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If it's a tender topic and/or you are looking for a particular level of responsiveness, you can let listeners know what you want back before you share -- or you can ask them for a particular kind of response right after you share. The more you can do this, the more it can create supportive relationships in your life. Read on for ways to ask for a particular kind of responsiveness to meet particular needs.

What's my intention? What needs am I trying to meet? What do I want the other person to know or understand? How can I say it in a way they are most likely to hear? These are four questions we can use in preparation for an important conversation. Read on for more on this, plus four accompanying practices.

There are five aspects helpful to consider when creating conditions and atmosphere where you can be heard deeply and hear others deeply: context, self-connection, autonomy, security, and specific requests. Read on for more, and reflect on moments when you have been heard deeply and name everything that contributed to that experience.

Making a decision or boundary that invites someone to be honest about their feelings can be difficult. Remember that lack of authenticity may be due to lack of awareness, inner conflict, or fear of conflict, rather than dishonesty. Offer empathy and reassurance and invite more conversation. Approach with compassion and curiosity to naturally invite more honesty.

Workplace relationships are complex. Each employee brings their unique self to work. Their background, perspective, emotional triggers, and working style. Add to this the dynamics of power relations, and the fact that often workplace communication now takes place at our computer keyboards rather than face-to-face. Sylvia Haskvitz offers practical tips to make today's complex workplace relationships more satisfying and effective.

Join Sylvia and Jean in this fascinating exploration of NVC and the Enneagram, a system of nine basic personality types.

Ask the Trainer: "I feel a lot of fear or nervousness about approaching a neighbor who uses 'wastebasket talk.' Once she's engaged, there are only two techniques that interrupt the flow: leaving or interrupting."

Asking for help is difficult for many of us, but can yield rich rewards.

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?"

When deciding if someone crossed your boundaries and how to respond, you may get conflicting opinions on it. These opinions can be coarse attempts to manage life with rules about what should(n’t) happen. Instead, so that you can find where you want to invest your energy, ask yourself questions that reveal what for you is truly in integrity, nourishing, connects to your heart, and deepens self understanding. Read on for examples.

When asking for respect it helps to first get clear about your interpretations of other's behavior. You can do this by asking about the other's intentions before believing your thoughts. You can also make a clear request for what specifically you want to see happen instead. Read on for more.

The pandemic asks us to examine the way we have always done things. It asks to try something new and notice what happens. This is an opportunity to ask why you have done holidays in a certain way and what needs it met to do it that way. Perhaps it is an opportunity to experiment and see what new things might arise. Read on for questions to ask yourself that might help you process your triggers, "should's", feelings, needs and dilemmas.

To learn to identify and speak from your needs requires specific tasks and practices. Here's a list of 10 learning tasks and practices for you to choose from. Some of these ideas include using needs cards and lists, working backwards from strategies and ideal scenarios, reflecting on past experiences and relationships, and asking for/offering/exchanging empathy.

Trainer Tip: When someone acts in baffling ways we can either wonder about what’s going on with the other person, create our own stories about it (blame, resent, make assumptions), or inform ourselves by asking. This is an opportunity to learn something new.

Listen to the Universe is a fun group exercise to explore how we focus our attention and interpret what we experience.

In this telecourse recording, expert trainer Miki Kashtan will help you uncover what prevents you from making requests for everything you want without fear. The class includes daily practices for requests skill building.

Trainer Tip: Asking for support may feel awkward and uncomfortable. In these moments, we may forget that everyone needs support. We may also forget that there may be many options available to us, even if what's available isn't our preferred source of support.

Do you just keep going with a task, even if your body is screaming for a pause? Maybe you leave tasks incomplete because you can't finish them the way you want? Do you not even attempt some tasks because you know that you won't be able to do them perfectly? In short, are you a perfectionist? In this Life Hack, we look at 5 tips to help any recovering perfectionists.

When asking for support from another, you are most likely to enjoy receiving that support when the person giving support is giving from the heart—from a place of joy or delight. Inviting them to say "no" is a way of encouraging an authentic response, a response you can trust more fully.

Learn when to use the two types of requests in the practice of Nonviolent Communication: Action Requests and Connection Requests. Both are important when working through conflict or difficult situations and for building connection.