NVC Resources on Groups

What do I do when I'm leading an NVC group and get emotionally triggered? Mary Mackenzie offers tips to respond with care and connection from her extensive experience leading NVC groups.

Leading an Nonviolent Communication workshop is a good way to learn and practice NVC skills. Here are Shantigrabha and Gesine's seven top tips for facilitators.

Old emotional hurts and pains can easily erupt when you’re in the throes of conflict – even if you’re the mediator. Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could avoid all of that, and instead create more peace and happiness for yourself, your family, your co-workers and your community?

Mary continues her discussion of tracking skills, focusing on tracking requests, agreements with the group and tracking time. Mary also examines how to monitor the purpose of the session, discerning if and when to shift the agreement about the purpose for meeting. Mary closes with some final helpful tips to hone your tracking skills.

Mary offers tips for developing effective tracking skills, including how the energy of the group is managed discerning the qualities of presence for each of the members, and monitoring group participation while striving for a balance of inclusion.

For many people thinking about creating a workshop outline is overwhelming because they focus on the whole thing at once. Breaking the process down to bite-size pieces eliminates much stress and overwhelm and brings fun and creativity to the process. here's your step-by-step guide!.

Want to increase diversity, plus improve group dynamics and group functioning? There are things you can do to make NVC settings more welcoming to people of color. Learn more about how to use NVC; attend to impact; help the community understand and demonstrate more awareness; factor in historical context; engage; create a more inclusive climate; and more!

Ask the Trainer: "A participant in our beginners' NVC practice group asked the co-facilitators if there was a confidentiality agreement that was typically used in NVC practice groups?"

Certified CNVC trainer Roxy Manning, Phd, answers a question: how to create a safe space for a first time group working on power and privileges ?

The focus of this 6-session class is on shifting the intention of your teaching from how to why while embodying the principles and practice of NVC every step of the way - from planning to delivery. The methodology Miki offers is to start with understanding what the people in your audience face in their environment, continue with what they might want to learn and how NVC principles can provide...

Here are five practical ideas from Ceri, Jo, and Sarah for creating simple agreements with any group you are working with when conflict arises!

Ask the Trainer: "Can you share stories of transforming group conflict, or is NVC strictly intended for 'one-on-one' work?"

The awareness and practice of interdependence is integral to holding an NVC consciousness. Practicing interdependence also means bringing in a quality of care in the moments we want to change agreements with others. This article talks about where our various choices, in regards to changing agreements, fits into different levels of engaging our interdependence.

Why does NVC practice, and NVC training/coaching, appear to be not enough to bridge divides between people? This article takes a look at the trickle down effect of our societal conditioning, what we can add to our NVC lense, and what we can do "upstream" when NVC doesn't seem to be enough. Additionally, the article talks about unseen constraints that men, women and minority groups face in...

Poetic License is a fun group exercise that's sure to incite laughter in your NVC group!

When a person of color (A.K.A. a person from the Global Majority, or GM) tells a marginalization story that triggers a defensive response from a white participant in a group, to foster awareness and healing, leaders can address the white person's distress with empathy, highlighting the common dynamic of prioritizing white pain. From there, leaders can offer GM participants opportunity to share...

Understanding how our brains operate in relation to power, privilege and status is important if we wish to build a world that works for all. This article gives an overview of the brain tendencies we have in relationship to groups, and provides remedies to counteract the automatic labor-saving devices of our human brains (which often prevent us from seeing the fullness of others, and our own,...

This exercise is most often the first activity in a beginning level workshop after the usual logistics/history/check-in. Penny Wassman experiences it as an opportunity for people to build connection with one another.

Ask the Trainer: "Recently, I was sitting in my weekly practice group trying to connect to my reasons for wanting to give empathy to a particular person. She was telling us about some painful feeling she was having, but was not connecting to her needs."

One clue we have trauma is when we respond in a way we don't want (eg. being reactive, self sabotaging, etc). Even when we have high level NVC skills our trauma-related mechanisms can activate, and we can lose access to well honed NVC skills. Read on for approaches that involve healing trauma, and approaches that involve managing the effects of trauma and preventing additional trauma.