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.
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.
The other problem that the article completely ignores is the difference in power between the manager and the engineer. NVC and NVC-like forms of communication work when the participants are relatively equal in power, when one person can say honestly and forthrightly what they feel and be reasonably certain that they won't be retaliated against for being honest.
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.
> 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."
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).
> NVC and NVC-like forms of communication work when the participants are relatively equal in power
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?
>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.
I honestly don't understand your point. Listening to how you feel (you're frustrated) and uncovering out why (you want to be treated like an adult) isn't theatre, it's how adult resolve problems. It's worth considering whether you're projecting onto NVC here... after all, NVC doesn't infantilize you, although this may be an area you're vulnerable to shame.
This reply, for example, is infantilizing. You have not engaged with the points I made at all and instead are pretending that a reply all about feeling or perceptions is in any sense an adequate way to respond.
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.”
Is has been observed many times that there seems to be an inverse relationship between the qualifiers in the name of a country and the conditions in said country.
Democratic People's Republic of China is what I believe he was referencing, though it's officially the People's Republic of China - maybe confusing the PRC with the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo)?
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.