What you described is not NVC communication. NVC communication requires at a bare minimum first listening to both sides needs.
To me there needs to be a differentiation between communication style, and consequence. If it is the case that your job is at risk unless you work late nights, is it preferable to be direct about it, use assertive language, or is it preferable to use NVC, and express ones feelings and other details that form some sense of empathy?
It's worded in a way that connects declining with not being a team player. Obviously that's an intentional construction and to some people it makes perfect sense. It also is emotionally manipulative because it intentionally seeks to manipulate the receivers emotional state so that they comply. Some people will comply to resolve that discomfort. The inherent power imbalance distorts the situation.
It also confuses the language of personal relationships (affective statements) with the workplace. To me, this is in the same realm as getting employees to view the workplace as a family. Again it hijacks the our relationship cognition centers in order to engage in exploitation. Declining in a regular relationship has regular relationship consequences. Declining this kind of statement from a boss has livelihood consequences.
The solution in the workplace? Just say it plainly. Bringing NVC into the workplace is fertile ground for emotional manipulation.
Communication in the workplace should revolve around shared goals leading to shared rewards.
"Let's impress this client with a great product so we can all get big performance bonuses from the profits made from closing the sale."
I think that's all the emotional connection the vast majority of employees are looking for in their jobs.
At least it sounds honest. The reason for late work is emotional (as often is) rather then rational reaction to unexpected business need.
"You're the only person we have who is able to fix these bugs, and if you don't fix them we'll go out of business. I need you to stay late until this backlog is cleared because if you don't, half our clients will drop us at the next renewal. I will make it up to you in your next performance evaluation."
(Substitute whatever urgent problem has lead to needing someone to work overtime.)
The business desires that a person to work overtime to reduce costs, avoid hiring additional staff, etc... not because it's an existential threat.
If you don't think that can happen, you don't know much about startup chaos. :-)
I agree with your implication, though, that when there is no need for the employee to work overtime, there is no right way to ask them to work overtime.
If your EULA indemnifies you from failure to provide service, and investor capital indemnifies you from failure to get revenue, then yeah it doesn't really matter what the engineers do - but that's hardly a universal principle of business.
Also, if you are really in this situation, you already lost, because mo way this late night code wont be complete crap. So you might just start prioritizing and negotiating now rather then later.
At no point would I ever allow the existence of my company to rely on a single individual. That is simply irresponsible.
Then we agree, because we both know that people often do things that seem irresponsible in hindsight. It is especially common in business situations that require a lot of diverse expertise, in which case having any redundancy at all could mean doubling the size of your workforce. It is easier when you're talking about pure software, but even then a nontechnical founder could allow two programmers to segregate their responsibilities without realizing it was happening.
The thing about advice is it's easy to say, "don't get in to that situation," but every day managers wake up in that situation. If your startup grows enough, some of your own managers might find themselves waking up in that situation.
A similar situation would be assigning causal relevance to an intern deleting the production database on a company failure. Based on how you're viewing the situation, it seems like you think that would be a plausible explanation to hold; certainly interns have deleted production databases by accident before and so certainly it would seem like such an action would cause a company to fail.
My argument is that the intern deleting the database is not the cause of the company failure and has no relevance in understanding the cause of a company failure. It is simply not possible to attribute a corporate failure to an intern deleting a database. The causal reason for the failure would be a failure to protect the production database from an intern.
Similarly it is simply not possible to see a company as failing because someone decided not to work overtime. That is never a criteria that a company failure can be attributed to.
I am confident based on my experience running a successful company that my assignment of causal relevance has stronger explanatory power and results in better judgement than the causal relevance you're assigning.
I would encourage other people looking to run a business to adopt my assignment over the one you're arguing in favor of. The company did not fail because someone didn't work overtime just like the company did not fail because of the intern. The company failed because someone in a position of authority failed to properly allocate resources, failed to have good policies in place to protect production databases, failed to have security policies in place, failed to properly incentivize work, overpromised beyond what could be delivered, or a host of other reasons that have nothing to do with blaming a small group of individuals. This assignment of causal relevance will yield greater insight into how to properly prepare for a vast array of scenarios and also appreciate the risks involved in running a business and strategies to mitigate those risks.
However, if production is down regardless of root cause, having engineers work overtime to bring it back up is probably overwhelmingly the right thing for the situation.
If they don’t and the company fails, it’s not because they didn’t work overtime (agreeing with you), but it would have been better if the downtime was 8 hours rather than 3.5 days (what I think whatshisface is saying).
You completely changed the reason for overtime.
(Substitute whatever urgent problem has lead to needing someone to work overtime.)
Obviously if there's no reason for them to work overtime, you won't be able to find a reason for them to work overtime, but then instead of asking, you should... not ask.
It is completely absurd to change the situation into completely different one and then complain the original statement dont fit it.
And yes, there are managers who think common overtime to make fake deadline is good teambuilding.
IMO the best way to respond to that would be "Aaron-santos, I understand that you feel disappointed now. Unfortunately I absolutely need to leave at X o'clock. How about we make a plan for tackling this insane workload such that everybody on the team feels supported?"
If it's coming from an actual peer, it's just weird.
In this example above, if after saying "I need us to work as a team," the person were to say "and I imagine maybe you're leaving because you're worried about something at home or afraid you're gonna burnout or who knows what" and then ask "would you willing to work late (this time) until we get through them?"
I think what the NVC process lacks (or maybe I just don't know it well enough) is a way to show the other person we are considering how they feel. I have found it works absolute wonders at times, not only to show the other person I'm thinking of them, but also to actually get me to more consciously think of them, which can alter how I proceed. Maybe I even realize that the tickets aren't that important when I imagine they may be stressed to pick up their kids from school because their marriage might already be on the rocks and they don't want to push it overboard.
It starts with a connecting statement where you put yourselves in the other person's shoes and you can include a disclaimer that you know they didn't mean to hurt your feelings. The rest of it seems similar to NVC.
One takeaway I got from Kidpower is that the minor conflicts I'm tempted to ignore because "it's not that big a deal" are actually great opportunities for me to practice being more assertive so I'll be prepared for situations where I do have to take action. Plus I think the act of resolving a conflict can strengthen and deepen a relationship when it's done well. So if I stay quiet out of fear of bad feelings, I'm leaving a lot on the table.
https://www.kidpower.org/library/article/kidpower-boundaries...
At first glance, personally, I worry that I'll not remember all 7 steps so that's another reason why I like the three steps I use.
If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you're saying you first communicate to them what you imagine their situation to be and that they have a good intention, I think that can work as well. I've seen that sometimes when I do that, I will passively still be angry or frustrated and the person is just waiting for me to say "but" or "and"—discounting what I'm saying in the beginning waiting for the metaphorical hammer to drop.
> the minor conflicts I'm tempted to ignore because "it's not that big a deal" are actually great opportunities for me to practice
I strongly agree. I feel less afraid apologizing for being late for a coffee than telling someone I want to get divorced and can be a great way to practice. Another way that I've found to practice is that I actually run classes and have created audios to practice dealing with such emotional conflict/attacks. I've found that role-playing it can help me gain more confidence and skills in resolving it.
Additionally, I'm starting to believe more and more that almost all big conflicts are built of many little conflicts. E.g., two people get divorced often not because of one thing, but because of many many events that created more distance over time. In this way, the better I get at resolving the micro-conflict, at the little events that drive us farther apart, the less likely big conflicts will happen.
At the end of the day, I feel excited for whatever framework/tool/strategy works for you. Again, thank you for sharing this one and for trying to do this work :-)
Requiring everyone in your workplace to engage coworkers with a level of emotional intimacy and care can impose even greater burdens on your employees. Sometimes it can be better to just try to impose fair rules on everyone, and straight forwardly convey to everyone where they stand in terms of expectations and performance.
Blame free retrospectives are also crucial in cases where things don't go well.
Instead of:
"You make me feel X way when you didn't close out your tickets."
Try:
"I generally hate asking anyone to work extra hours, but in this case if the ticket doesn't get fixed we are likely to lose the contract we are depending on to pay everyone's salary. Can you please stay late and get this done? We can work out a way to give you some extra PTO to make up for this in the near future."
To begin with, a fundamental principle of NVC is that when you make a request, you cannot expect the other person to agree to the request and if you are frustrated when they decline (let alone show frustration), then you were not making a request, but a demand masked as a request. As such, call them out on it! His behavior that you're describing is literally something the book says is a violation of NVC.
Given that context, NVC is not an appropriate way to communicate an order/demand. No matter the words you use: If it's a demand, it's not NVC by definition.
So respond NVC style:
"When you say your need is to work as a team, I am confused as I do not understand how that is a need. Would you be willing to expand on that?"
Or even more boldly:
"When you say your need is to work as a team, I am confused as that sounds like a evaluation/judgement/narrative and not a need. Would you be willing to clarify your need?"
(Judgements are a fundamental violation of NVC. If he's trying to manipulate you this way, call them out on it)
"When I work late to finish the tickets, I am [exhausted/dissatisfied/insert-feeling-here] as I need rest. Would you explain what will go wrong if these tickets are addressed tomorrow?"
The other NVC lesson I'd like you all to learn is that it is very explicit:
You are not responsible for other's feelings.
If your perception is the other party is offloading feelings on to you because they use NVC, understand that NVC itself tells you not to be burdened by it. The ideal is that you respond to people's feelings out of a sense of compassion, not out of obligation. And you're never wrong if you ignore their feelings (it's merely not ideal to do so).
Even calling it "non-violent communication" implies that more direct styles of communication are "violent", and veers towards manipulative exclusion of your peers.
The reason NVC is "a hard skill to cultivate" is because it's an unnatural method designed to suppress candor and transparency in favor of feel-good vibes, the interpersonal equivalent of corporate "synergy".
I have seen and felt NVC is a hard skill to cultivate because it takes good will, patience, and a lot of introspection to learn. From the speakers side they have to be aware of their feelings in the first place, and then additionally what needs are prompting those feelings, to even start to be able to communicate that. Even learning the gamut of feeling words and types of needs is an eye opener. And then on top of that is when listening to others, the practice of hearing their feelings and needs even when they might not communicate it in a clearly non-violent way. It seems the key is valuing the relationship between the people communicating and having an intention of openness, honesty, and genuineness even if you might in the end agree to disagree.
If one party does not want to participate then there isn't necessarily space to communicate this way. And either party can choose to remove themselves and not participate and, that is ok.
This is exactly my point in terms of exclusion, by enforcing such a communication style you would effectively shut down this discussion (depending on the people involved) before it even begins.
My argument is that intentions of "openness, honesty, and genuineness" (in other words, transparency, candor, and trust) are by themselves enough to establish effective communication without requiring a framework that potentially shuts people out.
If you've ever read the NVC book, you would realize that the notion of "enforcing an NVC communication style" is fundamentally an oxymoron.
From the Wikipedia article that started this thread:
“CNVC certifies trainers who wish to teach NVC in a manner aligned with CNVC's understanding of the NVC process.[64] CNVC also offers trainings by certified trainers.”
I did not realize, however, that you had corporations utilizing them formally. That would really suck. Very reminiscent of agile vs Agile (TM). NVC is valuable only if you accept its principles - the NVC template alone is of little use. Mandating people communicate this way is very anti-NVC.
The book is quite good. The local chapters in many cities are definitely not good. They'll usually embellish and add a lot to the content in the book, and a lot of it sucks. I too would be very put off by NVC if my primary exposure had been through them.
One issue with "candid conversation" that NVC tries to address is that the language we use can often imply blame or thrust the onus of your emotions onto someone else, even when not intended. NVC provides a more standard framework for working out issues while reducing the likelihood that your intentions are misinterpreted.
The increasing use of the word "violence" to describe clearly non-violent things greatly disturbs me.
It could lead to people reacting more strongly to words than literal, physical violence. And I think that is a very very bad direction for society to go.
As your responses show, what constitutes transparency and candor is widely disputed, given that NVC is fundamentally about transparency and candor. It seems you're confusing a (suggested, but not required) template with intent. The template can be used for anything good or bad. The NVC book isn't about the template, but the principles.
I've spent most of my life holding your view on this. Be direct. Don't take it personal. Etc. And my life's experiences showed me that merely committing to this is insufficient. Being well intentioned, and transparent, and candid, is not sufficient for effective communication, because there are usually barriers that prevent the other party from processing your words, no matter how clear or precise they are. What every communication book (not just NVC) teaches are methods to make it easier for the other party to listen to you. And in most cases you cannot do that without addressing the emotional aspect of humans.
I would often "excuse" myself by realizing that I've been quite unambiguous and clear, and if the other person doesn't understand it, they are the problem. In reality, I was merely accepting that I do not want to improve my communication.