clean talk communication

Cleantech Communication is uniquely qualified to articulate brand stories that balance complex science and engineering advances with aspirational sustainability goals. Its more about (1) modeling that sort of expression we might be interested in (i.e., one supportive of mutual compassion), (2) signaling that we we are interested in what is going on for the other in a non-blaming way, and (3) making ourselves vulnerable (by offering a guess that could be wrong) rather than asking them to vulnerably reveal themselves without offering any vulnerability of our own. Well, given how reactive I was to a seemingly inescapable charge of violence, clearly some part of my psyche holds violence as "bad." I think there are two main strategies for shifting our habit around (moralistic) judgment: The first practice requires setting aside time to do this work, over and over again. We are simply talking about the case where all we really know is that they said no to our request. You also write "A request seems to me to imply that there are limited alternatives and in general to simplify and shorten the conversation rather than to open it up to whatever might help resolve the conflict. I find this point interesting. In the example you offered, the inaccuracy could also have been exposed by sharing an observation such as "You didn't call me" without layering on judgment (pejorative speculation about others reasons) by saying "You couldn't be bothered to call me.". I suspect that shifting our habits in regard to judgments is likely to be most effective if both practices are used regularly. There is probably something to be learned about skillful use of requests so as to not fall into this trap. Considering the three beliefs you named, the one that stimulates a little concern in me is I think what I did was wrong. It all depends on what associations you have with an action being wrong. If you associate being wrong with I deserve to be punished and to suffer, then I would be concerned that this belief may amount to a type of violence towards self that may ultimately contribute to there being more violence in the world. I read through a bunch of relationship advice books recently looking for some good bits that might be helpful to pass along to readers. I'm guessing that, implicitly, you have some criteria about what type of things that we do in our minds rise to a level of importance that not sharing them would be a concern for you. In 1973, apparently Marshall Rosenberg specifically cautioned against talking about needing something, out of a concern that this would convey an unhelpful sense of Its an emergencyI have to have this thing I say Im needing. Over the years, Marshall wrestled with how to address certain problems that he wanted NVC to be able to address, and this eventually led to Marshall including something he chose to call needs as a central feature of the model. How would you know to whom you were talking, or when the conversation started and ended, or when the other person had finished talking and it was your turn to speak? Again, NVC is totally in favor of people exercising discernment (what you call judgment), so this concern seems rooted in a premise that doesnt match my understanding of NVC. Instead of saying, ""Would you be willing to connect with me? I would be more inclined to say something like, Would you be willing to talk about this now, for about 5 minutes?. Some such words have alternate forms, e.g., disappointment or disgust or shock; perhaps using these formswithout -edwould be more congruent with self-responsibility? "You'd probably feel better if you got off your fat, lazy ass and . Yelling, sarcasm, insults, and name-calling undermine trust. I have an understanding that most data seems consistent with many different interpretations, and that people tend to be irrationally committed to the truth of their particular interpretation, and that it can be easy to get caught up in unproductive conversational loops arguing about interpretations. Over time, our energy may more naturally go the a way of relating that is not so driven by judgments. The other person is then free to express their reasons in whatever way is natural for them. As you discuss whats bothering you, describe your emotions as specifically as possible. It is the norm for some people to get their way (superficially) and for others to submit, or for overt or covert rebellion to happen. Avoid judgment words and loaded terms. Actively transforming our judgments. You then quote Chapman Flack saying of watching Rosenberg "The effect is a curious picture of a man adroitly doing very fine, attentive thinking while insisting that it's not the thing to do.". Note to self: Is there something Id like to tell students to give them more guidance about how to navigate potential reactions to empathy guesses by people not used to NVC? What I say then would be an honest expression of what Im really feeling at that point. It contributes in an enlivening way to my own explorations of communication. ", Angry is similarly a word that tends to hold an implication that someone did something to us, and also points to a distinctive experience that isnt easy to accurately name in another way. (Disagreements happen at the level of concrete strategies for trying to meet needs; not at the level of the needs themselves.) NVC cautions that it's essential to empowerment and personal freedom to recognize that emotions don't only reflect what happens outside us, but also reflect the stories we have made up about what we've observed, associations we have with unhealed pain from the past, and our assessments of how what is happening is likely to meet or not meet our needs. For NVC to offer rigid rules would not be congruent with the type of attitudes NVC hopes to foster in its practitioners. I am grateful for the food for thought supplied by your naming these concerns. I see it offering connection to some aspects of deeper meaning. Most often, I dont find that requests lead to these sort of problems. (See also item V-C(1) below.). You offer "There's something I'd like to talk to you about. 26. This is a matter of sensing what is important to us in a judgment, and finding a new, more satisfying way of thinking about the issue which fully honors what is important to us, and which also honors the humanity of everyone involved. The whole system is about supporting people in making more life-serving choices that fit the circumstances. My sense is that anger seems to involve a belief that someone has made a choice that has had a significant adverse impact on us, and that they could have made a different choice. Why dont you take our finances more seriously? As far as moralistic judgments go I dont entirely agree with the premise that we cant stop making [moralistic] judgments." Angry fighting leads to distance and weakens intimacy. You say, "If we're not willing to say we believe that violence is bad in any way, why are we devoting time and effort to nonviolent communication?" Some people win, some people lose; and often, if you look closely, everyone loses. NASA said Wednesday it awarded $425 million to Boeing Co. for the agency's "Sustainable Flight Demonstrator" project as the Biden administration works to cut aviation sector emissions. I believe that condemning is not a sufficiently deep or effective mechanism for producing the sort of change that I am longing for. Note to self: Maybe there would be value in articulating when speaking about discernment would have value. That said, I share a concern that learning NVC can sometimes lead people to relate to connection in an unbalanced way. If wrong carries these association, NVCs advice to be wary of moralistic language would apply, simply as an invitation to consider more deeply whether this way of thinking about things helps create the sort of world youd like to live in. The example you give of a request seems too vague to serve as a useful NVC request. Our expertise stems from decades of experience providing strategic advisory services and marketing communication execution to climate tech companies. You say "Clean Talk allows for the expression of anger in the same manner as other emotions and contrast this with NVCs encouragement to transform anger and then express what was at the heart of our anger. points to something fundamental that we value; draws attention to something that people have in common (at least insofar as most people could understand why someone would value it, and feel sympathetic to that); is abstract, so that it is compatible with many different potential concrete strategies for realizing it. If so, I too want those concerns to be given weight. You say, "It's my belief that anger and other emotions are signals to let us know what's happening around us." Im feeling sad and worried. This is true of communication between our body systems as well. And, in the ways many individuals practice NVC, it doesnt always successfully do that. Post in topic forums and browse thousands of posts. as a way of alluding to whats there without unduly triggering the listener.). Its seldom something that can be done in real time in the middle of a conversation. (These are my own definitions, but they likely roughly correspond to what other NVC trainers would think of when they hear these terms. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he is against a "clean" debt ceiling increase. This occurs when you mix some of the 4 elements together or mislabel them in order to disguise your real intent. In writing the person off as incorrigible, you also essentially absolve yourself of any responsibility for your issues as a couple: We wouldnt have this problem if you werent so selfish.. ACT, as the name implies, is an active therapy, directed toward living fully while accepting what is not within our control and committing to actions that are within our control to make life meaningful and fulfilling. I suspect this may be a consequence of unspoken moralistic judgments being present, underneath the words. ", (I notice that last statement seemed to be sort of a "dig", rather than a straightforward communication, so I want to pause to check on what's going on in me. The communicative 'affordances and constraints' of BIM structured meeting conversations away from less structured, open-ending problem-solving and towards agenda-driven problem-solving around. The 10 Commandments of Clean Communication 1. Be the first to write a review. By choosing "Accept", you agree to the storage of all types of cookies used on the site. Given this understanding, Ive treated the advice to avoid interpretations as context dependent, something one does when one wants to focus attention on needs in order to transform a conflict. I don't have a sense that this is a problem that commonly arises in the ways that people try to put NVC into practice, but I would be interested to learn if it occurs more commonly than I'm currently aware of. With regard to perceptions that he minimizes the role of thought, again, I think that Dr. Rosenberg sometimes expressed things strongly to try to overcome the inertia of habits that undervalue emotion and values. Clean Talk TM is a communications approach specifically designed for expressing challenging or difficult messages by using language to evoke collaboration rather than compliance, proaction rather than reaction, and agility rather than rigidity. I think that is both unnecessary and unwise." Yet, I still feel cautious and curious about what you're advocating for. Want to start taking action on the content you read on AoM? [This is originally began as an email message to the author of the comparison, Alyce Barry, and so is written as if to her.]. Theyll also likely match your defensive stance, and the discussion will get off to a rocky start. What we say makes total sense to us, because we have the entire context of it in our heads. As alluded to above, I think you are severely misinterpreting NVC's stance on "praise and compliments." Id love to have trust and practical ease in what happens between us. I don't know how to make sense of a standard that would imply we have to (impossibly) say everything we are doing, or be judged as being violent. Note to self: Explore uses of the energy of anger that would be compatible with nonviolent aims. ", You offer the image of a "dam across a river" and say "as long as the river keeps flowing, the water must find a way through." It doesn't seem to occur to either the principal or Dr. Rosenberg that the goal of attending the meeting need not be summarily dropped in favor of spending an unspecified length of time with the student, that the situation might be a both/and rather than an either/or." You write "Dr. Rosenberg appears to consider only the most negative of these definitions as the meaning of a judgment essentially, to equate judgment with condemnation. Tech/Talk is a lightweight, portable 8 message, multi-level AAC device that helps individuals communicate using direct selection. Instead, do your best to keep your voice level and calm. This pseudo-objectivity and deep association with extrinsic motivators render such language and judgments as instruments of social and interpersonal control in ways that make conversations involving moral disagreements unsafe and fraught with challenge. If Dr. Rosenberg says I need this is primarily for pedagogical purposes, to draw the attention of his students to what he is doing, much like a dance instructor calling out the steps they are doing. I think there is lots of room for more nuanced presentation of this idea, and more nuanced advice about how to apply it in communication. Your Clean Talk examples provides a context that can soften this response but one can go further towards . There is a profound mental shift that needs to be practiced in order to achieve an inner paradigm shift. Id like to share some of what comes up for me, in reading your essay. Consider your first example, in which I ask you to buy milk on your way home, and I hear you say you will, and you arrive home without it. Checking in with yourself about your own needs, you realize that your upset is linked to how much it would support ease and comfort in your relationship to have dependability, and trust that each of us will do what we say well do. I have seen this particularly in the context of meetings. I am curious about ways in which we might explicitly talk about interpretations as a part of conversations intended to transform conflicts. CleanTalk Inc | 63 followers on LinkedIn. Here are some examples of global labels, and how they could be better rendered as specific critiques of behavior instead of character: As MFP put it, the essence of a you message is simply this: Im in pain and you did it to me. And theres usually this subtext: You were bad and wrong for doing it to me. When people slight us, it may be true that they are entirely, or almost entirely, to blame. This pattern ends in thinking Joe is wrong and deserves to be punished without ever considering other aspects of the situation, such as Joe making a tragic choice in order to address something that we could probably all agree was important to address, and our collectively modeling the use of violence as the way we address conflict, and so on. What NVC recommends is that the speaker express how the other persons actions have contributed to them personally. Having gone through this process, you now express whats up for you: There isnt anger expressed in this, but only because after the processing, anger is no longer the dominant emotion being felt. Some NVC practitioners are able to integrate their use of connection skills with keeping a focus on the purpose they are attending to, and this can result in a high degree of effectiveness. But, Im confident there was never any desire to have a sense of urgency or Ill die if I dont have this or you have to do this because its a need be associated with what was being talked about. That orientation towards fighting tends to be associated with a belief that a moral contract has been violated. I suspect it was a habit unique to the person you were listening to. People are understood as having powerful intrinsic motivation to contribute to life and to one anothers well-being, which can blossom when these impulses are not being dampened by a coercive milieu. I notice that you seem concerned about NVC practitioners not sharing certain things, yet I have no idea why not sharing these would be of concern. Im open to feedback on the content of anything that I say, or on the way I express myself, and Ill be curious about how any of this is for you to receive. Some people may interpret NVC as saying people shouldnt express interpretations, and if so, I agree that this is unduly limiting. I think the section you referenced to come to this conclusion might be better summarized as Dr. Messy talk and clean technology: communication, problem-solving and Clean communication means keeping your voice as close to your normal tone and volume as possible. NVC leads to a realization that it is really valuable to orient oneself to assuming there is some positive reason behind a no, and being curious about that reason. Under other circumstances, I willingly share interpretations. There is a topic in NVC called connection requests, which unfortunately isnt addressed in the book you read. . clean talk communication. Is this a time you could hear me? as an example of Clean Talk. You write "Clean Talk requires that the speaker state how they would benefit as a way of fully owning what they want. In principle, I generally like this idea. Consider whether it would be helpful to name this as a useful option. ), All of these concepts involve discernment, or determination of what it makes sense to believe. I have a sense that your "second-level want" is philosophically close to NVC's "need"both are about going to the deeper meaning that is at the heart of the conversation. I'm feeling irritated, wanting logic that I can make sense of, especially when I hear that logic coupled to words I interpret as suggesting the violation of values I hold dear. (I find the story you cite on p. 113 in NVC: A Language of Life.) Parameters are written to the log which can be viewed in the Dashboard service. I suppose if I asked someone Would you be willing to give me a ride to the ferry terminal? they might say, Id be willing, but I dont have a car. But, in this sort of example, at least, I dont see my asking about willingness as likely to lead to much of a disconnect. One could argue that a relative weakness of Clean Talk is that it apparently doesnt aspire to support some of the types of challenging-but-valuable deep change that NVC at its best can contribute to. If one combines the assertions Joe did something violent and Violence is harmful and the implicit Harming is bad and wrong, then it is a slippery slope to condemning Joe and thinking that this is right and natural. Youre sorry about spending too much on the couch, just like you were sorry for going over budget on the kitchen remodel, and sorry for spending so much on the dress for our wedding, Youre so irrational, just like your mom., None of my exes were ever as clingy as you are., Why cant you be more fun like Dereks girlfriend is?, If youre going to act like that, then Im not going with you to your parents house this weekend., If you cant get your act together, then maybe we should get a divorce., If you dont want to be more adventurous in bed, I can find plenty of other women who are willing to be., I feel disrespected when you make jokes at my expense when were out with your friends., I feel jealous when I see you texting your ex., I feel hurt when you ignore me when I come home from work., Why didnt you take out the trash last night?, Is there a reason all the dishes have been left in the sink?. In actual NVC conversations with people who dont know NVC, saying I need in a way that is likely to trigger a sense of obligation in the listener would be the total antithesis of NVC it would amount to making a demand (and NVC is specifically designed to be about not making demands) in the guise of what superficially appears to be NVC. I am also intrigued by the ideas of Powerful Non-Defensive Communication (PNDC), as developed by Sharon Strand Ellison. As a result, many couples find that their discussions regularly turn into heated, unproductive arguments that ultimately damage their relationship. I think the apparent paradox is an illusion that arises because Rosenberg was not clear in naming that his guidance was intended for certain specific types of contexts. . But when you lead with that blame, the instigator will instantly erect walls of defensiveness that will make working through the issue together impossible. Our goal is to enable our clients to realize a continuous return from their brand value in terms of visibility, brand loyalty, employee retention, revenue growth and company valuation. As I interpret it, the recipes of NVC are largely oriented towards advising how to skillfully address what I might term Relationship Talk having conversations which, at some level, have to do with the relationship between me and you, and where there is a risk of a sense of separation creeping in between us if we're not attentive. It's that role that Rosenberg tries to draw people's attention to. You may tell your significant other that youre not angry and are willing to talk things through, but if your posture and facial expressions say otherwise, they will assuredly pick up on it. NVC invites us to move out of the frame in which good/bad is the only means of expressing our enjoyment of others actions, and to provide more useful information to support others in understanding what we mean. I take Dr. Rosenbergs admonitions about thoughts as an invitation to notice when conversing at the level of interpretations isnt getting me where Id like to go, and when that happens, to be willing to drop down to a deeper level of awareness where I feel into what is happening, notice the barriers to open-heartedness, imagine the human aspirations in play, and remember my intention to find a way forward that works for everyone, or at the least, honors my deepest values. I recommend to my NVC students that they not use the word need when attempting to speak using NVC, to help avoid this pitfall. Talk to a Coach . "Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. On the other hand, when Rosenberg or anyone else teaches, they are engaged in a type of different activity, using what I might term Concept Mapping Talk transmitting concepts and how they relate to one anotherand the guidance that is relevant toteaching (once we've addressed the relational issue of whether there is consent to be together in a teaching context) is different than the guidance that relevant to addressing the relationship between us. Posted on . You write 'the book's list of words describing actual feelings contains quite a few words that Clean Talk would consider to be judgments masquerading as feelings, including quite a few words ending in "ed": "aggravated," "alarmed," "annoyed," "brokenhearted," "disappointed," "disgusted," "exasperated", "shocked," and "tired," among others. In its earlier phases, it looked more like Clean Talk than it does now, and potentially included judgments, so long as they were fully owned." User-friendly and easy-to-use communication aid is lightweight and portable. New Dawn Works is a Yelp advertiser. Cleantech Communication dedicates 1% of its earnings to kindred organizations also creating new options for women and the world. No Captcha, no questions, no counting animals, no puzzles, no math. Well, it's one way of detecting inaccuracies. One example of this is that excess focus on thinking can be risky at times, in the relational realm, but abstract thought is essential to teaching. Work opportunities - job leads that maybe in your area. To a large extent, the NVC invitation to name our need is meant to address this issue. Clean Talk can afford to be more restrictive in how it defines feelings since saying thats not a pure feeling simply changes how the idea gets expressed, not whether it gets expressed. Cleantech Communication is a collective of senior-level consultants who operate as an extension of our clients in-house teams. We also offer strategy and execution . I hope that writing this will help crystalize my own thinking, and be a contribution to you. Calling it a "second-level want" may make this excessive conciseness less likely. That implicit distinction is what allowed him to talk about the dangers of focusing on thought (in Relationship Talk), while demonstrating adroit thinking (in Concept Mapping Talk), without there being any actual contradiction. When youre having a heated argument with your significant other, it can be very tempting to level a real zinger at them to use words and putdowns you know will wound them and push their buttons. To me, NVC is best thought of, not as a set of rules, but as a collection of insights, to be applied in a context-sensitive way, with discernment. Remember when I spent all weekend cleaning the house before your folks arrived and you never even said thank you?, Its always the same damned thing with you. Our support of GRID Alternatives goes to training opportunities for women looking to jumpstart or advance their renewable energy career. I've learned that I enjoy human beings more if I don't hear what they think." It seems like youve been busier, and I dont know if thats just because your classes are hard this semester or you just havent been as interested in hanging out [Thoughts]. So, you can upload spammer email or IP spam list. The Art of Manliness participates in affiliate marketing programs, which means we get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links.