Non Violent Communication is a communication process with 4 key elements
1. Observations: What can we sense? Without judgement, we start by describing what we see, hear, or understand to have happened. Just the facts.
2. Feelings: Identify our emotional response. Given what happened, how do we feel?
3. Needs: What are the underlying needs we want addressed?
4. Requests: What would we like to happen next to address those needs?
How do we take the war out of our words? Sharon Strand Ellison's Powerful Non-Defensive Communication approach highlights our natural defensive reaction to feeling unsure, anxious or attacked when communicating with others.
She outlines these six different defensive reactions:
Update: Video of this talk is now available.
Communication is a skill most of us practice every day.
Often without realising we're doing it.
Rarely intentionally.
I gave a talk a couple of years ago called Tools for Talking.
I'm preparing a new talk, which, in some ways, is a sequel to this one. As part of that prep, I thought it might be useful to write some short summaries of each of the tools outlined here, with links to resources on them.
Communication can be surprisingly hard.
Human beings talk a lot. Well many humans do. Some less so, Some more so, but I reckon, in general, there's a lot of daily jibber jabber.
Some of that talking is light hearted "Small Talk". Some of it is world changing speeches. Some of it is the daily to and fro we need to get stuff done; at work, at play, at home.
