How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-resolve-a-conflict-when-both-sides-are-right-1f375bc82f7f

by davesuperman • 6 years ago

275 163 6 years ago

nottorp• 6 years ago

Do you need some framework for this? How about a competent manager instead?

ben509• 6 years ago

At some point, managers have to get from incompetent to competent. That's invariably going to involve trying out various techniques, and if those techniques have known expected results, it helps the individual evaluate whether they're getting it right.

Thus, frameworks and guides and such have a pedogogical value.

supercanuck• 6 years ago

The problem with businesses/startup/bosses trying to use these is that they come across as disingenuous and manipulative if you try to use these as a tool.

The core tenet of NVC is that: NVC is based on the assumption that all human beings have capacity for compassion and empathy. If you can't exhibit these skills in your day to day life, it feels manipulative to others because you are asking others to be vulnerable.

luckylion• 6 years ago

This. So much this.

You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks.

I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took from it.

Terr_• 6 years ago

Reminds me of a book-quote:

The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person.

-- Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

cousin_it• 6 years ago

I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC success story.

lmeyerov• 6 years ago

It helped us a lot by putting in a simple low bar for professional communication and conflict resolution, and as a training mechanism. Startups get wild in unpredictable diff ways, so need to have something.

In practice, older team members did not need it as much to begin with, so they quickly got it. Mid/younger benifited more -- less experience in channeling passion and handling problems?

Main issue IME can function as a smothering mechanism that lets things fester. Even if a discussion remains cordial and makes progress, that does not mean the conflict gets resolved. Ex: folks can just stop talking. So useful but incomplete, and the article title overclaims.

oconnor663• 6 years ago

I think the value of the canned phrases is in giving you an alternative to reach for in more difficult situations, where your default would've been either angry yelling or not communicating at all. When you take a typical business conversation -- which is definitely going to happen either way, and which isn't really at risk of becoming a screaming match -- and apply the canned phrases to it, I agree that it adds awkwardness for not much benefit.

lonelappde• 6 years ago

You might be lucky to be in an office where people don't scream at each other.

llamataboot3• 6 years ago

IMHO this stage of NVC lasts about 6 months, and it is rarely "doing NVC" - ie; if you get really angry/scared/etc you prob haven't built up the muscle memory yet to even reach for those canned phrases (probably applies more in more intimate relationships than the workplace - partner(s), parents, kids, etc) but maybe you do, and surprisingly even a clumsy canned phrase about your own feelings or needs rather than jumping to an accusation of the other person can still help ratchet down the tension.

After practicing NVC a fair amount (it is a /practice/, not a tool), you can literally start feeling your brain re-wire in a good way. You stop feeling so much responsible for other people's emotions, even if they are about something you did or needing to put your needs in contrast to someone elses, you start automatically being able to empathize with someone's feelings, even when they might scare you, and perhaps most importantly your own self-talk and the way you relate to parts of yourself that "you" are in conflict with starts to change.

At this point, there is much less robotic phrases. In fact, watching someone who has many years of experience rewiring their own defenses through NVC practice responding to difficult situations seems near-magical because there are so many less ego defenses to get stuck on someone elses ego defenses so really difficult and hard things can be cut through like better and both people can feel heard and understoor.

0xff00ffee3• 6 years ago

prob haven't built up the muscle memory yet

For me, it took YEARS of practice, and it amazes my that my limbic system is still the first responder! It comes and goes and you're right, you really need to practice. The canned phrases are the training wheels.

uk_programmer9• 6 years ago

The very acronym itself redefines violence to something it isn't which is always a red flag.

This all sounds like the worst parts of working in a lot of modern offices where people don't speak frankly and instead everything is done through this sort of political office speak which is lets be honest here all about politics and not about solving problems.

When I read things like this. I find it very insidious.

dkarl• 6 years ago

This was my impression after reading the NVC book. It doesn't aim at resolving conflict. It aims at being able to talk about a conflict without joining into it. Most conflicts have a rhetorical side to them, and when you try to talk through them, you almost inevitably fall into the trap of fighting the conflict on the rhetorical level. Even an intermediator trying to be neutral will end up reciting one side's attack line followed by the other side's attack line. NVC is the art of avoiding this, usually at the price of not really speaking about the nominal content of the conflict. This can actually help if the ill will generated by talking about the conflict is a big factor in inflaming it and keeping it going. Other than that, it doesn't do anything to bring you closer to a resolution.

pmichaud6• 6 years ago

I almost agree with you, but I think it actually does bring you much closer to resolution.

The reason is that by default the rhetoric and content, (as you've put it) are deeply conflated in the minds of the people who are engaged in conflict. NVC can tease them apart, and often the content that is left is literally nothing (ie. it was all just a matter of feeling respected or whatever), or a trivial disagreement that can be quickly solved.

But even when the conflict turns out to be non trivial, NVC is a boon. If all parties to the conflict are now in a non violent frame, then what has happened is the problem is quite clear, the stakes for everyone involved are quite clear, and all the people are in a collaboration together to figure out a solution that addresses what matters.

So you're right that it doesn't automatically solve any specific, objective problem, but it sets up the environment so success becomes way more likely.

BeetleB15• 6 years ago

Here's the deal: I've yet to come across someone who is critical of NVC but can provide something better. And in my experience, the status quo is rarely better.

NVC has its flaws. It won't always work. Nor will anything else we know of. If something comes along that works better (higher "success rate"), I'll jump on that bandwagon.

If you can't be bothered to read the rest of this long comment, here's a TLDR: Most communications books, written independently, have the same elements as NVC. The other books are better at explaining why these elements is important. But the NVC book is better at providing recipes, which is why it became more popular.

A few years ago I did a deep dive on the topic, and read 4 books on communications: Difficult Conversations, NVC, Crucial Conversations and Getting Past No. Most of these were written/invented independently of one another. When I had read all 4, I looked over all my notes, and noticed that they all point to the same things, with only minor differences:

1. State your observation, without judgement, and be specific, not general.

2. Personalize and state its impact on you. The "feelings" part of NVC - all the books explicitly call out that you should explicitly state your feelings. The Difficult Conversations authors pointed out that many people in professional settings have the notion that discussions should be absent of emotions ("objective). Yet if a discussion at work is getting heated, emotions are clearly playing a big role. Don't assume you can solve the problem without bringing those emotions to the table. And indeed, many solutions fail because they failed to address the emotions which resulted in a lack of commitment. As one book put it: Unvalidated emotions are a minefield.

Just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at work about whether to split a monorepo into smaller individual repos. One side's work is bogged down by it being a monorepo, and the other side would have trouble if it were split into monorepos. Both sides discussed the their problems, yet neither side acknowledged the other's pain. Validating the other's emotions is a core principle of all communications books I've read.

(The issue did not get resolved by the end of the day).

And personalize: Don't talk in vague principles, but talk about how you are affected. This is where a lot of the tech world fails. I recall one heated discussion at work where a person was strongly pushing for something, and using all kinds of principles/analogies. He wanted someone else to change his workflow because it was causing problems for him. Yet, he never explained how it was causing him problems! When queried, he kept invoking analogies and principles. The world rarely yields neatly to principles, and every analogy has a flaw. You'll often get competing principles. Invoking them alone will not solve the problem.

The other element of stating the impact on you is discussing the needs. What need of yours is not being met? Is this impacting your efficiency? Are you wondering whether the work is futile, and not giving your purpose? Do you think you are being ignored and want consideration?

I cannot stress this enough: If you have trouble putting a "need" to your problem, it is because you haven't thought this through, and it's a bad idea to go into a conversation about the issue. Even if you don't explicitly state your need, this is a valuable exercise to do internally. Feelings are easy: When you're mad you know you're upset. Most people stop there and go have an argument. NVC forces you to start introspecting: My teammate did X and now I'm mad. But why is his doing X bothering me? Yes, my teammate undid all my changes and replaced it with crappy code. But why exactly is this bothering me? Your needs and his needs may conflict. But unless you can determine both, the conversation is likely going to go south.

All the communications books are part "therapy": Emphasizing introspection along with communication.

3. Request (optional - depends on the situation).

Regarding the "canned robotic phrases": This is akin to any other book that becomes dogma (think TDD, unit tests, referential transparency, etc). And just like the others, the original author does not insist you use these phrases. The NVC author explicitly says that the elements must be present, but the order doesn't matter, and sometimes it can even be communicated in one phrase. It nevertheless provides those templates to make it easy on beginners.

When I read the NVC book, I felt similar to you: These phrases are very artificial. And would annoy others. NVC is the only book that has these templates, and it is likely why it is very successful. The other books discuss the issues involved in conversations much better than NVC does - but they don't provide a template.

Now how artificial are these? Surprisingly not very. All my skepticism went away once I started observing people destressing a situation at work. The majority of these situations involved someone using very similar templates. And many (most?) of those folks had never heard of NVC! It sounds very artificial when reading it, but no one thought it was off. This is the exercise I recommend everyone does: Observe someone handling a stressful situation at work, and note how often they touch on all 3 aspects of NVC (specific observation, referring to the feelings, and the needs that are unmet).

Rosenberg didn't invent NVC. He just identified its existence.

No one's forcing you to use the template. Here's an example "So this is bothering you because it's affecting your efficiency?" This is perfectly valid NVC.

I think some of the problem arises in what is considered "good" communication. In the academic (and tech) world, we often describe good communication as concise and objective. This is great when communicating facts, science, etc. But in the workplace, we are not in the business of communicating facts and doing science. Most of us are in the business of making a product, that someone will buy, from which we will earn our living. And there are many competing motivations (some people want to "make" something, others are more interested in promotions, etc). Generally, we are heavily reliant on others. You can make a great thing but if the marketing folks refuse to market it, it will impact you (and vice versa). So "good communication" at the workplace involves dealing with a wider variety of people who have differing needs from you.

Becoming better at that type of communication is a lot of effort over a long period of time. It's easy to dismiss one type of style (e.g. NVC), but recognize that the "default" alternative is very poor and merely dismissing means accepting a poor level of communication. Had I simply read the NVC book and not dived deep into other books, I wouldn't have improved at all. It is because I decided that I will try to find a way to improve it that I recognized the merits of NVC and recognized its effective usage in the real world. It's also why I didn't stop at "crappy templates" and focused on making it less artificial.

Finally, NVC has a cult following. Ignore the cult. Just focus on the book.

0xff00ffee3• 6 years ago

This is a great post: it stitches together the benefits of NVC, what turns people off about it, and lastly, what it looks like in the techworld.

Right on!

itronitron2• 6 years ago

In the context of work discussions, I think people should be strongly discouraged from describing their position in terms of how they 'feel' because what they feel is a result of their focus on work. Therefore the root cause of a person's feeling should be expressed instead and will be harder to dismiss in a discussion. It typically takes a lot of work to understand the root cause but it is also empowering for people when they can turn their intense feelings into rational arguments. My two cents.

geofft3• 6 years ago

Just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at work about whether to split a monorepo into smaller individual repos. One side's work is bogged down by it being a monorepo, and the other side would have trouble if it were split into monorepos. Both sides discussed the their problems, yet neither side acknowledged the other's pain. Validating the other's emotions is a core principle of all communications books I've read.

This is a technical tooling problem, not a problem about the feelings of the two teams. By all means, dig technically into why one team's work is being bogged down and why one team prefers the current setup. Maybe you need a different design for integration testing or deployment pipelines. Maybe you need another branching strategy. Maybe you need some ground rules about monorepo-wide changes. All of those can be discussed productively between the teams. Perhaps the underlying conclusion is you need more release engineering resources, and both teams might agree on that. (What did you end up discussing, anyway?)

Just like "there are no technical solutions to social problems," there are no social solutions to technical problems. The solution to "people keep breaking the build on trunk" has nothing to do with your feelings about the people who keep breaking the build - it has to do with your lack of a bot that runs tests and only pushes to trunk if the tests pass. (Nor is the reason that they keep breaking the build on trunk about their emotional needs - it's about the fact that they can't make use of such a bot because none exists.)

I'll give you an example from my side - just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at my own workplace about whether we'd perform a certain upgrade despite an ongoing not-quite-change-freeze because of WFH. A couple of people at the meeting were extremely unhappy about the proposal because they thought it was too risky. Tensions were high on the Jira ticket going into the meeting and various managers were overruling other managers. We got the right people on a call, and the folks who were concerned said, I think this is too risky if we're not going to do a production release, because we'll have too much divergence between master and prod, and the team that owned production said, actually, we're going to do a production release soon and we're happy with this upgrade being part of it. The people who were concerned said, great, that addresses my concern. Problem solved, and the upgrade is happening shortly.

Perhaps we were just mature enough to know, going into the meeting, that of course everyone's emotions were valid, and we had enough trust that teams genuinely want to not cause problems for other teams? I don't think we're an abnormally high-empathy workplace... people here are great, but I think we're pretty normal as workplaces go.

wintermutestwin10• 6 years ago

Great post. Your reading list is excellent and I'd add Getting to Yes. I think there are some key elements you left out: (1) the concept of emotional safety and the value of brainstorming (Crucial Conversations), (2) seeing the problem as separate from the people (Getting Past No / Getting to Yes), (3) Negotiating interests, not positions (Getting to Yes).

Here are the links to the reading list (and I added Getting to Yes):

https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...

https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Si...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit...

jshevek7• 6 years ago

I've yet to come across someone who is critical of NVC but can provide something better.

This makes sense from the perspective of seeking single, coherent, generalized system. If you embrace the chaos, complexity, and diversity of human goals, emotional experiences and communication styles, there is no need for some individual better "thing". My suggestion of "better" is to learn from a variety of sources, including NVC, but reject the premise of universality. Embrace the idea that a diversity of circumstance-dependent, participant-dependent communication styles is healthy.

an_d_rew• 6 years ago

That was a great reply! Thank you, @BeetleB!

friendlybus5• 6 years ago

Controlling someone else’s language and implying they are selfish for not changing is a lack of the social skills this framework purports to instill. You do not need to control someone’s language with a framework to enquire about their feelings. The majority of your comment is waffle littered with unsolved problems.

This NVC is fundamentally predatory on another’s mindset by controlling language under the guise of caregiving. It is an attempt to prime people for being heavily micromanaged in a few years by clogging up language with identifying feelings whilst real decisions are made by the nvc practitioners.

brlewis• 6 years ago

If your comment is still editable, could you please change it to be a response to the article? Its current phrasing makes it sound like you stopped reading before the heading, "Why NVC Can Fail in Practice". The article describes failures similar to the one you mention, and has recommendations that your comment doesn't respond to.

peterwwillis3• 6 years ago

This isn't just a NVC thing. Teach anyone a little bit of anything with the idea that they are now "better" because of it, and they'll be excited to share it with others. But they're still newbs, so not only do they fail at teaching, they also don't have the skills to respond to it not working. I've been that person many, many times. :)

booleandilemma• 6 years ago

When I see you write comments that put down NVC, I feel sad because I'm needing a framework that someone created to sell a book which I can shoehorn all of my behavior into. Would you be able to be a little more open-minded?

pmichaud6• 6 years ago

I agree with the gist of the other people who responded to you -- NVC success stories just look like someone winning, so you're not going to necessarily notice them. The robotic phrases are a training tool, and in many unfortunate cases a crutch, but what they are trying to train is a big shift away from fundamentally adversarial framing.

When people have really internalized the shift, they don't sound any particular way. It just seems like they really get where you're coming from, and it's a pleasure to work through things with them even when the things suck.

cheshire_cat• 6 years ago

This is actually a known and discussed issue in NVC circles. I highly recommend Miki Kashtans workshop "Naturalizing NVC" [0] to everyone. A shorter watch about the topic is a video from "Cup of Empathy"[1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHtDZ98CTDc

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiCtf5sZWHA&t=266s

redis_mlc2• 6 years ago

What Dave Bailey proposes with NVC is a cancer for engineering.

All things being equal, anybody's opinion or emotion is equally valuable. That is rarely the case in engineering.

Some of his examples indicate the lack of a roadmap is causing friction, not the request itself.

If you can't frame your request in logical terms, don't make the request. In other words, do the opposite of what Bailey proposes.

peterwwillis3• 6 years ago

You do realize that proposing that NVC is a cancer is a negative and threatening statement, right? (Cancer is generally considered negative, being that it's a fatal disease...) People who don't already agree with you are going to have a negative emotional reaction to this and immediately disagree without trying to understand your point of view.

If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing. If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding.

redis_mlc2• 6 years ago

Exactly.

jshevek7• 6 years ago

If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing

Are you speaking for yourself or for other people? If for other people, how do you know?

viklove• 6 years ago

If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think, you are succeeding.

You do realize this is a negative and threatening statement, right?

jshevek7• 6 years ago

In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest, or severely passive aggressive.

I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: because I need [universal need]. It's never because the speaker is selfish, or an asshole, it's always a "universal need".

One notable exception was, by nature, a sweet, kind, respectful person before she encountered nvc. NVC fit her well, and she remained a wonderful person, who still communicated in a straight forward and honest manner.

BeetleB15• 6 years ago

It's never because the speaker is selfish

Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish.

Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who is very generous is getting something out of it. Even when dealing with selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.

jshevek7• 6 years ago

This is an obvious and trivial observation which misses the point of my statement. In my experience, the vast majority of NVC practitioners use NVC as a weapon to manipulate others by righteously invoking "universal needs" while avoiding introspection into their character flaws.

Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not as obviously vegan)

fenwick67• 6 years ago

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/selfish

"Concerned chiefly or excessively with oneself, and having little regard for others"

(the second part being an important piece of the definition you have forgotten)

Ididntdothis3• 6 years ago

I think for all these methods to work there is the prerequisite that the user has some level of internal balance already or at least is willing to develop it. Otherwise something like NVC is just a way of papering over one’s own flaws. I had such a phase too a long time ago when I learned some communication skills. I enthusiastically applied my new methods and was constantly pissed off at other people because they didn’t reciprocate immediately. It took me a while to realize that I first had to clean up my own act before there could be a real improvement.

jshevek7• 6 years ago

Thank you for your response.

Would you agree that introspection and character development are important parts of a healthy NVC process? That an individual's application of NVC suffers without it?

umvi• 6 years ago

Based on the title alone I would say "find the most important aspect of each side's view and come up with a compromise that satisfies both parties"

I've done this several times now and it hasn't failed me yet. The hard part is discovering "the most important aspect of each side's view" because sometimes they themselves don't know it without some probing.

magicalhippo• 6 years ago

Also, to use the example from the blog post, maybe the new reporting dashboard was an instance of a X/Y problem. Maybe the customer need something else, they don't quite know what yet.

Maybe they really do need the reporting dashboard, but can accept a workaround and a concrete timetable for when the new feature will be implemented.

wintermutestwin10• 6 years ago

This approach is called Interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes

seanwilson• 6 years ago

What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.

ricardobeat• 6 years ago

The classic 'engineer wants to have fun' example also irks me. Most engineers want challenges (i.e. complex problems to solve), and the space to apply their knowledge and skills for mutual benefit (i.e. doing things right), they just happen to have fun while doing it. I imagine this is true for almost every technical profession.

0xff00ffee3• 6 years ago

NVC can be extremely powerful, but it only works if both parties are amenable to it. Source: therapy. While workers have an incentive to respond to NVC, some people simply do not internalize in a way that is necessary for it to work. This is the supreme challenge of mediators. Hat's off to them.

lidHanteyk2• 6 years ago

When I see people teaching "non-violent" communication, I become disappointed with their selfishness and inability to empathize with other people. I don't need anything from them, but I mark them well so that I understand that I will have to constantly have word-duels with them when they come to me with their passive-aggressive bullshit.

When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have a need for inclusion. Please, could you get me a coffee next time?

No. Fuck you. Get your own fucking coffee. How to phrase this in the workplace: "No."

Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

From your list, they need respect, empathy, space, and understanding. They need for you, the manager, to fuck off and give them space to not work on features.

The sales director explains that the prospect said, ‘If you had a reporting dashboard, I’d close the deal right now.’ The director is concerned that they’ll miss out on the deal without this feature, and feels altogether rather helpless.

The sales director needs to learn to fucking code. They need to understand that their pressure is going to cause engineers to quit.

What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

Do you know how to fucking code? I suspect not. You sound horribly incompetent, and worse, you sound like you encourage others in their incompetence. Engineering isn't about having fun; pay attention to your metrics, disregard features, focus on bugs. Sales does not need more independence; they already are selling far beyond engineering's capacity, and they need to knock it the fuck off.

The worst part of all of this is that you are probably well-compensated for this work, despite the fact that it promulgates systems which abuse and ignore the needs of laborers and consumers alike. When you are a word-weaseling suit-wearing grey-faced rent-seeking labor-harming parasite, I feel disappointed because I expect better moral and ethical behavior from humans. Would you be able to fucking knock this shit off already?

BeetleB15• 6 years ago

If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have you off the team/company in a heartbeat.

Your concerns are valid. Your method of expressing them is problematic. And your automatic assumptions are lethal to a good work environment.

I was going to address some of the specifics, but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.

crimsonalucard2• 6 years ago

Unlikely he actually behaves this way. The internet is partially a platform where people can lay it all out and tell it like it is.

lidHanteyk2• 6 years ago

I don't work for you. I am the consultant sitting to the side and watching you crash and burn. If you want to hear how I'll talk to you when you're my manager, then you'd better put a salary in my pocket first.

When you say that my concerns are valid but that I am expressing them in problematic ways, you are tone policing. This is a typical technique used by management: First, break up the original complaint into small pieces, then estrange the emotional content from each piece, minimizing and shifting as necessary. It is a useful way of dodging actual responsibility.

The attitude you are displaying, where you would have given a substantiative reply, but only for the way that the complaint was phrased, is a common empty rhetorical technique that comes with tone policing. Odds are strong that you don't actually have any substance to reply with, but you need to ensure that my tone isn't allowed to flourish or even gain sympathy or support.

Let's double-check my concerns, without profanity:

* People are not entitled to coffee or other errands being run by other employees. There are appropriate ways to join a coffee run, and this ain't it. Right? Now, does Dave give alternative wordings? Nope, he doubles down, just saying that it will be awkward at first but that you'll learn. Yep, you'd better learn to ask politely about coffee runs and other communal activities.

* Feature factories are a management anti-pattern, right? The engineering director in Dave's story is negligent to not seriously consider the risks to the stability and quality of their services and products.

* Sales must never drive engineering decisions unilaterally, right? It sounds like this engineering director lacks the ethical spine necessary to support their engineers.

* None of the people here, neither Dave, the sales director, nor the engineering director, are coders, right? So y'all don't understand the engineering concerns, which is unfortunate, because without addressing engineering concerns, your products and services will not be marketable.

Edit: After reading the rest of the thread, you've indicated that you do in fact have coding experience. Okay; in that case, I apologize and retract my guess. But I am then forced to conclude that you have a tremendous lack of empathy for fellow engineers and have decided to side with management, not just in terms of their emotional duplicity but also their manner of speaking-without-saying. I am, as before and as ever, disappointed.

friendlybus5• 6 years ago

This is how someone under unreasonable pressure behaves. Withholding support because of his erratic swearing and hip fire assumptions is going to perpetuate a sinking ship. Your reaction depends on having authority over him and will not fix disorganised companies.

This guy needs reassurance that his boat isn’t going to be rocked anymore as it stabilises. It’s a great key to the health of the company that all the business analytics in the world and discussions about feelings can’t see.

You are behaving in a predatory manner expecting him to submit rather than solving problems. It’s petty.

mellow2020• 6 years ago

If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have you off the team/company in a heartbeat.

You're describing sanctions without even being clear about the offense. What is the behaviour? Saying "no" to the question if they can bring a co-worker a coffee? That's the only behaviour they even hint at, the rest is how they think about things.

but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.

And now you're speaking for them.

I read most of your other posts in this thread with great interest, they are mostly very insightful, and I want to thank you for them. But here I think you're not being very fair, that is, you're simply bailing, and then blame the other person for that.

im3w1l• 6 years ago

Allow me to explicitly pose the implicit question I see in this thread "What does it mean to be wise, as opposed to robotic on the one hand, and sly on the other?"

How might one cultivate wisdom?

wintermutestwin10• 6 years ago

Practice active listening principles. Effective active listening requires giving your full attention AND actually being curious enough to shift your perspective to the other.

dsr_• 6 years ago

Wisdom is hard.

It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish things.

It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently.

And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed.

Practice, practice, practice.

peterwwillis3• 6 years ago

When my boss asks me "How are you feeling?", that feels weird. I don't know this person very well, so it's odd that they would ask me how I feel, out of the blue. But then I realize it feels weird because I'm cynical; I don't expect people that I don't know well to care about my feelings. So in some ways, the NVC framework is like "level 2" of developing empathy, whereas "level 1" should really involve developing trust and close connections.

Aside from that, this quote seems problematic:

"Creating a place where people can be vulnerable without fear of abuse is critical for any form of conflict resolution. Vulnerability is the source of connection."

Connections happen through development of trust, and trust makes you vulnerable, but vulnerability wasn't the source of the connection, it was incidental. If anything, the workplace encourages us to develop trust as well as verification, as a part of quality assurance.

By verifying the quality of work, we can trust in it, and thus others. This doesn't result in connections, but it can reduce conflicts, by focusing one's attention on a process rather than a person. So it's not "stupid Frank's fault that the build broke", it's "our SDLC is not developed enough yet to ensure that the build doesn't break". This isn't exactly NVC, but it is another tool one can use to redirect a conflict towards a resolution.

jasonv• 6 years ago

I take this one kind of like, "How's your day?" It's there as a politeness, but it's also an opportunity when something more substantial is necessary.

If there's something that needs to be said, starting your answer with, "Actually..." usually is the easy-to-acknowledge way to dive deeper.

davesuperman6• 6 years ago

Just to clarify, asking how are you feeling isn't NVC. Getting to the specifics of a contentious issue, and then asking how you feel about them is.

Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.

wintermutestwin10• 6 years ago

NVC (I prefer "Compassionate Communication") is not a complete conflict resolution framework. It is a communication strategy that is designed to help people turn on their innate compassion. It doesn't have a clear answer on what you do when people don't agree to requests. As a professional mediator, I find that it can work well for some types of conflict if I bolt on a problem solving step at the end.

I find Compassionate Communication useful for resolving:

1. Relationship Conflicts, which are caused by: Strong emotions, Faulty communication, Misperceptions, Recurring negative behavior

2. Identity Conflicts, Which are caused by: Negative comments or actions relative to personal or group identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.)

3. Value Conflicts, which are caused by: Different ways of life, Ideology and religion, Different criteria for evaluating ideas or behavior

In a startup context, I think that there are two more common types of conflict that lend themselves to an interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes ) approach:

1. Interest Conflicts are caused by perceived or actual competitive: Substantive interests, Procedural interests, Psychological interests

2. Structural Conflicts are caused by: Faulty or deficient organizational structures, Unequal power and authority, Time constraints, Geographic, physical, or environmental factors that hinder cooperation

I don't recommend relying on a blog post to address substantive conflict.

jph• 6 years ago

Your comments are excellent throughout this thread. I would like to know how to hire you. PM me if you're open to talking.

quanticle3• 6 years ago

Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole.

They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me".

More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. "See, I'm being non-violent," he or she will say, and it will serve as an universal shield against all who would object to their claims.

My take is that if you're in a situation where reported bugs have increased 30% and sprint velocity is down by 40%, no amount of NVC is going to solve that. What is going to solve it is management that's clued in to the problems at hand. Is it that too much feature work has been done, too quickly, leaving no time for the engineers to attend to technical debt? Is it that the application's architecture is unfit for the problem to which it is being applied, leading to lots of hacks and workarounds? Is it that the engineers are incompetent, and should be replaced?

In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the problem worse.

BeetleB15• 6 years ago

If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me".

If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage.

This is a rather large logical fallacy. It is a non-violent option. Not the violent option. And on top of that, dismissals due to semantics are usually insincere.

Edit: Wow. Kind of sad that my lowest effort comment for this submission both got the most responses and the most upvotes.

I'm sure I'll hit my comment limit if I respond to each response individually, so I'll respond to them here:

But the engineer has a BATNA here - find another job with a better boss. It's such a common BATNA that "people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses" is a catchphrase. The engineer can get extremely far in solving their "unmet universal needs" like fun and safety by finding another job. It's in the company's interest, one would hope, to keep them.

I don't disagree with any of this. We seem to be discussing different things. Of course, if your boss/job is problematic finding a different one solves that problem. What I was referring to is the inability to have an effective conversation about the need. Exactly what is your problem with a manager who spouts mindless psycho-babble? What is your problem with technical debt? What is your problem with no unit testing?

Imagine you're saying these things to someone who has never dealt with this problem (e.g. someone not in SW). Stating these is not helping the person understand you at all. I come from the engineering (non-SW) world. You will find little sympathy for technical debt and unit testing issues, and will get a response of "Perfect is the enemy of good".

Merely explaining that technical debt makes it harder to add features and will lead to longer timelines isn't explaining your needs. It just leads to more questions: Why is that a problem? You're getting paid for it, aren't you? And so on.

And please, the whole "manager spouting psycho-babble" is not going to get you far. Everyone has an imperfect boss, imperfect spouse, imperfect other. We all know it. After a while in industry, it is tiresome to hear someone complain about an imperfect manager. We all know it's true, and we all differ in what managerial problems one should put up with. Lots of employees are OK with such managers. And again, it's because different people have different needs. If you can describe how you differ from those employees, people are more likely to understand you.

And finally, possibly veering off topic, employers will always find the employee who effectively confronted the problems with the manager instead of running away to be more valuable. Now thankfully the SW world has a lot of mobility so I wouldn't always recommend it, but this looks a lot better on your resume than knowing React.

Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great.

Every discussion I've seen about communications involves this fallacy: False dichotomy. In fact, one other book I've read even gave a name for it: The Fool's Choice (the notion that if you don't sugarcoat relationships will get hurt). NVC isn't suggesting you sugar coat. In fact, it suggests the opposite. Know the problems. State them. Be direct.

I’m just going to say that we got man on the moon without NVC.

The elements of NVC have likely been around since people started talking, so I'm not sure you're right.

And I'll also point out we got men on the moon without debuggers, source code control, automated testing, etc. We also accomplished a lot without fundamental freedoms (speech, worship, etc). So what?

I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me.

I don't understand where you get the idea that it presumes you cannot handle criticism.

but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem

In a significant percentage of heated discussions I've seen, there is fundamental disagreement about what the problem is. I wonder if you're merely blaming NVC for something that is independent of NVC. NVC does try to get all parties to understand what the problems are, and I also wonder if that is making you believe it is trying to divert from your problem merely because it is trying to highlight that your problem is not the only one in the discussion.

Of course, without concrete examples, I cannot say.

and very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP."

I do hope people have relationships with their managers such that they are free to say stuff like this (I've seen it in person).

However, this is orthogonal to NVC. Your statement to the manager pretty much violates NVC's guidelines. It also violates the guidelines in Difficult Conversations and in Crucial Conversations. Sure it would be awesome to be able to say stuff like that to most people (it's not just about power relationships), but that's not the reality. These books exist to give you a way to get your point across without phrasing it that way.

Belittling is not a feeling. It is a story you are telling yourself. His ignoring feedback is not a fact, but a story you're telling yourself. Claiming the deadline is unreasonable is merely an opinion, and you did not back it up. Saying it's because of salespeople is also a story you are telling yourself, and not a fact. Pretty much every element of what you said can trigger defensiveness. Your statement implies you know everything, and doesn't have the posture of you attempting to validate what you think you know. What kind of conversation do you expect will happen? If you are wrong about any of the above, it will put the manager in a position of having to defend his actions, which is the very definition of defensiveness.

You can say this type of stuff without hurting feelings to only people very close to you (true buddies). Most people are not dealing with true buddies.

mlthoughts20183• 6 years ago

I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me.

It is also a political weapon. It may be non-violent in one domain (the tone and language presentation) but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem but instead filibustered with metaproblems about who is / isn’t being kind in someone’s made up subjective & political definition of verbal discourse.

Just because it says “non-violent” in the name doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact it’s rather suggestive. If you have to be defensive and _define_ your communication as non-violent, that’s pretty suspect and belies dangerous motives.

It’s “politeness theater” in a way similar to how the TSA uses security theater. You can _say_ it’s effective for a stated purpose all you want, but that doesn’t make it true.

lobotryas2• 6 years ago

I’m just going to say that we got man on the moon without NVC. Pretty sure we can cobble together CRUD sites without NVC either. NVC is just kore Corp-speak meant to shut out people who can’t or don’t want to participate in this obfuscated communication style. When it comes to feelings I’d rather talk about them with my SO, not my PM.

0xEFF• 6 years ago

Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

This isn’t the only choice, but it’s presented as though it is. Communication goes both ways, the people on the team can also choose to not get defensive.

Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great.

In bad situations it’s ok for people to feel bad.

geofft3• 6 years ago

If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

I think this is true in certain contexts where you don't have much power over the situation itself (which ranges from resolving conflicts between family members to resolving conflicts between leaders of non-allied countries). But the engineer has a BATNA here - find another job with a better boss. It's such a common BATNA that "people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses" is a catchphrase. The engineer can get extremely far in solving their "unmet universal needs" like fun and safety by finding another job. It's in the company's interest, one would hope, to keep them.

And this still isn't being judgmental: the engineer simply needs management who understands the process that they are managing. The engineer is not only allowed but expected to exercise technical judgment in determining whether that's happening, same as an engineer should exercise technical judgment in determining whether a proposed vendor product fills the need (and would not be doing their job if they refrained from analyzing the vendor product for fear of being judgmental). Perhaps the manager doesn't have the requisite technical background to make proper product decisions. That doesn't mean "the manager is a bad person" - that means that the manager isn't (by themselves) the right person for the role. Maybe they should seek a technical team lead, or promote a manager within the team, or something.

jshevek7• 6 years ago

If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem.

This is not universally true, but you state it as if it is.

Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

Wrong. Triggering defensiveness is something which happens as a matter of degree, and there is no problem with triggering small amounts of defensiveness if the other party is an emotionally mature person who has perspective on their own defensiveness.

wolfgke• 6 years ago

If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

Bullshit stays bullshit, even if you sugar-coat it.

Imagine you're saying these things to someone who has never dealt with this problem (e.g. someone not in SW).

In this case, the respective person should better trust the judgement of the software developers who have gone through this lots of time.

I wonder if you're merely blaming NVC for something that is independent of NVC.

Applying psychobable instead of attempting to solve the problem will make people angry.

nailer3• 6 years ago

By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default

I like and use NVC, but the naming is terrible. Violence is violence. Communication is not. Not only does the silly name throw aspersions onto other forms of communication, it trivialises actual violence and mars the actual NVC methodology, what I personally have found to be an effective way of resolving disputes.

And yes I like NVC: someone else on the thread mentioned they want to talk about their feelings with their SO, not their PM. It doesn't have to be that kind of wishy washy conversation or feel like bullshit. Here's an example:

"When we push updates without facing technical debt, it slows down our velocity for future updates as we're having to deal with things like flaky tests and infrastructure outside our configuration. I'm worried we're actually losing long term speed with our current focus"

It's a good methodology, but agreed completely on the terrible name.

jdmichal2• 6 years ago

The name makes sense, though they have a very explicit definition of violent which is laid out at the beginning of the book. (Which I suspect very few commenting here have read.) The definition is that, by only acknowledging your own needs, you are attempting to persuade others to meet your needs and disregard their own. It's violent in the way that telling someone "you're worthless" is violent -- it's the implicit message in that attempted persuasion. "You're worthless; let's talk about what I need." This is why it has such a strong focus on everyone stating their needs, and working towards common solutions.

sanderjd• 6 years ago

"When we push updates without facing technical debt, it slows down our velocity for future updates as we're having to deal with things like flaky tests and infrastructure outside our configuration. I'm worried we're actually losing long term speed with our current focus"

Coming into this article and thread without knowing anything about this NVC thing, that just seems like a normal thing for a person to say when describing a problem, having very little nothing to do with the technique I just read about... Does your "NVC done well" just boil down to communicating concerns clearly and honestly? If so, I don't see why it needs a name at all.

codingdave• 6 years ago

situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks

I've found those result are just as likely to come from a team with low morale. Still a management problem, but if people do not feel valued and don't believe their work matters, they tend to not care about quality. In those cases, improving communication to get to the root cause of problems, re-establishing trust, and making people feel better about their team, role, and work does have an improvement on the velocity and quality of the work.

quanticle3• 6 years ago

Ah, but why is the team's morale low? Could it be because the team's feedback is consistently ignored by management? By their deadlines being unreasonable? By the leadership of the team signalling (and, in more than one instance that I've personally witnessed, outright stating) that quality doesn't matter, what we need to do is ship?

Of course that will erode the team's morale. Of course that will reduce the team's velocity in the long run. But it's on management to understand that and realize when a short-term intense burst of effort is necessary to hit an important deadline and update the plan accordingly to include both the short-term burst of effort and the recovery downtime afterwards for the team to relax and for technical debt to be cleaned up.

If management can't (or won't) recognize the basics of planning and pacing, phrasing one's concerns using NVC isn't going to suddenly enlighten them. The way I see it, NVC is just tone-policing dressed up in psychobabble. It becomes yet another excuse for management to dismiss engineers for "not having great culture fit", when the reality is that the expectations from the leaders create the culture and it's those expectations that need to change.

asfarley• 6 years ago

Sounds like you would make a good project manager.

brudgers• 6 years ago

a manager that understands Is also "an employee who communicates effectively" and the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet cycle continues. If that's not what I want (and I am wont to want it), then non-violent communication is a method I can use to try and escape the loop along with my antagonist. The cycle is easy and my default. Non-violent communication tends not to be what I want to do in the moment. I don't really like seeing myself as a virtue-ninny either. Pretenseing as a winner strokes the part of my ego that's used to be stroked. Your milage may vary. For me, non-violent communication looks like a channel for personal growth. I'm already really good at being an asshole from long practice and innate talent. Good luck.

btilly4• 6 years ago

In my experience, developers always warn management repeatedly and well in advance that engineering is implementing short term hacks. And if management believes them and gives them a free hand, then sprint velocity goes down by 80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor. Which seldom works out in the end as well as development thinks it will.

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system, with all of the downsides of the second system effect.)

The moral of the story is that "...management has been warned repeatedly..." DOES NOT mean that the warnings are a correct diagnosis. Here are alternate diagnoses that may also cause the same symptom:

- Confusing product stories.

- Onboarding new developers without proper integration in the team.

- Poor communication patterns between developers.

- General company morale problems.

- Improved QA. (This one is actually an improvement. Reported bugs are up because they are being caught, and developer throughput is down because they have to fix the newly reported bugs. In dysfunctional organizations, though, developers can wind up upset at QA.)

And so on.

elmomle• 6 years ago

These are all good points, though I think a deeper point may be missing regarding employing empathic, curious, positive communication tools (If you prefer a term besides NVC, please use it--the politics of taxonomy could only distract us from the potential benefit of ideas).

Here's a theorem: For common personal or professional conversation types, I maximize the expected outcome of "difficult conversations" (both to me and to the group) by (in the conversation) assuming the best and focusing on open-mindedness and collaboration.

Proof: Enumerate expected outcomes from using that mindset versus not doing so over all possible values of {am I in the wrong?, is other person in the wrong?, other person's disposition}. (For full rigor multiple through by your priors on each of these but I hope the idea is clear enough).

In the example you gave, if I'm management and I'm in the wrong, being curious when trying to debug the problem will make it way easier for me to be open to my mistakes, since I've introduced no specter of guilt, shame, or blame for the fact that there is a mistake.

neeleshs• 6 years ago

But, technical debt is a real thing. Making sure that refactoring/clearing debt is part of every sprint (one or two tasks per sprint, probably) is important.

However, if benefits of refactoring are abstract, and not attached to immediate or short-term/medium term features/perf, there is a very high probability that it is not a tech debt. "Code looks better this way" - is an overrated rationale to refactor.

jdc• 6 years ago

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system, with all of the downsides of the second system effect.)

Sounds like you are saying that refactoring is usually incompetently done to me.

mehrdadn• 6 years ago

sprint velocity goes down by 80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor

Do you mean during the refactor, or after they claim it's finished?

l0b0• 6 years ago

Agreed except for the part about refactoring:

if management believes them and gives them a free hand, then sprint velocity goes down by 80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor.

5x less velocity and 10x bugs is not the result of any sane refactor. Anywhere close to this would indicate that either the devs massively underestimated the complexity of the job or their own competence, or something else in the process is broken, such as letting the senior estimate and the junior implement the change. The vast majority of refactorings are in my experience non-events, simply because I'm by now used to working with thoroughly tested systems.

mpweiher• 6 years ago

80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor.

Er...that's not a "refactor". I know the term nowadays gets used liberally for any kind of rework, but refactoring involves making the tiniest of steps, often automatic or automatable, that improve the structure of the code without affecting functionality, all under the umbrella of a comprehensive test-suite that catches violations.

davesuperman6• 6 years ago

While there's lots of interesting points in the thread, I'll focus my response on this one.

1) I completely agree that the title 'Nonviolent' is awful. It doesn't even follow the NVC principle of 'say what you want, not what you don't want'. The original author conceded to this. However, you shouldn't judge NVC by its title.

2) NVC doesn't purport to resolve the issue of the bugs or velocity, it aims to help resolve the conflict between the sales manager. Gosh, if NVC actually changed reality that would be awesome. Instead, it helps you find solutions given reality, which is actually very helpful.

3) I sense a lot of irritation and frustration in your tone because you want to be spoken to like an adult. Fair enough—that is a universal need. If you'd like to get your boss to 'give it to you straight', you could NVC to get what you want, without sounding self-righteous :)

Hope this clarifies.

spyckie2• 6 years ago

You have to think of nvc as a systemic solution and not a personal one in order to understand what it is trying to do.

Take a population of 100 people. 10 of them are emotional. 40 of them are emotional amplifiers. 10 are combative. And 40 are combative amplifiers.

In this system, it tends to chaos when communication is too combative because of the population set (regardless of any ideals or moral judgments of what you think).

Nvc is a set of rules that, if a subset of the 100 population follows it, lowers the chance of communication blowing up into chaos. That's about it.

It's the best communication style for nullifying others bad communication when bad communication is the root cause of tension or problems.

wintermutestwin10• 6 years ago

One critical NVC concept that this article leaves out is that people often express judgements as feelings. A small cut and paste from the list of "non-feelings:"

Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless

pmichaud6• 6 years ago

Yeah this is huge, and the sophomore mistake here is to try to "aikido" the people who are using feeling words to describe judgement. Ie. to immediately rephrase their statement into more a "correct," NVC-style format. It's a mistake for a couple reasons.

First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology (that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct, but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid.

Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them, which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way.

Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by "want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it.

I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art, instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth-seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and learn when to apply either mode.

wintermutestwin10• 6 years ago

I think you are pointing out that reframing can be misused. Do you think that this cut from my conflict resolution doc is a "concise alternative?"

"The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way." -- Bernard Mayer

How to reframe a statement:

Acknowledge the emotion

Restate the problem or issue removing the inflammatory language

Request or wait for clarification or validation from the speaker

Repeat as necessary

travisjungroth• 6 years ago

I think you've touched on the core problem with the implementation of NVC (and lots of other communication frameworks). People score themselves and others on their adherence to NVC instead of actually just doing it.

It makes sense after you read a book. The author spends all of this time judging conversations. A sentence is put out, and then the author says whether or not it's NVC. After reading the whole book, you come to think that's what NVC is: judging whether other people's sentences are correct or not.

So when someone says "I feel unwanted" the listener's natural instinct is to act like the author and say "Unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a projection of judgement". This is not NVC. This is not helpful. A simple "You're feeling unwanted." is 100 times better.

I have this theory that NVC, especially for listening, is done way better in "secret". It should be an internal process that the other person isn't really aware of. You don't have to force someone into your definition of observation, feeling, need and request to understand them. Maintain curiosity and respect, and you can get to those things.

Especially with all the negative connotation that NVC carries, if someone leaves a conversation with you thinking "That person did NVC", you probably fucked up. If they leave thinking "that person knows how I feel and what I want", you did it right.

danShumway• 6 years ago

Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole.
They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed.

I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems.

What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not your engineering environment was safe and fun.

Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real problem.

If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of 30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone.

Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can use communication to make it easier to confront.

frobozz• 6 years ago

Totally agree.

If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not actually solved the problem.

Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged without addressing the problems they raise.

Ididntdothis3• 6 years ago

You actually can piss them off with acting safe and engaged while not addressing the actual problem. I see that quite a bit.

crimsonalucard2• 6 years ago

The problem isn't always about a persons' needs. It's can be about who is actually MORE right.

adrianmonk• 6 years ago

When you apply the format to the letter, it usually comes off as over-prepared and clunky. It’s not how people normally speak so it can sound inauthentic.

This reminds me: it's hard to overstate how much of communication is nonverbal. Your tone, attitude, body language, facial expression, etc. can make all the difference in the world. This is probably especially relevant in conflict situations.

Imagine you have an attitude of thinly-veiled annoyance and you say a sentence (from the article) like, "When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt DISAPPOINTED because I have a need for inclusion. PLEASE, could you get me a coffee next time?"

Now compare that to having a relaxed, positive attitude and saying the exact same sentence but not loaded down with negative emotion. Imagine saying it in a way that makes them feel like it isn't a big deal to you, you're not going to remember The Coffee Cup Incident forever, you still like them, and that you probably brought this up because you care about getting along.

The words you say obviously matter some, but the way you deliver them might is often way more important. For example, some people could probably get away with saying, "Well... fuck you for not getting me a cup of coffee. I guess I'm not important. Nah, I'm kidding. I would have liked one, though. It's going to take me a while to work through this, but eventually I'll be able to forgive you."

Once I realized how important the nonverbal aspect of communication is and started practicing to get better at it, it made a lot of these things a ton easier.

---

Also, as long as I'm going on tangents, after a conflict has happened is sort of your last opportunity to get it right. Good conflict resolution methods can definitely help, but everything is going to be much easier if beforehand you spent the effort developing healthy relationships and building trust. Resolving conflict will be an uphill battle if you haven't. And if you have, then it will be much easier. So basically preparation and maintenance serves as an important multiplier.

Iwan-Zotow• 6 years ago

Leela: "Great. We're two days from earth with no food."

Bender: "Problem solved. You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."

motohagiography• 6 years ago

More I read about it, the more NVC seems essentially like a progressive NLP. It has the same hypnotic misdirection and playing on peoples emotions, while directing them to a zero sum end.

I'd argue further that the approach of pretending everyone's interests are legitimate also normalizes objectively terrible people.

perlgeek• 6 years ago

One problem is that when people are triggered by certain topics, they will still be triggered by the topic, no matter how careful or non-violently you approach.

If you are married, and your trigger topic is house work, it doesn't matter if your spouse says "you need to more house work" or "when I get home after a long day of work, I feel let down by having to do a large amount of house work, could please do more in the future?".

If anything, the latter might be seen as more accusatory, even though feeling let down is exactly the emotion that your spouse communicated, and it was "non-violently" communicated using the "I [feel]" pattern.

BeetleB15• 6 years ago

Well, here are some of the problems with such a statement:

The observation wasn't there. I initially wrote "I think we can both agree that it is not needed in this context.", but on reflection that's a really poor assumption. Because (and trust me, this is common), the other spouse may actually have tidied the house (or done laundry or whatever), and is now dealing with the complainant complaining as if he/she hasn't done any work. It would help a lot more if the complainant specified the problem.

Did you mean to say "I feel down" or "I feel let down"? The latter strictly violates NVC (it's not a feeling but a judgmental narrative). It will trigger defensiveness.

The spouse didn't state the need. Having to do a large amount of house work is not a need.

Your example is one of the most common types of problems between two people. One side is OK with a sloppy house, and the other isn't. The way you phrased it, the other spouse is likely to respond with "So don't do the house work. What's the problem? I'm fine with it, why aren't you?"

One spouse perhaps needs more order than the other. Unless that is made clear, how will progress be made? Is this obvious? No. Because it may not be about tidyness but about a filthy bathroom where the need may be sanitation. I'm not being splitting hairs. I know people who insist on very clean bathrooms and kitchens, but are not at all fussy about stuff all over the floor in the house.

Finally, the request was a poor one. Both the observation and the request need to be specific, not general.

Imagine that the other spouse had put effort in cleaning up, and is being requested "Could you please do more in the future?" More what? What will it take for you to be happy? And did I just waste my time doing something that you perhaps don't care about? Should I waste my time telling you what I already did?

Defenses are up.

If the other spouse managed not to be triggered and knows NVC, his/her response may be "Are you dejected/annoyed because you need the house to be more orderly?"

A better NVC statement from the original complainant would be:

"I came home and there were several of your dirty plates on the countertop, and the sink was empty. I have a need for tidyness. Would you be willing to place your dirty dishes in the sink if the sink is not full?"

To your wider point, though, of course - if there is a history of conflict on a particular topic, anything can trigger them. Looking at several comments here about technical debt and managers, I think I see it in action. :-)

quantified• 6 years ago

The fundamental needs omit "power". Perhaps "security" is the analog, but "I will keep my job" is not quite the same as "my competitive standing relative to my peers and superiors will remain at least as strong and ideally improve". Let's recognize that the author strives to steer organizations in a direction of open productivity, but once anyone in the org is good at managing up it becomes an arms race. No org of >400 people can ignore this factor, and an org of any size can have it.

davesuperman6• 6 years ago

Having read all of the comments to this article, it's quite impressive how quickly people lost sight of the conflict, and took sides with whoever they empathised most with.

I included enough facts to elicit a trigger response for anyone that's worked in a tech company. Just reading them was enough to make people angry, and invent a back story that 'management never listens' and 'this company is going to fail' (paraphrasing). This wasn't in the piece and likely reflects a projection of their reality.

This angry tone is pervasive in the comments and quickly turned people against each other. Anger that came from somewhere, perhaps a place that isn't apparent to the angry. A lasting sensation of not feeling listened to, or truly seen and valued.

Even if you only communicate your emotions to yourself, and get curious about where they come from, it's likely to help simply by acknowledging that not all emotions arise from the present situation. I believe this is true in life as it is in the comments.

Anyway, I wish you all a productive week!

How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

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