Hi,

I recently found your podcast after listening to Wes Bertrand’s podcast on NVC. (Oh what a web we liberty folks weave. ;) )

Anyway, when I first heard about it from Wes’ podcast I was very enthused as to the possibilities and as a result I watched lots of the videos Wes put up in the show notes and found some other items on the web too. I do not as of yet have any real examples of using it in my personal life, so I was curious about this episode of yours and want to thank you for sharing some personal examples.

I do have some thoughts to share based on some of what was said in this episode that I hope will help as you (and I) learn more about it.

- I was at first annoyed at Mike saying that he wasn’t sure how it could work when he admitted that he has not really investigated it thoroughly enough to draw such a conclusion. Then I realized I was judging! I had my “jackal” ears on! I realized he was really only sharing his current feeling about it. I KNOW my problem with this will be to empathize more with the other person.

- You were at one point discussing how Stephanie tried using NVC with someone when it was not her conflict, it was someone else’s. She was trying to see if she could be helpful by intervening and then you discussed whether or not that could work. Somewhere in the videos posted by Wes, there is an interview where Marshall Rosenberg explains a role play he did at some convention. A son wanted Marshall to help him communicate with his father and although Marshall was unsure of how it would work, what ended up happening is that Marshall played the role of the dad and talked to the son. HOWEVER, the dad was there observing the interaction. This had a good ending (which of course could be why it was used as an example, we may not be hearing of the failures).

So my point in bringing this up is that maybe it could work for third party intervention to some extent but it appears to me that in all of the videos I’ve watched from Marshall, that even when he’s working with warring tribes and such, what he’s doing as a third party is working very hard to get the people who are having the conflict into the same room actually communicating with each other. He mentions in an interview that it took 6 months of hard work for his team to get one group of people together but once he did, real change began to occur because they could see each other as humans and took away the enemy imagery.

- As to the “why are you psychoanalyzing” remarks, I wondered if that would happen to me. If I heard the details of the example right, maybe it happened with Stephanie because she did not share HER feelings and needs first and started asking the other person about his/hers. Also, Mike made an excellent point about what is happening when someone says that. Obviously this person’s needs are not being met when they say this. It’s their jackal talking.

(By the way, I encourage you to use jackal and giraffe because it really helps in quickly understanding how to use NVC. I encourage you not to skip over this and help your audience understand it because it really helps communicate the ideas of NVC well. At first I thought the use of jackal and giraffe was lame and the puppets really lame, but wow, now I realize how effective that was in helping me to understand this particular piece of your discussion.)

Anyway, according to NVC, this person was using jackal language because they didn’t know how else to communicate an unmet need. So someone using NVC simply learns from that and continues on. You can see examples of this in Marshall’s videos too. He shows how being wrong about a need is no problem because the Jackal in the other person has no problem telling you that you are wrong!

But the Giraffe doesn’t care. The giraffe ears do not hear any of this as being directed at them and so they never take it personally. According to Marshall, the Giraffe says “anything worth doing is worth doing wrong.” ;) This meaning that you just keep moving forward as the giraffe and work towards finding out what that other person is needing and feeling.

I hope this is making sense and will be helpful to you. I’ve also cc’d Wes because I think he would be interested as well. (I’ve written to him about NVC too.)

Thanks for reading this and thanks for your openness in discussing the possibilities of NVC.

http://cnvc.org

http://thesuburbanvoluntaryist.blogspot.com/

http://GraftonGulch.com

http://freekeene.com/2011/01/24/videos-keene-cops-assault-kidnap-man-for-wearing-hat/