Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values

Rating:
Summary: Good material, but presentation leaves a bit to be desired
Review: I borrowed this book from the local library after it caught my eye, sitting on the "new books" display. It's a pretty good book, although I do have some reservations about it.

/Nonviolent Communication/ is a rather easy read. This is both good and bad - good, because you're not slogging through lots of academia-speak and technical jargon; but also bad because you might breeze through the book too quickly to truly absorb the rather useful and insightful information it is offering.

The idea behind the NVC process is rather simple - it's mostly about learning to be more precise in expressing your feelings, their cause(s), and what you would like done to resolve them. Rather than saying "you never clean the !@#$ kitchen," the NVC approach would be to say something along the lines of: "When you do not take out the trash in the kitchen, I feel __________." And so on. NVC also encourages you to be receptive to what other people are saying and feeling, even if (or perhaps especially if) they do not word things with as much precision and care.

The approach is very sound, but I have reservations about the way the book presents it. Most of the example conversations are so unbelievably robotic, at times I just wanted to laugh out loud at how absurd they were. My initial thought was that I was being unreasonable - after all, they're just words on a page, and perhaps they would seem less laughable in person with real emotion behind them. And then I realized that was the key that was missing - the conversations were little other than the facts of the situation, and the exact words the people said. There was no emotional context, no insight into the feelings that were being expressed. I found this to be extremely ironic. A book about expressing emotions, with lots of examples that HAD no emotion!

I think if you can get beyond the rather mediocre examples, and put genuine *thought* into the principles the author outlines, you will find much of value in the book. Before reading /Nonviolent Communication/, I didn't think much about how the imprecision in our wording can cause a great deal of conflict. "You are so inconsiderate!" versus "When you leave your dirty dinner plate on the table and go watch football, I feel very angry. Would you please rinse the plate and put it in the dishwasher?" It's a world of difference, and I believe there is much benefit to this approach.

Final thought: there's a lot of good stuff in this book, but the presentation could use some work. Read the book carefully, and do not go as quickly as the breezy writing style allows - the material here needs careful consideration for it to truly benefit you.

Rating:
Summary: Good material, but presentation leaves a bit to be desired
Review: I borrowed this book from the local library after it caught my eye, sitting on the "new books" display. It's a pretty good book, although I do have some reservations about it.

/Nonviolent Communication/ is a rather easy read. This is both good and bad - good, because you're not slogging through lots of academia-speak and technical jargon; but also bad because you might breeze through the book too quickly to truly absorb the rather useful and insightful information it is offering.

The idea behind the NVC process is rather simple - it's mostly about learning to be more precise in expressing your feelings, their cause(s), and what you would like done to resolve them. Rather than saying "you never clean the !@#$ kitchen," the NVC approach would be to say something along the lines of: "When you do not take out the trash in the kitchen, I feel __________." And so on. NVC also encourages you to be receptive to what other people are saying and feeling, even if (or perhaps especially if) they do not word things with as much precision and care.

The approach is very sound, but I have reservations about the way the book presents it. Most of the example conversations are so unbelievably robotic, at times I just wanted to laugh out loud at how absurd they were. My initial thought was that I was being unreasonable - after all, they're just words on a page, and perhaps they would seem less laughable in person with real emotion behind them. And then I realized that was the key that was missing - the conversations were little other than the facts of the situation, and the exact words the people said. There was no emotional context, no insight into the feelings that were being expressed. I found this to be extremely ironic. A book about expressing emotions, with lots of examples that HAD no emotion!

I think if you can get beyond the rather mediocre examples, and put genuine *thought* into the principles the author outlines, you will find much of value in the book. Before reading /Nonviolent Communication/, I didn't think much about how the imprecision in our wording can cause a great deal of conflict. "You are so inconsiderate!" versus "When you leave your dirty dinner plate on the table and go watch football, I feel very angry. Would you please rinse the plate and put it in the dishwasher?" It's a world of difference, and I believe there is much benefit to this approach.

Final thought: there's a lot of good stuff in this book, but the presentation could use some work. Read the book carefully, and do not go as quickly as the breezy writing style allows - the material here needs careful consideration for it to truly benefit you.

Rating:
Summary: Useful skills, but poorly written
Review: I didn't really like this book. Although the skills described are useful, the author's style is incredibly condescending and arrogant. I felt like a dumb child at the back of the class all the way through. And some of the examples given of "real life" situations are ridiculous. As if you would ever, in a group of people at a function, tell the person talking that you find what they are saying to be unnecessary and uninteresting. Well, not if you don't mind not having any friends or business contacts. Honesty should only go so far in my opinion. I'm sure there are many other better books if you want to learn some good communication skills.

Rating:
Summary: Definitely a language of life
Review: I have read this book over and over and always find a new layer to discover, like uncovering the layers of needs when offering empathy. Dr. Rosenberg is a master story teller able to reinforce his teachings with humor and seriousness.

A suggestion, read this book, practice offering empathy on real people and yourself, express yourself with honesty and then reread it again for the next layer of learning. A language as Dr. Rosenberg has developed, is challenging to learn or relearn, yet it has been so worth the effort helping me to connect deeply with others.

Rating:
Summary: New edition's chapter on self-compassion well worth reading
Review: In November, 2000, I read the previous edition of this book...The quality of empathy I now am able to provide has enlivened my therapy practice, and meets my need for hope that I can contribute to the well being of my clients, and also connect deeply with my friends and family. The step-by-step empathy skills in this book are learnable by anyone..

This latest edition of Dr. Rosenberg's book has a completely new chapter called, "Connecting Compassionately with Ourselves." It's about what he calls, "self-compassion." He writes, "When we are internally violent towards ourselves, it is difficult to be genuinely compassionate towards others." I enjoyed this chapter because it helped me translate my self-judgments into statements of my own unmet needs. I now see that when I am angry with myself it is because my actions were not in harmony with my values. Seeing things from this perspective helps me mourn my action and move into self-forgiveness by connecting with the specfic need I was trying to meet when I used a strategy that I now regret. I particularly enjoyed the section on translating "have-to" into "choose-to." The exercise showed me how to locate the choice in what I do, by connecting with the need, want, or value each activity serves. I find I have more energy, more compassion when I experience choice in my life.

Rating:
Summary: Profound! The most important book I've ever read.
Review: Initially I thought this book wouldn't be relevant to me since I didn't consider myself a "violent" communicator. A few pages into the book however, it became evident to me that despite my easy-going nature, I had much to learn about communication. Dr. Rosenberg identifies learned communication that disconnects us from each other and is at the very root of violence. He then offers a simple yet powerful 4 step model that leads to respectful and compassionate communication. One catch - while the model is simple, it can be challenging to apply, especially when we're upset. That's because most of us have learned to blame others when we're upset and it's hard to unlearn this behavior. However, use of the model deepens our awareness and it becomes very clear how destructive our habitual knee-jerk reactions are to both ourselves and others. The Nonviolent Communication model helps us to become conscious and choose to respond differently - that is in ways that are more likely to lead to positive and satisfying outcomes for everyone. If you'd like to transform your relationships, for example: learn how to really listen to others while not taking anything you hear personally (what a gift!), learn how to give and receive in ways that are deeply gratifying, and much more, this is a must read. Also, this model is applicable in all relationship types - perfect for couples, parents, teachers, managers, executives, counselors and anyone else interested in relationship building.

On a personal note, this book has been life-changing for me. I have witnessed truly amazing results in all my relationships including one relationship which had been a great struggle for me for many years.

Rating:
Summary: Profound! The most important book I've ever read.
Review: Initially I thought this book wouldn't be relevant to me since I didn't consider myself a "violent" communicator. A few pages into the book however, it became evident to me that despite my easy-going nature, I had much to learn about communication. Dr. Rosenberg identifies learned communication that disconnects us from each other and is at the very root of violence. He then offers a simple yet powerful 4 step model that leads to respectful and compassionate communication. One catch - while the model is simple, it can be challenging to apply, especially when we're upset. That's because most of us have learned to blame others when we're upset and it's hard to unlearn this behavior. However, use of the model deepens our awareness and it becomes very clear how destructive our habitual knee-jerk reactions are to both ourselves and others. The Nonviolent Communication model helps us to become conscious and choose to respond differently - that is in ways that are more likely to lead to positive and satisfying outcomes for everyone. If you'd like to transform your relationships, for example: learn how to really listen to others while not taking anything you hear personally (what a gift!), learn how to give and receive in ways that are deeply gratifying, and much more, this is a must read. Also, this model is applicable in all relationship types - perfect for couples, parents, teachers, managers, executives, counselors and anyone else interested in relationship building.

On a personal note, this book has been life-changing for me. I have witnessed truly amazing results in all my relationships including one relationship which had been a great struggle for me for many years.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful tool for peacemaking, social change, and healing
Review: Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication practice gives people a practical tool for manifesting spiritual principles like nothing I have ever seen before. NVC empowers us to create a quality of connection with other people that makes it much more likely we can have peace, harmony, and resolution in our conflicts.

Rating:
Summary: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values
Review: Toward the end of the 1970's, while studying at the Gestalt Institute San Diego, I was treated by a colleague to an intriguing list of tips about the use of language from a group in Southern California calling itself the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). I found the list both intriguing and helpful, and I sought to practice what I could understand of it, but somehow never discovered the source. About 25 years later the work of Marshall Rosenberg surfaced for me and I was both delighted to reconnect with the NVC movement and also curious as to how the passage of so much time might have affected its development as well as my understanding and acceptance of the technology of communication that it forwards.

In the passing years, I had changed substantially in my outlook toward humanistic as well as traditional psychology, shifting my thinking in the direction of linguistics and cognitive science. I immersed myself in intercultural studies and gained experiences working abroad that distanced me to some degree from my US ethnocentricity and provided cultural perspective on ideas and movements that I had formerly swallowed whole.

Treated to a review copy of Nonviolent Communication, I feasted on it with an appetite whetted by years of waiting. At the same time I attempted to critique the cuisine with the palate I had developed since I had last tasted it. What did I discover?

First, then as now, I was reminded that NVC remains an act of courage, courage to confront self and others with both honesty and empathy. This has not become easier in a culture that, from kindergarten to White House, seems to value shooting from the hip followed up by cover-your-ass strategies.

Other important insights emerged. For years I had been uncomfortable with assertiveness training where a constantly whining, "You make me feel..." subtext is camouflaged under the rubric of "When you do/say X, I feel Y." People were learning assertive scripts but practicing them punitively, that is, without the intentionality that would allow them to become constructive. It is this intentionality that is at the core of NVC. Life is frequently made up of competition and acquisitiveness, and trying to look good when clawing our way to the top tempts us to put on appearances of trendy communications practice in order look good and be liked.

Being positive is the sine-qua-non of today's US culture. Put another way, the quickest route to becoming a pariah in both work and social contexts is to fail to show the obligatory positive attitude. Negative judgments, failure to look on the bright side, criticism, mourning failures and losses head a list of US capital sins. The result sounds good on the surface-positive feedback, lots of encouragement, and a steady diet of "atta' boy/atta' girl" language. Negativity is bad, violent, and destructive, while "Blessed are the positive!" is beatitude in US civil religion.

Plenty of non-USians had been telling me that they felt attacked and aggressed upon by US "positivity." My initial temptation was to dismiss their complaint as negativity or pessimism. However, listening to what they felt, I learned that having a positive attitude was not itself the problem. They felt that they were being judged, that their US interlocutor was taking a one-up or arrogant stance toward them. I had overlooked the fact that both positive and negative evaluations can be violent communication forms. Both play into the our addiction to judgment and dichotomous thinking. We fail to observe that the messages, "Great job," and "You screwed up," are identical acts of violence, the subtext being, "I judge you," whether the judgment be positive or negative.

Also often missed is that the injunction to be positive can be a power play used to neutralize opposition to one's ideas and plans. Criticize me, or look on the negative side of what I am doing or saying, and you are no longer my friend. We experience this on a daily basis, and recently saw it writ large, in US policy toward those countries that refused to support the US invasion of Iraq. While Rosenberg's book does not address the cultural phenomenon of US "positivity" directly, reading it that gave me the impetus to look for the feelings and the needs in people's reaction to the aggressive use of the "be positive" principle.

It is not surprising that there is a national crisis of self-esteem when empowerment based on judgment is a norm of communication. As some critics of the drive for self-esteem in the California school system pointed out, self-esteem comes from acknowledged accomplishment and a growing sense of one's own competence, something that no number of feel-good strokes can replace. Particularly since USians believe they are defined by what they do rather than who they are and where they come from, there is an insatiable thirst for identity via accomplishment. Respect, not being dissed, is the yearning; positivity is the palliative. In this light, NVC can be without question an important tool for healing in the USA, as it teaches the attitudes as well as the practices that help us genuinely respect others as well as ourselves.

In the past 50 or so years we have discovered or become conscious of language is the tool by which we create things in the first instance. Tangibles flow from intangibles. We construct and deconstruct with words. We can use them to create powerful visions and dreams. But the words create chimeras unless the intentionality and commitment to what we say is furthered by what we do and how we relate to each other. Power leads to the illusion that when we say, "Let there be light," there will be light. However, being mortal, our sound bytes and adverts, propaganda and spin require closer examination, something they rarely receive in the general fog of okayness we strive to maintain. When some years ago, Richard Nixon uttered his famous denial of dishonesty by saying, "What I said then is now inoperative," many of us got our first clue as to the possibility that big lies could happen here as well as elsewhere in the world. NVC is a call to use the creative power of words compassionately and ethically. Much still needs to be done to see how it can be more broadly applied in public life.

The need to decide who is good and who is evil, to judge, and then to act, drives our national ethos to a stark "good guys vs. bad guys" paradigm of reality, personal, economic and political. Rosenberg astutely notes how we, "having learned that the bad guys deserve to be punished, take pleasure in watching this violence." It is this addiction that we are struggling with daily as USians, particularly now that geopolitical and economic stress have become a constant. Self-righteousness arouses a latent Schadenfreude that relishes misfortune almost anywhere and anytime. We live in a time of small and great religious wars. Mastering NVC can keep us from turning observations and desires into non-negotiable absolutes, to keep the brush fires of disagreement from becoming deadly firefights.

A few words from the interculturalist side... Separating observation from evaluation has long been recognized as essential to working across cultures. For people in my profession, NVC can contribute substantially to success at expatriation and global teamwork. There are only occasional notes in Nonviolent Communication about how local values affect how NVC is practiced in other cultural contexts. The international distribution of NVC practitioners and programs offers a very rich field for international understanding that deserves exploitation on a larger scale. Capturing NVC challenges, solutions, best practices and learnings as its core technology is applied around the world would be an exciting undertaking and a rich contribution to how we generate cultural competence. The next doctoral candidate I lay my influence on will get steered in this direction.

As to the book itself, it is highly readable, definitely value for the money. Each chapter gives the reader the opportunity to grasp the principles explored by asking them to assess a list of statements in terms of their non-violent quality. Linear flow is relieved with occasional poetry or metaphor to remind us that there is beauty in what we are learning to practice. Key insights are visually highlighted so that you can flip through the book for a refresher course in a few minutes.

It will be good for the world's trouble spots to know that Nonviolent Communication and not just tear gas canisters and weapons bear the cachet "Made in the USA."



Rating:
Summary: Easy to Read, Difficult to Apply
Review: While I agree with another reviewer who questioned the rather stilted examples in the book, I believe that the premises on which this book is based are absolutely sound - that all humans want to be understood and acknowledged.

I've worked myself, and coached adult students to work through some of the example scenarios. They prompted lively debate, critical thinking and crucial self-reflection about our own styles of communicating with ourselves and others.

We realized that we often put judgement into our language when we think we are simply describing beahaviour. We were struck by the realization that our English language often adds to the confusion when we make statements like: "I feel that this is unfair". Rosenberg spends a whole chapter on us being able to actually express feelings, rather than opinions and thoughts, as the above quote exemplifies.

He helped me realize that I rarely sort out for myself what personal need I have of another, and I was struck by the simplicity and power of being sure that I am able to identify what request I have of the other person that will address my need. Since I am practicing these skills with my teenager - you KNOW that they are truly being put to the test!

This is a book that is much better shared with at least one other person so that you can share the examples and share the hard work of changing unconscious communication patterns. If you breeze through this book as an interesting read, you won't get much out of it. If you treat it as a workbook, with gems of wisdom that need to be assessed, and practiced and made your own - then this is a treasure, and one you'll return to again and again.