What is Nonviolent Communication?
in less than 300 words
1. What is Nonviolent Communication (NVC)?
Developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, NVC is a communication approach that helps people express themselves honestly while fostering empathy and connection.
Rosenberg drew on the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, particularly the ground breaking work of empathy, and as its name suggests, it honours the lineages of nonviolence and the nonviolent strategy campaigns of Gandhi and Dr Martin Luther King to end the oppression their communities were enduring.
It’s often summarized as the "language of life"—a way to communicate without blame, judgment, or aggression.
2. The 4-Step NVC Model
At its core, NVC follows a four-step framework, with a check for connection.:
Observation – State the facts, free of interpretation.
→ “When I see that you made a decision on our project without asking me…”Feelings – Express your emotions (not thoughts or judgments).
→ “…I feel concerned…”Needs – Identify the deeper human need behind the feeling.
→ “…because I need a sense of togetherness in this.”Request – Make a clear, doable request (not a demand).
→ “Would you let me know why you didn’t ask for my input?”→ “Would you acknowledge that this has impacted me ?”
Connection check - Can you do all the above in the spirit of goodwill and towards connection and understanding?
This model helps prevent defensiveness and encourages mutual understanding. This model is a map of your experience to aid your own understanding. This is not necessarily what you will say. You might say bits of this. It’s definitely not an ‘NVC formula’. I tend to lean more into the structure when I am more triggered. It prevents me from blaming the other and perpetuating the cycle of difficult communication.
NVC is an iterative process, meaning it won’t provide you with a ‘cure-all’ statement that people will immediately agree with. It does powerfully support us to be more authentic in a world that wants us to swallow our needs. You will need to use it .. and use it again … and refine your process and use it again.
Iterative.
Life long practice.
On needs: There’s something about the ‘abstract’ nature of needs that is important. Although I think it’s more an embodied, spiritual experience than abstract, (which tends to take us into the label rather than the experience of needs).
And this is not the first thing people learn about needs, it takes time to tune into needs as a resource.
It’s not the naming of needs that’s important (although that’s the first step), it’s the feeling of the named needs, as a longing that is so alive in you it brings you alive to feel it, that is transformative.
Eg, I might be feeling lonely and disheartened about something and I can tune into my utter longing to connection and collaboration and alongsidedness and support, and if it really feel these longings, I can bring myself alive with my longing. And I am able to bring myself alive with the longing because I have experiences of this need met. So I am resourcing myself with my memories and lived experiences.
I like to think of this as ‘meeting my needs’ – it’s an inner experience.
And when we don’t tend to this inner experience, we end up finding strategies that we demand of others for eg ‘safety’ that have tragic consequences.
This innerwork is essential for real and lasting peace. Let’s be fierce in advocating for it!
So, I tend to talk about needs as Visionary, big picture, sensory and as such right brain-aligned because we are interdependent beings, when I meet my true needs , it positively impacts others
On Requests: When you focus on Requests, as the 4th component of NVC, you also consider the 3 other components, as well as the intention of connection.
We always need to distinguish between Needs and Requests and to link our Requests to our Needs (even if we do that part in our head), but an expression of a Need is not a Request.
For example 'I need connection' is not a Request, It's an expression of a Need.
Similarly, 'I need a hug' is not a request .. it's an expression of a strategy that you hope will meet a need AND it leaves a lot for the other person to intuit and do.
Requests WILL be strategic and the person we are speaking to might say No to our request, in which case, we might have another request, which might be to ourselves.