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Is Nonviolent Communication an effective decision-making model? (Jeff Brown)
I'm
participating in a 5-day retreat in New York state this week for
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) trainers. I am feeling very nourished to
be with a group of my colleagues who are truly peers to me (so it's
great to have empathy, shared understanding, authenticity, and all the
goodies that come with NVC! ;-)
The group's decision-making process, though, has left me unsatisfied overall, and at times feeling a lot of frustration.
It raises some questions in my mind that have been "on my mind" a lot lately:
Q: Is NVC an effective decision-making model?
Q: Can NVC be used as a governing structure?
My quick answers, at least in the present, are: No; and not really.
For
me, NVC is an amazing and powerful interpersonal communication model,
and also is tremendously supportive for my inner work (inner peace,
transforming enemy images, healing, etc.)
It supports me in
focusing my attention on what is alive in each moment -- what is coming
through me and the other person -- which keeps me in the present and
empowered to take actions that serve everyone involved.
The
dynamics shift, however, once we include much more than a small group
of people -- say 4 or 5 -- and we have a group process happening.
I
have experienced countless frustrating and ineffective group
decision-making processes in NVC communities over the years, and I
believe I know why: NVC is not necessarily an effective approach for
making decisions!
In fact, it can be downright oppressive, as well as exasperating!
What
I am leaning toward now is finding other, effective models for
decision-making and governance, and INFUSING them with NVC
consciousness; in other words, making them more powerful by integrating
NVC skills within them to create synergy.
For instance, I really
like most aspects of Sociocracy, the decision-making model that was
originated in Holland and recently has begun being used in North
America.
Sociocracy, as far as I can tell, has clear, specific
processes for including everyone, gathering input, and making decisions
that everyone can live with, and giving a timeline for how long the
group will try out the decision before it re-evaluates it.
The
goal, thank God, is not to continue processing until each person
present feels comfortable and happy and totally at peace with a
decision. That is nearly impossible and hardly ever happens!
I
have noticed a tendency in NVC group processes to emphasize empathy
more than I enjoy, so much so that is impedes the progress of a group.
I like it better when individuals find ways to meet their own needs for
empathy, and/or the group finds ways to build in empathy in a way that
does not send the group process into a quagmire.
- Jeff Brown's blog
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Kommentare
Miki Kashtan's approach
Hi Jeff,
I've had the joy of seeing Miki Kashtan using NVC for decision-making with large groups and I'd say she has cracked it.
What she does (though go to her for the definitive version) is stay connected to herself, respect any already-agreed rules, and use the lightest criteria she can to get whole group unity.
So ultra-light would be:
Is everybody completely happy with us now doing a and b?
And one of the toughest would be:
Would anyone feel that their rights were being trampled on if we now did c & d for half an hour first?
Ray
www.CourageousCommunication.com
ORID Model
Angus:
This link contains one of the better summaries of the ORID facilitation model:
http://fnsingapore.blogspot.com/2008/08/focused-conversation-method.html
One of the benefits of studying facilitation models as they relate to NVC is learning about some of the tools facilitators use to help groups make effective decisions. These include helping the group to set ground rules that allow everyone to participate, defining the purpose of the meeting and asking questions that elicit answers and responses that group members may not have thought of on their own.
Robert
NVC and Group Processes
Jeff:
Your post generated a lot of reflection on my part because I have noticed also that NVC groups use empathy more than I enjoy and, from what I can tell, more than what the recipient of the empathy wants! In other words, there can be many occasions when a person does not need or want empathy in that moment.
My reactions to your post are:
1. In groups and in one on one conversations I do not always need empathy for my feelings and needs. I may have a greater need for efficiency at that time and would prefer to discuss strategies. I also enjoy hearing people's thoughts and opinions on many occasions and can want that more than a discussion of feelings and needs.
I see an NVC approach to this problem as making a request to the person or group that I am in conversation with that we move beyond empathy and discussing specific strategies and potential decisions. I can also make a connecting request to see how people feel about this before actually discussing strategies and decisions.
2. I don't see NVC as a decision making tool. I see it as a way for facilitating honest dialogue. If I recall Marshall's teaching correctly he believes if we are connected at the level of feelings and needs strategies will present themselves and problems will solve themselves.
While I also like a lot in sociocracy I have also found other decision making models to be effective and respectful without requiring all of the formal structure of sociocracy. You may want to look into some of the consensus based decision models that are used in co-operative housing and intentional communities. There is also a group facilitation model called ORID that contains some similar elements to NVC but also has some unique insights and ways of promoting group decisions.
Robert
Decision-making and NVC
I have had to make considerable additions to NVC's OFNR model of communication in order to facilitate decision-making in organizations. Yet I found the OFNR levels that MBR advocates to be a practical sequence to follow once I had gone a level deeper internally than the "I am X adjectival phrase" (IAXAP) linguistic for feeling that NVC requires.
(For clarity, following are examples of the IAXAP linguistic: "I am concerned", "I am irritated", "I am angry", "I am very disappointed", "I am happy", etc.)
Briefly, once one is in a context in which being a victim is not considered acceptable, the IAXAP linguistic, while it does facilitate frank dialogue, is not very facilitative of either authentic or thoroughly honest and certainly not accurate communication.
Of course, this does not mean that there are no victims. But in certain environments, presentation of a victim status arouses only contempt. While this may change in the future, for the present, a more consistently present linguistic in such environments is the "I have X emotion now" (IHXEN) linguistic, where 'X emotion' is limited to a noun or modified noun, e.g. concern, or alarm, or mild worry.
I use the IHXEN linguistic extensively in my coaching practice, which is especially focused on entrepreneurs and executives whose power to set the quality of organizational, market, and political life -- in which decision-making is quintessential -- is enormous, but not exclusively so.
I would have interest in the ORID model that you mention, Robert, and could in return offer you a summary of the decision-making process by which I have adapted NVC to rest on the IHXEN rational emoto-linguistic. You might want next to visit my blog at:
http://www.cnvc.org/en/%5Bogname%5D/adding-ihxens-nvc
Angus Cunningham, Principal, Authentix Coaches