What I Learnt About Non-Violent Communication
... and why it matters
Non-violent communication is an interesting concept, arising from the observation that communication at work can often come across as threatening or antagonistic to the recipient, which results in a negative response, rather than a beneficial one.
Here’s what I learnt about non-violent communication:
There are three kinds of communication:
Observations: These are objective facts, what a camera would record. For example, “You were late to the meeting.”
Judgments: These start with “you” and follow with an evaluation of the person. Like “you’re stubborn”. ← There’s no place for judgments in nonviolent communication.
Sharing what we feel: These start with “I” and share a feeling like “I promised this feature to the customer by last week, so now I feel embarrassed” Saying these makes us feel vulnerable and awkward, so many people phrase them as you statements like “You guys didn’t deliver on time!”, which feels like an attack, because it’s a judgment (the second type of communication above). Sharing how we feel makes people empathise with us.
If you must criticise, criticise behaviours, not people. If someone mocked someone else, don’t say, “You have a bad attitude!” Say, “Mocking other people is not right”. It may seem subtle, but in the first case you are criticising who the person is, while in the second case, you are criticising what a person has done. People find it hard to accept a negative judgement about him as a person, but easier to accept that sometimes we make mistakes.
Identify the underlying need. In the previous example, the need may be “I need the features to launch by the promised date”. Again, people can understand the need, which naturally makes people want to cooperate. Whereas if you say, “We need to launch by next week” it can sound like an order.
When you’re in a conflict, separate the person from the problem. If you’re in a conflict with Santosh about the marketing strategy, you have a disagreement about the marketing strategy; you don’t necessarily have a dispute with Santosh.
Say what you want, not what you don’t want. “Can you be on time for meetings?” is better than “Please don’t be late.” The former sounds like a request for you to do something, while the latter sounds like being chided.
Criticise in private. When you criticise in public, people’s ego comes into play, and they feel the need to not lose face in front of the whole team. People feel like they’re performing in front of an audience. Instead, pull the person you have a problem with aside and discuss in private. Ego comes into play even 1:1, but don’t make it harder by doing it in public.
Why does all this matter? Why should you care about non-violent communication? Because we all have an emotional bank account with others. Communication that comes across as antagonistic depletes your account, leaving you less effective, both immediately in the sense of the getting the current task done, and in the future. Conversely, non-violent communication builds trust and increases your influence, and when people trust you, they’ll go the extra mile for you.