Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg (Discussion + Book Club Meeting)

[NewBlood]

This video by the NVC author is worth watching: NVC Marshall Rosenberg - San Francisco Workshop.

Thanks, delay, will do!

[ertyu]

Watching this right now and it was interesting to me that needs-based literacy and nonviolent communication begin with ourselves: how we speak to ourselves and what needs we can identify behind the unskillful ways we've used in the past. When we criticize ourselves, what need of -ours- isn't getting met?

I also loved, "if you can't tell, just look through the list and your body will tell you" amen -- I love it when two different thinkers or systems of thought point the same way: in this case, NVC and Focusing, to the importance of bodily awareness.

ETA: other things notable from video:

- you can't have enough compassion to hear the other without fist giving compassion to yourself
- I love his insistence on, if you can't have the insight to figure out what's going on for you (what needs are at stake? Are you confusing a need with a strategy? what is the actual behavior that is bothering you here?) and if you can't "get compassion" for the other, you're not going anywhere. The point is to get insight into ourselves and into the situation, all else is incidental.

It is interesting to note that even when we try supposedly "nonviolent" communication [a good question, this: what counts as interpersonal violence?] -- even then, our communication doesn't exist outside of culture or outside of pre-existing power structures. The video is from 10+ years ago and some examples are of interactions that happened even further back, and some of the behavior that was described was really jarring to my libtard millenial soul - yet no one stopped and went, "this person did what?? wow that's not alright." So, the take-home thing at least for me is, just bc one is practicing or trying to practice NVC doesn't mean one's home safe when it comes to the ethics of one's behavior towards others.

[mathiverse]

I've found that NVC has helped me make further inroads when having conversation with a person who isn't communicating feelings, needs, requests, or observations. The basic pattern is that I might tell them something and make a request. They might say yes or no with no further elaboration or negotiation on something that I had hoped to have a further negotiation about. Now, I start asking them about their feelings about the request I made by guessing, "Are you feeling... because...?" Then this person typically elaborates or corrects my guess and we can work something out.

Prior to reading this book, I didn't have a good technique for drawing out more information or a model for what information to ask about to make progress. I'd say my prior approaches were more direct in trying to get to a solution rather than exploratory trying to get to an understanding (eg "Can you explain why not? Is there another option you'd prefer? I'm open to other ideas, but you have to elaborate on what you might want." vs NVC). Being direct was more likely to make the other party get defensive and halt progress which was frustrating on both sides.

[mathiverse]

I sent information about how to join the meeting in two weeks on Sunday, November 19th, to all those who expressed interest in attending. Please reach out via PM if you would like the information and you haven't received it yet.

[mathiverse]

The date: November 19, 2023
The time: 10 am Eastern, 7 am Pacific
Video call link: PM me to be notified!

This event is happening this Sunday at 10 am Eastern/7 am Pacific! I hope to see folks there. If you don't have the video call information, but you'd like it, then please PM me.

[AxelHeyst]

I’m planning on attending, looking forward to it. Many thanks for setting this up Marhiverse!

[Stahlmann]

Unless there's economical discrepancy between people involved in communication, concepts like NC are pure BS.

For example, is it possible to emphathicaly fire people from their job?
Do you really can feel suffering of other person?
I don't think so. I don't believe in mainstream meaning of empathy, so maybe I'm biased.

Of course, it's nice to talk to nice people etc.

[mathiverse]

Hi Stahlmann, Are you feeling sad that, according to your beliefs, your need for connection and understanding may never be met?

[Crusader]

For example, is it possible to emphathicaly fire people from their job?
Do you really can feel suffering of other person?

Well, mirror neurons are a thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

[Jean]

@Stahlmann
NVC is not just about empathy.
In the case were you'de have to fire someone, you would say something like:
"Employee, we think that the effect of the task you are performing aren't worth the money we pay you. Therefore it isn't in the company interest to keep employing you in this position. We have no open position. We need to make benefit to survive as a company, therefor, we decided to fire you"

It is important in NVC is to be factual.
Of course, when you are presenting an unilaterral decision, it might not be agreable for the other person.

The non NVC way of presenting it (or UVC , ultra violent communication, like we invented with my ex), would be to say:
You are a bad employee, we fire you.

This is not just sugar coating. In the first version, the statement are factual, in the second version, it's a judgement. It's much easier for anyone to accept facts than an arbitrary judgement.

That's why I think that the most important skil to communicate, is to be able to know the fact about oneself (like how we are feeling), so that we can explain our decision or impulse with fact, instead of made up judgement about the other person.

Another example.

You share a room with someone, and both of you are working. What would you prefer the other person to tell you?

"I'm sorry, you are anoying, could you please stop being annoying, that would be very nice, thank you"

or

"I cannot focus when i smell your feet. I'm very sensitive to smell. I would like to be able to work here. Could you go wash your feet and change your socks"

The first one is sugar coated, but very violent, and impossible to act upon for the recipient, which is a very good way to provoke an emotional response.
The second one, is very factual, doesn't judge the second person for having smelly feet, and it even offers an actionable demand to solve the issue. It is likely to be much better recieved, even without sugar coating.

So NVC isn't a miracle solution, but a lot of interpersonnal conflict could be avoided while using NVC, because often, there are no contradictory interest, just hurt feelings.

[AxelHeyst]

The non NVC way of presenting it (or UVC , ultra violent communication, like we invented with my ex), would be to say:
You are a bad employee, we fire you.

Jean, when you write posts in this way it makes me feel happy and sometimes I spit my coffee out. I would like for you to keep making posts like this. Thank you.

[C40]

For example, is it possible to emphathicaly fire people from their job?

Of course it is. I had an assistant once. He was the only assistant I was going to get. But also there was the expectation in roles like his that he should be developing quickly to be able to be a good manager. But he lacked some really important and pretty basic skills to do that. And generally if he couldn't we didn't want to keep him around. I was his last chance as he had been in a different department and got moved to me laterally.

The more rough way would be that as soon as I saw he couldn't cut it AND couldn't learn it relatively quickly - to fire him immediately.

What I did was make it clear to him about the gaps he had and the expectations - and that if he couldn't improve pretty quickly he'd be out. But also tried to make it clear that even if didn't improve I wouldn't fire him really quickly and I wasn't in any rush to - (and I'm not sure if he understood that it was a situation where if I fired him then I would have no assistant at all and not get any replacement).

I did also have some detailed conversations with him about some of the mis-steps he was making. I also gave him a project to do.. When he did well at getting the improvement (still without doing so well at the people skills stuff) I proposed to my boss - the factory manager - that we give him a technical and non-leadership role - and assured the boss that he could do well at this and would be worth it financially. Boss didn't want to do that (because if you do that you end up with too many dead end technical employees).

After some time passed and the assistant realized he couldn't improve quickly on the people skills (and likely him also seeing other young people in similar positions do better with that side) he eventually quit and left. IDK where he went or if he had another job. I wondered if he quit to avoid getting fired. People do that a lot. But financially if I understand right it's better to be fired because then you can get unemployment money.

After retiring - over the years I think back about work situations and things I wish I had done better. Nearly all of them are people related. With this assistant guy the things I wish I had done are:
- Have some conversations even more 'off the record' with him - keeping it more clear to him that I wasn't going to fire him soon. I remember one time something had gone wrong. I forget what it was. I guess he was partly involved in the situation but it wasn't his fault. After it passed he said to me "I thought you were going to make me an escape-goat" [LOL]... So I think I hadn't clarified well enough that I wanted not to fire him.
- At a certain point - advising him that he should find another job - and if I saw that he was trying to I would give him time to find one (and could be a reference for him - especially if he was getting a different job that was a more technical role because then I could vouch that he would be good). This way he could get the other job and then quit and not have any jobless time.

[7Wannabe5]

What Jean said. Also how you may achieve a "good" divorce. The only note I would add would be that it is not necessary to ask/tell the other person how to fix the problem once you have adequately communicated your perspective/preferences/boundaries. IOW, "I can smell your feet.", "I would greatly prefer not to smell your feet." is useful information. Asking/telling another adult to wash their feet and change their socks is condescending/over-bearing, because obvious. Also, you need to give the other a bit of space to collect their own thoughts and maybe reply "This is not the first time you have been disturbed by factors related to my human presence. I have little inclination or inadequate motivation to go to further effort to remediate my behavior or qualities in alignment with your preferences, so I will resign effective immediately."

[Crusader]

I think we had a constructive meeting and I am grateful for everyone's insights. I am convinced that NVC is a really useful tool. However, once everyone understands everyone's needs and empathetically feel each other, I think that it is possible that the conclusion is that the two people are incompatible and that they should go their separate ways. (It could be a friendship, a romantic relationship, job.) And maybe this is a conversation that has to be repeated at different points in time because people change.

Anyway, I am a little bit confused about something. I saw a few competing ideas:
A) Explain to the person how doing X (in as specific terms as possible) would help meet your needs. Do not demand that they do it.
B) (From Chapter 12, "Two Questions That Reveal the Limitations of Punishment".) If I punish the person if they don't do X, then they would only be doing it because I said so and are afraid of punishment, NOT because they really want to (e.g. not because they love me), and this is bad.

These two are in contradiction, because if they don't do X, some kind of punishment will eventually come. In an uncharitable interpretation, I would call it passive aggressive!

I think that there are 3 levels of why someone would do X:

1 - I am doing X because I fear punishment, or because I someone wants me to do X, and I want to make them happy, because otherwise I will lose this relationship.
2 - I am doing X because I (now) understand the need of this other person and since doing this doesn't interfere with any of my own needs.
3 - I am doing X because this is what I normally do (or, alternatively, this is how I satisfy my own needs), and this happens to make this other person happy as well. We are on the same wavelength without even talking about it. Our relationship styles and values are compatible naturally.

For some things, 1 might be satisfactory (clean the dishes after you cook, roommate). But, I feel that if you really want 3 and you present it as 1 or even 2, you are not being genuine and you are just prolonging the inevitable demise of this relationship.

[jacob]

In an uncharitable interpretation, I would call it passive aggressive!

I probably shouldn't be commenting on something I haven't really looked into, but "passive aggressive" was my immediate interpretation as well in terms of how NVC can come across. It may not be explicitly violent, but it can certainly be implicitly violent.

A general problem with trying to remove power-relations via an explicit method is that the power just gets hidden underground. This is similar to how decision processes that seeks equality or consensus usually have the side-effect of creating backroom politics: While it officially looks like everybody is independently voting their own opinion, some are already making deals behind the curtains. It's basically the art of the mob boss saying "Wouldn't it be nice if this guy had an accident?"---a milder version would be "this guy is the biggest obstacle to our happiness", so that the mob boss subsequently can claim that he never explicitly gave any violent orders: It was the henchmen who interpreted them as such.

In order for this to work, there needs to be a very good understanding that if you tell me that it bothers you that my feet smell, I can respond with "that's a you-problem" w/o consequences. Otherwise, it just seems a question of how subtle the threat is.

[7Wannabe5]

@Crusader:

I think the discrepancy can be somewhat resolved by distinguishing between "punishment" and "natural consequences" or the spectrum between these. Also, the difference between "value" and "validation" would apply. Every adult should comprehend "natural consequences" or "option/opportunity cost", but "punishment" takes on the meta-level of dominance as well as consequences, and will naturally tend to make the other defensive. It is also likely that threatened punishment will be either bluff or unenforceable-without-de-facto-consent-of-the-punishee. If the other enacting the behavior you prefer is not of "value" unless they fully agree, empathize, inhabit your perspective, emotional state, and preferences, etc. then you are likely seeking psychological "validation" rather than "value", where "acceptance" might be more appropriate/functional.

Terrible sort of real life example would be somebody I know who married his first wife because they came together supportively when her brother who was his best friend died young in an accident. Then he eventually divorced her, because he was only strongly sexually attracted to women with very large breasts. Nobody "validated" his value matrix, especially his first wife, but if she had "accepted" his value matrix, then she could have had a "good divorce" rather than a miserable one that stayed miserable for decades afterwards. "I will take you to the cleaners in divorce court, unless you change your sexual preferences." is a "punishment" that will not "work."

[Crusader]

If the other enacting the behavior you prefer is not of "value" unless they fully agree, empathize, inhabit your perspective, emotional state, and preferences, etc. then you are likely seeking psychological "validation" rather than "value", where "acceptance" might be more appropriate/functional.

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say here, even with the example. "I will take you to the cleaners in divorce court, unless you change your sexual preferences" - is that what happened? What would be an alternative "good divorce"? What would it mean to "validate" his "value matrix"?

[7Wannabe5]

@Crusader:

Sorry. My example was sort of structured backwards to the the quote. She felt "invalidated", inherently unlovable and/or undesirable on some level, just because of his innate (or early imprinted) sexual preference being incompatible with her natural body type; she was the one who then needed "validation" from him, of a type he was unable to provide, that she was okay just the way she was. But, nobody else can or should do this for you.

What actually happened was that she remained madly "in love" with him for decades after their divorce, and continued demonstrating some pretty cuckoo-bananas behaviors in order to get the validation she dysfunctionally needed. The alternative good divorce would have required "accepting" something about her husband, and reality, that she didn't like and moving on. If she was genius-level "differentiated" (opposite of "validation"-needy), she might even have rationally decided to get breast-augmentation OR not*. Emotional "differentiation" (I am me. Other is other.) provides this level of optionality, whereas need for "validation" keeps you stuck.

*Then she could cheerfully say something like "I value the integrity of my natural body and my desire for a vibrant sex life more than maintaining monogamous contract to you." which is a statement inclusive of a natural, value-based, consequence, as opposed to a threat of punishment.

[Crusader]

The fact that "value" has 2 different meanings is confusing me when reading the responses, i.e.:
1) Usefulness of something.
2) A person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.
When I mentioned "value" in my earlier post, I meant definition 2. If you are in a relationship and your partner has different values, and you need them to have the same values (this can be religion, politics or relationships style...), for reasons that you examine and determine you want to keep... no amount of NVC will make things better, even if they "act" according to the "rules".*

The example from my own life is my friend who was in a relationship but she wanted to open it up because she valued freedom, whereas her boyfriend didn't. I thought that it was so obvious that they wouldn't make it and what they should have done is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CmNkKZt-8w&t=34s
But, instead, they awkwardly tried to cater to each other's incompatible needs. They created "rules" of how she is to sleep with other people, they tried going to sex clubs... but it just prolonged the misery on both sides. Now they can't be in the same room together and they have split up the friend circle in two.

In your example, they were just sexually incompatible, and when they got together, maybe the husband's need for companionship was more important than his need for sex, and instead of just calling it quits when the sexual incompatibility surfaced, they tried really hard to make it work, scarring the wife in the process.

HOWEVER, I do think that there is a subset of dysfunctional relationships in which people are so out of tune with each other's needs and desires that actively practicing empathy and getting in touch with your own feelings can bring about good results.

* - Disclaimer: I haven't been in a relationship since the pandemic started.

[Jean]

@Crusader
There is a difference beetween protecting your boundaries and punishing someone, but we tend to conflate it (just look at different's people outlook on death penalty).
It is very important to explain how the consequence of your action will help you, so that the other person understands it isn't a punishment.