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How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

275 points by davesuperman 7y ago

nottorp 7y ago
Do you need some framework for this? How about a competent manager instead?
- ben509 7y ago
  At some point, managers have to get from incompetent to competent. That's invariably going to involve trying out various techniques, and if those techniques have known expected results, it helps the individual evaluate whether they're getting it right. Thus, frameworks and guides and such have a pedogogical value.
supercanuck 7y ago
The problem with businesses/startup/bosses trying to use these is that they come across as disingenuous and manipulative if you try to use these as a tool. The core tenet of NVC is that: NVC is based on the assumption that all human beings have capacity for compassion and empathy. If you can't exhibit these skills in your day to day life, it feels manipulative to others because you are asking others to be vulnerable.
- luckylion 7y ago
  This. So much this. You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks. I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took from it.
  - Terr_ 7y ago
    Reminds me of a book-quote: > The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person. -- Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett
cousin_it 7y ago
I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC success story.
- lmeyerov 7y ago
  It helped us a lot by putting in a simple low bar for professional communication and conflict resolution, and as a training mechanism. Startups get wild in unpredictable diff ways, so need to have something. In practice, older team members did not need it as much to begin with, so they quickly got it. Mid/younger benifited more -- less experience in channeling passion and handling problems? Main issue IME can function as a smothering mechanism that lets things fester. Even if a discussion remains cordial and makes progress, that does not mean the conflict gets resolved. Ex: folks can just stop talking. So useful but incomplete, and the article title overclaims.
- oconnor663 7y ago
  I think the value of the canned phrases is in giving you an alternative to reach for in more difficult situations, where your default would've been either angry yelling or not communicating at all. When you take a typical business conversation -- which is definitely going to happen either way, and which isn't really at risk of becoming a screaming match -- and apply the canned phrases to it, I agree that it adds awkwardness for not much benefit.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    You might be lucky to be in an office where people don't scream at each other.
- llamataboot 7y ago
  IMHO this stage of NVC lasts about 6 months, and it is rarely "doing NVC" - ie; if you get really angry/scared/etc you prob haven't built up the muscle memory yet to even reach for those canned phrases (probably applies more in more intimate relationships than the workplace - partner(s), parents, kids, etc) but maybe you do, and surprisingly even a clumsy canned phrase about your own feelings or needs rather than jumping to an accusation of the other person can still help ratchet down the tension. After practicing NVC a fair amount (it is a /practice/, not a tool), you can literally start feeling your brain re-wire in a good way. You stop feeling so much responsible for other people's emotions, even if they are about something you did or needing to put your needs in contrast to someone elses, you start automatically being able to empathize with someone's feelings, even when they might scare you, and perhaps most importantly your own self-talk and the way you relate to parts of yourself that "you" are in conflict with starts to change. At this point, there is much less robotic phrases. In fact, watching someone who has many years of experience rewiring their own defenses through NVC practice responding to difficult situations seems near-magical because there are so many less ego defenses to get stuck on someone elses ego defenses so really difficult and hard things can be cut through like better and both people can feel heard and understoor.
redis_mlc 7y ago
What Dave Bailey proposes with NVC is a cancer for engineering. All things being equal, anybody's opinion or emotion is equally valuable. That is rarely the case in engineering. Some of his examples indicate the lack of a roadmap is causing friction, not the request itself. If you can't frame your request in logical terms, don't make the request. In other words, do the opposite of what Bailey proposes.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  You do realize that proposing that NVC is a cancer is a negative and threatening statement, right? (Cancer is generally considered negative, being that it's a fatal disease...) People who don't already agree with you are going to have a negative emotional reaction to this and immediately disagree without trying to understand your point of view. If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing. If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    Exactly.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    >If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing Are you speaking for yourself or for other people? If for other people, how do you know?
  - viklove 7y ago
    > If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding. You do realize this is a negative and threatening statement, right?
jshevek 7y ago
In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest, or severely passive aggressive. I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: because I need [universal need]. It's never because the speaker is selfish, or an asshole, it's always a "universal need". One notable exception was, by nature, a sweet, kind, respectful person before she encountered nvc. NVC fit her well, and she remained a wonderful person, who still communicated in a straight forward and honest manner.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  > It's never because the speaker is selfish Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish. Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who is very generous is getting something out of it. Even when dealing with selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    This is an obvious and trivial observation which misses the point of my statement. In my experience, the vast majority of NVC practitioners use NVC as a weapon to manipulate others by righteously invoking "universal needs" while avoiding introspection into their character flaws. Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not as obviously vegan)
    - BeetleB 7y ago
      Generally, people using the NVC template that you recognize are "beginners". So your edit is probably very relevant. As I said in another comment: Actually observe those who communicate very well in stressful situations (very well = both parties not upset after the fact, with some resolution on the issue at hand), and you'll find their approach is fairly similar to NVC - they're just not using the templates your recognize.
umvi 7y ago
Based on the title alone I would say "find the most important aspect of each side's view and come up with a compromise that satisfies both parties" I've done this several times now and it hasn't failed me yet. The hard part is discovering "the most important aspect of each side's view" because sometimes they themselves don't know it without some probing.
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  Also, to use the example from the blog post, maybe the new reporting dashboard was an instance of a X/Y problem. Maybe the customer need something else, they don't quite know what yet. Maybe they really do need the reporting dashboard, but can accept a workaround and a concrete timetable for when the new feature will be implemented.
- wintermutestwin 7y ago
  This approach is called Interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes
seanwilson 7y ago
> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support? Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  The classic 'engineer wants to have fun' example also irks me. Most engineers want challenges (i.e. complex problems to solve), and the space to apply their knowledge and skills for mutual benefit (i.e. doing things right), they just happen to have fun while doing it. I imagine this is true for almost every technical profession.
0xff00ffee 7y ago
NVC can be extremely powerful, but it only works if both parties are amenable to it. Source: therapy. While workers have an incentive to respond to NVC, some people simply do not internalize in a way that is necessary for it to work. This is the supreme challenge of mediators. Hat's off to them.
lidHanteyk 7y ago
When I see people teaching "non-violent" communication, I become disappointed with their selfishness and inability to empathize with other people. I don't need anything from them, but I mark them well so that I understand that I will have to constantly have word-duels with them when they come to me with their passive-aggressive bullshit. > When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have a need for inclusion. Please, could you get me a coffee next time? No. Fuck you. Get your own fucking coffee. How to phrase this in the workplace: "No." > Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? From your list, they need respect, empathy, space, and understanding. They need for you, the manager, to fuck off and give them space to not work on features. > The sales director explains that the prospect said, ‘If you had a reporting dashboard, I’d close the deal right now.’ The director is concerned that they’ll miss out on the deal without this feature, and feels altogether rather helpless. The sales director needs to learn to fucking code. They need to understand that their pressure is going to cause engineers to quit. > What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support? Do you know how to fucking code? I suspect not. You sound horribly incompetent, and worse, you sound like you encourage others in their incompetence. Engineering isn't about having fun; pay attention to your metrics, disregard features, focus on bugs. Sales does not need more independence; they already are selling far beyond engineering's capacity, and they need to knock it the fuck off. The worst part of all of this is that you are probably well-compensated for this work, despite the fact that it promulgates systems which abuse and ignore the needs of laborers and consumers alike. When you are a word-weaseling suit-wearing grey-faced rent-seeking labor-harming parasite, I feel disappointed because I expect better moral and ethical behavior from humans. Would you be able to fucking knock this shit off already?
- BeetleB 7y ago
  If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have you off the team/company in a heartbeat. Your concerns are valid. Your method of expressing them is problematic. And your automatic assumptions are lethal to a good work environment. I was going to address some of the specifics, but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.
im3w1l 7y ago
Allow me to explicitly pose the implicit question I see in this thread "What does it mean to be wise, as opposed to robotic on the one hand, and sly on the other?" How might one cultivate wisdom?
- wintermutestwin 7y ago
  Practice active listening principles. Effective active listening requires giving your full attention AND actually being curious enough to shift your perspective to the other.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  Wisdom is hard. It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish things. It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently. And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed. Practice, practice, practice.
peterwwillis 7y ago
When my boss asks me "How are you feeling?", that feels weird. I don't know this person very well, so it's odd that they would ask me how I feel, out of the blue. But then I realize it feels weird because I'm cynical; I don't expect people that I don't know well to care about my feelings. So in some ways, the NVC framework is like "level 2" of developing empathy, whereas "level 1" should really involve developing trust and close connections. Aside from that, this quote seems problematic: "Creating a place where people can be vulnerable without fear of abuse is critical for any form of conflict resolution. Vulnerability is the source of connection." Connections happen through development of trust, and trust makes you vulnerable, but vulnerability wasn't the source of the connection, it was incidental. If anything, the workplace encourages us to develop trust as well as verification, as a part of quality assurance. By verifying the quality of work, we can trust in it, and thus others. This doesn't result in connections, but it can reduce conflicts, by focusing one's attention on a process rather than a person. So it's not "stupid Frank's fault that the build broke", it's "our SDLC is not developed enough yet to ensure that the build doesn't break". This isn't exactly NVC, but it is another tool one can use to redirect a conflict towards a resolution.
- jasonv 7y ago
  I take this one kind of like, "How's your day?" It's there as a politeness, but it's also an opportunity when something more substantial is necessary. If there's something that needs to be said, starting your answer with, "Actually..." usually is the easy-to-acknowledge way to dive deeper.
- davesuperman 7y ago
  Just to clarify, asking how are you feeling isn't NVC. Getting to the specifics of a contentious issue, and then asking how you feel about them is. Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.
wintermutestwin 7y ago
NVC (I prefer "Compassionate Communication") is not a complete conflict resolution framework. It is a communication strategy that is designed to help people turn on their innate compassion. It doesn't have a clear answer on what you do when people don't agree to requests. As a professional mediator, I find that it can work well for some types of conflict if I bolt on a problem solving step at the end. I find Compassionate Communication useful for resolving: 1. Relationship Conflicts, which are caused by: Strong emotions, Faulty communication, Misperceptions, Recurring negative behavior 2. Identity Conflicts, Which are caused by: Negative comments or actions relative to personal or group identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.) 3. Value Conflicts, which are caused by: Different ways of life, Ideology and religion, Different criteria for evaluating ideas or behavior In a startup context, I think that there are two more common types of conflict that lend themselves to an interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes ) approach: 1. Interest Conflicts are caused by perceived or actual competitive: Substantive interests, Procedural interests, Psychological interests 2. Structural Conflicts are caused by: Faulty or deficient organizational structures, Unequal power and authority, Time constraints, Geographic, physical, or environmental factors that hinder cooperation I don't recommend relying on a blog post to address substantive conflict.
- jph 7y ago
  Your comments are excellent throughout this thread. I would like to know how to hire you. PM me if you're open to talking.
quanticle 7y ago
Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me". More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. "See, I'm being non-violent," he or she will say, and it will serve as an universal shield against all who would object to their claims. My take is that if you're in a situation where reported bugs have increased 30% and sprint velocity is down by 40%, no amount of NVC is going to solve that. What is going to solve it is management that's clued in to the problems at hand. Is it that too much feature work has been done, too quickly, leaving no time for the engineers to attend to technical debt? Is it that the application's architecture is unfit for the problem to which it is being applied, leading to lots of hacks and workarounds? Is it that the engineers are incompetent, and should be replaced? In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the problem worse.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  > If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me". If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness. > More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. This is a rather large logical fallacy. It is a non-violent option. Not the violent option. And on top of that, dismissals due to semantics are usually insincere. Edit: Wow. Kind of sad that my lowest effort comment for this submission both got the most responses and the most upvotes. I'm sure I'll hit my comment limit if I respond to each response individually, so I'll respond to them here: > But the engineer has a BATNA here - find another job with a better boss. It's such a common BATNA that "people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses" is a catchphrase. The engineer can get extremely far in solving their "unmet universal needs" like fun and safety by finding another job. It's in the company's interest, one would hope, to keep them. I don't disagree with any of this. We seem to be discussing different things. Of course, if your boss/job is problematic finding a different one solves that problem. What I was referring to is the inability to have an effective conversation about the need. Exactly what is your problem with a manager who spouts mindless psycho-babble? What is your problem with technical debt? What is your problem with no unit testing? Imagine you're saying these things to someone who has never dealt with this problem (e.g. someone not in SW). Stating these is not helping the person understand you at all. I come from the engineering (non-SW) world. You will find little sympathy for technical debt and unit testing issues, and will get a response of "Perfect is the enemy of good". Merely explaining that technical debt makes it harder to add features and will lead to longer timelines isn't explaining your needs. It just leads to more questions: Why is that a problem? You're getting paid for it, aren't you? And so on. And please, the whole "manager spouting psycho-babble" is not going to get you far. Everyone has an imperfect boss, imperfect spouse, imperfect other. We all know it. After a while in industry, it is tiresome to hear someone complain about an imperfect manager. We all know it's true, and we all differ in what managerial problems one should put up with. Lots of employees are OK with such managers. And again, it's because different people have different needs. If you can describe how you differ from those employees, people are more likely to understand you. And finally, possibly veering off topic, employers will always find the employee who effectively confronted the problems with the manager instead of running away to be more valuable. Now thankfully the SW world has a lot of mobility so I wouldn't always recommend it, but this looks a lot better on your resume than knowing React. > Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great. Every discussion I've seen about communications involves this fallacy: False dichotomy. In fact, one other book I've read even gave a name for it: The Fool's Choice (the notion that if you don't sugarcoat relationships will get hurt). NVC isn't suggesting you sugar coat. In fact, it suggests the opposite. Know the problems. State them. Be direct. > I’m just going to say that we got man on the moon without NVC. The elements of NVC have likely been around since people started talking, so I'm not sure you're right. And I'll also point out we got men on the moon without debuggers, source code control, automated testing, etc. We also accomplished a lot without fundamental freedoms (speech, worship, etc). So what? > I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me. I don't understand where you get the idea that it presumes you cannot handle criticism. > but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem In a significant percentage of heated discussions I've seen, there is fundamental disagreement about what the problem is. I wonder if you're merely blaming NVC for something that is independent of NVC. NVC does try to get all parties to understand what the problems are, and I also wonder if that is making you believe it is trying to divert from your problem merely because it is trying to highlight that your problem is not the only one in the discussion. Of course, without concrete examples, I cannot say. > and very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP." I do hope people have relationships with their managers such that they are free to say stuff like this (I've seen it in person). However, this is orthogonal to NVC. Your statement to the manager pretty much violates NVC's guidelines. It also violates the guidelines in Difficult Conversations and in Crucial Conversations. Sure it would be awesome to be able to say stuff like that to most people (it's not just about power relationships), but that's not the reality. These books exist to give you a way to get your point across without phrasing it that way. Belittling is not a feeling. It is a story you are telling yourself. His ignoring feedback is not a fact, but a story you're telling yourself. Claiming the deadline is unreasonable is merely an opinion, and you did not back it up. Saying it's because of salespeople is also a story you are telling yourself, and not a fact. Pretty much every element of what you said can trigger defensiveness. Your statement implies you know everything, and doesn't have the posture of you attempting to validate what you think you know. What kind of conversation do you expect will happen? If you are wrong about any of the above, it will put the manager in a position of having to defend his actions, which is the very definition of defensiveness. You can say this type of stuff without hurting feelings to only people very close to you (true buddies). Most people are not dealing with true buddies.
deleted 7y ago
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wintermutestwin 7y ago
One critical NVC concept that this article leaves out is that people often express judgements as feelings. A small cut and paste from the list of "non-feelings:" Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless
- pmichaud 7y ago
  Yeah this is huge, and the sophomore mistake here is to try to "aikido" the people who are using feeling words to describe judgement. Ie. to immediately rephrase their statement into more a "correct," NVC-style format. It's a mistake for a couple reasons. First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology (that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct, but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid. Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them, which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way. Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by "want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it. I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art, instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth-seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and learn when to apply either mode.
danShumway 7y ago
> Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. > They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed. I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems. > What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support? When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not your engineering environment was safe and fun. Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real problem. If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of 30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone. Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can use communication to make it easier to confront.
- frobozz 7y ago
  Totally agree. > If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not actually solved the problem. Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged without addressing the problems they raise.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
The problem isn't always about a persons' needs. It's can be about who is actually MORE right.
adrianmonk 7y ago
> When you apply the format to the letter, it usually comes off as over-prepared and clunky. It’s not how people normally speak so it can sound inauthentic. This reminds me: it's hard to overstate how much of communication is nonverbal. Your tone, attitude, body language, facial expression, etc. can make all the difference in the world. This is probably especially relevant in conflict situations. Imagine you have an attitude of thinly-veiled annoyance and you say a sentence (from the article) like, "When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt DISAPPOINTED because I have a need for inclusion. PLEASE, could you get me a coffee next time?" Now compare that to having a relaxed, positive attitude and saying the exact same sentence but not loaded down with negative emotion. Imagine saying it in a way that makes them feel like it isn't a big deal to you, you're not going to remember The Coffee Cup Incident forever, you still like them, and that you probably brought this up because you care about getting along. The words you say obviously matter some, but the way you deliver them might is often way more important. For example, some people could probably get away with saying, "Well... fuck you for not getting me a cup of coffee. I guess I'm not important. Nah, I'm kidding. I would have liked one, though. It's going to take me a while to work through this, but eventually I'll be able to forgive you." Once I realized how important the nonverbal aspect of communication is and started practicing to get better at it, it made a lot of these things a ton easier. --- Also, as long as I'm going on tangents, after a conflict has happened is sort of your last opportunity to get it right. Good conflict resolution methods can definitely help, but everything is going to be much easier if beforehand you spent the effort developing healthy relationships and building trust. Resolving conflict will be an uphill battle if you haven't. And if you have, then it will be much easier. So basically preparation and maintenance serves as an important multiplier.
Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
Leela: "Great. We're two days from earth with no food." Bender: "Problem solved. You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."
motohagiography 7y ago
More I read about it, the more NVC seems essentially like a progressive NLP. It has the same hypnotic misdirection and playing on peoples emotions, while directing them to a zero sum end. I'd argue further that the approach of pretending everyone's interests are legitimate also normalizes objectively terrible people.
perlgeek 7y ago
One problem is that when people are triggered by certain topics, they will still be triggered by the topic, no matter how careful or non-violently you approach. If you are married, and your trigger topic is house work, it doesn't matter if your spouse says "you need to more house work" or "when I get home after a long day of work, I feel let down by having to do a large amount of house work, could please do more in the future?". If anything, the latter might be seen as more accusatory, even though feeling let down is exactly the emotion that your spouse communicated, and it was "non-violently" communicated using the "I [feel]" pattern.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  Well, here are some of the problems with such a statement: The observation wasn't there. I initially wrote "I think we can both agree that it is not needed in this context.", but on reflection that's a really poor assumption. Because (and trust me, this is common), the other spouse may actually have tidied the house (or done laundry or whatever), and is now dealing with the complainant complaining as if he/she hasn't done any work. It would help a lot more if the complainant specified the problem. Did you mean to say "I feel down" or "I feel let down"? The latter strictly violates NVC (it's not a feeling but a judgmental narrative). It will trigger defensiveness. The spouse didn't state the need. Having to do a large amount of house work is not a need. Your example is one of the most common types of problems between two people. One side is OK with a sloppy house, and the other isn't. The way you phrased it, the other spouse is likely to respond with "So don't do the house work. What's the problem? I'm fine with it, why aren't you?" One spouse perhaps needs more order than the other. Unless that is made clear, how will progress be made? Is this obvious? No. Because it may not be about tidyness but about a filthy bathroom where the need may be sanitation. I'm not being splitting hairs. I know people who insist on very clean bathrooms and kitchens, but are not at all fussy about stuff all over the floor in the house. Finally, the request was a poor one. Both the observation and the request need to be specific, not general. Imagine that the other spouse had put effort in cleaning up, and is being requested "Could you please do more in the future?" More what? What will it take for you to be happy? And did I just waste my time doing something that you perhaps don't care about? Should I waste my time telling you what I already did? Defenses are up. If the other spouse managed not to be triggered and knows NVC, his/her response may be "Are you dejected/annoyed because you need the house to be more orderly?" A better NVC statement from the original complainant would be: "I came home and there were several of your dirty plates on the countertop, and the sink was empty. I have a need for tidyness. Would you be willing to place your dirty dishes in the sink if the sink is not full?" To your wider point, though, of course - if there is a history of conflict on a particular topic, anything can trigger them. Looking at several comments here about technical debt and managers, I think I see it in action. :-)
quantified 7y ago
The fundamental needs omit "power". Perhaps "security" is the analog, but "I will keep my job" is not quite the same as "my competitive standing relative to my peers and superiors will remain at least as strong and ideally improve". Let's recognize that the author strives to steer organizations in a direction of open productivity, but once anyone in the org is good at managing up it becomes an arms race. No org of >400 people can ignore this factor, and an org of any size can have it.
davesuperman 7y ago
Having read all of the comments to this article, it's quite impressive how quickly people lost sight of the conflict, and took sides with whoever they empathised most with. I included enough facts to elicit a trigger response for anyone that's worked in a tech company. Just reading them was enough to make people angry, and invent a back story that 'management never listens' and 'this company is going to fail' (paraphrasing). This wasn't in the piece and likely reflects a projection of their reality. This angry tone is pervasive in the comments and quickly turned people against each other. Anger that came from somewhere, perhaps a place that isn't apparent to the angry. A lasting sensation of not feeling listened to, or truly seen and valued. Even if you only communicate your emotions to yourself, and get curious about where they come from, it's likely to help simply by acknowledging that not all emotions arise from the present situation. I believe this is true in life as it is in the comments. Anyway, I wish you all a productive week!

275 points by davesuperman 7y ago

nottorp 7y ago

Do you need some framework for this? How about a competent manager instead?

ben509 7y ago
At some point, managers have to get from incompetent to competent. That's invariably going to involve trying out various techniques, and if those techniques have known expected results, it helps the individual evaluate whether they're getting it right. Thus, frameworks and guides and such have a pedogogical value.

supercanuck 7y ago

The problem with businesses/startup/bosses trying to use these is that they come across as disingenuous and manipulative if you try to use these as a tool. The core tenet of NVC is that: NVC is based on the assumption that all human beings have capacity for compassion and empathy. If you can't exhibit these skills in your day to day life, it feels manipulative to others because you are asking others to be vulnerable.

luckylion 7y ago
This. So much this. You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks. I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took from it.
- Terr_ 7y ago
  Reminds me of a book-quote: > The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person. -- Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

cousin_it 7y ago

I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC success story.

lmeyerov 7y ago
It helped us a lot by putting in a simple low bar for professional communication and conflict resolution, and as a training mechanism. Startups get wild in unpredictable diff ways, so need to have something. In practice, older team members did not need it as much to begin with, so they quickly got it. Mid/younger benifited more -- less experience in channeling passion and handling problems? Main issue IME can function as a smothering mechanism that lets things fester. Even if a discussion remains cordial and makes progress, that does not mean the conflict gets resolved. Ex: folks can just stop talking. So useful but incomplete, and the article title overclaims.
oconnor663 7y ago
I think the value of the canned phrases is in giving you an alternative to reach for in more difficult situations, where your default would've been either angry yelling or not communicating at all. When you take a typical business conversation -- which is definitely going to happen either way, and which isn't really at risk of becoming a screaming match -- and apply the canned phrases to it, I agree that it adds awkwardness for not much benefit.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  You might be lucky to be in an office where people don't scream at each other.
llamataboot 7y ago
IMHO this stage of NVC lasts about 6 months, and it is rarely "doing NVC" - ie; if you get really angry/scared/etc you prob haven't built up the muscle memory yet to even reach for those canned phrases (probably applies more in more intimate relationships than the workplace - partner(s), parents, kids, etc) but maybe you do, and surprisingly even a clumsy canned phrase about your own feelings or needs rather than jumping to an accusation of the other person can still help ratchet down the tension. After practicing NVC a fair amount (it is a /practice/, not a tool), you can literally start feeling your brain re-wire in a good way. You stop feeling so much responsible for other people's emotions, even if they are about something you did or needing to put your needs in contrast to someone elses, you start automatically being able to empathize with someone's feelings, even when they might scare you, and perhaps most importantly your own self-talk and the way you relate to parts of yourself that "you" are in conflict with starts to change. At this point, there is much less robotic phrases. In fact, watching someone who has many years of experience rewiring their own defenses through NVC practice responding to difficult situations seems near-magical because there are so many less ego defenses to get stuck on someone elses ego defenses so really difficult and hard things can be cut through like better and both people can feel heard and understoor.

redis_mlc 7y ago

What Dave Bailey proposes with NVC is a cancer for engineering. All things being equal, anybody's opinion or emotion is equally valuable. That is rarely the case in engineering. Some of his examples indicate the lack of a roadmap is causing friction, not the request itself. If you can't frame your request in logical terms, don't make the request. In other words, do the opposite of what Bailey proposes.

peterwwillis 7y ago
You do realize that proposing that NVC is a cancer is a negative and threatening statement, right? (Cancer is generally considered negative, being that it's a fatal disease...) People who don't already agree with you are going to have a negative emotional reaction to this and immediately disagree without trying to understand your point of view. If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing. If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Exactly.
- jshevek 7y ago
  >If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing Are you speaking for yourself or for other people? If for other people, how do you know?
- viklove 7y ago
  > If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding. You do realize this is a negative and threatening statement, right?

jshevek 7y ago

In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest, or severely passive aggressive. I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: because I need [universal need]. It's never because the speaker is selfish, or an asshole, it's always a "universal need". One notable exception was, by nature, a sweet, kind, respectful person before she encountered nvc. NVC fit her well, and she remained a wonderful person, who still communicated in a straight forward and honest manner.

BeetleB 7y ago
> It's never because the speaker is selfish Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish. Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who is very generous is getting something out of it. Even when dealing with selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.
- jshevek 7y ago
  This is an obvious and trivial observation which misses the point of my statement. In my experience, the vast majority of NVC practitioners use NVC as a weapon to manipulate others by righteously invoking "universal needs" while avoiding introspection into their character flaws. Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not as obviously vegan)
  - BeetleB 7y ago
    Generally, people using the NVC template that you recognize are "beginners". So your edit is probably very relevant. As I said in another comment: Actually observe those who communicate very well in stressful situations (very well = both parties not upset after the fact, with some resolution on the issue at hand), and you'll find their approach is fairly similar to NVC - they're just not using the templates your recognize.

umvi 7y ago

Based on the title alone I would say "find the most important aspect of each side's view and come up with a compromise that satisfies both parties" I've done this several times now and it hasn't failed me yet. The hard part is discovering "the most important aspect of each side's view" because sometimes they themselves don't know it without some probing.

magicalhippo 7y ago
Also, to use the example from the blog post, maybe the new reporting dashboard was an instance of a X/Y problem. Maybe the customer need something else, they don't quite know what yet. Maybe they really do need the reporting dashboard, but can accept a workaround and a concrete timetable for when the new feature will be implemented.
wintermutestwin 7y ago
This approach is called Interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes

seanwilson 7y ago

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support? Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.

ricardobeat 7y ago
The classic 'engineer wants to have fun' example also irks me. Most engineers want challenges (i.e. complex problems to solve), and the space to apply their knowledge and skills for mutual benefit (i.e. doing things right), they just happen to have fun while doing it. I imagine this is true for almost every technical profession.

0xff00ffee 7y ago

NVC can be extremely powerful, but it only works if both parties are amenable to it. Source: therapy. While workers have an incentive to respond to NVC, some people simply do not internalize in a way that is necessary for it to work. This is the supreme challenge of mediators. Hat's off to them.

lidHanteyk 7y ago

When I see people teaching "non-violent" communication, I become disappointed with their selfishness and inability to empathize with other people. I don't need anything from them, but I mark them well so that I understand that I will have to constantly have word-duels with them when they come to me with their passive-aggressive bullshit. > When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have a need for inclusion. Please, could you get me a coffee next time? No. Fuck you. Get your own fucking coffee. How to phrase this in the workplace: "No." > Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? From your list, they need respect, empathy, space, and understanding. They need for you, the manager, to fuck off and give them space to not work on features. > The sales director explains that the prospect said, ‘If you had a reporting dashboard, I’d close the deal right now.’ The director is concerned that they’ll miss out on the deal without this feature, and feels altogether rather helpless. The sales director needs to learn to fucking code. They need to understand that their pressure is going to cause engineers to quit. > What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support? Do you know how to fucking code? I suspect not. You sound horribly incompetent, and worse, you sound like you encourage others in their incompetence. Engineering isn't about having fun; pay attention to your metrics, disregard features, focus on bugs. Sales does not need more independence; they already are selling far beyond engineering's capacity, and they need to knock it the fuck off. The worst part of all of this is that you are probably well-compensated for this work, despite the fact that it promulgates systems which abuse and ignore the needs of laborers and consumers alike. When you are a word-weaseling suit-wearing grey-faced rent-seeking labor-harming parasite, I feel disappointed because I expect better moral and ethical behavior from humans. Would you be able to fucking knock this shit off already?

BeetleB 7y ago
If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have you off the team/company in a heartbeat. Your concerns are valid. Your method of expressing them is problematic. And your automatic assumptions are lethal to a good work environment. I was going to address some of the specifics, but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.

im3w1l 7y ago

Allow me to explicitly pose the implicit question I see in this thread "What does it mean to be wise, as opposed to robotic on the one hand, and sly on the other?" How might one cultivate wisdom?

wintermutestwin 7y ago
Practice active listening principles. Effective active listening requires giving your full attention AND actually being curious enough to shift your perspective to the other.
dsr_ 7y ago
Wisdom is hard. It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish things. It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently. And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed. Practice, practice, practice.

peterwwillis 7y ago

When my boss asks me "How are you feeling?", that feels weird. I don't know this person very well, so it's odd that they would ask me how I feel, out of the blue. But then I realize it feels weird because I'm cynical; I don't expect people that I don't know well to care about my feelings. So in some ways, the NVC framework is like "level 2" of developing empathy, whereas "level 1" should really involve developing trust and close connections. Aside from that, this quote seems problematic: "Creating a place where people can be vulnerable without fear of abuse is critical for any form of conflict resolution. Vulnerability is the source of connection." Connections happen through development of trust, and trust makes you vulnerable, but vulnerability wasn't the source of the connection, it was incidental. If anything, the workplace encourages us to develop trust as well as verification, as a part of quality assurance. By verifying the quality of work, we can trust in it, and thus others. This doesn't result in connections, but it can reduce conflicts, by focusing one's attention on a process rather than a person. So it's not "stupid Frank's fault that the build broke", it's "our SDLC is not developed enough yet to ensure that the build doesn't break". This isn't exactly NVC, but it is another tool one can use to redirect a conflict towards a resolution.

jasonv 7y ago
I take this one kind of like, "How's your day?" It's there as a politeness, but it's also an opportunity when something more substantial is necessary. If there's something that needs to be said, starting your answer with, "Actually..." usually is the easy-to-acknowledge way to dive deeper.
davesuperman 7y ago
Just to clarify, asking how are you feeling isn't NVC. Getting to the specifics of a contentious issue, and then asking how you feel about them is. Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.

wintermutestwin 7y ago

NVC (I prefer "Compassionate Communication") is not a complete conflict resolution framework. It is a communication strategy that is designed to help people turn on their innate compassion. It doesn't have a clear answer on what you do when people don't agree to requests. As a professional mediator, I find that it can work well for some types of conflict if I bolt on a problem solving step at the end. I find Compassionate Communication useful for resolving: 1. Relationship Conflicts, which are caused by: Strong emotions, Faulty communication, Misperceptions, Recurring negative behavior 2. Identity Conflicts, Which are caused by: Negative comments or actions relative to personal or group identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.) 3. Value Conflicts, which are caused by: Different ways of life, Ideology and religion, Different criteria for evaluating ideas or behavior In a startup context, I think that there are two more common types of conflict that lend themselves to an interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes ) approach: 1. Interest Conflicts are caused by perceived or actual competitive: Substantive interests, Procedural interests, Psychological interests 2. Structural Conflicts are caused by: Faulty or deficient organizational structures, Unequal power and authority, Time constraints, Geographic, physical, or environmental factors that hinder cooperation I don't recommend relying on a blog post to address substantive conflict.

jph 7y ago
Your comments are excellent throughout this thread. I would like to know how to hire you. PM me if you're open to talking.

quanticle 7y ago

Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me". More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. "See, I'm being non-violent," he or she will say, and it will serve as an universal shield against all who would object to their claims. My take is that if you're in a situation where reported bugs have increased 30% and sprint velocity is down by 40%, no amount of NVC is going to solve that. What is going to solve it is management that's clued in to the problems at hand. Is it that too much feature work has been done, too quickly, leaving no time for the engineers to attend to technical debt? Is it that the application's architecture is unfit for the problem to which it is being applied, leading to lots of hacks and workarounds? Is it that the engineers are incompetent, and should be replaced? In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the problem worse.

BeetleB 7y ago
> If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me". If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness. > More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. This is a rather large logical fallacy. It is a non-violent option. Not the violent option. And on top of that, dismissals due to semantics are usually insincere. Edit: Wow. Kind of sad that my lowest effort comment for this submission both got the most responses and the most upvotes. I'm sure I'll hit my comment limit if I respond to each response individually, so I'll respond to them here: > But the engineer has a BATNA here - find another job with a better boss. It's such a common BATNA that "people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses" is a catchphrase. The engineer can get extremely far in solving their "unmet universal needs" like fun and safety by finding another job. It's in the company's interest, one would hope, to keep them. I don't disagree with any of this. We seem to be discussing different things. Of course, if your boss/job is problematic finding a different one solves that problem. What I was referring to is the inability to have an effective conversation about the need. Exactly what is your problem with a manager who spouts mindless psycho-babble? What is your problem with technical debt? What is your problem with no unit testing? Imagine you're saying these things to someone who has never dealt with this problem (e.g. someone not in SW). Stating these is not helping the person understand you at all. I come from the engineering (non-SW) world. You will find little sympathy for technical debt and unit testing issues, and will get a response of "Perfect is the enemy of good". Merely explaining that technical debt makes it harder to add features and will lead to longer timelines isn't explaining your needs. It just leads to more questions: Why is that a problem? You're getting paid for it, aren't you? And so on. And please, the whole "manager spouting psycho-babble" is not going to get you far. Everyone has an imperfect boss, imperfect spouse, imperfect other. We all know it. After a while in industry, it is tiresome to hear someone complain about an imperfect manager. We all know it's true, and we all differ in what managerial problems one should put up with. Lots of employees are OK with such managers. And again, it's because different people have different needs. If you can describe how you differ from those employees, people are more likely to understand you. And finally, possibly veering off topic, employers will always find the employee who effectively confronted the problems with the manager instead of running away to be more valuable. Now thankfully the SW world has a lot of mobility so I wouldn't always recommend it, but this looks a lot better on your resume than knowing React. > Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great. Every discussion I've seen about communications involves this fallacy: False dichotomy. In fact, one other book I've read even gave a name for it: The Fool's Choice (the notion that if you don't sugarcoat relationships will get hurt). NVC isn't suggesting you sugar coat. In fact, it suggests the opposite. Know the problems. State them. Be direct. > I’m just going to say that we got man on the moon without NVC. The elements of NVC have likely been around since people started talking, so I'm not sure you're right. And I'll also point out we got men on the moon without debuggers, source code control, automated testing, etc. We also accomplished a lot without fundamental freedoms (speech, worship, etc). So what? > I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me. I don't understand where you get the idea that it presumes you cannot handle criticism. > but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem In a significant percentage of heated discussions I've seen, there is fundamental disagreement about what the problem is. I wonder if you're merely blaming NVC for something that is independent of NVC. NVC does try to get all parties to understand what the problems are, and I also wonder if that is making you believe it is trying to divert from your problem merely because it is trying to highlight that your problem is not the only one in the discussion. Of course, without concrete examples, I cannot say. > and very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP." I do hope people have relationships with their managers such that they are free to say stuff like this (I've seen it in person). However, this is orthogonal to NVC. Your statement to the manager pretty much violates NVC's guidelines. It also violates the guidelines in Difficult Conversations and in Crucial Conversations. Sure it would be awesome to be able to say stuff like that to most people (it's not just about power relationships), but that's not the reality. These books exist to give you a way to get your point across without phrasing it that way. Belittling is not a feeling. It is a story you are telling yourself. His ignoring feedback is not a fact, but a story you're telling yourself. Claiming the deadline is unreasonable is merely an opinion, and you did not back it up. Saying it's because of salespeople is also a story you are telling yourself, and not a fact. Pretty much every element of what you said can trigger defensiveness. Your statement implies you know everything, and doesn't have the posture of you attempting to validate what you think you know. What kind of conversation do you expect will happen? If you are wrong about any of the above, it will put the manager in a position of having to defend his actions, which is the very definition of defensiveness. You can say this type of stuff without hurting feelings to only people very close to you (true buddies). Most people are not dealing with true buddies.

deleted 7y ago

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wintermutestwin 7y ago

One critical NVC concept that this article leaves out is that people often express judgements as feelings. A small cut and paste from the list of "non-feelings:" Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless

pmichaud 7y ago
Yeah this is huge, and the sophomore mistake here is to try to "aikido" the people who are using feeling words to describe judgement. Ie. to immediately rephrase their statement into more a "correct," NVC-style format. It's a mistake for a couple reasons. First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology (that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct, but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid. Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them, which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way. Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by "want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it. I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art, instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth-seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and learn when to apply either mode.

danShumway 7y ago

> Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. > They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed. I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems. > What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support? When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not your engineering environment was safe and fun. Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real problem. If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of 30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone. Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can use communication to make it easier to confront.

frobozz 7y ago
Totally agree. > If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not actually solved the problem. Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged without addressing the problems they raise.

crimsonalucard 7y ago

The problem isn't always about a persons' needs. It's can be about who is actually MORE right.

adrianmonk 7y ago

> When you apply the format to the letter, it usually comes off as over-prepared and clunky. It’s not how people normally speak so it can sound inauthentic. This reminds me: it's hard to overstate how much of communication is nonverbal. Your tone, attitude, body language, facial expression, etc. can make all the difference in the world. This is probably especially relevant in conflict situations. Imagine you have an attitude of thinly-veiled annoyance and you say a sentence (from the article) like, "When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt DISAPPOINTED because I have a need for inclusion. PLEASE, could you get me a coffee next time?" Now compare that to having a relaxed, positive attitude and saying the exact same sentence but not loaded down with negative emotion. Imagine saying it in a way that makes them feel like it isn't a big deal to you, you're not going to remember The Coffee Cup Incident forever, you still like them, and that you probably brought this up because you care about getting along. The words you say obviously matter some, but the way you deliver them might is often way more important. For example, some people could probably get away with saying, "Well... fuck you for not getting me a cup of coffee. I guess I'm not important. Nah, I'm kidding. I would have liked one, though. It's going to take me a while to work through this, but eventually I'll be able to forgive you." Once I realized how important the nonverbal aspect of communication is and started practicing to get better at it, it made a lot of these things a ton easier. --- Also, as long as I'm going on tangents, after a conflict has happened is sort of your last opportunity to get it right. Good conflict resolution methods can definitely help, but everything is going to be much easier if beforehand you spent the effort developing healthy relationships and building trust. Resolving conflict will be an uphill battle if you haven't. And if you have, then it will be much easier. So basically preparation and maintenance serves as an important multiplier.

Iwan-Zotow 7y ago

Leela: "Great. We're two days from earth with no food." Bender: "Problem solved. You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."

motohagiography 7y ago

More I read about it, the more NVC seems essentially like a progressive NLP. It has the same hypnotic misdirection and playing on peoples emotions, while directing them to a zero sum end. I'd argue further that the approach of pretending everyone's interests are legitimate also normalizes objectively terrible people.

perlgeek 7y ago

One problem is that when people are triggered by certain topics, they will still be triggered by the topic, no matter how careful or non-violently you approach. If you are married, and your trigger topic is house work, it doesn't matter if your spouse says "you need to more house work" or "when I get home after a long day of work, I feel let down by having to do a large amount of house work, could please do more in the future?". If anything, the latter might be seen as more accusatory, even though feeling let down is exactly the emotion that your spouse communicated, and it was "non-violently" communicated using the "I [feel]" pattern.

BeetleB 7y ago
Well, here are some of the problems with such a statement: The observation wasn't there. I initially wrote "I think we can both agree that it is not needed in this context.", but on reflection that's a really poor assumption. Because (and trust me, this is common), the other spouse may actually have tidied the house (or done laundry or whatever), and is now dealing with the complainant complaining as if he/she hasn't done any work. It would help a lot more if the complainant specified the problem. Did you mean to say "I feel down" or "I feel let down"? The latter strictly violates NVC (it's not a feeling but a judgmental narrative). It will trigger defensiveness. The spouse didn't state the need. Having to do a large amount of house work is not a need. Your example is one of the most common types of problems between two people. One side is OK with a sloppy house, and the other isn't. The way you phrased it, the other spouse is likely to respond with "So don't do the house work. What's the problem? I'm fine with it, why aren't you?" One spouse perhaps needs more order than the other. Unless that is made clear, how will progress be made? Is this obvious? No. Because it may not be about tidyness but about a filthy bathroom where the need may be sanitation. I'm not being splitting hairs. I know people who insist on very clean bathrooms and kitchens, but are not at all fussy about stuff all over the floor in the house. Finally, the request was a poor one. Both the observation and the request need to be specific, not general. Imagine that the other spouse had put effort in cleaning up, and is being requested "Could you please do more in the future?" More what? What will it take for you to be happy? And did I just waste my time doing something that you perhaps don't care about? Should I waste my time telling you what I already did? Defenses are up. If the other spouse managed not to be triggered and knows NVC, his/her response may be "Are you dejected/annoyed because you need the house to be more orderly?" A better NVC statement from the original complainant would be: "I came home and there were several of your dirty plates on the countertop, and the sink was empty. I have a need for tidyness. Would you be willing to place your dirty dishes in the sink if the sink is not full?" To your wider point, though, of course - if there is a history of conflict on a particular topic, anything can trigger them. Looking at several comments here about technical debt and managers, I think I see it in action. :-)

quantified 7y ago

The fundamental needs omit "power". Perhaps "security" is the analog, but "I will keep my job" is not quite the same as "my competitive standing relative to my peers and superiors will remain at least as strong and ideally improve". Let's recognize that the author strives to steer organizations in a direction of open productivity, but once anyone in the org is good at managing up it becomes an arms race. No org of >400 people can ignore this factor, and an org of any size can have it.

davesuperman 7y ago

Having read all of the comments to this article, it's quite impressive how quickly people lost sight of the conflict, and took sides with whoever they empathised most with. I included enough facts to elicit a trigger response for anyone that's worked in a tech company. Just reading them was enough to make people angry, and invent a back story that 'management never listens' and 'this company is going to fail' (paraphrasing). This wasn't in the piece and likely reflects a projection of their reality. This angry tone is pervasive in the comments and quickly turned people against each other. Anger that came from somewhere, perhaps a place that isn't apparent to the angry. A lasting sensation of not feeling listened to, or truly seen and valued. Even if you only communicate your emotions to yourself, and get curious about where they come from, it's likely to help simply by acknowledging that not all emotions arise from the present situation. I believe this is true in life as it is in the comments. Anyway, I wish you all a productive week!