How does your empathy land?

If you have practiced NVC for years, there's a good chance empathic listening has become your favorite way to support people, formally and informally. And for good reasons. Empathy can help somebody feel seen. It softens shame, reduces isolation, and creates the safety needed for fearless soul-searching and new perspectives.

Yet many NVC practitioners encounter situations where empathy alone doesn't seem to move the process forward. Do you recognize this:

• Your person understands what they feel and need, yet nothing changes.
• A familiar story keeps repeating.
• Insight is present, but change is elusive.

The question then becomes:

Might there be other ways of accompanying people, still rooted in NVC consciousness?

This 2-part workshop explores what happens when we combine the relational depth of Nonviolent Communication with selected competencies from the coaching skill-set. Because coaching offers additional ways of supporting awareness, choice, integration, and movement.

What We Will Explore

• When is empathy sufficient, and when might something else serve?
• How can we support people who don’t feel their feelings?
• How do we stimulate needs-awareness without being educational?
• What can NVC practitioners learn from coaching conversations?
• How can classic NVC processes be woven into real-life support conversations?

Throughout, we will experiment with approaches that help you discover your own meanings, insights, and next steps. The workshop will invite your real-life issues as your practice field.

Topics Include

• Empathic guesses versus open-ended questions
• Supporting awareness without interpreting
• Working with metaphors
• Embodiment as a doorway to deeper knowing
• Parts awareness and working with conflicting needs
• Structuring the process and capturing the loose ends
• Roleplays and The Four Chairs process in coaching
• Refraining from the pitfall of teaching NVC in a 1:1 support role

The emphasis throughout will be experiential and practical.

Who Is This For?

This workshop is intended for:

• NVC trainers
• Certified and certification-pathway practitioners
• NVC facilitators
• Mediators
• Coaches with a strong NVC foundation
• Anyone who regularly accompanies others using NVC

You have the NVC knowledge and experience. We deliver the coaching add-ons

The workshop is particularly relevant if you have ever found yourself wondering:

"How can I reach this person who doesn’t enjoy my attempts to meet them with empathy?"

Day 1: Awareness

Our first session focuses on our role when supporting another person.

We will explore the strengths and limitations of feelings-and-needs guessing, examine what coaching brings to the table, and experiment with ways to support awareness that do not rely on NVC vocabulary.

Day 2: Merging the Best of Two Worlds

The second session focuses on integration. How can we retain the heart of NVC while benefiting from the best of coaching?

Through demonstrations, practice, and reflection, we will explore ways to work with conflicting needs and to embed classic NVC processes into conversations that foster both connection and change, that doesn't require the receiver to know the feelings- and Needs lingo.

Our Intention

This is not a workshop about replacing empathy. It is about expanding our repertoire.

Many of us learned NVC as if support happened more or less only through empathic presence and needs-consciousness. Coaching offers additional ways of helping people discover clarity, agency, learning, and movement.

When the two are brought together thoughtfully, something else becomes possible: True transformational support through accompaniment and discrete interventions.

Dates

• 18 November 2026, 15:00-18:00 CET
•  25 November 2026, 15:00-18:00 CET

Online via Zoom.

Price

• Early Bird until 31st October: 180 €
• Ordinary price: 210 €

Not sure?

Join the free taster session on the 27th October, find it elsewhere on this page.

Facilitator
Pernille Plantener, certified trainer of Nonviolent Communication since 2011 and coach and coach educator as long. She brings decades of experience in NVC, coaching, facilitation, relational neuroscience, and transformational learning.