The Twain Shall Meet: Connection and Effectiveness in the Workplace Using Nonviolent Communication

A Recorded Telecourse with Miki Kashtan, CNVC Certified Trainer, Author and Co-founder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication and the North America NVC Leadership Program, from Oakland, California, USA

Recorded October 19, 2008—November 16, 2008
Running Time: 5 Hours, 17 Minutes

Cost: $30.00 USD

• Do you want support for bringing NVC consciousness to your workplace?

• Would you like to have facility with using NVC skills in a business environment?

• Do you long to transform your experience of work and have more joy and connection into your daily work life?

In this 5-session telecourse recording, you will learn what it takes to bring NVC consciousness and skills into an environment that operates on different principles. You will find out what you can do even when none of your colleagues embrace or even know about NVC. You can benefit from this course whatever your role or title is within the organization where you work. Each session focuses on a different theme:

• Session 1 – What’s Unique about Applying NVC in a Work Setting?
• Session 2 – Feedback without Criticism
• Session 3 – Running Meetings Using NVC Efficiently and Inclusively
• Session 4 – Negotiating, Keeping, and Changing Agreements Based on Needs
• Session 5 – Using Empathy and Transparency to Support Customer Relations

Bring authenticity and presence to your work without appearing “touchy-feely” Offer and receive feedback with grace Support groups in making quick collaborative decisions, or discovering why a decision cannot be made Surface all needs and concerns in making and changing agreements Turn your customers, especially the unhappy ones, into fans

Session 1: Introduction: What’s Unique about Applying NVC in a Work Setting?

In this session we will explore the specific challenges and opportunities that using NVC in the workplace entails. We will address questions such as: How do we modify the NVC vocabulary of feelings and needs to fit the constraints of organizational life? How can we address feelings and needs in an environment that appears to be hostile to them? How can we balance connection and effectiveness? In this and future sessions we will use examples from participants to illustrate and deepen understanding and open up a sense of possibility and hope.

Session 2: Feedback without Criticism

Most everyone dreads performance evaluations, yes we all want to know how to give and receive feedback. In this session we will learn how to provide useable feedback through offering clear observations free of evaluation and how to support everyone around us in giving us useable feedback by asking for clear observations. We will also apply the same skill towards coming up with concrete suggestions for improvement, as well as learning to ask others to support us with concrete suggestions.

Session 3: Running Meetings Using NVC Efficiently and Inclusively

Let’s face it: most of us sit in many meetings simply waiting for them to be over. In this session we will learn how we can support meetings in reaching conclusions quickly: either a decision everyone is on board with, or clarity about why a decision cannot be made without incurring too much cost in trust and goodwill. Whether you are the official facilitator of a meeting, or simply a participant interested in supporting smooth operations, you can benefit from learning these skills. We will delve deeply into formulating requests that reflect the significance of an issue to us, so that we can ask for the level of cooperation we seek and assess quickly if it’s there or not. Mastering the art of modifying thresholds of willingness through paying close attention to needs whenever disagreements persist will allow us to maintain and increase trust that everyone’s perspective and needs matter.

Session 4: Negotiating, Keeping, and Changing Agreements Based on Needs

Most often agreements are not kept because they were never entered willingly. Understanding this dynamic, especially in the context of power differences, will allow us to increase the chances that agreements will be entered willingly, kept with integrity, and changed with care if circumstances change to the point where strategies agreed to no longer meet needs. Our primary tool for this session is a focus on understanding the needs of all parties to the agreement, and creating mutual interest through mutual understanding.

Session 5: Using Empathy and Transparency to Support Customer Relations

A customer is someone who is looking to us for a service or product: a boss, a colleague in another department waiting for a report, or a paying customer. Sooner or later, we are bound to act in ways that will result in a customer being dissatisfied with the results. In this session we will focus on how to attend to the quality of connection with our customers instead of the specific content of displeasure the customer brings to us. Our guiding insight will be the understanding that in addition to the displeasure about the service or product not being delivered as expected, a key element in a customer’s upset is the belief that their needs and concerns are not taken seriously by us. Even when the service or product remains unsatisfactory for the customer, learning to focus on empathic understanding and transparent sharing of truth restores, and often deepens trust.

"Miki's leadership inspires, startles, thrills and challenges my growing edge. it meets my needs for hope, fresh possibilities, and change in the smallest part of my heart and in the world at large." —Melody Stewart, Santa Rosa, CA

• Listen to the learning material again and again
• Recordings are an alternative to participating in live course
• Use recordings to prepare for a live workshop or telecourse
• Conveniently listen in your car, while you're jogging, or while relaxing at home
• Recordings can supplement your learning and reinforce what you already know
• Recordings make great learning tools for your practice group

Cost: $30.00 USD

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