They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me".

More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. "See, I'm being non-violent," he or she will say, and it will serve as an universal shield against all who would object to their claims.

My take is that if you're in a situation where reported bugs have increased 30% and sprint velocity is down by 40%, no amount of NVC is going to solve that. What is going to solve it is management that's clued in to the problems at hand. Is it that too much feature work has been done, too quickly, leaving no time for the engineers to attend to technical debt? Is it that the application's architecture is unfit for the problem to which it is being applied, leading to lots of hacks and workarounds? Is it that the engineers are incompetent, and should be replaced?

In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the problem worse.

In my experience, developers always warn management repeatedly and well in advance that engineering is implementing short term hacks. And if management believes them and gives them a free hand, then sprint velocity goes down by 80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor. Which seldom works out in the end as well as development thinks it will.

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system, with all of the downsides of the second system effect.)

The moral of the story is that "...management has been warned repeatedly..." DOES NOT mean that the warnings are a correct diagnosis. Here are alternate diagnoses that may also cause the same symptom:

- Confusing product stories.

- Onboarding new developers without proper integration in the team.

- Poor communication patterns between developers.

- General company morale problems.

- Improved QA. (This one is actually an improvement. Reported bugs are up because they are being caught, and developer throughput is down because they have to fix the newly reported bugs. In dysfunctional organizations, though, developers can wind up upset at QA.)

And so on.

Here's a theorem: For common personal or professional conversation types, I maximize the expected outcome of "difficult conversations" (both to me and to the group) by (in the conversation) assuming the best and focusing on open-mindedness and collaboration.

Proof: Enumerate expected outcomes from using that mindset versus not doing so over all possible values of {am I in the wrong?, is other person in the wrong?, other person's disposition}. (For full rigor multiple through by your priors on each of these but I hope the idea is clear enough).

In the example you gave, if I'm management and I'm in the wrong, being curious when trying to debug the problem will make it way easier for me to be open to my mistakes, since I've introduced no specter of guilt, shame, or blame for the fact that there is a mistake.

Are you familiar with https://www.triballeadership.net/? Based on language patterns, people and organizations can be classified into 5 levels. The linguistic patterns are (1) Life Sucks, (2) My Life Sucks, (3) I'm Great (but you suck), (4) We're Great (but some other organization sucks), and (5) Life Is Great.

There are formal tools behind that classification, and formal ways to measure it, but in general the opinion of people you interact with will be fairly consistent. That notwithstanding, most people judge themselves as operating at a level or two better than they actually do.

Here is where that becomes a problem. Most successful executives operate at level 3, but think that they operate at level 4 or 5. They can adopt any linguistic pattern that they think will make them more successful, but the tools make them more effective at being level 3, with the attendant problems that result for others.

This is not a slight on the communication tools. Emotional people will tend to escalate until the emotion is noticed and acknowledged. Therefore doing that up front really does calm the other person down, and really does facilitate communication. Conversely, approaching challenges with openness, curiosity and openmindedness really does make problems easier to solve.

However if you give a person the tools without changing their underlying attitudes, what looks and sounds wonderful will, over time, create the exact same type of problems in the long run. It just creates them more effectively.

> if management believes them and gives them a free hand, then sprint velocity goes down by 80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor.

5x less velocity and 10x bugs is not the result of any sane refactor. Anywhere close to this would indicate that either the devs massively underestimated the complexity of the job or their own competence, or something else in the process is broken, such as letting the senior estimate and the junior implement the change. The vast majority of refactorings are in my experience non-events, simply because I'm by now used to working with thoroughly tested systems.

Sounds like you are saying that refactoring is usually incompetently done to me.

Not at all intended on my part. Nor would I say it is usually what went wrong.

The primary root cause is an underestimation of the true complexity of the problem. The details of which only start to become apparent after you've begun the rewrite.

An inevitable secondary cause is organizational pressures to add features to the rewrite. This happens after frustration builds because other departments have been unable to get features into the legacy code. I can't fault developers for lack of skill in managing these organizational pressures. That skill is not a core competency for developers, but it generally is for the people who are trying to get their agendas into the development roadmap.

If there is any additional challenge from the lack of skill of the developers, then you had much bigger problems from the start.

Refactoring is usually the modification of existing code while maintaining existing functionality in order to make the code easier to maintain and reason about for future developers.

Furthermore, if you're given points for refactoring (as you should be) your velocity is very unlikely to go down in my opinion. I will say that many teams and managers do not do this, but that's because they're poor managers.

If you have tests in place you will cause fewer bugs by refactoring. If you don't you will still create a few bugs as you refactor. But imo, fixing the bugs created by refactoring is just... part of refactoring. If that means the task requires an even higher number of points, so be it.

As a manager, there's no point in forcing the team to accept a reality they know isn't possible. It's not beneficial for anyone.

Small refactors happen all the time.

Er...that's not a "refactor". I know the term nowadays gets used liberally for any kind of rework, but refactoring involves making the tiniest of steps, often automatic or automatable, that improve the structure of the code without affecting functionality, all under the umbrella of a comprehensive test-suite that catches violations.

Do you mean during the refactor, or after they claim it's finished?

However, if benefits of refactoring are abstract, and not attached to immediate or short-term/medium term features/perf, there is a very high probability that it is not a tech debt. "Code looks better this way" - is an overrated rationale to refactor.

I've found those result are just as likely to come from a team with low morale. Still a management problem, but if people do not feel valued and don't believe their work matters, they tend to not care about quality. In those cases, improving communication to get to the root cause of problems, re-establishing trust, and making people feel better about their team, role, and work does have an improvement on the velocity and quality of the work.

Of course that will erode the team's morale. Of course that will reduce the team's velocity in the long run. But it's on management to understand that and realize when a short-term intense burst of effort is necessary to hit an important deadline and update the plan accordingly to include both the short-term burst of effort and the recovery downtime afterwards for the team to relax and for technical debt to be cleaned up.

If management can't (or won't) recognize the basics of planning and pacing, phrasing one's concerns using NVC isn't going to suddenly enlighten them. The way I see it, NVC is just tone-policing dressed up in psychobabble. It becomes yet another excuse for management to dismiss engineers for "not having great culture fit", when the reality is that the expectations from the leaders create the culture and it's those expectations that need to change.

I like and use NVC, but the naming is terrible. Violence is violence. Communication is not. Not only does the silly name throw aspersions onto other forms of communication, it trivialises actual violence and mars the actual NVC methodology, what I personally have found to be an effective way of resolving disputes.

And yes I like NVC: someone else on the thread mentioned they want to talk about their feelings with their SO, not their PM. It doesn't have to be that kind of wishy washy conversation or feel like bullshit. Here's an example:

"When we push updates without facing technical debt, it slows down our velocity for future updates as we're having to deal with things like flaky tests and infrastructure outside our configuration. I'm worried we're actually losing long term speed with our current focus"

It's a good methodology, but agreed completely on the terrible name.

That is not violent.

Coming into this article and thread without knowing anything about this NVC thing, that just seems like a normal thing for a person to say when describing a problem, having very little nothing to do with the technique I just read about... Does your "NVC done well" just boil down to communicating concerns clearly and honestly? If so, I don't see why it needs a name at all.

1) I completely agree that the title 'Nonviolent' is awful. It doesn't even follow the NVC principle of 'say what you want, not what you don't want'. The original author conceded to this. However, you shouldn't judge NVC by its title.

2) NVC doesn't purport to resolve the issue of the bugs or velocity, it aims to help resolve the conflict between the sales manager. Gosh, if NVC actually changed reality that would be awesome. Instead, it helps you find solutions given reality, which is actually very helpful.

3) I sense a lot of irritation and frustration in your tone because you want to be spoken to like an adult. Fair enough—that is a universal need. If you'd like to get your boss to 'give it to you straight', you could NVC to get what you want, without sounding self-righteous :)

Hope this clarifies.

If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

> More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally hostile communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent" option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default, allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage.

This is a rather large logical fallacy. It is a non-violent option. Not the violent option. And on top of that, dismissals due to semantics are usually insincere.

Edit: Wow. Kind of sad that my lowest effort comment for this submission both got the most responses and the most upvotes.

I'm sure I'll hit my comment limit if I respond to each response individually, so I'll respond to them here:

> But the engineer has a BATNA here - find another job with a better boss. It's such a common BATNA that "people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses" is a catchphrase. The engineer can get extremely far in solving their "unmet universal needs" like fun and safety by finding another job. It's in the company's interest, one would hope, to keep them.

I don't disagree with any of this. We seem to be discussing different things. Of course, if your boss/job is problematic finding a different one solves that problem. What I was referring to is the inability to have an effective conversation about the need. Exactly what is your problem with a manager who spouts mindless psycho-babble? What is your problem with technical debt? What is your problem with no unit testing?

Imagine you're saying these things to someone who has never dealt with this problem (e.g. someone not in SW). Stating these is not helping the person understand you at all. I come from the engineering (non-SW) world. You will find little sympathy for technical debt and unit testing issues, and will get a response of "Perfect is the enemy of good".

Merely explaining that technical debt makes it harder to add features and will lead to longer timelines isn't explaining your needs. It just leads to more questions: Why is that a problem? You're getting paid for it, aren't you? And so on.

And please, the whole "manager spouting psycho-babble" is not going to get you far. Everyone has an imperfect boss, imperfect spouse, imperfect other. We all know it. After a while in industry, it is tiresome to hear someone complain about an imperfect manager. We all know it's true, and we all differ in what managerial problems one should put up with. Lots of employees are OK with such managers. And again, it's because different people have different needs. If you can describe how you differ from those employees, people are more likely to understand you.

And finally, possibly veering off topic, employers will always find the employee who effectively confronted the problems with the manager instead of running away to be more valuable. Now thankfully the SW world has a lot of mobility so I wouldn't always recommend it, but this looks a lot better on your resume than knowing React.

> Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great.

Every discussion I've seen about communications involves this fallacy: False dichotomy. In fact, one other book I've read even gave a name for it: The Fool's Choice (the notion that if you don't sugarcoat relationships will get hurt). NVC isn't suggesting you sugar coat. In fact, it suggests the opposite. Know the problems. State them. Be direct.

> I’m just going to say that we got man on the moon without NVC.

The elements of NVC have likely been around since people started talking, so I'm not sure you're right.

And I'll also point out we got men on the moon without debuggers, source code control, automated testing, etc. We also accomplished a lot without fundamental freedoms (speech, worship, etc). So what?

> I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me.

I don't understand where you get the idea that it presumes you cannot handle criticism.

> but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem

In a significant percentage of heated discussions I've seen, there is fundamental disagreement about what the problem is. I wonder if you're merely blaming NVC for something that is independent of NVC. NVC does try to get all parties to understand what the problems are, and I also wonder if that is making you believe it is trying to divert from your problem merely because it is trying to highlight that your problem is not the only one in the discussion.

Of course, without concrete examples, I cannot say.

> and very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP."

I do hope people have relationships with their managers such that they are free to say stuff like this (I've seen it in person).

However, this is orthogonal to NVC. Your statement to the manager pretty much violates NVC's guidelines. It also violates the guidelines in Difficult Conversations and in Crucial Conversations. Sure it would be awesome to be able to say stuff like that to most people (it's not just about power relationships), but that's not the reality. These books exist to give you a way to get your point across without phrasing it that way.

Belittling is not a feeling. It is a story you are telling yourself. His ignoring feedback is not a fact, but a story you're telling yourself. Claiming the deadline is unreasonable is merely an opinion, and you did not back it up. Saying it's because of salespeople is also a story you are telling yourself, and not a fact. Pretty much every element of what you said can trigger defensiveness. Your statement implies you know everything, and doesn't have the posture of you attempting to validate what you think you know. What kind of conversation do you expect will happen? If you are wrong about any of the above, it will put the manager in a position of having to defend his actions, which is the very definition of defensiveness.

You can say this type of stuff without hurting feelings to only people very close to you (true buddies). Most people are not dealing with true buddies.

I think this is true in certain contexts where you don't have much power over the situation itself (which ranges from resolving conflicts between family members to resolving conflicts between leaders of non-allied countries). But the engineer has a BATNA here - find another job with a better boss. It's such a common BATNA that "people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses" is a catchphrase. The engineer can get extremely far in solving their "unmet universal needs" like fun and safety by finding another job. It's in the company's interest, one would hope, to keep them.

And this still isn't being judgmental: the engineer simply needs management who understands the process that they are managing. The engineer is not only allowed but expected to exercise technical judgment in determining whether that's happening, same as an engineer should exercise technical judgment in determining whether a proposed vendor product fills the need (and would not be doing their job if they refrained from analyzing the vendor product for fear of being judgmental). Perhaps the manager doesn't have the requisite technical background to make proper product decisions. That doesn't mean "the manager is a bad person" - that means that the manager isn't (by themselves) the right person for the role. Maybe they should seek a technical team lead, or promote a manager within the team, or something.

This is not universally true, but you state it as if it is.

>Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

Wrong. Triggering defensiveness is something which happens as a matter of degree, and there is no problem with triggering small amounts of defensiveness if the other party is an emotionally mature person who has perspective on their own defensiveness.

This isn’t the only choice, but it’s presented as though it is. Communication goes both ways, the people on the team can also choose to not get defensive.

Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great.

In bad situations it’s ok for people to feel bad.

There's an important distinction. You can't control whether your teammates tend to get defensive, or how much it takes to make them defensive. However, you can control how you deliver your message to optimize for getting what you need, which requires steering around their defensiveness long enough for them to understand your point. (Try telling someone to stop being defensive... that's never worked for me. However, anecdotally, conflict resolution and mediation focused around mutual understanding of communication style, working style, and project related needs has worked most of the time.)

Communication goes both ways, but effective communicators understand that they have personal agency in the matter and that exercising it is good for getting what they want.

As a manager I've told direct reports something like this about working with people on other teams who were being difficult. It's not strictly their fault that the counterparty got defensive, but they're a lot more effective (and more likely to be promoted) if they can work through it without me intervening, because that means I can trust them to work autonomously on projects with lots of stakeholders.

It is also a political weapon. It may be non-violent in one domain (the tone and language presentation) but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem but instead filibustered with metaproblems about who is / isn’t being kind in someone’s made up subjective & political definition of verbal discourse.

Just because it says “non-violent” in the name doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact it’s rather suggestive. If you have to be defensive and _define_ your communication as non-violent, that’s pretty suspect and belies dangerous motives.

It’s “politeness theater” in a way similar to how the TSA uses security theater. You can _say_ it’s effective for a stated purpose all you want, but that doesn’t make it true.

In my experience, that describes very few business settings. There is a massive power differential between the manager and the engineer (after all, the manager can fire the engineer, but the engineer cannot fire the manager) and very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP."

As I see it, a work environment that's safe enough for NVC to be useful is one where the lines of communication are open and honest enough for NVC to be unnecessary. As a result, whenever I see or hear someone speaking NVC phrases at me at work (especially if they have never done so in the past), I am immediately on guard, because I know they're trying to slip a fast one by me.

There's one quick way to find out how they'd react! Seriously though, I generally find myself respected in the organisations that I work in, and I think it's at least partly because I'm willing to be forthright in calling people out and telling them what I think, regardless of their position. Of course, some may take it badly, but that's not the kind of organisation I want to work in (and in my experience, most people react well to honesty).

In that situation, your manager doesn't really have much power over you. What's the worst they can do, fire you?

But a lot of people don't feel confident of finding another job and are basically afraid of losing the one they have.

That's what makes it a significant power difference. They're afraid because they aren't secure.

Could you suggest a general approach to mitigating conflict when there is inequality in power without getting to the specifics, listening to both sides, and attempting to find a win-win?

If the less-powerful don't try to get what they want, the more powerful wins by default.

> "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP"

Let's work with this. Are you feeling resentful because your need to be listened to? If the answer is yes, how about we take 15 minutes and you can explain the extent of the issues? If not, I haven't understood—could you try again?

I'm not sure what you're trying to show here, because just because you can write a positive reply to that here on Hacker News does not in any way change someone's actual trepidations with expressing that to their actual manager.

Plus the entire subtext of that reply is just "I don't want to acknowledge the possibility that I have made any mistakes, and so I am going to reduce your problems down to cliches."

> “ Let's work with this. Are you feeling resentful because your need to be listened to?”

comes off as quite infantilizing and degrading. If I received this reply, I would feel you are not treating me with respect and you’re trying to undercut me by appealing to an emotion (resentfulness) and shifting focus onto that instead of dealing with the actual problems.

The only part of your reply that contains non-belittling words is the first sentence where you admit, “I honestly don’t understand your point.”

Example: http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2019/08/22/1108-republics/

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corea

Bullshit stays bullshit, even if you sugar-coat it.

> Imagine you're saying these things to someone who has never dealt with this problem (e.g. someone not in SW).

In this case, the respective person should better trust the judgement of the software developers who have gone through this lots of time.

> I wonder if you're merely blaming NVC for something that is independent of NVC.

Applying psychobable instead of attempting to solve the problem will make people angry.

Take a population of 100 people. 10 of them are emotional. 40 of them are emotional amplifiers. 10 are combative. And 40 are combative amplifiers.

In this system, it tends to chaos when communication is too combative because of the population set (regardless of any ideals or moral judgments of what you think).

Nvc is a set of rules that, if a subset of the 100 population follows it, lowers the chance of communication blowing up into chaos. That's about it.

It's the best communication style for nullifying others bad communication when bad communication is the root cause of tension or problems.

I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: because I need [universal need]. It's never because the speaker is selfish, or an asshole, it's always a "universal need".

One notable exception was, by nature, a sweet, kind, respectful person before she encountered nvc. NVC fit her well, and she remained a wonderful person, who still communicated in a straight forward and honest manner.

Would you agree that introspection and character development are important parts of a healthy NVC process? That an individual's application of NVC suffers without it?

So yeah, people who now have a new format to say sentences in, but who make no changes internally are doing NVC wrong :)

It's sort of like a programming language. It won't turn a shitty programmer into a good one, but it will turn a good programmer into a more situationally effective one. The hardest part isn't learning the programming language, it's becoming a better programmer.

The first lesson in the book I learned from, Crucial Conversations (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...), is to recognize when you are becoming emotionally driven (angry, defensive, etc.) and to step back from it. Another key lesson is to focus on identifying and solving the collective problem - the key point is that in the vast majority of cases, especially in the workplace, there is a formulation of the problem such that everyone is trying to solve it, but they are just disagreeing on how to approach it. In my own experience that's been consistently true.

These are both introspective processes of first getting yourself into the right mindset and then employing the communication tools. Learning to first be generous to other people was the hardest and also the most crucial change, whether or not I had communication tools to go with it.

That’s my firm belief. It’s pretty much the same with all methods. If you just use technique without deeper understanding the result will always be shallow. We see the same with Agile. A lot of companies are practicing the methods but don’t really understand or follow the underlining reasoning.

Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish.

Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who is very generous is getting something out of it. Even when dealing with selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.

Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not as obviously vegan)

"Concerned chiefly or excessively with oneself, and having little regard for others"

(the second part being an important piece of the definition you have forgotten)

The core tenet of NVC is that: NVC is based on the assumption that all human beings have capacity for compassion and empathy. If you can't exhibit these skills in your day to day life, it feels manipulative to others because you are asking others to be vulnerable.

You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks.

I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took from it.

> The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person.

-- Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

I find Compassionate Communication useful for resolving:

1. Relationship Conflicts, which are caused by: Strong emotions, Faulty communication, Misperceptions, Recurring negative behavior

2. Identity Conflicts, Which are caused by: Negative comments or actions relative to personal or group identity (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.)

3. Value Conflicts, which are caused by: Different ways of life, Ideology and religion, Different criteria for evaluating ideas or behavior

In a startup context, I think that there are two more common types of conflict that lend themselves to an interests-based negotiation (or Principled Negotiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes ) approach:

1. Interest Conflicts are caused by perceived or actual competitive: Substantive interests, Procedural interests, Psychological interests

2. Structural Conflicts are caused by: Faulty or deficient organizational structures, Unequal power and authority, Time constraints, Geographic, physical, or environmental factors that hinder cooperation

I don't recommend relying on a blog post to address substantive conflict.

> They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed.

I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not your engineering environment was safe and fun.

Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real problem.

If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of 30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone.

Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can use communication to make it easier to confront.

> If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not actually solved the problem.

Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged without addressing the problems they raise.

All things being equal, anybody's opinion or emotion is equally valuable. That is rarely the case in engineering.

Some of his examples indicate the lack of a roadmap is causing friction, not the request itself.

If you can't frame your request in logical terms, don't make the request. In other words, do the opposite of what Bailey proposes.

You do realize this is a negative and threatening statement, right?

Are you speaking for yourself or for other people? If for other people, how do you know?

After practicing NVC a fair amount (it is a /practice/, not a tool), you can literally start feeling your brain re-wire in a good way. You stop feeling so much responsible for other people's emotions, even if they are about something you did or needing to put your needs in contrast to someone elses, you start automatically being able to empathize with someone's feelings, even when they might scare you, and perhaps most importantly your own self-talk and the way you relate to parts of yourself that "you" are in conflict with starts to change.

At this point, there is much less robotic phrases. In fact, watching someone who has many years of experience rewiring their own defenses through NVC practice responding to difficult situations seems near-magical because there are so many less ego defenses to get stuck on someone elses ego defenses so really difficult and hard things can be cut through like better and both people can feel heard and understoor.

For me, it took YEARS of practice, and it amazes my that my limbic system is still the first responder! It comes and goes and you're right, you really need to practice. The canned phrases are the training wheels.

Spot on! I'm going to borrow that analogy and in return I'll give you a solution to the limbic system. From my conflict resolution process document:

"Brainstorming is a “brainhack” that engages the analytical brain, which helps to reduce the stress response. This emotion regulation technique “tricks” the brain and body by sending the message that they are safe because you wouldn’t put energy into analytical thought if you were threatened. By engaging the higher reasoning part of the brain, you inhibit the stress response and mitigate the risk it poses to the conflict resolution process."

Like most forms of awareness training, it takes a direct experience through lots of practice as to how your own bodymind is changing. The direct experience of being able to hear someone stating needs and empathizing directly with your commonality in having those needs regardless of how they are acting is a pretty strong one.

Even now though when we are having a conflict where both my partner and I feel confused and hurt and we don't quite even understand what we are arguing about but we both feel something pretty intensely we will literally sit down with a typed sheet of feelings of needs and try to identify exactly what is happening for us, regardless of "content" of the fight.

It still amazes me, especially as someone socialized to not feel my feelings, how often in those situations I actually have no idea what I'm /feeling/ (other than BAD) much less what I am needing...

This all sounds like the worst parts of working in a lot of modern offices where people don't speak frankly and instead everything is done through this sort of political office speak which is lets be honest here all about politics and not about solving problems.

When I read things like this. I find it very insidious.

That said, I do prefer the AKA of "Compassionate Communication"

And? They have also redefined violence to mean something else. It doesn't mean they are correct in doing so and in no way does this address my complaint.

In the link you posted the very first line:

> Violence is "the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy."

That is the definition and that is what most people think when they hear the term violence. Your link itself says it is a unconventional definition. One that I do not care for. So both the WHO and this acronym as far as I am concerned is redefining violence.

> That said, I do prefer the AKA of "Compassionate Communication"

Again. This is more newspeak. It just being empathetic. I absolutely abhor people inventing their own terms when there is already suitable word.

The reason is that by default the rhetoric and content, (as you've put it) are deeply conflated in the minds of the people who are engaged in conflict. NVC can tease them apart, and often the content that is left is literally nothing (ie. it was all just a matter of feeling respected or whatever), or a trivial disagreement that can be quickly solved.

But even when the conflict turns out to be non trivial, NVC is a boon. If all parties to the conflict are now in a non violent frame, then what has happened is the problem is quite clear, the stakes for everyone involved are quite clear, and all the people are in a collaboration together to figure out a solution that addresses what matters.

So you're right that it doesn't automatically solve any specific, objective problem, but it sets up the environment so success becomes way more likely.

In practice, older team members did not need it as much to begin with, so they quickly got it. Mid/younger benifited more -- less experience in channeling passion and handling problems?

Main issue IME can function as a smothering mechanism that lets things fester. Even if a discussion remains cordial and makes progress, that does not mean the conflict gets resolved. Ex: folks can just stop talking. So useful but incomplete, and the article title overclaims.

When people have really internalized the shift, they don't sound any particular way. It just seems like they really get where you're coming from, and it's a pleasure to work through things with them even when the things suck.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHtDZ98CTDc

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiCtf5sZWHA&t=266s

NVC has its flaws. It won't always work. Nor will anything else we know of. If something comes along that works better (higher "success rate"), I'll jump on that bandwagon.

If you can't be bothered to read the rest of this long comment, here's a TLDR: Most communications books, written independently, have the same elements as NVC. The other books are better at explaining why these elements is important. But the NVC book is better at providing recipes, which is why it became more popular.

A few years ago I did a deep dive on the topic, and read 4 books on communications: Difficult Conversations, NVC, Crucial Conversations and Getting Past No. Most of these were written/invented independently of one another. When I had read all 4, I looked over all my notes, and noticed that they all point to the same things, with only minor differences:

1. State your observation, without judgement, and be specific, not general.

2. Personalize and state its impact on you. The "feelings" part of NVC - all the books explicitly call out that you should explicitly state your feelings. The Difficult Conversations authors pointed out that many people in professional settings have the notion that discussions should be absent of emotions ("objective). Yet if a discussion at work is getting heated, emotions are clearly playing a big role. Don't assume you can solve the problem without bringing those emotions to the table. And indeed, many solutions fail because they failed to address the emotions which resulted in a lack of commitment. As one book put it: Unvalidated emotions are a minefield.

Just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at work about whether to split a monorepo into smaller individual repos. One side's work is bogged down by it being a monorepo, and the other side would have trouble if it were split into monorepos. Both sides discussed the their problems, yet neither side acknowledged the other's pain. Validating the other's emotions is a core principle of all communications books I've read.

(The issue did not get resolved by the end of the day).

And personalize: Don't talk in vague principles, but talk about how you are affected. This is where a lot of the tech world fails. I recall one heated discussion at work where a person was strongly pushing for something, and using all kinds of principles/analogies. He wanted someone else to change his workflow because it was causing problems for him. Yet, he never explained how it was causing him problems! When queried, he kept invoking analogies and principles. The world rarely yields neatly to principles, and every analogy has a flaw. You'll often get competing principles. Invoking them alone will not solve the problem.

The other element of stating the impact on you is discussing the needs. What need of yours is not being met? Is this impacting your efficiency? Are you wondering whether the work is futile, and not giving your purpose? Do you think you are being ignored and want consideration?

I cannot stress this enough: If you have trouble putting a "need" to your problem, it is because you haven't thought this through, and it's a bad idea to go into a conversation about the issue. Even if you don't explicitly state your need, this is a valuable exercise to do internally. Feelings are easy: When you're mad you know you're upset. Most people stop there and go have an argument. NVC forces you to start introspecting: My teammate did X and now I'm mad. But why is his doing X bothering me? Yes, my teammate undid all my changes and replaced it with crappy code. But why exactly is this bothering me? Your needs and his needs may conflict. But unless you can determine both, the conversation is likely going to go south.

All the communications books are part "therapy": Emphasizing introspection along with communication.

3. Request (optional - depends on the situation).

Regarding the "canned robotic phrases": This is akin to any other book that becomes dogma (think TDD, unit tests, referential transparency, etc). And just like the others, the original author does not insist you use these phrases. The NVC author explicitly says that the elements must be present, but the order doesn't matter, and sometimes it can even be communicated in one phrase. It nevertheless provides those templates to make it easy on beginners.

When I read the NVC book, I felt similar to you: These phrases are very artificial. And would annoy others. NVC is the only book that has these templates, and it is likely why it is very successful. The other books discuss the issues involved in conversations much better than NVC does - but they don't provide a template.

Now how artificial are these? Surprisingly not very. All my skepticism went away once I started observing people destressing a situation at work. The majority of these situations involved someone using very similar templates. And many (most?) of those folks had never heard of NVC! It sounds very artificial when reading it, but no one thought it was off. This is the exercise I recommend everyone does: Observe someone handling a stressful situation at work, and note how often they touch on all 3 aspects of NVC (specific observation, referring to the feelings, and the needs that are unmet).

Rosenberg didn't invent NVC. He just identified its existence.

No one's forcing you to use the template. Here's an example "So this is bothering you because it's affecting your efficiency?" This is perfectly valid NVC.

I think some of the problem arises in what is considered "good" communication. In the academic (and tech) world, we often describe good communication as concise and objective. This is great when communicating facts, science, etc. But in the workplace, we are not in the business of communicating facts and doing science. Most of us are in the business of making a product, that someone will buy, from which we will earn our living. And there are many competing motivations (some people want to "make" something, others are more interested in promotions, etc). Generally, we are heavily reliant on others. You can make a great thing but if the marketing folks refuse to market it, it will impact you (and vice versa). So "good communication" at the workplace involves dealing with a wider variety of people who have differing needs from you.

Becoming better at that type of communication is a lot of effort over a long period of time. It's easy to dismiss one type of style (e.g. NVC), but recognize that the "default" alternative is very poor and merely dismissing means accepting a poor level of communication. Had I simply read the NVC book and not dived deep into other books, I wouldn't have improved at all. It is because I decided that I will try to find a way to improve it that I recognized the merits of NVC and recognized its effective usage in the real world. It's also why I didn't stop at "crappy templates" and focused on making it less artificial.

Finally, NVC has a cult following. Ignore the cult. Just focus on the book.

This makes sense from the perspective of seeking single, coherent, generalized system. If you embrace the chaos, complexity, and diversity of human goals, emotional experiences and communication styles, there is no need for some individual better "thing". My suggestion of "better" is to learn from a variety of sources, including NVC, but reject the premise of universality. Embrace the idea that a diversity of circumstance-dependent, participant-dependent communication styles is healthy.

I do not think what people "feel" is necessary a result of a focus on work. I've often encountered upset people at work because they believed a coworker was implying they were stupid. And in any case, things like fairness in compensation/promotions, etc can play a big role.

I agree with root causing, but I often find it's hard to root cause someone else's problem without knowing their feelings. The sad truth about communications is that most people suck at it. Half of becoming a better communicator is learning to deal with poor communicators, and making it easier for them to express what's on their mind (something many/most are reluctant to do).

While I think people are right to have feelings I think they are more likely to achieve the outcome they want if they can understand and express why they feel that way. This is assuming that they are conscientious workers which is the more common case. If they are bonkers then they probably won't be able to pin down a sensible root cause.

If the engineers have feelings they might feel dismissed and devalued if they spend time and effort making features nobody will ever see.

Going back to the facts and going through them dispassionately is the only way to solve a problem properly.

In my experience feelings-type problems are significantly more numerous than technical problems to resolve dispassionately.

But whether or not they are thinking about things objectively has no basis on whether or not they are thinking objectively right now. Neither is whether or not you are an objectivist with your own bias (a feeling) relevant to the fact that someone has their own feelings that need to be understood during the analysis part of problem solving.

Let me give you a real example.

I took a two day workshop on communications at work (not NVC). They did a survey of the class: How many people think facts, and not feelings should be the focus of a discussion? And how many felt the opposite (focus should be on feelings, not facts)?

The outcome? Roughly a 50% split.

So when you say:

> What someone else feels is almost completely irrelevant.

You've already alienated half of the population. Good luck at resolving a conflict with them.

I come from your perspective: Feelings exist, but they divert from the real issues. Feelings are subjective, so what's the point? Facts are indisputable. Let's focus on those.

And you know what? I like that world where facts are what matters. I like working with people who act that way. I think with enough training and discipline, anyone can get to the point where the feelings don't matter, and they focus on facts. That's what people strive for in academia[1].

But I'm crazy to think that half the population will spend the effort to get there. A big chunk of them don't view it as a desirable goal. It's a laudable aspiration for me to try to make them think that way, but unless I want to make it my life's mission, I need to focus on getting results now, and that means discussing their emotions, and realizing that in doing so I'm not going for an inferior approach.

I work in a team. I need them and they need me. If addressing their emotions helps them, then it helps me. Refusing to do so makes me the problem - not them. Insisting on facts is dogma.

Oh, and people who say feelings are irrelevant? Let me completely dismiss them in a meeting and suggest mildly that they're perspective likely is due to a lack of competence. Most of them will not perform well for the rest of the meeting. Quite a few of them will have issues with me in the long run - either my productivity or theirs will be suboptimal.

Hell yeah - feelings matter. And I was the problem. Not them for letting their negative feelings towards me get in the way at the workplace.

Is this an artificial example? How about a more realistic example. Same paragraph as the above, but the person merely interpreted it as me dismissing them and questioning their competence. I had no intention of doing so and those thoughts are not in my head. Yet they perceived it, and did not want to discuss the feelings they had.

The outcome is the same:

Quite a few of them will have issues with me in the long run - either my productivity or theirs will be suboptimal.

How often does this happen at work? I suspect at least once in every team I've been in. Someone in the team believes someone else thinks that way about them based on some offhand remark, and tells me about it, but refuses to have a discussion with the "accused".

The person is jumping to conclusions. The only fact is the person made a particular remark. The conclusion was premature. I point this out to the aggrieved every time. And every time they refuse to accept it. Is the person who is jumping to conclusions problematic? Sure. I could try ensuring such people don't join the team (or stay in it for long). But trust me, that's a difficult solution. A much easier solution is learning how to deal with his emotions effectively.

[1] And as someone who spent a decade in it, I can tell you they mostly fail - academics make plenty of decisions based on emotions.

That is endemic with society today is that people don't seem to think facts important.

Also a two day communication workshop on how to talk to people. You have bigger problems than how to communicate at work.

> You've already alienated half of the population. Good luck at resolving a conflict with them.

And that is their problem. Why is it mine? If you are an adult you should be able to talk about things as a matter of fact. If you cannot you are not an adult. Some people don't grow up past 16 years old. That is their failing and not mine.

> But I'm crazy to think that half the population will spend the effort to get there. A big chunk of them don't view it as a desirable goal. It's a laudable aspiration for me to try to make them think that way, but unless I want to make it my life's mission, I need to focus on getting results now, and that means discussing their emotions, and realizing that in doing so I'm not going for an inferior approach.

Sure. You have a choice as to whether you want to work with those people or not. I don't like working with those people so I minimise the amount of time I spend working with them if possible.

> Oh, and people who say feelings are irrelevant? Let me completely dismiss them in a meeting and suggest mildly that they're perspective likely is due to a lack of competence. Most of them will not perform well for the rest of the meeting. Quite a few of them will have issues with me in the long run.

There is a difference between openly hostile (which is what your example is) and talking about things as a matter of fact.

No one said facts aren't important. They said facts shouldn't be the focus.

And what's with "society today"? When was society any different?

> Also a two day communication workshop on how to talk to people. You have bigger problems than how to communicate at work.

There are worse things. People take a whole semester course on compilers and most don't use any of that knowledge. The majority of technical courses I took in undergrad were never used for anything at work. The communications workshop has been more valuable than those.

And about those bigger problems at work? Try solving them with poor communication.

> And that is their problem. Why is it mine?

Because you have to deal with these people at work. I mean, if you're a solo developer who doesn't work in a team, then your stance is fine. If people don't want to work with you on a project, it becomes your problem. The world isn't going to change to conform to how you thinks adults "should" behave.

Speaking of "should":

> If you are an adult you should be able to talk about things as a matter of fact.

This is classic way to deny yourself of agency and put the onus on others. I once told a manager of mine to stop using the word "should" - it's a way of saying "I don't want to deal with this - it is someone else's fault".

> I don't like working with those people so I minimise the amount of time I spend working with them if possible.

And you are willing to disclose this in an interview?

> There is a difference between openly hostile (which is what your example is) and talking about things as a matter of fact.

Sorry, but I was not being "openly hostile". My dismissing remark can be quite factual, as well as my imputation of incompetence,

You conveniently ignored the rest of my comment where the perception this happens is fairly common. No one is acting hostile, but the outcome is similar.

Splitting hairs.

> And what's with "society today"? When was society any different?

About 20 years speech codes and communication frameworks were mocked openly and treated with scorn (as they should be). Today not so much.

> There are worse things. People take a whole semester course on compilers and most don't use any of that knowledge. The majority of technical courses I took in undergrad were never used for anything at work. The communications workshop has been more valuable than those.

This is a general misunderstanding by people such as yourself why they teach you these things. The first being "this is how this works under the hood" and the second is that many other problems might have similar patterns to them. It teaches you how to think in a particular way and break down problems. But alas this was lost on you.

> And about those bigger problems at work? Try solving them with poor communication.

1) Just speak to people. like adults. 2) Be honest. 3) If someone doesn't seems to know what they mean just say "Does that make sense?" and assume you made an error.

It is very simple.

> Because you have to deal with these people at work. I mean, if you're a solo developer who doesn't work in a team, then your stance is fine. If people don't want to work with you on a project, it becomes your problem. The world isn't going to change to conform to how you thinks adults "should" behave.

It isn't about how I think adults should behave. It how the rest of the world thinks adults should behave. You are there to do a job.

> This is classic way to deny yourself of agency and put the onus on others. I once told a manager of mine to stop using the word "should" - it's a way of saying "I don't want to deal with this - it is someone else's fault".

Not at all. I've accepted there things I can control (myself) and there are things I largely cannot control (other people). You seem to framing this like I go around being verbally abusive to my co-workers.

> And you are willing to disclose this in an interview?

I am a contractor. I am brought in to do specific jobs. I don't spend years working at the same place. If I don't like it somewhere I just don't extend the contract.

I also don't particular respect lifers and company men. But I tend to keep that to myself.

> You conveniently ignored the rest of my comment where the perception this happens is fairly common. No one is acting hostile, but the outcome is similar.

Because the premise was a nonsense.

Here are the links to the reading list (and I added Getting to Yes):

https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...

https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Si...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit...

This NVC is fundamentally predatory on another’s mindset by controlling language under the guise of caregiving. It is an attempt to prime people for being heavily micromanaged in a few years by clogging up language with identifying feelings whilst real decisions are made by the nvc practitioners.

> Controlling someone else’s language and implying they are selfish for not changing is a lack of the social skills this framework purports to instill.

This is explicitly false. Please tell me where in the NVC book this is recommended. It never suggests criticizing someone else's language. In fact, quite the opposite - it puts the burden on you not to be upset at how people phrase things - even if they're shouting at you. Of course, if you are upset at the general communication approach with a coworker, it does give you a way to express it. It doesn't mandate it, though.

The NVC book is quite clear that there should be no judgment from you if the other party doesn't change. To the extent that part of NVC is defined that way. I mean, you can dislike it and disengage with the person (quit, divorce, etc). But blame the other person for not changing after asking them to? That's a clear no-no in the NVC book.

> You do not need to control someone’s language with a framework to enquire about their feelings.

You and the NVC author are in complete agreement.

> This NVC is fundamentally predatory on another’s mindset by controlling language under the guise of caregiving. It is an attempt to prime people for being heavily micromanaged in a few years by clogging up language with identifying feelings whilst real decisions are made by the nvc practitioners.

I must mirror a sentiment expressed in another comment. Has anyone who is critical of NVC over here actually read the book? The impression we who have are getting is that this thread is full of people who have little to no understanding of NVC and yet are quite critical of it.

None of what you wrote here is advocated for in the NVC book. There is an NVC cult out there who take things further, and while they annoy me, I have yet to hear anything like what you say from them either. It's certainly quite possible there are manipulative managers (i.e. assholes) at work who exploit it for their own gains, but a more likely prior is that people are entirely misinterpreting their efforts and in those people's world view such language is triggering.

I cannot alter a person's world view if he is not willing to discuss it. I do wonder which alternate universe these people are from where NVC is about labeling people for their refusal to change. It's like criticizing Gandhi's nonviolence movement for aiming to increase beheadings. It's just so antithetical to the concept that the criticism is so ... bizarre.

I stand by my comment above: It's totally OK with me if you don't like NVC. However, in a thread of over 100 comments, no one has pointed to an alternative that works when dealing with a wide variety of people. Sure - you can always filter people for "culture fit" and get a group where such language is not necessary. As your company grows in size, though, this becomes impossible.

You have the opportunity to create an individual approach that works well in most situations. That is your social advantage in the workplace that on the whole you don't need or want to share because it dilutes the advantage. It is also tuned to your identity, your past, your needs and your goals that are not the same for everyone.

Why are you changing other people's worldview? The enterprise seems predatory, it depends on others changing to a framework that privileges it's proponents. It demonstrates a lack of skill in the speaker. It's politicking under the guise of caregiving, a negative act.

So can we agree that your problem is not with NVC but with a few people?

The scenario I can think of where what you are witnessing makes some sense is if someone (perhaps management?) is saying that people are not effectively communicating when there are problems and they're recommending NVC as an alternative. That makes sense, and is not at all problematic. If, OTOH, they are saying "We're picking NVC as a style of communication", then it's problematic if the employees don't agree with this. As an example, my workplace used to have a 2 day workshop on effective communication (not NVC, but more or less the same[1]). But it was purely voluntary and no one called out on someone if they didn't take the workshop or practice it.

If management is pushing you to communicate this way and you don't want to, change your job. But don't knock NVC for things unrelated to it.

I do get the sense from a number of comments (not necessarily yours) that people think they should be able to express themselves at work however they feel most comfortable. That's an unrealistic expectation at any sizable workplace. How you choose to communicate does impact team productivity and is definitely a factor in promotions, continued employment, etc. I don't hire you to do solo work - I hire you to produce results while collaborating with other people. And communication styles do impact how well you will collaborate with people.

[1] It's more or less the same because most books on effective communication are the same.

No. I was describing what NVC is. The book, this thread, the culture of people like you pushing it in the workplace is what I wrote. The book encourages a language form, the proponents of the book push a language form, you are pushing a 'communication style'.

>I do get the sense from a number of comments (not necessarily yours) that people think they should be able to express themselves at work however they feel most comfortable. That's an unrealistic expectation at any sizable workplace. How you choose to communicate does impact team productivity and is definitely a factor in promotions, continued employment, etc. I don't hire you to do solo work - I hire you to produce results while collaborating with other people. And communication styles do impact how well you will collaborate with people.

Comfort can be good or bad, I don't see it as a property worth examining. Working solo or collaboratively is a fine line, at the end of the day everybody does the work by themselves, you are hired for your individual skills at a particular task. The collaboration aspect is half the job and that half is not worth slavery to a language form for the sake of micromanagement.

Your communication style is not working with me. I don't see the value of your ideas on this topic. The value of the ideas should be self-evident because we are talking about how to communicate. Who's responsibility is that?

Sociology has been dealing with the fundamental attribution error for fifty years. There is little evidence that communicating in any particular style is going to solve problems and instead will likely paper over miss-attributed judgments about an individual's character rather than looking at the situation they are in. We have been working together as groups for thousands of years, it's unlikely a new fad book is going to have a solution to 'communication', one of the most fundamental things we do as humans.

If you're a boss it doesn't matter what I say because you can just set the rules however you like, it's not a workplace where I'd choose to work. I would look forward to working with people that want to talk about mission critical issues more than they want (apparently) to spend talking about feelings and structuring sentences.

I'm sorry, but:

1. You haven't read the book.

2. You are falsely accusing me of pushing it in the workplace. Do you work at my workplace and know me?

3. I am not pushing a 'communication style'. Nowhere in this thread or anywhere else have I suggested that one should follow it. I've expressed my like for it - that's all.

If you have concluded all this about me, then I must say I do not trust at all what you say about the people "pushing" NVC at your work place. And frankly, your comments remind me of people who make all kinds of claims about, say, Muslims/Islam without understanding anything about them.

> you are hired for your individual skills at a particular task.

Rarely. This is true for contract jobs, but not employment. People are usually hired with a project in mind, and then anything else we give them.

> at the end of the day everybody does the work by themselves

Also rare. If you're committing code to a shared codebase, you are not working by yourself.

> I would look forward to working with people that want to talk about mission critical issues more than they want (apparently) to spend talking about feelings and structuring sentences.

As I said - I don't talk about communications issues at work unless it is clearly affecting people (e.g. someone complains). And when that happens, your communication style has become something that affects mission critical issues.

I may practice NVC on occasion[1], but NVC doesn't require or request others to do so, and insisting others do so pretty much violates the NVC approach.

> We have been working together as groups for thousands of years, it's unlikely a new fad book is going to have a solution to 'communication', one of the most fundamental things we do as humans.

Again, as one who has not read the book, you cannot appreciate how your comment sounds to those who have. To give an extreme example: Imagine a popular book today talking about the need to be truthful, and imagine someone on the Internet coming in and saying "People have been dealing with each other for thousands of years. I don't want to read some new fad book." As I said earlier, Rosenberg didn't invent NVC. He merely identified its existence. Most people I've seen who successfully destress a situation are using NVC without having heard of it. I listen to a radio show where the host does a fantastic job of getting people to speak honestly (local issues and conflicts in my cities). He doesn't get people to say "I feel X because of my need for Y", but he is practicing NVC. I should email him and ask if he's even heard of NVC.

I don't practice NVC because I think it's a new thing that's cool and awesome (BTW, the book is older than many people here). I practice it because after reading it, I noticed it everywhere in the world. It's not at all new.

[1] And it really is on occasion. Anyone who knows NVC can see I'm not practicing it in these comments.

I know there are books that describe “the obvious”, we just had two years of Jordan Peterson telling common sense things to 500 million people and selling books on it. I don’t need another guru to tell me how to do the “obvious”.

You didn’t answer my question about who’s responsibility this problem communicating self evident ideas is. If you can answer that then you have a key to why NVC is silly.

You didn’t answer my point about NVC being more about papering over judgements of character or acknowledge that these treatments of communication necessarily fall into problems of attribution.

Associate me with religious critics however much you want. I have made solid points and you have lied. I’m done here.

Right on!

This is a technical tooling problem, not a problem about the feelings of the two teams. By all means, dig technically into why one team's work is being bogged down and why one team prefers the current setup. Maybe you need a different design for integration testing or deployment pipelines. Maybe you need another branching strategy. Maybe you need some ground rules about monorepo-wide changes. All of those can be discussed productively between the teams. Perhaps the underlying conclusion is you need more release engineering resources, and both teams might agree on that. (What did you end up discussing, anyway?)

Just like "there are no technical solutions to social problems," there are no social solutions to technical problems. The solution to "people keep breaking the build on trunk" has nothing to do with your feelings about the people who keep breaking the build - it has to do with your lack of a bot that runs tests and only pushes to trunk if the tests pass. (Nor is the reason that they keep breaking the build on trunk about their emotional needs - it's about the fact that they can't make use of such a bot because none exists.)

I'll give you an example from my side - just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at my own workplace about whether we'd perform a certain upgrade despite an ongoing not-quite-change-freeze because of WFH. A couple of people at the meeting were extremely unhappy about the proposal because they thought it was too risky. Tensions were high on the Jira ticket going into the meeting and various managers were overruling other managers. We got the right people on a call, and the folks who were concerned said, I think this is too risky if we're not going to do a production release, because we'll have too much divergence between master and prod, and the team that owned production said, actually, we're going to do a production release soon and we're happy with this upgrade being part of it. The people who were concerned said, great, that addresses my concern. Problem solved, and the upgrade is happening shortly.

Perhaps we were just mature enough to know, going into the meeting, that of course everyone's emotions were valid, and we had enough trust that teams genuinely want to not cause problems for other teams? I don't think we're an abnormally high-empathy workplace... people here are great, but I think we're pretty normal as workplaces go.

Yep, the person who initiated the conversation was hoping to have precisely this kind of conversation. And no, he didn't get such a discussion. It's easy to say that this is what the conversation should have been. The reality was quite different. So the question is why did they not end up having a fruitful discussion?

In the past my thought process almost exactly mirrored yours. It's only due to a bunch of years of observing these dynamics in multiple teams did I realize that these expectations I had were off. SW folks, as much as they try to deny it, are as emotional as anyone else. Everyone is emotional - they just manifest it in different ways. The fact that a person has described his pain with a technical configuration, and the other party isn't explicitly acknowledging that pain usually will have negative consequences. Frankly, as a third party observer, I think both parties heard and understood the others' pain. But neither party indicated it to the other. And so every exchange in the conversation was a restatement of the pains they had with other's preferences. I catch on to this pretty well because I used to be guilty of the same. And my experience has taught me how frequently disarming it is to merely convince the other party that you truly understand the other's pain. It takes very little effort.

The issue is not resolved. The manager is likely going to step in and pick one solution. This is the worst way to resolve it as he is the one least impacted (at least directly).

> Just like "there are no technical solutions to social problems," there are no social solutions to technical problems.

Something I heard in my first or second year in the industry: "At top tech companies, there are no technical problems. Every problem is a social one. Even a problem that looks technical is really due to a social problem somewhere behind the scenes." Whoever said it was so right. I've worked on plenty of technical problems that arose because people did not get along.

So I must disagree. Solve the social problems, and you often solve the technical ones as well.

> The solution to "people keep breaking the build on trunk" has nothing to do with your feelings about the people who keep breaking the build - it has to do with your lack of a bot that runs tests and only pushes to trunk if the tests pass. (Nor is the reason that they keep breaking the build on trunk about their emotional needs - it's about the fact that they can't make use of such a bot because none exists.)

First: Feelings aren't "about people". My problem is not that people are breaking the build. My problem is that I don't have a clean build to work on. There's a difference.

Second, I've been in teams that allowed anything in the trunk (CI would fail later, but it worked off the trunk, so the damage is done). Yet every time someone proposed to switch the CI to reject things that broke the build, there was push back and it never got implemented. Why is that? How do you solve this?

We had the "technical" solution. That we could not implement it is a social problem. You are not going to succeed unless you deal with the social problem? No matter how bullet proof your technical solution is.

That does not describe my thought process at all. Of course software people are as emotional as anyone else. No part of my argument is about software people being unemotional - and no part of my argument is about software people in particular. It applies to everyone who's trying to get a job done. If your altos and sopranos aren't blending because they're using different vowels, that isn't about how they feeling, that's about the vowels they're using. If your choir director isn't able to notice that, that isn't about an emotional desire for a particular choir director, that's because it's the choir director's job to notice it.

Yes, you can be upset or sad or exasperated at the choir director. You can be jealous that he has the job and you don't. You can even be indifferent. That's all worth addressing if you want a happy choir, sure, but none of that changes that the choir director's job is to notice when the altos and sopranos aren't pronouncing their vowels the same. The purpose of a choir (even a community choir that never performs) isn't to make a happy choir, it's to make good music. People are in the choir because they think making good music will make them happy - and everyone knows that, that's not an interesting observation.

> I've worked on plenty of technical problems that arose because people did not get along.

I have, too. I've also worked on plenty of technical problems that would have been equally present had everyone got along. I think whoever told you that there are "no technical problems" had a pretty limited view of the world. Sure, many problems are from behind-the-scenes social problems. I'd maybe even say that most problems that actually get solved are those. But it hardly means that if you had a company full of people who were perfect empaths operating in perfect good faith, you'd have no technical problems left.

(And, again, same for other fields - I've been in plenty of choirs with interpersonal problems, and the altos not liking the sopranos and the soprano who's unwilling to admit she's really an alto certainly aren't make things easier, but solving those won't magically make you blend!)

> You are not going to succeed unless you deal with the social problem? No matter how bullet proof your technical solution is.

Firmly agree. But you're also not going to succeed without a technical solution, either. Yes, if you've built out the pre-push CI, figuring out why people don't want to switch to it is a social problem, and you must solve that. But you also have to build it, and take any technical concerns they raise into account.

But he's stuck at the stage where multiple people are arguing in a very non-constructive manner, and so he can't see all the issues on the table. How can he get the different parties to talk without merely repeating their stance?

There are clearly emotions involved. And yes, I do agree with you that it is not necessary for people to discuss them. However, if they are discussed well, then it makes the rest of the discussion easier. The "discussing well" is what many communications books are trying to address. Trying to get to the technical aspects that are causing these feelings is a good idea, but a lot harder if you don't know the feelings.

One person involved is quite senior, incredibly competent, and very rarely gets into arguments. He's definitely getting into one. So there are clearly strong emotions at play. If he's upset, he has a good reason. And at the moment he's refusing to engage and is building walls. Now this might be because the other party is perceived as being dismissive, so he doesn't want to waste time in the discussion.

When one person is appearing dismissive, and the other person is clamming up, how do you get them to talk so that the manager has all the factors to consider on the table? Note that the notion that one is dismissive and the other is upset are merely how I have observed the dialogue - and I may be off. Any attempt at starting a discussion where it is accepted that one side is being dismissive and the other stubborn is likely to blow up.

This reminds me: it's hard to overstate how much of communication is nonverbal. Your tone, attitude, body language, facial expression, etc. can make all the difference in the world. This is probably especially relevant in conflict situations.

Imagine you have an attitude of thinly-veiled annoyance and you say a sentence (from the article) like, "When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt DISAPPOINTED because I have a need for inclusion. PLEASE, could you get me a coffee next time?"

Now compare that to having a relaxed, positive attitude and saying the exact same sentence but not loaded down with negative emotion. Imagine saying it in a way that makes them feel like it isn't a big deal to you, you're not going to remember The Coffee Cup Incident forever, you still like them, and that you probably brought this up because you care about getting along.

The words you say obviously matter some, but the way you deliver them might is often way more important. For example, some people could probably get away with saying, "Well... fuck you for not getting me a cup of coffee. I guess I'm not important. Nah, I'm kidding. I would have liked one, though. It's going to take me a while to work through this, but eventually I'll be able to forgive you."

Once I realized how important the nonverbal aspect of communication is and started practicing to get better at it, it made a lot of these things a ton easier.

---

Also, as long as I'm going on tangents, after a conflict has happened is sort of your last opportunity to get it right. Good conflict resolution methods can definitely help, but everything is going to be much easier if beforehand you spent the effort developing healthy relationships and building trust. Resolving conflict will be an uphill battle if you haven't. And if you have, then it will be much easier. So basically preparation and maintenance serves as an important multiplier.

I've done this several times now and it hasn't failed me yet. The hard part is discovering "the most important aspect of each side's view" because sometimes they themselves don't know it without some probing.

Maybe they really do need the reporting dashboard, but can accept a workaround and a concrete timetable for when the new feature will be implemented.

Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless

First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology (that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct, but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid.

Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them, which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way.

Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by "want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it.

I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art, instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth-seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and learn when to apply either mode.

It makes sense after you read a book. The author spends all of this time judging conversations. A sentence is put out, and then the author says whether or not it's NVC. After reading the whole book, you come to think that's what NVC is: judging whether other people's sentences are correct or not.

So when someone says "I feel unwanted" the listener's natural instinct is to act like the author and say "Unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a projection of judgement". This is not NVC. This is not helpful. A simple "You're feeling unwanted." is 100 times better.

I have this theory that NVC, especially for listening, is done way better in "secret". It should be an internal process that the other person isn't really aware of. You don't have to force someone into your definition of observation, feeling, need and request to understand them. Maintain curiosity and respect, and you can get to those things.

Especially with all the negative connotation that NVC carries, if someone leaves a conversation with you thinking "That person did NVC", you probably fucked up. If they leave thinking "that person knows how I feel and what I want", you did it right.

"The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way." -- Bernard Mayer

How to reframe a statement:

Acknowledge the emotion

Restate the problem or issue removing the inflammatory language

Request or wait for clarification or validation from the speaker

Repeat as necessary

I think your steps are a decent approximation, but I don't think they are fully general. For example, sometimes clarifying the details and reality of a conflict causes the conflict to be more directly inflammatory. And if you're following a procedure that has "be less inflammatory" as a metric, then you'll fuck that up. (For the record, I don't think it's a bad heuristic to follow. Most of the time you do actually want "less inflammatory").

A few months ago I facilitated a conversation in which some old friends/coworkers were trying to have a conflict, and they were being SO careful, and SO polite, and SO open to each others' perspectives. Yet neither of them was willing to be fully honest about the pain and blame they were feeling. Things didn't really move forward until I started making clarifications that sounded like impassioned, inflammatory accusations, which really got to the heart of what was at stake emotionally.

I think the real guiding principle is truth tracking, at its core--ie. as a facilitator noticing when something is being confused or hidden, and bringing it more out. In practice, bringing more truth to light normally causes relief and feelings of safety, but sometimes what the reality of the situation calls for is more like "honorable combat," which is made honorable because it's direct, straightforward, and open hearted.

So maybe I'd change that step to "Restate the problem in a more truthful way."

I included enough facts to elicit a trigger response for anyone that's worked in a tech company. Just reading them was enough to make people angry, and invent a back story that 'management never listens' and 'this company is going to fail' (paraphrasing). This wasn't in the piece and likely reflects a projection of their reality.

This angry tone is pervasive in the comments and quickly turned people against each other. Anger that came from somewhere, perhaps a place that isn't apparent to the angry. A lasting sensation of not feeling listened to, or truly seen and valued.

Even if you only communicate your emotions to yourself, and get curious about where they come from, it's likely to help simply by acknowledging that not all emotions arise from the present situation. I believe this is true in life as it is in the comments.

Anyway, I wish you all a productive week!

Aside from that, this quote seems problematic:

"Creating a place where people can be vulnerable without fear of abuse is critical for any form of conflict resolution. Vulnerability is the source of connection."

Connections happen through development of trust, and trust makes you vulnerable, but vulnerability wasn't the source of the connection, it was incidental. If anything, the workplace encourages us to develop trust as well as verification, as a part of quality assurance.

By verifying the quality of work, we can trust in it, and thus others. This doesn't result in connections, but it can reduce conflicts, by focusing one's attention on a process rather than a person. So it's not "stupid Frank's fault that the build broke", it's "our SDLC is not developed enough yet to ensure that the build doesn't break". This isn't exactly NVC, but it is another tool one can use to redirect a conflict towards a resolution.

Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.

If there's something that needs to be said, starting your answer with, "Actually..." usually is the easy-to-acknowledge way to dive deeper.

> When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have a need for inclusion. Please, could you get me a coffee next time?

No. Fuck you. Get your own fucking coffee. How to phrase this in the workplace: "No."

> Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

From your list, they need respect, empathy, space, and understanding. They need for you, the manager, to fuck off and give them space to not work on features.

> The sales director explains that the prospect said, ‘If you had a reporting dashboard, I’d close the deal right now.’ The director is concerned that they’ll miss out on the deal without this feature, and feels altogether rather helpless.

The sales director needs to learn to fucking code. They need to understand that their pressure is going to cause engineers to quit.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

Do you know how to fucking code? I suspect not. You sound horribly incompetent, and worse, you sound like you encourage others in their incompetence. Engineering isn't about having fun; pay attention to your metrics, disregard features, focus on bugs. Sales does not need more independence; they already are selling far beyond engineering's capacity, and they need to knock it the fuck off.

The worst part of all of this is that you are probably well-compensated for this work, despite the fact that it promulgates systems which abuse and ignore the needs of laborers and consumers alike. When you are a word-weaseling suit-wearing grey-faced rent-seeking labor-harming parasite, I feel disappointed because I expect better moral and ethical behavior from humans. Would you be able to fucking knock this shit off already?

This guy needs reassurance that his boat isn’t going to be rocked anymore as it stabilises. It’s a great key to the health of the company that all the business analytics in the world and discussions about feelings can’t see.

You are behaving in a predatory manner expecting him to submit rather than solving problems. It’s petty.

When you say that my concerns are valid but that I am expressing them in problematic ways, you are tone policing. This is a typical technique used by management: First, break up the original complaint into small pieces, then estrange the emotional content from each piece, minimizing and shifting as necessary. It is a useful way of dodging actual responsibility.

The attitude you are displaying, where you would have given a substantiative reply, but only for the way that the complaint was phrased, is a common empty rhetorical technique that comes with tone policing. Odds are strong that you don't actually have any substance to reply with, but you need to ensure that my tone isn't allowed to flourish or even gain sympathy or support.

Let's double-check my concerns, without profanity:

* People are not entitled to coffee or other errands being run by other employees. There are appropriate ways to join a coffee run, and this ain't it. Right? Now, does Dave give alternative wordings? Nope, he doubles down, just saying that it will be awkward at first but that you'll learn. Yep, you'd better learn to ask politely about coffee runs and other communal activities.

* Feature factories are a management anti-pattern, right? The engineering director in Dave's story is negligent to not seriously consider the risks to the stability and quality of their services and products.

* Sales must never drive engineering decisions unilaterally, right? It sounds like this engineering director lacks the ethical spine necessary to support their engineers.

* None of the people here, neither Dave, the sales director, nor the engineering director, are coders, right? So y'all don't understand the engineering concerns, which is unfortunate, because without addressing engineering concerns, your products and services will not be marketable.

Edit: After reading the rest of the thread, you've indicated that you do in fact have coding experience. Okay; in that case, I apologize and retract my guess. But I am then forced to conclude that you have a tremendous lack of empathy for fellow engineers and have decided to side with management, not just in terms of their emotional duplicity but also their manner of speaking-without-saying. I am, as before and as ever, disappointed.

Dave here. The point of the article was in fact not at all that NVC is awkward and you'll have to learn, but to say there are valuable principles that you can apply without the format, that can help you address conflict.

You're describing sanctions without even being clear about the offense. What is the behaviour? Saying "no" to the question if they can bring a co-worker a coffee? That's the only behaviour they even hint at, the rest is how they think about things.

> but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.

And now you're speaking for them.

I read most of your other posts in this thread with great interest, they are mostly very insightful, and I want to thank you for them. But here I think you're not being very fair, that is, you're simply bailing, and then blame the other person for that.

Bender: "Problem solved. You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."

If you are married, and your trigger topic is house work, it doesn't matter if your spouse says "you need to more house work" or "when I get home after a long day of work, I feel let down by having to do a large amount of house work, could please do more in the future?".

If anything, the latter might be seen as more accusatory, even though feeling let down is exactly the emotion that your spouse communicated, and it was "non-violently" communicated using the "I [feel]" pattern.

The observation wasn't there. I initially wrote "I think we can both agree that it is not needed in this context.", but on reflection that's a really poor assumption. Because (and trust me, this is common), the other spouse may actually have tidied the house (or done laundry or whatever), and is now dealing with the complainant complaining as if he/she hasn't done any work. It would help a lot more if the complainant specified the problem.

Did you mean to say "I feel down" or "I feel let down"? The latter strictly violates NVC (it's not a feeling but a judgmental narrative). It will trigger defensiveness.

The spouse didn't state the need. Having to do a large amount of house work is not a need.

Your example is one of the most common types of problems between two people. One side is OK with a sloppy house, and the other isn't. The way you phrased it, the other spouse is likely to respond with "So don't do the house work. What's the problem? I'm fine with it, why aren't you?"

One spouse perhaps needs more order than the other. Unless that is made clear, how will progress be made? Is this obvious? No. Because it may not be about tidyness but about a filthy bathroom where the need may be sanitation. I'm not being splitting hairs. I know people who insist on very clean bathrooms and kitchens, but are not at all fussy about stuff all over the floor in the house.

Finally, the request was a poor one. Both the observation and the request need to be specific, not general.

Imagine that the other spouse had put effort in cleaning up, and is being requested "Could you please do more in the future?" More what? What will it take for you to be happy? And did I just waste my time doing something that you perhaps don't care about? Should I waste my time telling you what I already did?

Defenses are up.

If the other spouse managed not to be triggered and knows NVC, his/her response may be "Are you dejected/annoyed because you need the house to be more orderly?"

A better NVC statement from the original complainant would be:

"I came home and there were several of your dirty plates on the countertop, and the sink was empty. I have a need for tidyness. Would you be willing to place your dirty dishes in the sink if the sink is not full?"

To your wider point, though, of course - if there is a history of conflict on a particular topic, anything can trigger them. Looking at several comments here about technical debt and managers, I think I see it in action. :-)

Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.

I'd argue further that the approach of pretending everyone's interests are legitimate also normalizes objectively terrible people.

How might one cultivate wisdom?

It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish things.

It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently.

And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed.

Practice, practice, practice.

Thus, frameworks and guides and such have a pedogogical value.