I suspect that this person is making some assumptions that I don’t share, namely that his proposed strategies are actually more effective at meeting needs than other strategies, and that his strategies don’t also interfere with needs being met.

I figure, however, that the opposite strategies must meet needs as well. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be doing them.

It occurs to me that all sets of rules or guidelines have this same problem: they support needs sometimes in some ways and interfere with needs sometimes and in some ways. Another example is CNVC’s strategies around other people’s use of the name “NVC”.

Here’s an idea for a more alive approach to address clashing preferences:

• Use a living, collaborative medium, like a wiki page. Expect an ongoing evolutionary process, not a static conclusion.
• Jot down what behaviors you sometimes like and which ones you sometimes dislike, say which is which and why.
• Invite others to contribute to these lists as well.
• Deal with stuff as it comes up instead expecting to control it in advance.

I expect and hope that some behaviors will show up as both liked and disliked (even by the same person), and I believe this intersection will be where the most value comes. In fact, I’d be very surprised to learn of any behavior at all that’s worth writing down in one category (Like or Dislike) and not also in the other. After all, if everyone agreed, then either the behavior would always happen or never happen. In either case, there’s no point in mentioning it.

This last point gets me most clearly to one of the essential pitfalls of the whole idea of rules or guidelines (part of the game of Preserve & Prevent). They record thin slices of creative tensions among strategies. The matching counterpoint strategies are omitted, and more importantly, so are the “good reasons” (needs met) by both sets of strategies. And so the beautiful dream of “all needs fully met” is short-circuited, and we settle for and propagate the same old either-or, win-lose-compromise thinking and living we were inculturated with.

I’m going for the dream. Want to join me?

Over the last few years of exploring and discussing CNVC certification, I’ve been particularly surprised and concerned when what I hear described as “needs” more often match what I understand to be strategies instead, and correspondingly how rarely I hear what I recognize as a pure & genuine Universal Need.

For concreteness, I’d like to mention a few recent examples from an NVC mailing list. I am in no way meaning to single out these two people. They just happened to provide recent examples.

One wrote:

I have a need for clarity and connection regarding the certification process and am very hopeful that my needs can be met.

I can relate to clarity and (particularly) connection as (universal) needs if taken by themselves. I strongly suspect, however, that the writer meant something specifically connected to the strategy of certification, and more specifically yet, to CNVC certification. From the place of Needs, clarity and connection can be fulfilled by means that have nothing at all to do with certification.

Because the distinction can be subtle and old habits persistent, I like to use this test: discard any qualifier following the needs, e.g., stop after “clarity and connection”, with no “regarding”, “about”, “of”, “for”, etc. Then add back an inverted/released form of the qualifier, as “and I’m totally fine with those needs being met without …”. Then listen to my body telling me whether I’ve just spoken truly or not. For example, I might say

I have a need for clarity and connection, and I’m totally fine with those needs being met without any information or forward movement on the certification process.

If my body says “Yes”, I celebrate my power, freedom, and abundance. If my body says “No”, I thank it for helping my mind out of its temporary delusion. Dropping the pretense of having found the sacred place of NVC Consciousness, I get to continue on my journey.

(Note: if you get overwhelmed or lose interest/joy in following the additional examples below, please skip to the request at the end of the post.)

For a few more examples of what I understand to be strategies masquerading as needs, here is a passage from another recent note from CNVC folks:

We have been wrestling with the balance between

the need to ensure the integrity of NVC — of who is teaching it and how it is being taught, and the need to see NVC demonstrated in the lives of the trainers

with

the need for consistency in standards to ensure the above two needs.

[...]

We are aware that we need more assessors world-wide and are working on this evolution of the new assessor training.

In all of these “need” descriptions, I hear strategies instead. I long for the pure Gold I’m confident lies buried — for the power, freedom, and inspiration I experience in deep exploration of underlying needs and release of strategy attachments.

In the first statement (“the need to ensure …”), I’m not sure whether the need was thought to be ensuring or integrity. “Ensuring” (applying will and effort toward) is always a strategy, in my understanding. “Integrity” I hear as a need, but then come the qualifiers: “of NVC”, “of who … and how …”. To the writers, I offer the Body-Clarity test:

I have a need for Integrity, and I’m totally fine with meeting that need independently of strategies involving the whos, hows and whats of teaching NVC.

Then ask the body for feedback. If it says “No!” then delve deeper for the Needs.

For the next one, “the need to see NVC demonstrated …”, I have a harder time confidently guessing the underlying need. Maybe it’s meant as additional strategy for the the same needs supported by strategies of who, what & how.

Next, “need for consistency in standards to ensure …”. If I took the language literally, I might think of “consistency” as the need. However, I understand consistency to be just a (useful as well as detrimental) strategy, and here there’s the additional qualifier “in standards”. The “to ensure”, confirms for me that consistency is in service of (i.e., is a strategy for supporting) the previous “needs” (what I’d describe as spoken strategies and unspoken and perhaps unidentified needs).

Finally, “we need more assessors …”. In this case, I’m guessing that the writers didn’t even intend the word “need” in the NVC sense. In case anyone was writing or reading this statement as a Need in the NVC sense, I’d suggest reconsidering assessors as a strategy to support the strategy of certification. Even within the strategy of assessment, there are naturally scalable alternatives to more specific strategy of a centralized, top-down approach. (See, e.g., the “Emergence of NVC” vision.)

Several other posts on this blog provide more background and examples of this perspective on faux needs.

Please try out the Body-Clarity test described in this post, and share your experience as a comment to this post (or just to me if you’d prefer more privacy). As well, please share any insights, techniques, celebrations or mournings about encountering and navigating past faux needs. With each other’s help, I believe we can get more adept at finding and living in the sacred place.

A reader responded to the earlier post, and I understand his comments to say that that such remarks are expressions of “honesty”. I’ve heard that term used in this way before, and I’d like to suggest another viewpoint. Of course, one can express one’s opinions & judgments with “honesty”, but I don’t think that’s what Marshall had in mind when teaching about honest & empathy, and I certainly don’t think that kind of honesty helps to nurture inner & outer connection, leading to hearts awakened to joyful giving & receiving at a deep level.

I expect people to go through stages of deepening into NVC Consciousness, and perhaps NVC-sounding vague demands represents some progress. I’m not really sure it does, however, as I’ve so rarely heard practitioners (externally certified or otherwise, even certification assessors) get beyond that stage. Moreover, I see teaching and teaching materials propagating & reinforcing vague demands as if they were the real connecting stuff of Life. See today’s “NVC Quick Connect” newsleter for some examples, as well as the widely-circulated document on translating faux-feelings to needs, developed collaboratively at an IIT. My partner Holly had more to say about these issues today in a post called “Sounds like NVC, must be NVC …?” I recommend her post.

With help from Holly, I got it today that I’m especially distressed when NVC teachers use & teach vague demands. NVC as Marshall teaches & demonstrates (most of the time) is the approach I’m most inspired about and confident in, for solving the “significant problems of our time” (as Einstein put it). I want to see NVC’s potential power & depth shared effectively, and so I care a lot about what the teachers are modeling and teaching.

Holly & I came up with a simple test for whether we’ve really connected with a Need. The test is “Heart opening or heart closing?” For us and our students, this test helps us not to settle for NVC-sounding head stuff, and keep looking for the real gold. We’ve also realized that the whole idea of teaching & learning how to talk is almost guaranteed to lead to vague demands, because it’s so much easier to change words than change consciousness. So we no longer teach the four-step process, and instead re-interpret observations, feelings, needs, & requests as tools for clarity and self-connection. Once one makes the inner shift, we recommend speaking without conscious effort. Without the shift, the effort just clouds our awareness of our unawareness.

When I listen to people who have learned NVC, I often hear them express emotional upset and state that an action failed, fails, or would fail to meet a particular need, as in “That doesn’t meet my need for X”. My hunch is that, though couched in NVC-like language, this pattern always reveals a fundamental departure from NVC Consciousness. I interpret such statements as placing importance on a strategy and on lack. I suspect that when someone says “That doesn’t meet my need for X”, s/he usually really means “That prevents my need for X being satisfied”, or at least “That interferes with my need for X being satisfied”. In contrast, my understanding of NVC Consciousness implies that no action or strategy can possibly interfere with a need getting met, considering the abundance of other ways to meet the need. (For related comments, please see Distinguishing needs from vague demands.)

Going further out on a limb, I propose that (in contrast to typical NVC teaching) emotional upset is typically not caused by unmet needs, but rather by belief in scarcity and interpretation of a situation as evidence of scarcity. Consider as an alternative this quote from Thomas Edison. Someone asked him didn’t he feel bad to have failed two thousand times to make a working filament for the light bulb. He responded “I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a light bulb.”

It occurs to me that the word “need” for the central principle of NVC encourages scarcity thinking, in that “need” has the connotation of “don’t have”, or “lack”. My impression is that Marshall’s concept is quite the opposite meaning, as in a “fullness”, “richness”, or “blessing”.

Here is a suggestion for how to help shift from lack to fullness in your collaborative conversations. Instead of saying “that doesn’t meet my need for X”, try out one of the following.

• “I can see how that would meet your need for X. I’d also like your help in working out how to also meet my need for Y.”
• “I’d like to meet my need for Y by doing [name conflicting strategy]. Would you be willing to collaborate with me on finding other ways to meet your need for X?”

Please let me know what you learn from this experiment. And, as always, I’d love to hear what my post stirs up for you.

The request about not using “NVC” is just a request, right? I’ve pondered this request at length and concluded that (a) I don’t hear an underlying need (despite some pseudo-need language on the site and expressed in person), and (b) clear expression/understanding is better served by my using the term “NVC”, since it clearly conveys what I teach. And I know that whatever the underlying needs are, they can be met with strategies that don’t interfere with my clear expression (and contribution) and my students’ clear understanding (and improved lives). So I decline CNVC’s request, and I use the term freely. If folks in CNVC want to engage in a giraffe dance with me (aimed at connection and meeting all needs fully), I’d be delighted, and I think the organization and I would both benefit.

I have heard the claim that people who hear that someone teaches “NVC” (or “is an NVC trainer”, to use static/to-be language) will assume that the person is certified by CNVC. I don’t believe that claim at all. If I tell you I’m playing Beethoven, would you assume I’m certified by Ludwig van himself, or by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra? Of course not. Certification is just certification. Certification is not NVC. People won’t confuse the two unless their cultural context encourages that confusion. I choose to contribute to clarity, not participate in confusion.

As NVC practitioners, we know that granting a request quickly can result in missing opportunities — opportunities for deep connection at the needs level and consequently meeting needs more effectively than the original request would accomplish. I want to see a deep re-examination and open (to all) dialog about the needs behind CNVC’s strategies of certification and of not using “NVC” in a workshop title. If there were such a re-examination, I’m guessing the beginning would contain familiar old statements like “integrity of the NVC process” or “respect for the copyright”. Given words like “integrity” and “respect”, such statements can be confused with needs, and I imagine a lot of learning and depth would come from dispelling those confusions and going deeper.

Maybe you’ll connect with what I’ve said above, and maybe not. In either case, here’s another angle on the issue — one of my favorite quotes, straight from Marshall’s mouth:

Please do as I requested, only — only if you can do so with the joy of a little child feeding a hungry duck.
Please do not do as I request if there is any taint of fear of punishment if you don’t.
Please do not do as I request to buy my love, that, is hoping that I will love you more if you do.
Please do not do as I request if you will feel guilty if you don’t.
Please do not do as I request if you will feel shameful.
And certainly do not do as I request out of any sense of duty or obligation.

I’d love to hear what’s touched in you in reading this post. If you’re willing to share your response as a comment in this blog post, that’s my preference. If you’d like a more private conversation, you can email me directly.

• The word “trainer” is a label. I’d rather practice what I believe and teach about labeling. And when I run into difficulty expressing myself clearly & succinctly without labels, I’d rather go through the effort of retraining myself into new habits than reinforcing old ones. I made this effort with the Emergence vision. It was hard for me and well worthwhile. (I don’t like compromise.) Not only did I get the practice (and it gets easier every time), but I believe the document came out more clearly and concisely as a result. The reason I care about other NVC folks’ use of labeling is that I long for community support in deepening, integrating, and strengthening the new consciousness and habits. It’s easier for me to speak Jackal because I grew up with it, but not because Jackal is a more fitting language for what I want to communicate. With practice, Giraffe is becoming easier & easier. Statements like “it’s easier to label” (or clearer, more succinct, etc), “compromise is necessary”, or “violence is inevitable to resolve conflicts”, are self-fulfilling prophecies. More precise and life-connected would be “I have a habit of labeling, so I can do it with little conscious effort”.
• I hear some (not all) NVC folks (included both labeled-in and labeled-out) consistently use the word “trainer” not in the simple & direct sense of the word as “one who trains”, but rather in an indirect sense of someone who is approved by others to train. Despite what I said above, I’m relatively comfortable with the direct usage of the word, as I hear it to be simply shorthand for saying what what a person does. I strongly dislike the implicit approval usage, because (a) it eliminates a simple word for a meaning I care a lot about, namely one who trains, and (b) it disguises the fact that external approval is involved. I’m highly suspicious of unconscious habits in relation to external approval systems, so I want language use to be very explicit in such a case, as support for us to live in partnership consciousness rather than domination.

I understand the implicit-approval usage of “trainer” as being in direct conflict with a deep teaching of Marshall’s. He shifts labeling language to relationship language, such as reflecting “That’s a terrible picture” into “Oh, you don’t like the picture?” I’ve heard him call that principle “Never let somebody in authority tell you what you are”. (For instance, “you’re a trainer”.) Marshall’s reframe counteracts the basic Amtsprache trick of using language that obscures personal connection and responsibility. As I understand Marshall’s teaching, applying or withholding the label “trainer” but really meaning approved-by-someone trainer is telling them what they are. I’d rather hear an observation or a feeling or a need. A more life-connected alternative might be “I trust that person to present NVC in a way I agree with.” Do you feel a difference?

Even saying “certified trainer” is still Jackal-speak in my understanding, in that it (a) labels what someone is rather than what they do, and (b) replaces a conscious & visible labeler (an NVC organization or assessor) with a statement of what someone is, by virtue of unspoken authority. The label and doesn’t say certified by whom. (For example, I’m certainly certified by myself and my students.) A clear observation would be “I heard that CNVC certified Suzy”. Still — yuck; I’d rather just remove my personal energy from the whole external approval mindset and focus on support, learning, evolution, and community.

I’ve wanted to raise awareness and promote change about these issues around in our local NVC organization. My first attempt was to model different word choices, avoiding the word “trainer” altogether, even in its relatively direct meaning of one who trains. I’m discouraged about this approach. Now I wonder if a more effective strategy to get the language shift I’m wanting is to simply use the word the way I want to use it (the direct & conventional English meaning of one who trains, i.e., do rather than be) and allow cognitive dissonance in others to help from there.

I have a request and an offer. The request is to let me know whether any of the above resonates with and inspires you and if you would like to join me in community around using practicing label-free, clear & succinct communication. Given my experience and interest, my offer is to work with you to eliminate labeling from your own communications while improving clarity & conciseness. My needs-payoff includes community, play, learning, and integrity (living what I believe).

• The group decided to disband the existing “core team” and to create two new sociocratic circles, called the “Training Circle” and “Compassion University”.
• It was agreed that the new circles would define their own aim.
• It was agreed that “Each circle will create membership criteria to be presented to the GC [General Circle] for consent that they are congruent with the aims of the organization.”
• A first phone meeting was called privately for a limited group of people, coinciding with the old “trainers” group (including only trainers approved by the local or global NVC organization and excluding other trainers and other group members), plus Sandy, our executive director.
• An early agenda item called “sociocratic consent Sandy member of TC” had the description “as I understand the agreements from GC: Sandy can choose to be part of any circle, given the circle gives consent”.
• The next agenda was called “NCC affiliated trainers”, described as “Discussion on if and what are criteria to join training circle.”
• The meeting did take place, involved paramount objections from Sandy, and left most or all agenda items unresolved and raised some upset.
• An invitation, this time public, was issued for others to join the next meeting.

As I’ve reflected over reports of what was said and agreed to at the retreat and the phone call, I notice some things don’t make sense to me. I offer these puzzlements up for discussion, as a starting point for helping us better understand our intentions and how to support them consistently.

• I don’t understand what it could mean to say that a circle creates its own membership criteria. After all, a circle’s decisions are made by its members. Who is there to decide on membership criteria before such criteria exist? In this case, as far as I know, some people (the formerly-approved “trainers”) were spared the consent process.
• Similarly, I don’t understand how a circle can choose its own aim. How can a circle exist without an aim? I don’t understand how one could decide whether to form and/or join a group without having the aim defined first.
• I don’t understand how a circle can define exclusion criteria while staying with the intent of sociocracy. I understand the purpose of sociocracy as being a way to make sure all needs (related to a given aim) get addressed and supported as well as possible, even the needs held by a minority. Now imagine a circle that is allowed to both (a) have power (e.g., who gets promoted on the group web site and who doesn’t), and (b) exclude some people who embrace the group’s aim (e.g., supporting those who share NVC). I don’t understand how exclusion can have any effect but to defeat the effective, sociocratic approach to fulfilling the aim.

I suggest the following solution to these quandaries:

• Anyone can define an aim and propose creation of a circle. (Aim first, then circle.)
• If such a circle forms, then everyone who says s/he embraces the aim is invited to participate in the circle. (No membership criteria to be defined by a circle that doesn’t yet exist.)

I’d like some feedback about how this solution fits with successful sociocratic experience.

The title of this post comes from the name of an I Ching hexagram (also called “difficulty at the beginning”).

I love the discussion here (in the section called “Trouble at the beginning”) as it relates to our group’s transition and learning process.