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A review: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

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Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

by Marshall Rosenberg
ISBN: 978-1-892005-28-1

I was sitting in an Amazon Web Services workshop and, as an after lunch ice breaker, the workshop leader asked us to all name our latest purchase from Amazon. I had no idea what mine was and when I looked it turned out to be Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. I grinned and announced that I had bought after a recommendation from my boss. While true, it still got the laughter I was looking for.

It wasn’t, well at least I hope it wasn’t, recommended to me as I am angry or violent in my communication, but I was certainly struggling with some of the people related parts of my role as a Team Lead of a software engineering team. However, reading the book made me realise that I was struggling with:

  • Observations
  • Feelings
  • Needs
  • Requests

Not just with respect to other people, but for myself as well. The book helped me use these, along with a deeper understanding of what empathy is and how to use it, to understand better what is really being communicated when we talk with people. When resolving conflict we often look for compromise, but the book helped me understand that what is really needed is to find a way for all parties involved to have their needs fully met.

On several occasions I found myself able to relate directly what the book was telling me to situations I have found myself in.

In one of the later chapters there’s a description of two software engineers in conflict over maintaining an old system or replacing it with a new one. Neither engineer was listening to the needs of the other.

When someone tells me a story of something which has happened to them I am usually keen to retort with a similar story of something that has happened to me. The book helped me understand that this is not demonstrating empathy and I am gradually trying to fight the urge.

One of the first things the book teaches is that just because someone does something you don’t like, like cutting you up when driving or making a decision you don’t agree with, you shouldn’t give them a negative label, like idiot or moron. It doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you. Instead remember that we don’t always understand what is causing someone to behave in that way and that acts we perceive as bad don’t make a person bad.

I am a big fan of The One Minute Manager. At one point I thought that the Nonviolent Communication book was suggesting that One Minute praisings are shallow and manipulative, so I reacquainted myself with them (they’re part of a poster I have on my wall). I discovered that both books are in alignment, because when you praise someone you should be able to clearly explain how what they did met a need you had.

After I finished the book, one of my colleagues asked me if it was one of those self help books which laboured the same point over and over and could have been shorter. While there is a theme throughout, each chapter looks at a different aspect of Nonviolent Communication, with everything from empathy to how to express anger.

 

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