Why are we learning to talk to each other at Makers Academy?

by Evgeny Shadchnev

At Makers Academy we’re fans of nonviolent communication (NVC). Most of the team chose to go through the NVC training and we introduced it to our students for the first time in a guest lecture last week. What is NVC and why are we interested in it?

Nonviolent communication is a framework to help you express your needs in a way that doesn’t lead to escalation of the argument and to listen to what others are trying to communicate. It’s not a silver bullet, of course, and it takes a long time to master but it helps us understand others and be understood.

Our NVC trainer, Daren, once noted that some of his clients have an occasional NVC class but never seem to adopt NVC at their companies, whereas the Makers Academy team took it to heart. We invited Daren to the #nvc channel on our Slack to provide ongoing advice on how we’re using NVC and we’re doing our best to use NVC when we’re talking to each other and our students.

The basic pattern of NVC communication is the OFNR (observation, feeling, need, request) framework, e.g.:

O: I noticed that you didn’t set the alarm when you closed the office last night. (observations are facts, never judgements)
F: I was worried when I learned about it (focus on my feelings)
N: I need to be sure that our office is safe overnight (focus on what I need, not what I want others to do)
R: So may I please request that we discuss how we could make sure the office is always secure overnight? (a request that can be refused, not a command that cannot)

As I’ve said, it’s not a silver bullet. However, in many situations it helps to understand each other better and faster.

So, why did most of Makers Academy team took it to heart while some other companies often forget about it after the training? I believe it’s down to the fact that we’re building a self-managed company where the power hierarchy doesn’t exist. In other words, while we recognise that some people have more experience than others, nobody can tell anyone else what to do.

When we can’t order each other around (we have no managers for a reason), we are forced to communicate well to get stuff done. Suddenly we need to be understood if we want the buy in of our colleagues when we’re asking for help. We need to understand others if we can’t simply brush them off.

NVC training is a great idea for any team, self-managed or not. However, in companies with power hierarchy it’s less essential since conflicts can be resolved by force (e.g. firing people, refusing salary increases or promotions). In self-managed companies without the power hierarchy it becomes essential to communicate well to get anything done.

I wouldn’t like to give an impression that at Makers Academy we’re somehow perfect communicators that never have conflicts. Quite the contrary, we do have them. However, as David Richo reminds us in his book How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological And Spiritual Integration, “To be adult in a relationship is not to be conflict free. It is to resolve conflicts mindfully”. NVC helps you to do exactly this: to resolve conflicts mindfully. Sometimes we fail to do that, and it serves as a reminder of how much we can to grow.

Originally published at blog.makersacademy.com on December 17, 2015.