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“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

Most of our life is spent communicating with self and others.

Thinking, planning, sharing our thoughts, feelings, needs, making requests and understanding another person's feelings, needs and requests are essential for our development, wellbeing and success.

It is no wonder that difficulty with communication is the number one issue and is at the core of many other things that we struggle with.

How do Emotional Intelligence and Nonviolent Communication work together?

The use of the word ‘Nonviolent’ might imply that there is some sort of violence going on in the way we behave or speak.

The common understanding of violence involves fighting, bullying, beating, yelling, screaming, hurting, the type of things the ‘nice’ people do not do.

We believe that we are not violent or aggressive and in many ways, we are not.

Despite this belief, our emotions sometimes trigger us to react in a violent or aggressive way towards self or others.

Emotional intelligence (EI) or emotional quotient (EQ) is the capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a practical set of skills that supports the expression through language and communication of an Emotionally Intelligent person.

Nonviolent communication (NVC, also called compassionate communication, or Giraffe language) is a communication process developed by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960s and 70s. As many other self-help direction it is inspired by the so-called Humanistic psychology (see my article Humanistic psychology, self-help, and the danger of reducing religion to psychology).  

NVC often functions as a conflict resolution process. It focuses on two aspects of communication: honest self-expression (defined as expressing oneself in a way that is likely to inspire compassion in others) and empathy (defined as listening with deep compassion).

NVC is based on the idea that humans are innately compassionate, while violence (psychological and physical) is learned through culture. NVC theory supposes all human behaviour stems from attempts to meet a small set of human needs. Needs are believed never to be in conflict. Rather, conflict arises when strategies for meeting needs clash. NVC proposes that if people can identify the needs of others, and the feelings that surround the needs, harmony can be achieved.  

By attending the NVC training programme offered on this website, you develop Emotional Competence. You'll become skillful at understanding your own and other people’s feelings, emotions, words and actions and seeing things from their standpoint, which likely results in very few misunderstandings. 

You will develop empathy and compassion which are an essential part of good interpersonal skills. You can easily get a good sense of what others are thinking and will be able to adjust yourself accordingly when the people you’re conversing with seem confused or perhaps uncomfortable.

NVC advocates that, in order to cultivate a deeper understanding of each other, the parties should express themselves in objective and neutral terms, (preferring factual

observations about feelings and needs) rather than in judgmental terms (such as good versus bad, right versus wrong, or fair versus unfair). 

With the help of applied principles of NVC, a person successfully creates harmony within self and in relationships, and build lasting peace. NVC is used in interpersonal relationships, families, business and organizational environments, and in broader social change efforts. 

Training Programmes for Individuals and Organisations

By attending any of the training programmes offered on this website, you become skilful at understanding other people’s words and actions and seeing things from their standpoint, which likely results in very few misunderstandings.

You will develop empathy and compassion which are an essential part of good interpersonal skills and therefore, will do your best to place yourself in other people’s shoes in order to better understand them.

You can easily get a good sense of what others are thinking and will be able to adjust yourself accordingly when the people you’re conversing with seem confused or perhaps uncomfortable.

Meet our trainers

Camelia PETRUS,

PGDip. Psychology, Nonviolent Communication, NLP.

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