Jeff teaches Nonviolent Communication (NVC) at university in Tokyo, Japan

Hideayaki and Haruno, two of my Japanese friends, made this connection with ICU, and I am grateful.

(photo taken by Ken Anno-- thank you, Ken)

In
preparation for the lecture, I reminded myself of something very useful
I learned from Miki Kashtan a couple of year ago -- that people who
attend an introduction to NVC are not necessarily interested in, or
committed to, learning the skill sets of NVC (e.g. Observation,
Feeling, Need and Request).

And I have found this to be
especially true for groups -- such as this university class -- who do
not deliberately choose to attend a training, but instead it is
selected for them. The most extreme case of this is when I have been
invited to give a training at a workplace, and the employees are
"required" to attend -- this often creates an attitude of resentment
and resistance even before I arrive, which I then am faced with once I
get there.

In this class, obviously, the students had some
degree of "buy-in" because they voluntarily signed up for the course as
a whole. And to my extreme delight, my needs for receptivity and
partnership and inspiration were very, very deeply satisfied.

The
students, while they did not speak very much, seemed very engaged, and
I sensed this based on their eye contact, facial expressions and
nonverbal communication, including whenever I asked them to do
something, they all agreed (which met my need for trust).

From
the start, one of my favorite places to share NVC is in a university
setting, which strikes me as somewhat odd -- even to myself -- because
sometimes the institutional structure of universities sometimes makes
it harder to establish heart connection.