Most exciting practical application of NVC ever

During the eleven years I have been studying and practicing Nonviolent Communication (NVC), I have never encountered a practical application of NVC more promising to me than Dominic Barter's Restorative Circles.



Dominic, one of my colleagues as a Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication, has developed and tested a process for creating a place for people to have conflict with each other without the typical distraction of violence.

Yes, that's right -- a place to have conflict! ...because much of what we tolerate, Dominic suggests, is to withhold and suppress our needs and that's why conflict eventually escalates into some form of violence.

A Restorative Circle is a community process for supporting those in conflict. It brings together the three parties to a conflict – those who have acted, those directly impacted and the wider community – within an intentional systemic context, to dialogue as equals. Participants invite each other and attend voluntarily. The dialogue process used is shared openly with all participants, and guided by a community member. The process ends when actions have been found that bring mutual benefit.

Restorative Circles are facilitated in 3 stages designed to identity the key factors in the conflict, reach agreements on next steps, and evaluate the results. As a circle form, they invite shared power, mutual understanding, self-responsibility and effective action.


Learn more here.

Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time

A new resource is available for those working with classroom teachers and school leaders. Written by Bob & Megan Tschannen-Moran, Evocative Coaching: Transforming Schools One Conversation at a Time (Jossey-Bass, 2010), incorporates the principles of Appreciative Inquiry into the process of one-on-one coaching for personal and professional development.

The Evocative Coaching model works with Story Listening, Expressing Empathy, Appreciative Inquiry, and Design Thinking to move educators beyond old ways of thinking, doing, and being. It inspires and invigorates educators with the passion for making schools better, one conversation at a time.

David Cooperrider had this to say about the book: “If you could choose only one inspiring and resource-filled book on coaching, what do you suppose it would be? For me the answer is right here. Evocative Coaching is a gem; it’s something that should be read by anyone involved in a helping profession—and that’s everyone!”

For more information about the book and the coach training program based upon the book, visit www.SchoolTransformation.com

Unique Assumptions of Nonviolent Communication

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) begins by assuming that we are all compassionate by nature and that violent strategies -- whether verbal or physical -- are learned behaviors taught and supported by the prevailing culture.

It also assumes that we all share the same basic human needs, and that all actions are strategies to meet one or more of these needs.

Source: "Key Facts about Nonviolent Communication," by PuddleDancer Press

When to Kill People to Increase the Peace

I've been doing some healing work lately as a result of an experience I had last May in St. Louis where I was held up at gunpoint by two young men late at night, in front of the home I was then living in.



My counselor was using a process known as EMDR, and what came forward in me during that process was a desire to physically beat those men who robbed me, and furthermore hurt them so bad that they could never threaten me, or anyone else, ever again.

I also remembered reading something by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, in response to the 9/11 attacks in New York City. I looked it up on his organization's website, and he wrote,

"To create short-term safety, we will need to protect ourselves from further threat. This may include actions taken in, what I call, the “protective use of force.” We may need to capture and imprison the perpetrators so that they cannot attack us again. And we may even have to kill some of them if we can't otherwise restrain them."

I resonated with this statement, and it gave me companionship to know that even a world-famous peacemaker would write such things.

For me, I am so committed to peaceable communities, and so dearly want all people to be able to live without fear of being attacked, killed, or otherwise oppressed, that I'm willing to consider anything to preserve safety and security... even if it means using force. Whatever force I have in my body. Including when my well-being is physically threatened, because I matter.

Now, it's important that I offer context for how I came to this -- I was in a semi-trance state, doing healing work about a very traumatic experience that I had.

Somehow, coming to the idea that I matter, and that I can use force to protect myself and preserve peace in my community... in my world... was extremely empowering.

I suspect it was part of my healing process, somehow.

Back to Dr. Rosenberg's statement quoted above -- to be fair, that paragraph was only a small part of his response letter to the 9/11 attacks, and most of the letter (as I understand it) was about the folly of retaliating with violence, and how important it is to use NVC principles when dealing with such incidents.

Nevertheless, I still honor how Marshall includes the use of force, in a protective manner (rather than punitive), as being consistent with nonviolence.

Back to me: I cannot fathom going out looking for trouble or looking for someone to attack -- it's beyond my imagination to do that. Yet, when I connect deeply with my desire for safety and well-being and survival, I find within me immense resources (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual) to create the kind of world that I want.