Nonviolent Communication

It’s been said that we’ve learned how to speak but not necessarily how to communicate. Rarely are we taught the art of deep listening or how to respond to someone without accusation or blame or the ability to articulate our own needs without putting others on the defensive. To see additional resources and our other […]

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Humankind is produced in association with W
Boston and supported by the humankind program fund.
Additional funding for the series has been provided
by the corporation for public broadcasting, the National
Institutes of Health,
Annie e casey foundation and the Park Foundation.
This notion of, if I can just be...

(00:22):
Still enough to listen to you.
Just in that process of listening
creates
understanding
and a connection
between us.
Promotes from me the possibility
of peace making.
The promote for me, the the possibility that
we really can get along

(00:43):
in society
that we really can create
institutions in places
where peace building is sustainable.
A simple way of communicating that can help
us to heal conflict and foster greater compassion.
You're listening to humankind. I'm David Freud.

(01:13):
It's been said that we've learned how to
speak, but not necessarily how to communicate.
Rarely, we taught the art of deep listening.
Or how to respond to someone without accusation
or blame or the ability to articulate our
own needs without putting others on the defensive.
These are some skills taught in a system

(01:35):
known as non nonviolent
communication. Its aim is to promote more understanding
in a world riddled with conflict.
Finding ways to do that has long been
a quest of Betty Bi an educator in
Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
In an age where language is sometimes cheap
and cra,
her manner of speech is quiet and considered.

(01:58):
I
was in the peace corps,
when I was very young,
and
I read a montessori school.
For many years.
I
was very involved in the women's internationally Peace
and freedom.
For many years.
In all of those environments, conflict was very

(02:21):
present
mean, conflict is a very normal
condition in our lives. It and the conflict
is not ever the problem.
Of course, it's always the ways in which
we try to solve it that we get
into trouble.
The the complex
in
teaching and running a school often had to

(02:43):
do with
people's assumptions,
about
what was actually
happening or
being
required or requested of them.
So
Again,
I've discovered it over and over again,
the way to solving conflicts in a way

(03:04):
that we all can live with it, is
to listen deeply to people's needs
that are at the center of the conflict
and more often than not,
the needs aren't in conflict.
It's the strategies that we're trying to use
to solve them.
So

(03:25):
My
approach
has always been to listen
to listen and to listen.
And in that listening process,
looking for
a place of
agreement,
a common ground.
And

(03:47):
more often than not,
finding enough common ground to then move more
deeply into where the conflict or the the
The disconnect around the need is. Betty Bi
has worked toward conflict
resolution in venues ranging from a preschool on
Cape Cod.
To the United Nations department of disarm affairs.

(04:09):
But whether in the playground or in the
international arena or in personal relations at home.
For Betty Burke the same principles of non
nonviolent
communication or Nbc
apply.
Listen respectfully,
communicate authentically.
She rarely attends a practice group with others.

(04:29):
Trying to hone the skills of Nbc.
In my own
struggles,
there is this sense of often
this sense of
wanting to fix
somebody else's
distress
because
there's some way in which I have

(04:52):
taken on the notion that I'm responsible
for
their feelings.
And
having the opportunity through the Nbc practice group
to actually
understand my responsibility for what I've done.
But also the fact that the other person

(05:13):
makes choices about how they feel about what
I've done,
and that I don't get to
control
or be in charge of the choice is
that they make.
And that's both liberating
in the end
and goes against what

(05:33):
we're brought up to to believe
that in fact,
I can behave in a particular way. I
can... Whatever I do,
you have the choice about your feelings around
it
that I can say something that's
quite un and quite rude

(05:53):
But how you receive it is up to
you. You can choose to hear it as
rude and
cruel,
or you can hear it as
Betty not being very skill in trying to
communicate
and that it
it truly is not about you. Not taking
it personally.
Yeah.
How much of this

(06:14):
practice of non nonviolent communication boils down to,
not taking personally
the things that other people say or do.
All of it.
All of it is about
I mean not taking it personal is about
really knowing that you aren't

(06:35):
creating
the other person's reality.
It's hard.
It is because it's not how we are
raised.
It's not the messages that we get as
children.
So if we're not creating the other person's
reality,
what is our role in
communicating with the other person,

(06:56):
especially in a case of conflict.
Holding up our own.
Like, being in touch with them authentically about
our own reality.
And
being with them in a way that supports
them,
being in being with them in a relationship

(07:18):
to them that supportive
about their true nature,
which is
quite
beautiful.
And sacred and special.
Even if
covered over sometimes.
Always, it's covered over.

(07:38):
It is about unpacking it about
restoring it sometimes,
red it sometimes,
but the...
I believe and I I think it's at
the basis of
not nonviolent communication is that we are all
good,
loving,

(08:00):
beautiful beings
and that... At core. At core.
And that
Nbc is about helping us be in touch
with that core.
More and more and more.
On a daily basis moment to moment.
And of course, we will slip out of
it,

(08:20):
but we can always
reestablish it

(08:45):
The simply yet powerful skill sat known as
non nonviolent
communication has been championed by a tireless world
traveler named Marshall Rosenberg.
In 19 84, he founded the nonprofit center
for non nonviolent
communication based in La Sent California.
Raised in a turbulent neighborhood of Detroit

(09:06):
He has long been
preoccupied with the question of what motivates some
people toward violence,
while others are moved to compassion instead.
It spends much of the year training people
in non nonviolent
communication.
Well, first, we try to get people to
see the difference between intellectual understanding. Which is
going up to our mind and classifying

(09:28):
and trying to
intellectually understand what somebody is saying.
And empathy, which for us is to connect
with the life that's coming through the other
person at this moment.
I was in a refugee camp for in
the Middle East and when my interpreter
announced that I was from the United States.

(09:48):
A gentleman jumped to his feet and screamed
at me, me do it.
And here was my response to him. I
said,
sir,
Are you
irritated
annoyed? I guess even furious
with my government because your need for
support is not being met by some of

(10:09):
our policies.
See We try to hear people's feelings and
needs behind what they say.
He was rather shocked, I think, to to
hear that. I guess he was expecting a
defensive or aggressive response.
And after he stopped for a moment. And
he said you're darn right.
We don't have housing. We don't have sewage.
Why are you sending your weapons?

(10:32):
So again, I continued trying to hear the
life that was coming through him, and I
said,
so, sir, am I hearing you correctly that
it's very painful when you have such basic
needs not getting met, and you see a
lot of weapons being sent over here.
You said you're darn right.
You know what it's like to live under
these conditions?
I said sir, so you'd like some understanding

(10:54):
of.
Just how painful it can be to live
under these conditions.
Now in a couple more sentences, he felt
understood and he could start to hear me.
And about 40 minutes after that when the
meeting was over, he invited me to Rama
down dinner at his house.
Was your first goal to
diffuse the anger and intensity by asking those

(11:17):
questions
trying to
understand him and hear him out. Oh, my
first goal was to see the beauty in
this human being.
I know that whatever is coming through a
human being is a very precious energy.
A divine energy, and I wanna commit with
that.
If even if the person is
being nasty and he's only nasty if I'm

(11:39):
diagnosing him? I don't diagnose him. I try
to hear what is his pain right now
that leads him to call me this name?
What needs of his or not being met.
So you are not perceiving him
as threatening or as
unpleasant?
Let me say that the first... When he
jumped to his feet in the tone of
his voice, my first reaction, I was scared.

(12:02):
I was really scared so I took a
deep breath before I said anything and just
saw my fear, but I didn't see him
as the problem. I just saw that I
was scared
and giving myself just that much understanding. I
could then shift my attention to what he
might be feeling and needing when he said
that. Now,
I had some clues to go on because

(12:24):
as we were walking into the refugee camp
that day, we had to kick out of
the path,
empty tear gas grenades. There were hundreds of
them all over the ground. There had been
a riot in this refugee camp the night
4 and hundreds of tear gas grenades were
shipped in there. And on the side of
these empty grenades was written made in Usa.

(12:44):
So if people are seeing that as they
walk the paths of their
refugee camp,
they have some
associations to people.
Non nonviolent
communication recognizes that there's often a story behind
the story.
The ideas people express and the tone of
voice they use
Don't always convey fully their are true underlying

(13:06):
concerns.
A good listener will notice not only what's
being said, but also what's been left said
and we'll try to get clarification on the
source of conflict.
For Betty Bi, who is African American,
peer beneath the surface
helped her to get past appearances while
participating in a circle of peace activists.

(13:27):
I joined
the circle after the invitation quite joyful
and
fell quite
privileged and honored to be invited.
Out of my own sense of my own
work
and my own
accomplishment

(13:47):
around non violence and peace education and
and those values that I hold in the
world in the place that I have
actually
had an opportunity to work.
And as the meeting
of the circle
progressed over the year.
I
through

(14:08):
conversations and
observations
realized
that
I had actually been invited
because I filled a particular
diversity slot.
And I was
quite
hurt
and felt

(14:30):
angry
about that.
But
actually, I got some empathy around it.
I was able to
separate my own
personal
internalized
feelings of not

(14:50):
being enough just as who I was, and
for the work I done to be invited,
but that it was
a racial
slot that need to be filled and I
met that race and I was invited.
I was able to
do some empathy for the person who was
organizing this circle,

(15:12):
and
understanding that the need to
diversify the circles to invite
people
into it who would meet her needs for
inclusion and diversity.
Really had nothing to do with my worth
and my value.

(15:32):
It was really about her need to
feel her circle in a particular way.
And I was able to
reconnect with my own self around my own
worth and my own value.
And not
around
my
feelings of

(15:52):
diminish or feelings of not enough ness
that got stimulated
when I real when I understood
the circumstances that had included me in the
circle,
that that was not about me at all.

(16:15):
In the heat of a moment of conflict,
especially if we're feeling slight or even attacked.
It can be extremely hard to see the
other people as they really are, rather than
through this subjective lens that we may have
created about them.
Non nonviolent
communication offers some tools for breaking through those
pre

(16:35):
toward a more authentic way of interacting.
Marshal Rosenberg.
Well, the first thing you is that all
this language that we first hear is criticism
attack in insult.
Is a tragic expression of what the speaker
is feeling and needing.
And we show people that if you can
see the truth,

(16:56):
The truth, you see. Now I was working
with Israeli police.
And when I didn't make this clear at
first. 1 of the police... Let me see
if I'm understanding you, Marshal,
you're saying if somebody spits on me, I'm
supposed to tell myself it's raining up.
I said, thank you for that question. I
think it'll help me be clear.
No. Telling yourself it's raining out is looking

(17:18):
at the world through rose colored glasses that
I'm saying is it requires seeing the truth.
See what that person is feeling and needing
at the time you get this message. Whatever
the message is even if it is spitting.
So you're seeing a difference
between when somebody lashes out
through insult or Vi,

(17:39):
and
who the person is that doing the lashing
out. But I'm gonna be even more concrete
than the the abstract, who the person is.
I wanna hear something very concrete
What are they feeling at this moment? What
emotions?
And what needs of theirs are creating the
emotions?
See all human beings have the same needs.

(18:02):
So when I see the need of this
person that's being expressed through this
language.
I see another human being like me like
you. I don't see an enemy.
I don't see him lashing out or insulting
me. I see him as trying in the
best way he knows how to tell me
that something I've done is a stimulus for

(18:22):
pain for him.
And it didn't meet some needs of his,
or maybe it isn't something I did. It's
the fact that I'm from the United States.
Well,
that's not something about the country I'm associated
with is doing something that's stimulating great pain
for him. It's not meeting his needs.
So as we put it this way sometimes
in our training.

(18:43):
Never hear what somebody thinks about you. You'll
live longer and enjoy people more.
Instead of hearing what they think about you,
even when they say, I think you're this
or that.
Hear the truth. Here at that moment, what
that person is feeling and needy.
What they're telling you about themselves. Hear what

(19:04):
they are feeling
and needing, and that does tell you about
themselves. Yes. It says that at that moment
what they're feeling and needing.
Now we have to guess at this because
they're not using a language of feelings and
needs.
However, even if I guess wrong, I am
still seeing a human being. I'm not hearing
any criticism.

(19:25):
I'm not diagnosing
them. I'm connecting with their human.
The philosophy of non nonviolent

(19:47):
occasion requires deeply respecting the humanity of others.
But that doesn't dictate yielding to unreasonable demands
or ac whenever someone tries to get their
way by use of bully tactics.
Treating the other person with dignity while treating
oneself with dignity,
can mean walking a fine line.

(20:08):
The line is
understanding
my responsibility versus your responsibility.
And my taking responsibility
for what I'm responsible for.
And how do you see your responsibility in
a mode of communication and based on non
violence?

(20:28):
Consciousness and awareness around speech.
The way I speak
the way I listen,
my intentions,
my
commitment to staying self connected

(20:49):
in the process of being connected to the
other person.
So to remain true to yourself.
To remain
present with myself. That's the kind of truth,
but not abandoning my own
emotions, my own feelings and my own needs,
in the moment of listening to the other

(21:10):
persons.
So sometimes it's about taking time out. It's
about saying, you know, I'm not I'm not
able to give you the kind of
listening and the kind of attention that you
need right now because I'm needing so much.
Could we make some time
just to be quiet together, just to give
me a chance to

(21:31):
reconnect with myself so that I can more
connected to you.
So you said a moment ago that your
responsibility
included being responsible for
your speech?
Yes.
It seems we live in a culture where
there's a lot of reckless
speech.
What does it mean who

(21:51):
consciously
take
responsibility for what we say.
It means staying in
a place of
wake and consciousness
about myself,
staying connected to myself and my values.
And

(22:13):
which is which is
being aware that really my intention is to
be in the service of
staying connected.
And if that's what I want,
then
I have to do certain things.

(22:33):
Like monitor my speech,
monitor my responses,
be aware of my feelings.
Maintain
an environment that nurture and contributes
to those values.
Which for me means not watching television,

(22:55):
turning off the news.
Monitoring the newspapers or the the media that
comes into my house.
So really
being very discriminating in what you allow into
your thinking? Yes. The books that I choose
to read, the movies I choose to see
So choice

(23:15):
is at the heart of
some of that
consideration in how I
live in order to maintain that quality of
speech
or action.
It's so easy.
Nevertheless,
for us to blur out things, we don't
really

(23:36):
intend. Mh. To say. Yes. Of course.
I make lots of mistakes.
The level of skill that I
want to live
is often not there.
Its practice.
It's about being in the
commitment and intention of practice.

(23:57):
And you know, I I do believe that
when the intention is there, when the intention
is good even when we lack our skill
or we make a mistake.
There is a way of
recur reads much more quickly
than when the intention is not good.
You know, I might hurt your... I might

(24:19):
do something that
is hurtful that results in hurting or someone
feeling hurt
But if my intention was not to
my intention was not to harm.
The way in which we can reconnect and
recover it is much is much quicker.
And for you, what is

(24:40):
what is the intention that underlies your interest
in communicating with people in a nonviolent way.
Promoting peace,
promoting
promoting,
a way of being in the world.
That I would like everybody to be able
to be in the world,
living in a way that

(25:00):
really come out of doing into others
as I would have them do unto to
me.
And my doing into others is really
coming out of a place of love and
acceptance and
appreciation
and
recognizing the sacred
in all beings.

(25:23):
So
that's my intention. That's what
that's what motivates
my
desire
of, a way of being in the world.
And I don't often don't come up to
it, but it's still what I'm holding.
And
is there anything in your personal life personal

(25:44):
story that
drives you to want to
make the world more peaceful.
David, I grew up in a family.
With
a grandmother and a father,
who,
modeled for me
a way of being in the world that
I
integrated

(26:05):
in a non stage at and
it's deeply embedded in me
this this notion that
the way to be in the world is
to be in in the world in a
loving kind
generous
spacious,
abundant,

(26:25):
message,
that
there is enough for everyone,
and that,
part of our being on this planet is
to be in this service
of others
and that
others are here to be in the service
of us as well that is... It's about
mutual.

(26:46):
And we have some responsibility
to
create the kinds of communities that we want
to live in.
And it's it's to be done in a
collective,
collaborative,
holy way.
Not in a

(27:06):
hierarchical,
mean spirited competitive way.
It it's it's a message that I got
as a child, and it...
It's been tested.
I've tried other ways.
But they've never felt off intake in the
way this 1 does.
Educator Betty Bi and earlier, Marshall Rosenberg.

(27:29):
Author of non nonviolent
communication, a language of life.
You're listening to humankind. I'm David Freud,

(27:52):
studio recording by Steve Colby at tutorial assistance
from Thomas Royal,
special thanks to Nancy Carlson Page.
Our program is presented by human media in
association with the network incorporated
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(28:13):
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(28:34):
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