Nonviolent Communication

What it is about

Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication offers four steps: observation without evaluation, feeling, need, and request. The aim is not to win, but for needs to be seen—reducing defence that blame and moral verdicts create.

Questions it can answer

• How do you say what happened without a verdict hidden in the sentence?
• What is the difference between a feeling, a thought, a need, and a strategy?
• How do you make a request that the other person can accept, refuse, or negotiate?

What you will not find

• A full safety plan under violent threat
• Legal drafting or organisational bargaining tactics
• A guarantee the other person will cooperate