Nonviolent Communication™ Skills in Interactions with Authority
“Never give authority power to make you submit or rebel.”
More information on this topic coming soon. In the meantime, please enjoy these articles from Work Collaboratively and CNVC.
NVC Conversations About Power, Privilege, “Power-Over” and Social Change
About two years ago the NVC Academy organized an online symposium on Removing Our Blinders: Seeing the Impact of Power and Privilege. The symposium offered opportunities for those of European background and people of color to share their experiences as well as men and women, and for others to empathically listen in a virtual fishbowl.
This approach, of structured group speaking and listening, seemed to me to be a uniquely Nonviolent Communication (NVC) approach to social change and powerful use of empathy. I wonder what the world would be like if we could have more symposiums of this kind, and group mourning circles, for all that is happening in the world today including around the #Metoo movement, the environment, and species extinction.
In the context of co-leading one of the fishbowls and symposiums, I received an email from someone who had emailed all the symposium trainers challenging our involvement. This person wrote that “there’s no correlation when talking about subjective differences such as privilege and NVC…” and saw this focus a deviation from NVC principles and out of integrity with what Marshall Rosenberg (the creator of NVC) taught. I found this take on NVC both confusing and surprising. I took care and effort in responding to the person; below is a modified version of my response. For me, Nonviolent Communication is a form of social change, and addressing power is intrinsic to creating that change…
Please read the rest of this article here: https://workcollaboratively.com/2017/08/17/nvc-conversations-about-privilege-and-power-over/
Transforming Power Relations: the Invisible Revolution
by Miki Kashtan
This article was published in Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice in September 2002. It is republished with permission. All names in this article are made up.
For more than a century, holistic and progressive educators have creatively thought about and responded to the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs of children. Despite this enormously rich work, coercive power relations still hamper our ability to serve students and faculty. Nonviolent Communication can help us understand, engage with and transform some of these relationships. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) provides specific tools to empower ourselves and others to live more in line with our values and deeper needs. When we do that, we become more effective in relating to ourselves, other faculty, and staff, and we can contribute more to students’ ability to feel connected and energized. Through this process, we nurture the hope in everyone about the possibility of creating a world that works for all.
Beyond a certain limited application, the use of NVC requires a radical shift in consciousness. NVC is a dialogue process aimed at a particular form of consensus: solutions to meet both parties’ needs. Using this form of dialogue as the primary mode of interaction requires a deep trust that people enjoy giving freely. It also requires an abiding commitment to attend to the needs of other people. When we are equally concerned about others’ needs as we are about our own, we make it possible for them to give joyfully. What makes it possible to say YES from the heart is the knowledge that we are free to say NO without suffering consequences. Entering into NVC dialogue means choosing to model this quality of care and connection whether or not others are.
Please read the rest of this article here: https://www.cnvc.org/what-nvc/articles-writings/transforming-power-relations/transforming-power-relations-invisible-revolution
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There is a wealth of information on Nonviolent Communication – in articles and videos. Of course we endorse all of Marshall’s sharing’s, however, there are many transcripts and videos created by others. Due to limited resources we do not verify the full accuracy of any particular video or articles created by others, even though there is plenty of wonderful and educational information on the web.
