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Gewaltfreie Kommunikation

·266 words·2 mins·
Books
Author
Markus Ongyerth

Summary
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Gewaltfreie Kommunikation is part of the larger nonviolent communication world.

The book gives an introduction to the concepts of nonviolent communication. Unsurprisingly, this mostly covers topics of communication. The focus is put on understanding before convincing. This comes from a principled approach to communication that needs understanding as a basic element of getting to any result.

In a quite related manner, it’s necessary to keep the communication partner in their own comfort zone and avoid attacking them. This attacking is not just intentional violence, but can be simple things like interrogation tactics.

Most of the book resonates quite well with the corporate communication training I’ve received, but I consider NVC as the most focused and complete work for these methods. OTOH, part of the claim to glory is communication efforts in the middle east. Which currently betrays itself as being at best short lived peace.

Main Takeaway
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Communication needs to happen on shared understanding of not just vocabulary but also world-view. I.e. while it’s often obvious when words have different meanings to people and therefore lead to break downs in communication, there’s a similar possibility of misunderstandings based on different values.

This often results in discussions at a higher level than the actual disagreement is at. This can materialize in mundane things like whether something looks good being related to preferences around colour. Up to quite relevant highly impactful topics.

Whether it’s in the workplace, where e.g. differences in previously felt pain leads to different preferred solutions that avoid the specific pain. Or personal topics that result in quite diametrical politics.