
How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right - davesuperman
https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-resolve-a-conflict-when-both-sides-are-right-1f375bc82f7f
======
quanticle
_Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30%
since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling
desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the
risk to the system as a whole.

They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system
architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?_

If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a
manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for
unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me".

More seriously, this article reinforces my view of NVC as a fundamentally
_hostile_ communication framework. By framing itself as the "non-violent"
option, it makes any other form of communication "violent" by default,
allowing the first person to wield NVC to claim an advantage. "See, I'm being
non-violent," he or she will say, and it will serve as an universal shield
against all who would object to their claims.

My take is that if you're in a situation where reported bugs have increased
30% and sprint velocity is down by 40%, no amount of NVC is going to solve
that. What is going to solve it is management that's clued in to the problems
at hand. Is it that too much feature work has been done, too quickly, leaving
no time for the engineers to attend to technical debt? Is it that the
application's architecture is unfit for the problem to which it is being
applied, leading to lots of hacks and workarounds? Is it that the engineers
are incompetent, and should be replaced?

In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint
velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation
I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and
well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would
come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about
with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright, "Yeah, we screwed
up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would just make the
problem worse.

~~~
btilly
_In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint
velocity goes down by 40% don 't just happen out of nowhere. In every
situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned
repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term
hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you
were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to a clear and forthright,
"Yeah, we screwed up, how do we go forward from here?") seems like it would
just make the problem worse._

In my experience, developers always warn management repeatedly and well in
advance that engineering is implementing short term hacks. And if management
believes them and gives them a free hand, then sprint velocity goes down by
80% and bug counts go up by 90% as stuff randomly breaks in the refactor.
Which seldom works out in the end as well as development thinks it will.

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system,
with all of the downsides of the second system effect.)

The moral of the story is that "...management has been warned repeatedly..."
DOES NOT mean that the warnings are a correct diagnosis. Here are alternate
diagnoses that may also cause the same symptom:

\- Confusing product stories.

\- Onboarding new developers without proper integration in the team.

\- Poor communication patterns between developers.

\- General company morale problems.

\- Improved QA. (This one is actually an improvement. Reported bugs are up
because they are being caught, and developer throughput is down because they
have to fix the newly reported bugs. In dysfunctional organizations, though,
developers can wind up upset at QA.)

And so on.

~~~
elmomle
These are all good points, though I think a deeper point may be missing
regarding employing empathic, curious, positive communication tools (If you
prefer a term besides NVC, please use it--the politics of taxonomy could only
distract us from the potential benefit of ideas).

Here's a theorem: For common personal or professional conversation types, I
maximize the expected outcome of "difficult conversations" (both to me and to
the group) by (in the conversation) assuming the best and focusing on open-
mindedness and collaboration.

Proof: Enumerate expected outcomes from using that mindset versus not doing so
over all possible values of {am I in the wrong?, is other person in the
wrong?, other person's disposition}. (For full rigor multiple through by your
priors on each of these but I hope the idea is clear enough).

In the example you gave, if I'm management and I'm in the wrong, being curious
when trying to debug the problem will make it way easier for me to be open to
my mistakes, since I've introduced no specter of guilt, shame, or blame for
the fact that there is a mistake.

~~~
btilly
The deeper point is true, but hits at an even deeper point. Which is what lay
behind the attitude in the comment that I was responding to.

Are you familiar with
[https://www.triballeadership.net/](https://www.triballeadership.net/)? Based
on language patterns, people and organizations can be classified into 5
levels. The linguistic patterns are (1) Life Sucks, (2) My Life Sucks, (3) I'm
Great (but you suck), (4) We're Great (but some other organization sucks), and
(5) Life Is Great.

There are formal tools behind that classification, and formal ways to measure
it, but in general the opinion of people you interact with will be fairly
consistent. That notwithstanding, most people judge themselves as operating at
a level or two better than they actually do.

Here is where that becomes a problem. Most successful executives operate at
level 3, but think that they operate at level 4 or 5. They can adopt any
linguistic pattern that they think will make them more successful, but the
tools make them more effective at being level 3, with the attendant problems
that result for others.

This is not a slight on the communication tools. Emotional people will tend to
escalate until the emotion is noticed and acknowledged. Therefore doing that
up front really does calm the other person down, and really does facilitate
communication. Conversely, approaching challenges with openness, curiosity and
openmindedness really does make problems easier to solve.

However if you give a person the tools without changing their underlying
attitudes, what looks and sounds wonderful will, over time, create the exact
same type of problems in the long run. It just creates them more effectively.

------
jshevek
In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional
authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it
seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of
the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest,
or severely passive aggressive.

I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: _because I need [universal
need]_. It's never because the speaker is selfish, or an asshole, it's always
a "universal need".

One notable exception was, by nature, a sweet, kind, respectful person before
she encountered nvc. NVC fit her well, and she remained a wonderful person,
who still communicated in a straight forward and honest manner.

~~~
BeetleB
> It's never because the speaker is selfish

Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That
person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish.

Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who
is very generous _is_ getting something out of it. Even when dealing with
selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.

~~~
jshevek
This is an obvious and trivial observation which misses the point of my
statement. In my experience, the vast majority of NVC practitioners use NVC as
a weapon to manipulate others by righteously invoking "universal needs" while
avoiding introspection into their character flaws.

Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC
without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a
selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not
as obviously vegan)

~~~
BeetleB
Generally, people using the NVC template that you recognize are "beginners".
So your edit is probably very relevant. As I said in another comment: Actually
observe those who communicate very well in stressful situations (very well =
both parties not upset after the fact, with some resolution on the issue at
hand), and you'll find their approach is fairly similar to NVC - they're just
not using the templates your recognize.

------
supercanuck
The problem with businesses/startup/bosses trying to use these is that they
come across as disingenuous and manipulative if you try to use these as a
tool.

The core tenet of NVC is that: NVC is based on the assumption that all human
beings have capacity for compassion and empathy. If you can't exhibit these
skills in your day to day life, it feels manipulative to others because you
are asking others to be vulnerable.

~~~
luckylion
This. So much this.

You need to be extremely good at it to fake compassion and empathy. And if you
don't need to fake it, you don't need a lot of frameworks.

I've had one client that suddenly changed his behavior in this way and it felt
like somebody who clenches their teeth and does a weird smile while he says in
a robotic voice "I mean you no harm". I know him fairly well, so I asked him
about it and he explained that he had read some book and "be friendly, show
interest and people will work harder for you" was one of the lessons he took
from it.

~~~
Terr_
Reminds me of a book-quote:

> The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden
> bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who's
> suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00-7.05, Be Cheerful and
> Relaxed and a People Person.

\-- Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett

------
wintermutestwin
NVC (I prefer "Compassionate Communication") is not a complete conflict
resolution framework. It is a communication strategy that is designed to help
people turn on their innate compassion. It doesn't have a clear answer on what
you do when people don't agree to requests. As a professional mediator, I find
that it can work well for some types of conflict if I bolt on a problem
solving step at the end.

I find Compassionate Communication useful for resolving:

1\. Relationship Conflicts, which are caused by: Strong emotions, Faulty
communication, Misperceptions, Recurring negative behavior

2\. Identity Conflicts, Which are caused by: Negative comments or actions
relative to personal or group identity (gender, race, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, etc.)

3\. Value Conflicts, which are caused by: Different ways of life, Ideology and
religion, Different criteria for evaluating ideas or behavior

In a startup context, I think that there are two more common types of conflict
that lend themselves to an interests-based negotiation (or Principled
Negotiation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes)
) approach:

1\. Interest Conflicts are caused by perceived or actual competitive:
Substantive interests, Procedural interests, Psychological interests

2\. Structural Conflicts are caused by: Faulty or deficient organizational
structures, Unequal power and authority, Time constraints, Geographic,
physical, or environmental factors that hinder cooperation

I don't recommend relying on a blog post to address substantive conflict.

~~~
jph
Your comments are excellent throughout this thread. I would like to know how
to hire you. PM me if you're open to talking.

------
danShumway
> Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased
> 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is
> feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features
> because of the risk to the system as a whole.

> They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system
> architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here?

No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that
you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed.

I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or
confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual
problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales
> director more independence and support?

When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that
leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not
your engineering environment was safe and fun.

Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells
you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that
makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy
communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and
engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real
problem.

If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that
problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix
that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of
30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix
bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone.

Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in
your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking
for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software
your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical
mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with
communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can
use communication to make it easier to confront.

~~~
frobozz
Totally agree.

> If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the
> bug count, you have not actually solved the problem.

Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged
without addressing the problems they raise.

~~~
Ididntdothis
You actually can piss them off with acting safe and engaged while not
addressing the actual problem. I see that quite a bit.

------
redis_mlc
What Dave Bailey proposes with NVC is a cancer for engineering.

All things being equal, anybody's opinion or emotion is equally valuable. That
is rarely the case in engineering.

Some of his examples indicate the lack of a roadmap is causing friction, not
the request itself.

If you can't frame your request in logical terms, don't make the request. In
other words, do the opposite of what Bailey proposes.

~~~
peterwwillis
You do realize that proposing that NVC is a cancer is a negative and
threatening statement, right? (Cancer is generally considered negative, being
that it's a fatal disease...) People who don't already agree with you are
going to have a negative emotional reaction to this and immediately disagree
without trying to understand your point of view.

If you are trying to convince someone of your opinion, you are failing. If you
are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what others think,
you are succeeding.

~~~
viklove
> If you are trying to assert your opinion forcefully without caring what
> others think, you are succeeding.

You do realize this is a negative and threatening statement, right?

------
cousin_it
I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that
his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit
others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned
robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to
ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen
anyone who could be described as an NVC success story.

~~~
BeetleB
Here's the deal: I've yet to come across someone who is critical of NVC but
can provide something _better_. And in my experience, the status quo is rarely
better.

NVC has its flaws. It won't always work. Nor will anything else we know of. If
something comes along that works better (higher "success rate"), I'll jump on
that bandwagon.

If you can't be bothered to read the rest of this long comment, here's a TLDR:
Most communications books, written independently, have the same elements as
NVC. The other books are better at _explaining_ why these elements is
important. But the NVC book is better at providing recipes, which is why it
became more popular.

A few years ago I did a deep dive on the topic, and read 4 books on
communications: Difficult Conversations, NVC, Crucial Conversations and
Getting Past No. Most of these were written/invented independently of one
another. When I had read all 4, I looked over all my notes, and noticed that
they all point to the same things, with only minor differences:

1\. State your observation, without judgement, and be specific, not general.

2\. Personalize and state its impact on you. The "feelings" part of NVC - all
the books explicitly call out that you should explicitly state your feelings.
The Difficult Conversations authors pointed out that many people in
professional settings have the notion that discussions should be absent of
emotions ("objective). Yet if a discussion at work is getting heated, emotions
are clearly playing a big role. Don't assume you can solve the problem without
bringing those emotions to the table. And indeed, many solutions fail because
they failed to address the emotions which resulted in a lack of commitment. As
one book put it: Unvalidated emotions are a minefield.

Just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at work about whether to split a
monorepo into smaller individual repos. One side's work is bogged down by it
being a monorepo, and the other side would have trouble if it were split into
monorepos. Both sides discussed the their problems, yet neither side
acknowledged the other's pain. Validating the other's emotions is a core
principle of all communications books I've read.

(The issue did not get resolved by the end of the day).

And personalize: Don't talk in vague principles, but talk about how _you_ are
affected. This is where a lot of the tech world fails. I recall one heated
discussion at work where a person was strongly pushing for something, and
using all kinds of principles/analogies. He wanted someone else to change his
workflow because it was causing problems for him. Yet, _he never explained how
it was causing him problems!_ When queried, he kept invoking analogies and
principles. The world rarely yields neatly to principles, and every analogy
has a flaw. You'll often get competing principles. Invoking them alone will
not solve the problem.

The other element of stating the impact on you is discussing the needs. What
need of yours is not being met? Is this impacting your efficiency? Are you
wondering whether the work is futile, and not giving your purpose? Do you
think you are being ignored and want consideration?

I cannot stress this enough: If you have trouble putting a "need" to your
problem, it is because you haven't thought this through, and it's a bad idea
to go into a conversation about the issue. Even if you don't explicitly state
your need, this is a valuable exercise to do internally. Feelings are easy:
When you're mad you know you're upset. Most people stop there and go have an
argument. NVC forces you to start introspecting: My teammate did X and now I'm
mad. But why is his doing X bothering me? Yes, my teammate undid all my
changes and replaced it with crappy code. But _why exactly_ is this bothering
me? Your needs and his needs may conflict. But unless you can determine both,
the conversation is likely going to go south.

All the communications books are part "therapy": Emphasizing introspection
along with communication.

3\. Request (optional - depends on the situation).

Regarding the "canned robotic phrases": This is akin to any other book that
becomes dogma (think TDD, unit tests, referential transparency, etc). And just
like the others, the original author does _not_ insist you use these phrases.
The NVC author explicitly says that the elements must be present, but the
order doesn't matter, and sometimes it can even be communicated in one phrase.
It nevertheless provides those templates to make it easy on beginners.

When I read the NVC book, I felt similar to you: These phrases are very
artificial. And would annoy others. NVC is the only book that has these
templates, and it is likely why it is very successful. The other books discuss
the issues involved in conversations much better than NVC does - but they
don't provide a template.

Now how artificial are these? Surprisingly not very. All my skepticism went
away once I started observing people destressing a situation at work. The
majority of these situations involved someone using very similar templates.
And many (most?) of those folks had never heard of NVC! It sounds very
artificial when reading it, but no one thought it was off. This is the
exercise I recommend everyone does: Observe someone handling a stressful
situation at work, and note how often they touch on all 3 aspects of NVC
(specific observation, referring to the feelings, and the needs that are
unmet).

Rosenberg didn't invent NVC. He just identified its existence.

No one's forcing you to use the template. Here's an example "So this is
bothering you because it's affecting your efficiency?" This is perfectly valid
NVC.

I think some of the problem arises in what is considered "good" communication.
In the academic (and tech) world, we often describe good communication as
concise and objective. This is great when communicating facts, science, etc.
But in the workplace, we are not in the business of communicating facts and
doing science. Most of us are in the business of making a product, that
someone will buy, from which we will earn our living. _And_ there are many
competing motivations (some people want to "make" something, others are more
interested in promotions, etc). Generally, we are heavily reliant on others.
You can make a great thing but if the marketing folks refuse to market it, it
_will_ impact you (and vice versa). So "good communication" at the workplace
involves dealing with a wider variety of people who have differing needs from
you.

Becoming better at that type of communication is a lot of effort over a long
period of time. It's easy to dismiss one type of style (e.g. NVC), but
recognize that the "default" alternative is very poor and merely dismissing
means accepting a poor level of communication. Had I simply read the NVC book
and not dived deep into other books, I wouldn't have improved at all. It is
because I decided that I will try to find a way to improve it that I
recognized the merits of NVC and recognized its effective usage in the real
world. It's also why I didn't stop at "crappy templates" and focused on making
it less artificial.

Finally, NVC has a cult following. Ignore the cult. Just focus on the book.

~~~
itronitron
In the context of work discussions, I think people should be strongly
discouraged from describing their position in terms of how they 'feel' because
what they feel is a result of their focus on work. Therefore the root cause of
a person's feeling should be expressed instead and will be harder to dismiss
in a discussion. It typically takes a lot of work to understand the root cause
but it is also empowering for people when they can turn their intense feelings
into rational arguments. My two cents.

~~~
BeetleB
I think providing an example will help me understand what you're trying to
say. And I worry I will soon hit my comment limit so I may not be able to
respond.

I do not think what people "feel" is necessary a result of a focus on work.
I've often encountered upset people at work because they believed a coworker
was implying they were stupid. And in any case, things like fairness in
compensation/promotions, etc can play a big role.

I agree with root causing, but I often find it's hard to root cause someone
_else 's_ problem without knowing their feelings. The sad truth about
communications is that most people suck at it. Half of becoming a better
communicator is learning to deal with poor communicators, and making it easier
for them to express what's on their mind (something many/most are reluctant to
do).

~~~
itronitron
As an example, consider a product manager that decides to remove a previously
planned feature that one or more people have spent considerable effort working
towards. If they can discuss the benefit of keeping the feature (or the cost
associated with dropping it) then they stand a better chance of a favorable
outcome than if they discuss in terms of how the product manager made them
feel.

While I think people are right to have feelings I think they are more likely
to achieve the outcome they want if they can understand and express why they
feel that way. This is assuming that they are conscientious workers which is
the more common case. If they are bonkers then they probably won't be able to
pin down a sensible root cause.

~~~
kungtotte
As long as it doesn't affect the health of the codebase or force the engineers
to work overtime, why do the engineers care about what features get shipped or
not? They're paid to code, so if they aren't sacrificing code quality or
working overtime they should just focus on coding features that may or may not
get shipped. I mean, if we're being strictly objective that is.

If the engineers have feelings they might feel dismissed and devalued if they
spend time and effort making features nobody will ever see.

------
adrianmonk
> _When you apply the format to the letter, it usually comes off as over-
> prepared and clunky. It’s not how people normally speak so it can sound
> inauthentic._

This reminds me: it's hard to overstate how much of communication is
nonverbal. Your tone, attitude, body language, facial expression, etc. can
make all the difference in the world. This is probably especially relevant in
conflict situations.

Imagine you have an attitude of thinly-veiled annoyance and you say a sentence
(from the article) like, "When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt
DISAPPOINTED because I have a need for inclusion. PLEASE, could you get me a
coffee next time?"

Now compare that to having a relaxed, positive attitude and saying the exact
same sentence but not loaded down with negative emotion. Imagine saying it in
a way that makes them feel like it isn't a big deal to you, you're not going
to remember The Coffee Cup Incident forever, you still like them, and that you
probably brought this up because you care about getting along.

The words you say obviously matter some, but the way you deliver them might is
often way more important. For example, some people could probably get away
with saying, "Well... fuck you for not getting me a cup of coffee. I guess I'm
not important. Nah, I'm kidding. I would have liked one, though. It's going to
take me a while to work through this, but eventually I'll be able to forgive
you."

Once I realized how important the nonverbal aspect of communication is and
started practicing to get better at it, it made a lot of these things a ton
easier.

\---

Also, as long as I'm going on tangents, after a conflict has happened is sort
of your last opportunity to get it right. Good conflict resolution methods can
definitely help, but everything is going to be much easier if beforehand you
spent the effort developing healthy relationships and building trust.
Resolving conflict will be an uphill battle if you haven't. And if you have,
then it will be much easier. So basically preparation and maintenance serves
as an important multiplier.

------
umvi
Based on the title alone I would say "find the most important aspect of each
side's view and come up with a compromise that satisfies both parties"

I've done this several times now and it hasn't failed me yet. The hard part is
discovering "the most important aspect of each side's view" because sometimes
they themselves don't know it without some probing.

~~~
wintermutestwin
This approach is called Interests-based negotiation (or Principled
Negotiation):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes)

------
wintermutestwin
One critical NVC concept that this article leaves out is that people often
express judgements as feelings. A small cut and paste from the list of "non-
feelings:"

Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless

~~~
pmichaud
Yeah this is huge, and the sophomore mistake here is to try to "aikido" the
people who are using feeling words to describe judgement. Ie. to immediately
rephrase their statement into more a "correct," NVC-style format. It's a
mistake for a couple reasons.

First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a
judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because
it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of
what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology
(that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct,
but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes
a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a
reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the
feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the
sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid.

Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone
attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person
laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them,
which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your
rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it
serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way.

Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already
know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the
conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other
person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by
"want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that
implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is
actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably
is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric
aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it.

I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are
why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art,
instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had
to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth-
seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and
learn when to apply either mode.

~~~
wintermutestwin
I think you are pointing out that reframing can be misused. Do you think that
this cut from my conflict resolution doc is a "concise alternative?"

"The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to
help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way." \-- Bernard
Mayer

How to reframe a statement:

Acknowledge the emotion

Restate the problem or issue removing the inflammatory language

Request or wait for clarification or validation from the speaker

Repeat as necessary

~~~
pmichaud
I really like that quote!

I think your steps are a decent approximation, but I don't think they are
fully general. For example, sometimes clarifying the details and reality of a
conflict causes the conflict to be more directly inflammatory. And if you're
following a procedure that has "be less inflammatory" as a metric, then you'll
fuck that up. (For the record, I don't think it's a bad heuristic to follow.
Most of the time you do actually want "less inflammatory").

A few months ago I facilitated a conversation in which some old
friends/coworkers were trying to have a conflict, and they were being SO
careful, and SO polite, and SO open to each others' perspectives. Yet neither
of them was willing to be fully honest about the pain and blame they were
feeling. Things didn't really move forward until I started making
clarifications that sounded like impassioned, inflammatory accusations, which
really got to the heart of what was at stake emotionally.

I think the real guiding principle is truth tracking, at its core--ie. as a
facilitator noticing when something is being confused or hidden, and bringing
it more out. In practice, bringing more truth to light normally causes relief
and feelings of safety, but sometimes what the reality of the situation calls
for is more like "honorable combat," which is made honorable because it's
direct, straightforward, and open hearted.

So maybe I'd change that step to "Restate the problem in a more truthful way."

~~~
wintermutestwin
Yes, you are spot on with that example and I have had similar experiences when
mediating with parties that have higher EQ, but lack a rich set of soft
skills. My process doc addresses the basics of facilitating conflict
resolution as could be taught in a one day class. Your example is something I
would consider to be more advanced and requiring an experienced mediator. I'll
also say that most conflicts requiring "honorable combat" lend themselves
better to an interests-based negotiation approach. I really appreciated your
comments here and would love to get your feedback on my doc. Email me if you
are interested.

~~~
pmichaud
Sure, I'm happy to take a look. Not sure what your email is, mine is in my
profile.

------
davesuperman
Having read all of the comments to this article, it's quite impressive how
quickly people lost sight of the conflict, and took sides with whoever they
empathised most with.

I included enough facts to elicit a trigger response for anyone that's worked
in a tech company. Just reading them was enough to make people angry, and
invent a back story that 'management never listens' and 'this company is going
to fail' (paraphrasing). This wasn't in the piece and likely reflects a
projection of their reality.

This angry tone is pervasive in the comments and quickly turned people against
each other. Anger that came from somewhere, perhaps a place that isn't
apparent to the angry. A lasting sensation of not feeling listened to, or
truly seen and valued.

Even if you only communicate your emotions to yourself, and get curious about
where they come from, it's likely to help simply by acknowledging that not all
emotions arise from the present situation. I believe this is true in life as
it is in the comments.

Anyway, I wish you all a productive week!

------
peterwwillis
When my boss asks me "How are you feeling?", that feels weird. I don't know
this person very well, so it's odd that they would ask me how I feel, out of
the blue. But then I realize it feels weird because I'm cynical; I don't
expect people that I don't know well to care about my feelings. So in some
ways, the NVC framework is like "level 2" of developing empathy, whereas
"level 1" should really involve developing trust and close connections.

Aside from that, this quote seems problematic:

 _" Creating a place where people can be vulnerable without fear of abuse is
critical for any form of conflict resolution. Vulnerability is the source of
connection."_

Connections happen through development of trust, and trust makes you
vulnerable, but vulnerability wasn't the _source_ of the connection, it was
incidental. If anything, the workplace encourages us to develop trust _as well
as verification_ , as a part of quality assurance.

By verifying the quality of work, we can trust in it, and thus others. This
doesn't result in connections, but it can reduce conflicts, by focusing one's
attention on a process rather than a person. So it's not _" stupid Frank's
fault that the build broke"_, it's _" our SDLC is not developed enough yet to
ensure that the build doesn't break"_. This isn't exactly NVC, but it is
another tool one can use to redirect a conflict towards a resolution.

~~~
davesuperman
Just to clarify, asking how are you feeling isn't NVC. Getting to the
specifics of a contentious issue, and then asking how you feel about them is.

Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection
contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.

------
lidHanteyk
When I see people teaching "non-violent" communication, I become disappointed
with their selfishness and inability to empathize with other people. I don't
need anything from them, but I mark them well so that I understand that I will
have to constantly have word-duels with them when they come to me with their
passive-aggressive bullshit.

> When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have
> a need for inclusion. Please, could you get me a coffee next time?

No. Fuck you. Get your own fucking coffee. How to phrase this in the
workplace: "No."

> Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased
> 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is
> feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features
> because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new
> features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think
> their unmet universal need is here?

From your list, they need _respect_ , _empathy_ , _space_ , and
_understanding_. They need for you, the manager, to fuck off and give them
space to not work on features.

> The sales director explains that the prospect said, ‘If you had a reporting
> dashboard, I’d close the deal right now.’ The director is concerned that
> they’ll miss out on the deal without this feature, and feels altogether
> rather helpless.

The sales director needs to learn to fucking code. They need to understand
that their pressure is going to cause engineers to quit.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales
> director more independence and support?

Do _you_ know how to fucking code? I suspect not. You sound horribly
incompetent, and worse, you sound like you encourage others in their
incompetence. Engineering isn't about having fun; pay attention to your
metrics, disregard features, focus on bugs. Sales does not need more
independence; they already are selling far beyond engineering's capacity, and
they need to knock it the fuck off.

The worst part of all of this is that you are probably well-compensated for
this work, despite the fact that it promulgates systems which abuse and ignore
the needs of laborers and consumers alike. When you are a word-weaseling suit-
wearing grey-faced rent-seeking labor-harming parasite, I feel disappointed
because I expect better moral and ethical behavior from humans. Would you be
able to fucking knock this shit off already?

~~~
BeetleB
If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have
you off the team/company in a heartbeat.

Your concerns are valid. Your method of expressing them is problematic. And
your automatic assumptions are lethal to a good work environment.

I was going to address some of the specifics, but you're not exactly giving
the impression of someone who wants input.

~~~
lidHanteyk
I don't work for you. I am the consultant sitting to the side and watching you
crash and burn. If you want to hear how I'll talk to you when you're my
manager, then you'd better put a salary in my pocket first.

When you say that my concerns are valid but that I am expressing them in
problematic ways, you are _tone policing_. This is a typical technique used by
management: First, break up the original complaint into small pieces, then
estrange the emotional content from each piece, minimizing and shifting as
necessary. It is a useful way of dodging actual responsibility.

The attitude you are displaying, where you _would_ have given a substantiative
reply, but _only for_ the way that the complaint was phrased, is a common
empty rhetorical technique that comes with tone policing. Odds are strong that
you don't actually have any substance to reply with, but you need to ensure
that my tone isn't allowed to flourish or even gain sympathy or support.

Let's double-check my concerns, without profanity:

* People are not entitled to coffee or other errands being run by other employees. There are appropriate ways to join a coffee run, and this ain't it. Right? Now, does Dave give alternative wordings? Nope, he doubles down, just saying that it will be awkward at first but that you'll learn. Yep, you'd better learn to ask politely about coffee runs and other communal activities.

* Feature factories are a management anti-pattern, right? The engineering director in Dave's story is negligent to not seriously consider the risks to the stability and quality of their services and products.

* Sales must never drive engineering decisions unilaterally, right? It sounds like this engineering director lacks the ethical spine necessary to support their engineers.

* None of the people here, neither Dave, the sales director, nor the engineering director, are coders, right? So y'all don't understand the engineering concerns, which is unfortunate, because without addressing engineering concerns, your products and services will not be marketable.

Edit: After reading the rest of the thread, you've indicated that you do in
fact have coding experience. Okay; in that case, I apologize and retract my
guess. But I am then forced to conclude that you have a tremendous lack of
empathy for fellow engineers and have decided to side with management, not
just in terms of their emotional duplicity but also their manner of speaking-
without-saying. I am, as before and as ever, disappointed.

~~~
davesuperman
> Nope, he doubles down, just saying that it will be awkward at first but that
> you'll learn

Dave here. The point of the article was in fact not at all that NVC is awkward
and you'll have to learn, but to say there are valuable principles that you
can apply without the format, that can help you address conflict.

------
crimsonalucard
The problem isn't always about a persons' needs. It's can be about who is
actually MORE right.

------
Iwan-Zotow
Leela: "Great. We're two days from earth with no food."

Bender: "Problem solved. You two fight to the death and I'll cook the loser."

------
perlgeek
One problem is that when people are triggered by certain topics, they will
still be triggered by the topic, no matter how careful or non-violently you
approach.

If you are married, and your trigger topic is house work, it doesn't matter if
your spouse says "you need to more house work" or "when I get home after a
long day of work, I feel let down by having to do a large amount of house
work, could please do more in the future?".

If anything, the latter might be seen as more accusatory, even though feeling
let down is exactly the emotion that your spouse communicated, and it was
"non-violently" communicated using the "I [feel]" pattern.

~~~
BeetleB
Well, here are some of the problems with such a statement:

The observation wasn't there. I initially wrote "I think we can both agree
that it is not needed in this context.", but on reflection that's a really
poor assumption. Because (and trust me, this is common), the other spouse may
actually have tidied the house (or done laundry or whatever), and is now
dealing with the complainant complaining as if he/she hasn't done any work. It
would help a lot more if the complainant _specified_ the problem.

Did you mean to say "I feel down" or "I feel let down"? The latter strictly
violates NVC (it's not a feeling but a judgmental narrative). It will trigger
defensiveness.

The spouse didn't state the need. Having to do a large amount of house work is
not a need.

Your example is one of the most common types of problems between two people.
One side is OK with a sloppy house, and the other isn't. The way you phrased
it, the other spouse is likely to respond with "So don't do the house work.
What's the problem? I'm fine with it, why aren't you?"

One spouse perhaps needs more order than the other. Unless that is made clear,
how will progress be made? Is this obvious? No. Because it may not be about
tidyness but about a filthy bathroom where the need may be sanitation. I'm not
being splitting hairs. I know people who insist on very clean bathrooms and
kitchens, but are not at all fussy about stuff all over the floor in the
house.

Finally, the request was a poor one. Both the observation and the request need
to be _specific_ , not _general_.

Imagine that the other spouse had put effort in cleaning up, and is being
requested "Could you please do more in the future?" More what? What will it
take for you to be happy? And did I just waste my time doing something that
you perhaps don't care about? Should I waste my time telling you what I
already did?

Defenses are up.

If the other spouse managed not to be triggered and knows NVC, his/her
response may be "Are you dejected/annoyed because you need the house to be
more orderly?"

A better NVC statement from the original complainant would be:

"I came home and there were several of your dirty plates on the countertop,
and the sink was empty. I have a need for tidyness. Would you be willing to
place your dirty dishes in the sink if the sink is not full?"

To your wider point, though, of course - if there is a history of conflict on
a particular topic, anything can trigger them. Looking at several comments
here about technical debt and managers, I think I see it in action. :-)

------
seanwilson
> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales
> director more independence and support?

Not sure how realistic an example it was meant to be but if e.g. an app needs
a new feature like a billing system that isn't fun for the engineer to
implement, how are you meant to resolve this? I can't imagine many cases where
an important engineering dilemma gets resolved this way. A lot of the time
people are being paid more because the work they're doing has parts that
aren't fun and because there's bad consequences when mistakes are made.

~~~
ricardobeat
The classic 'engineer wants to have fun' example also irks me. Most engineers
want _challenges_ (i.e. complex problems to solve), and the space to apply
their knowledge and skills for mutual benefit (i.e. doing things right), they
just happen to have fun while doing it. I imagine this is true for almost
every technical profession.

------
motohagiography
More I read about it, the more NVC seems essentially like a progressive NLP.
It has the same hypnotic misdirection and playing on peoples emotions, while
directing them to a zero sum end.

I'd argue further that the approach of pretending everyone's interests are
legitimate also normalizes objectively terrible people.

------
0xff00ffee
NVC can be extremely powerful, but it only works if both parties are amenable
to it. Source: therapy. While workers have an incentive to respond to NVC,
some people simply do not internalize in a way that is necessary for it to
work. This is the supreme challenge of mediators. Hat's off to them.

------
quantified
The fundamental needs omit "power". Perhaps "security" is the analog, but "I
will keep my job" is not quite the same as "my competitive standing relative
to my peers and superiors will remain at least as strong and ideally improve".
Let's recognize that the author strives to steer organizations in a direction
of open productivity, but once anyone in the org is good at managing up it
becomes an arms race. No org of >400 people can ignore this factor, and an org
of any size can have it.

------
im3w1l
Allow me to explicitly pose the implicit question I see in this thread "What
does it mean to be wise, as opposed to robotic on the one hand, and sly on the
other?"

How might one cultivate wisdom?

~~~
dsr_
Wisdom is hard.

It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish
things.

It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could
have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently.

And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle
of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those
hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed.

Practice, practice, practice.

------
nottorp
Do you need some framework for this? How about a competent manager instead?

~~~
ben509
At some point, managers have to get from incompetent to competent. That's
invariably going to involve trying out various techniques, and if those
techniques have known expected results, it helps the individual evaluate
whether they're getting it right.

Thus, frameworks and guides and such have a pedogogical value.

