At Pismo, we want to be certain that we communicate with each other in a productive and friendly way. So we invited the specialists Jade Arantes and Flávia Amorim, from Instituto CNV Brasil, to talk about Nonviolent Communication to our team.
American psychologist Marshall Rosenberg first proposed Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in the 1960s. It is a method to increase empathy and improve the quality of life of those who utilise it and the people around them. NVC helps us ensure that interactions among coworkers are satisfactory for all the participants.
In her presentation about NVC, Jade Arantes discussed the fact that, in work meetings, sometimes a person feels disqualified by another participant — even if it isn’t the other person’s intention. One of the causes of this problem is the assumptions each person makes even before the conversation starts:
“If we imagine we are biting a lemon, our mouth salivates. This illustrates the power of the imagination. If we take part in a meeting imagining that another person doesn’t value our work, whatever they say, we will probably feel disqualified.”
“Human necessities motivate our behaviour. All our actions are attempts to fulfil our needs. If we replace our imaginary lemons with a genuine effort to understand the other person’s needs, we can connect to them and create collaborative relationships,” she added.
According to Flavia Amorim, clarity is a requisite to cordial communications. We must talk in a way that does not allow misunderstandings so that we can prevent unnecessary conflicts: “Things that seem to be obvious to a person may not be so obvious to another person. Many conflicts happen because ‘obvious’ things are not asserted.”
Promoting NVC is a continuous endeavour. So we are always looking for new ways to improve communication aiming to have a healthy work environment.
