Search the NVC Library

Trainer Tip: Have you heard the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Communication is like that too. Don’t try to adjust your communication and behaviors if they already work for you.

Trainer Tip: When there's conflict if you set the intention to connect and build trust first, you're more likely to move towards resolution. This can be built through offering reflections that captures essence of what's important to each party. Once connection and trust is established, then begin the process of creating strategies and solutions.

If you’ve ever dreaded attending a meeting – or watched in dismay as your group collapses into conflict – know that a methodology known as Convergent Facilitation offers you possible solutions. It’s based on one simple experience: that people come together at the level of their underlying principles, needs, aspirations, and dreams, not at the level of their surface positions.

Convergent Facilitation is a highly efficient decision-making process developed by Miki Kashtan from the principles of Nonviolent Communication. It enables you to look beneath the surface and find the essence of what’s important to different stakeholders, and bring it together into one set of principles that lead to proposals and ultimately decisions. As a result, it readily produces solutions and decisions that everyone can embrace.

Trainer Tip: Even when it's tempting to coerce or match might with might, we can strive to meet our needs without negatively affecting others. Instead of convincing anyone to do it our way or to value the same things we value, we can focus on what we value: compassion among people and valuing everyone’s needs. By doing this we are actually more likely to meet our own needs and we are better able to live peacefully.

Two NVC trainers went into dangerous, war torn territory to share the skills they found so valuable but end up learning that they need to first apply those skills before those they came to help could receive what they had to offer. Only when the foundation of connection and trust was built could they mediate the conflicts using empathic communication.

If you’ve ever dreaded attending a meeting – or watched in dismay as your group collapses into conflict – know that a methodology known as Convergent Facilitation offers you possible solutions.

It’s based on one simple experience: that people come together at the level of their underlying principles, needs, aspirations, and dreams, not at the level of their surface positions.

Convergent Facilitation is a highly efficient decision-making process developed by Miki Kashtan from the principles of Nonviolent Communication. It enables you to look beneath the surface and find the essence of what’s important to different stakeholders, and bring it together into one set of principles that lead to proposals and ultimately decisions. As a result, it readily produces solutions and decisions that everyone can embrace.

• Explore how gender power dynamics impact everyday interactions
• Learn how to navigate these complexities with curiosity and compassion
• Gain the skills to build inclusive personal and professional environments
• Contribute to a world where every voice matters!

Dear friends,

How was 2024 for you? For me, it was a bumpy ride. There were moments of joy spending time with our 3-year-old grandson, mine and Kim’s first international trip together (a bonafide vacation that was void of work), and precious time with family and friends. There was also heartbreak...

Mary Mackenzie, renowned CNVC Certified Trainer, shares her understanding and experience of empathy.

Control may help us feel safe in an unpredictable, unsafe, wild world. Wanting control may be a response to shielding ourselves from feeling fear and being aware of our vulnerability. The more we insulate from fear, discomfort, and vulnerability, the more we are cut off from aliveness; we can become more anxious, and depressed. The more we control the more we are disconnected from empathy and care. With aliveness come joy, peace, love, awe.

How can we mobilize this insight in support of our own and others' healing? These recordings will shed light on how the social context into which we are born affects our experience, and what we can do about it at the individual level within the paradigm of nonviolence.

One thing that makes empathic understanding difficult yet valuable is that it can be humbling. If I really open myself to hearing and understanding, while trusting my inner strength of self-knowing, I may be changed by what I hear. My core beliefs or understanding might change and grow. This openness could be key to transforming the energy of conflict into new possibilities for greater connection, creativity, and well-being.

Read how an American Buddhist NVC teacher with Jewish roots reflects on how any dehumanization in the Israel-Hamas conflict can be used to justify all kinds of violence that can escalate for generations. With acknowledgment of the complexities, his desire is for us to bring in respect, dignity and peace -- for both Israelis and Palestinians. He emphasizes compassionate advocacy of all humanity amid the ongoing crisis.

• Learn how to cultivate a consciousness of compassion
• Embark on a journey of compassion-based self-discovery
• Become more alive and present with yourself and others
• Liberate yourself by meeting your fears and distress with an open heart

2020 has added three major global crises to our long and painful list of ongoing challenges:

• Public health crisis emerging from the Coronavirus infecting humans;
• Governance crisis manifesting especially in global protests against police brutality and governments more generally; and
• Economic crisis unfolding from responses to the pandemic.

And as a result, many of us who share NVC with others have been feeling a growing unease about our roles. I have heard from quite a few who want to go beyond using NVC primarily as a personal growth tool within the market economy, and often don't know how to do so. This course is designed to respond to this need by supporting anyone who shares NVC with others – regardless of experience or certification – in opening to the way systemic perspectives deepen and transform how we bring NVC to people, communities, and organizations.

Ever since the Women's Movement of the 60s and 70s, we have known that "the personal is the political" – that individual suffering and challenges often have their source in the social systems within which we live.

How can we mobilize this insight in support of our own and others' healing?

Join Miki Kashtan for this course designed to shed light on how the social context into which we are born affects our experience, and what we can do about it at the individual level within the paradigm of nonviolence. 

What will it take to reclaim our fundamental relatedness with all things alive, surrender our attempts to control nature, and find a way of living that averts or mitigates the worst possible catastrophes awaiting us while it's still possible?

When we ask something of a person and threaten negative repercussions if she doesn’t comply, we're making a demand. Demands limit the possible responses and reduce joyful participation. Instead, look to find mutually satisfying resolutions. And look for ways to change your demand into a request. Read on for more.

Listen to Miki Kashtan explain the importance of intention in developing our skill at creating solutions that work for everyone. Neither fighting nor giving up are qualities of nonviolence, but rather a fierce determination to hold the needs of all parties may arise.