Last Friday I attended a seminar on non violent communication. In many ways this is a complementary learning process to the paper written by Frank Fowlie, available on my site, about respectful communication. See http://www.icann.org/en/ombudsman/respectful-communication-en.htm
The Center for Non Violent Communication sent one of their trainers, Jorge Rubio-Vollert, to New Zealand for a New Zealand Law Society sponsored presentation. The range of people who attended was diverse-some of the obvious attendees were family lawyers, who often deal with highly stressed people. There were a few mediators as well, who would use the techniques in perhaps a different way. in addition there were a number of lawyers who worked for government departments, which I thought showed an interesting commitment to better communication between the state and citizens.
For those not familiar with the idea, the concept was first developed by an American psychologist called Marshall Rosenberg. Quoting from his writing “It focuses on three aspects of communication:self-empathy (defined as a deep and compassionate awareness of one's own inner experience), empathy (defined as listening to another with deep compassion), and honest self-expression (defined as expressing oneself authentically in a way that is likely to inspire compassion in others).”
Some of the ideas seemed obvious, and there appears to be only limited academic study of the concept, although some seems to support the efficacy. A lot of the ideas seemed common sense and part of the tool kit of a dispute resolution professional, such as listening and decrypting what people are really saying. Mediators often talk about finding the real needs of the parties and moving beyond the rhetoric, which is much the same as what NVC teaches.
The stages of observation, feelings, needs and request to respond to communication are a sensible approach. You do not respond to an attack by another attack but try to find out what is really meant, and needed. The need for empathy in listening and answering is emphasised.
I think the seminar was perhaps entry level to present the idea, and some became a little impatient at the lack of more detail-but lawyers have high demands of their teachers! My response was to look out for more readings about the concept so I could build on what i had learned.