improve your interaction with others ...
I want to share with you a tool that has been around for some time and yet it is overlooked and underestimated.
But first, let me tell you a story.
I was delivering training on leadership. The group was a mixture of young and recently promoted managers and senior managers with years of experience.
During one of our discussions, one of the participants was sharing an argument he had with his wife just a week before the training.
We encouraged him to tell us the whole story which he willingly did.
In short, his wife was nagging about him spending the whole weekend with his buddies fishing and hunting.
I asked him "What could you have done for your wife so that she would have let you spend the weekend the way you wanted to and have been happy for you?"
He looked at me kind of puzzled. I call it "light's on nobody's home" Look... "we don't do that" ... "What do you mean by that?" he replied.
I explained to him that we all have a hierarchy of criteria by which situations/ behaviors are evaluated and judged. And when the situation or behavior doesn't match our criteria (= it elicits negative emotions in us) we search for ways to tranquilize the unpleasant negative emotions. And one way to react is the nagging behavior of his wife.
"What could he have done differently?" ... "Is there a better way to handle it?" others asked?
At this point, I introduced Non Violent Communication (NVC for short) to them. Even though many of them had heard of NVC they did not how to apply it to this situation.
Which didn't come to me as a surprise. I have heard this many times over. I call it "a training poor" syndrome. More on the syndrome in a future post.
The NVC model may find its application in other scenarios as well such as handling a conflict between a manager and his team, as a tool to avoid misunderstanding between sales rep and customer, reaching a win x win result in negotiation, and so on.
What I like about NVC is its simplicity. It is easy to use, it has built-in several protections that prevent the situation from escalating. It prevents judgment, criticism, and denial of responsibility among others thus preventing misunderstanding and conflicts.
In the corporate training, we teach participants how to express appreciation for the NVC as a form of positive feedback in a way that encourages and inspires.
The principles and techniques of NVC can literally change the quality of your life with co-workers, kids, friends, neighbors, and everyone else you interact with.
