What is it?
Marshall Rosenberg created Nonviolent Communication to help improve the quality of our relationships by transforming existing patterns of defensiveness and aggressiveness into compassion and empathy.
The Nonviolent Communication model has four components and two parts.
The four components are:
- Observation
- Feeling
- Needs
- Request
The two parts are:
- Empathy
- Honesty
The outline of the model goes like this:
When I see that______________
I feel ______________
because my need for ________________ is/is not met.
Would you be willing to __________________?
Why use it?
The model supports your introspection and reflection of what is going on in the world around you. By practising Nonviolent Communication, you are more able to nurture the relationships with people around you.
Steps
Remember a time and place where the conversation became really heated. For Alexis It was one reaction in a meeting, something he said, he did not necessarily know why, but he could see on the faces of other people that it was not helping. We will use this as an example for the different steps.
Observation
- Take a step back and observe what happened,
- When I see (hear…)
- Alexis: When I hear you speaking about the complexity of the work of a team that has no representative in the room, a team I was a member of before…
Feelings
- Now express how you feel, it can be an emotion or a sensation rather than a thought that is in relation to what you observe.
- … I feel…
- Alexis: … I felt a rush of anger…
Needs
- Now express what you need or value that cause your feelings.
- … Because I need…
- Alexis: … Because I need people to be respected, I need their work to be respected, I need fairness and equity…
Requests
- Now you can formulate a request that would improve the relationship, without demanding, a concrete action that you would like to be taken.
- … Would you be willing to… ?
- Alexis: … Would you be willing to invite representatives of that team so they can bring their own perspective on those issues so that we can all learn and improve?
You can expect that you won’t get it right the first time, and that you’ll need more than one iteration to make it good. Good being, an observation that is really an observation, a feeling that is really a feeling, and so on…
Working on this with a trusted peer could really help.
Further Information
- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D
- Nonviolent Communication Companion Workbook: A Practical Guide for Individual, Group, or Classroom Study, Lucy Leu. Also the workbook is on issuu.com
