attitudinal shifts and is more likely to trigger a constructive response in a conflicted situation.   NVC also provides a more systematic approach to identifying underlying needs buried in put-downs, critical attack, blame and so on, whether from internal or external sources.  It firmly establishes the connection between feeling and needs in practice.

 Process:

The process is conceptually simple though it belies the complexity of putting it into practice.  Key elements from a behavioural perspective require all parties to:

1.    Make accurate observations - central to this capacity is separating observation and evaluation . e.g. "you are hurting me" might become "I feel hurt when you ..".

2.    State the accompanying feeling/ emotion  - e.g. being able to recognise the difference between mental pictures and emotions.  (e.g. feeling attacked is a picture of what you perceive someone is doing to you and not an emotion / an experience within your body, - hurt for example)

3.    Identify the needs related to the experienced emotion  - requires that one takes responsibility for generating one's own feelings.  Needs are universal, experienced within ourselves and not related to another specific person.  Stating one's need without reference to another is more likely to engender a compassionate response.

4.    Request - state imagined activities that might meet needs.  They are best stated specifically and directly in positive action language, but without demand, i.e. they respect the other's right to decide whether or not to meet it.

5.    Listen empathically - a primitive art of love in which people try to compassionately enter another's world  (though they may not yet understand it), thereby making themselves accessible and vulnerable to it. 

This behavioural approach, developed by Marshall Rosenberg from Sherman, Texas, has been tested and proved its worth in conflict situations all over the world - including educational, organisational, political settings and in working to resolve violent armed conflict. Our NVC workshop in January offers a way of building such capability for dealing with conflicts.