What it is
Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication describes a way of speaking and listening with four parts:
- Observation: what happened, without evaluation.
- Feeling: what you feel about it.
- Need: the need behind the feeling.
- Request: a clear, doable action, asked for, not demanded.
“You never help” is an evaluation. “The dishes were in the sink this morning, I felt overwhelmed, I need some help with the house, would you do them tonight?” is all four.
How it shows up for me
A close friend read the book in two days and said it helped him enormously. My own use is rougher. The trap I’ve fallen into is using its vocabulary as a weapon, naming the other person’s needs for them. The four steps only work when they’re about me.