This One Idea Changed My Understanding of Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

Communication is not simple or complicated, it’s complex.

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This is going to be quite a nerdy text. It’s about the challenges of practicing NVC in a complex and messy reality.

Some years back, I came across the Cynefin Framework. It’s a framework for sense-making. And it strongly changed the way I look at things. To make a long story short, the systems we interact with are either simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic. And these differences are essential. In NVC terms, you could say it’s a key differentiation:

• In simple systems, there is an obvious relationship between cause and effect. Therefore, the solutions to simple problems can be based on best practices. If you learned how to tie your shoelaces once, you can use the same solution again and again and it will most likely always work. It even works when you replace your old shoes with new ones.
• In complicated systems, the relationship between cause and effect still exists, but it’s less self-evident. Therefore you rely on analysis and expert knowledge to solve problems. If you want to learn how to play an instrument, you might not be able to learn it on your own. But if you follow the advice of an experienced teacher (and practice a lot) you will master the instrument step-by-step.
• In complex systems, the relationship between cause and effect is no more evident. In many cases, there are way too many factors that influence the behavior of things (or people). In such cases, nobody, including the best experts, can predict what will happen if you do this or that. You deal with complex problems by making small experiments and taking one step at a time. With every step, you learn something new, which helps you decide what to do next. Still, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get it right.
• In chaotic systems, there’s literally nothing to learn because everything is always new and unique. You deal with chaotic problems by taking action and responding as skillfully as you can to the random results of your action.

In this post, I will reflect on NVC in relation to the first 3 kinds of systems:

So What, You Ask?

Learning the Cynefin Framework allowed me to see the tragedy of trying to treat complex problems as if they were simple or complicated. Some examples:

• I now think of my body’s health as being complex. It’s influenced by a vast amount of factors (my genes, lifestyle, environment,..), some of which are constantly changing, or simply unknown. If physical health were a simple issue, there could be a 5-step guide for perfect health that would apply to anyone and everyone. In the past, I blindly applied simple solutions for my nutrition (i.e. vegan) and workout (i.e. jogging). I believed it’s all about finding “the best” workout or nutrition and then sticking with it. That only took me so far, because my body needs a unique solution, which evolves and changes in accordance with my life situation and my environment.
• I also treat the question of chemistry between people as being complex. It’s influenced by many factors ranging from genetics, psychology, family history to traumas in both persons. Personality tests and complicated dating algorithms can only go so far in predicting the spark between two individuals.

What Does All That Have to Do With NVC?

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People who know little about NVC often believe NVC is a communication model that involves talking in 4 steps and guessing people’s feelings and needs. Using NVC this way, like a recipe, would make sense if communication were simple. In my opinion, communication is complex. And no communication method, regardless of how brilliant it is, will work in every situation. Here’s why:

• Each person I talk to interprets my words in a different way, based on their background and previous experiences. For example, when I simply name how I feel at the moment, people might hear it as a request of them to do something, even when that’s not my intention.
• For some people, talking about feelings supports trust, for others it’s stressful.
• Some people are grateful when you attend to the underlying needs behind what they’re saying. Others are threatened by your ability to “read them” so well.
• The requests we make to people don’t take place in a vacuum, but rather in a multidimensional power dynamic that shapes their ability to say “no”. In some situations, people can’t help but hear our honest requests as demands that they must fulfill. And that happens even if we explicitly tell them, it’s perfectly OK if they say “no”.
• Our growing abilities as NVC-practitioners to articulate our feelings and needs, make requests, say “no” and listen emphatically increase our ability to get what we want. This creates a power dynamic on its own when interacting with people less trained in those skills.

The diversity of backgrounds, the ambiguity of language, the variety of contexts, and our brains’ creative ability to interpret things to fit our image of ourselves and of the world. All these things make our interactions, and therefore our communication, complex.

How I Use NVC in a Complex Reality

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The most important part for me about my NVC practice is the WHY of it: to self-connect and approach others with curiosity and care, believing that the needs on both sides matter and can be met. When it comes to talking to people and listening to them, I avoid any kind of recipe (i.e. communication in 4 steps) unless both sides agree upon it. Instead, I expect that

• no matter how I speak, some people will not like my communication style or my choice of words. In a complex reality, that’s the only way it can be. So I accept that and persist with my intention to support meeting the needs on both sides.
• I will have to adapt my communication style again and again, depending on the context and situation, even with the same person. Every dialogue is something new. Some things work repeatedly until they don’t.
• power dynamics will play a role in every interaction. There’s no way to prevent that. We can educate ourselves about power in order to have more awareness in our interactions. Still, it’s going to be messy.

If It’s So Complex, Does It Make Sense to Learn NVC?

Training in NVC improves my ability to notice my feelings and needs more accurately and more quickly. It also improves my ability to be attuned to the experiences of others. Interacting with people from diverse backgrounds in changing contexts and multidimensional power dynamics is messy. And in such situations, my NVC skills help me notice more quickly that something is off, for the other person, or for myself. If it seems serving, I can choose to use some of the many tools NVC offers: silent empathy, guessing feelings and needs, reformulating, or making connection requests. If that doesn’t support the connection, I drop it and try something else. There’s no recipe for effective communication, but we can use NVC to sharpen our connection skills, be more aware of our feelings, and have more choice when interacting. For me, that’s a lot.

That’s it?

Yes, and there’s more!! If you like reflecting on the complexity of practicing NVC, you might enjoy my other text called How to get in trouble while learning nonviolent communication.