Practically speaking, NVC helps us build our emotional intelligence and enhance our communication skills so that we can understand and act in harmony with our values and the values of others.

Whether we're addressing conflict in a boardroom, classroom, or around the kitchen table, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) offers a powerful and effective alternative to the competitive and adversarial styles of communication that often impede a desirable outcome.

The NVC Difference

Take a moment to think about a situation, either at work or in your personal life, where you experienced conflict. In conflict situations, many people focus on trying to convince the other person of the validity of their position (there can be more and less adversarial ways of doing this, but the intent is the same). The NVC model, on the other hand, proposes that we can instead focus on creating a quality of connection where all the needs of all parties are recognized and valued in order to best identify solutions that will meet those needs.

The NVC dialogue model is essentially a gateway to creating 'compassionate connections' with others. It consists of:

a) making clear non-judgmental observations,
b identifying and expressing feelings,
c) identifying and expressing the needs that are connected to the feelings,
d) making clear do-able positive action requests.

First Steps – Identifying Barriers to Compassionate Communication.

Most of us, even if we consider ourselves good communicators, possess ways of thinking and communicating that can get in the way of productive dialogues. Within NVC this is referred to as 'Alienating Language'. Some examples of Alienating Language are:

a) Words that imply "wrongness" or "rightness". Examples of this are terms like should, good, bad, right, wrong, inappropriate, aggressive, competitive, negative, obsessive.

b) Words that minimize choice and respect for the autonomy of others (also called demands). Such words tend to provoke resistance, rebellious or submissive responses. Examples of such phrases are "you must", "you have to", "you can't".

c) Words that deny personal responsibility for actions taken. This includes words like "I had to", "I was told to", "just following orders", "that's just the way it is", "it's our policy".

Alienating language has a dehumanizing effect and makes it difficult to remain connected to our compassionate and cooperative natures. It often results in a need to invest energy in personal defense and/or the condemnation of others. Do you often find yourself using alienating language, as described above? If so, you're not alone… read on for an example of NVC at work.

Positive Alternatives

So what do we do when faced with difficult conversations, or people telling us things that we don't like to hear? Without a clear understanding of the alternatives, it's all too easy to resort to attack or defensiveness.

The first step is to realize that every moment offers us a choice about how to respond. You might try asking yourself: "Do I simply want to win, or do I want to create an effective dialogue so that we both win?"

Imagine you are at work, and a co-worker says to you "It seems unfair that you consistently have the last say."

You have a number of options about how to respond. Many of us might be inclined to respond with "Well, it's my responsibility to make sure that the best decisions are made" or "That's not really accurate. There have been plenty of times when others have had the last say." These are not "bad" responses, but they do sever the opportunity to connect with your co-worker in a meaningful way, and to increase your mutual understanding. What's more important here is that your co-worker feels truly heard and understood by you.

So rather than getting defensive yourself or immediately making your co-worker into the "wrong" one, NVC offers ways to respond differently. NVC suggests that you withold all your judgements and even ignore for a minute everything you know about this person and their particular attributes, history, etc. -- and instead just really tune into the feelings of the person. From there, you can try to identify the need(s) behind the feelings you perceive.

Follow the NVC model: make clear, non-judgemental observations, identify and express feelings, identify and express the needs connected to the feelings, and make clear, positive action requests.

The Nonviolent Communication method is simple in theory, and often challenging to master. To learn more, or to read chapter 1 of Nonviolent Communication online, visit www.nonviolentcommunication.com.