The NVC model was developed by Marshal Rosenberg, and is best described in his book Nonviolent Communication.
Watch a short video presentation about nonviolent communication, featuring NVC founder Marshall Rosenburg
The NVC Model
Rather than the frequent style of ordinary communication which often involves making judgments or evaluations followed by demands, NVC delineates four components of communication:
1) Observations free of evaluations;
2) Feelings straight from the heart;
3) Needs, values and longings; and
4) Requests expressed clearly in positive action language.
We are trained to make careful observations free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us. We learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what we are wanting in a given moment. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.
But I'm not Violent! (from our friends at the NVC Academy: http://nvctraining.com/)
I’m not a violent person, so what can the NVC process offer me? This is a common question when people read the term “Nonviolent Communication.”
The word "nonviolent" in Nonviolent Communication refers to the term as Gandhi used it when he spoke of the absence of violence in the human heart. In Nonviolent Communication or NVC, we recognize that certain language dehumanizes other people, or disconnects or dissociates us from those people. NVC seeks to keep us connected to what is alive within us and other people.
NVC allows us to:
Value everyone’s needs equally.
Know that every action or word is an attempt to meet a need.
Most people refer to violence as physically trying to hurt another. In the NVC process we also consider violence to be any use of power over people, or trying to coerce people into doing things. That would include any use of motivating others by fear of punishment and promise of reward, or any use of guilt, shame, duty or obligation. Violence in this larger sense is defined as any use of force (verbal or physical) to get people to do things, or any system that includes structures that support this “power-over” paradigm.
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