…give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” Luke 6:38
After learning how to make observations, express feelings, and recognize needs without analyzing, judging, criticizing or accusing others, we are now ready to learn how to make requests because by now we have created the ideal condition for these requests to be answered. When we are genuine, we open up and share with complete honesty what we observe, feel and need, this will more likely inspire compassion and empathy in others, and increase the likelihood that everyone’s needs will be met so that life will be more enjoyable for everyone.
In order to meet our needs, we make requests to assess how likely we are to get cooperation for the particular strategies we have in mind for meeting our needs. Our aim is to identify and express a specific action that we believe will serve this purpose, and then check with others for their willingness to participate in meeting our needs in this way.
Nonviolent Communication gives recommendations as to how this can be done to maximize the connection in relationships in order to increase the chance that the needs of all involved in the interaction will be met.
What is a request in NVC?
I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
This verse from the Gospel of Saint John suggests that we are at the same time indigent and part of a community. As social beings, our happiness, our well-being involves others. In fact, an integral and important part of our relationship with others are the requests that we implicitly or explicitly make of them. Rosenberg argues that 80% of our communication contains requests for either empathy or action.
In the context of Nonviolent Communication, a request is an opportunity to contribute to our own well-being and/or to the well-being of others. It consists of request for a specific action that has the purpose of satisfying a concrete need of ours or of others. For this to happen, it is necessary to be conscious of these current needs and know how to express them correctly.
When we make requests, we need to be prepared to hear a ‘no’. Since the ultimate goal of the Nonviolent Communication is for everyone to win, therefore in NVC, even a ‘no’ means a ‘yes’. We know far too well that a coerced “yes” to our request would be like a deadly gift that could inevitably result in a loss for both parties. Curiously enough, in the national language of Ethiopia there are two words for ‘yes’, “Au” and “Eshi”, and none for ‘no’; saying ‘no’ is considered bad manners in Ethiopia.
Wanting the other to contribute to the fulfillment of our needs without taking into account his, by denying them or even sacrificing them, is to make him a slave subservient to our will; this is not good for him and it cannot be good for us. Furthermore, such request would no longer be a request, but an order or a demand.
A “no” can be a response to our request, but what we hear is that the needs of the person we are speaking to are currently in conflict with ours, which is understandable and easily accepted because in NVC the needs of others are just as important as our own. Therefore, if we are in line with the philosophy of NVC, we never hear a “no”; what we hear instead are the feelings and needs that are preventing the other person from saying “yes” at that moment.
The spirit of request relies on our willingness to hear a “no” and to continue to work with ourselves or others to find ways to meet everyone’s needs. Whether we are making a request or a demand, this will often be evident from our response when our request is denied.
Demands force people to blind obedience, and their non compliance will lead to punitive consequences; whereas requests give the other person the freedom of choice and a “no” means a “yes” to some of the needs of the other person that are getting in the way; so, a denied request, most often, will simply lead to further dialogue.
If we trust that through empathic dialogue the needs of both parties can be acknowledged and fulfilled a “no” is simply a wake-up call to let us know that a “yes” to our request would be too costly to the other person which means, eventually in the end, to us too.
We recognize that a “no” is an expression of some needs that are preventing the other person from saying “yes”. If we trust that through dialogue we can find strategies to meet both of our needs, a “no” is simply an information to alert us that saying “yes” to our request may be too costly in terms of the other person’s needs. We can then continue to seek connection and understanding to allow additional strategies to arise that will work to meet more needs.
Therefore in NVC, what apparently seems to be an absolute "no" to meeting my needs, is in reality a "yes" to meeting the other person’s needs; since I love the other the way I love myself, his needs are as much my own as my needs; fundamentally, therefore, and from the point of view of NVC, all I hear is a "yes".
But what about my needs, those that prompted my request in the first place? What are we going to do about them? In his reply when he points out the reason (his needs) why he is unable to meet mine, he will ask whether it is okay for me to postpone my needs to a particular time in the near future.
If we are psychologically mature, and love the other as ourselves, we will accept this postponement in goodwill. If we do not, we will probably rebel like children who require the immediate gratification of their needs. The psychological ability to postpone the gratification and pleasure we derive from the fulfillment of our needs is evidence of psychological maturity as proven in the well know “Marshmallow Experiment”.
In this experiment, several children between the age of 4 and 5 were each given the opportunity to choose to either eat one treat immediately, or two treats after waiting for 15 minutes. The study followed the lives of these children over a period of some years, and it found that those who managed to delay the gratification by not eating the candy during the set 15 minutes, were more successful than those who failed to postpone their gratification.
Despite the violent way it is interpreted in Christianity which constantly emphasizes that the other has to come before me, that the other’s needs are more important than mine, and that I should put myself at the service of the other by neglecting myself, NVC suggests otherwise, that my needs should be met first. This is precisely the idea behind loving thy neighbor as thyself. If “violent Christian altruism” is correct, then the commandment should have been written the other way around: “Love thyself the way you love thy neighbor."
Now I understand something that has puzzled me each time I board a plane and am told that in the case of a sudden drop in cabin pressure, I should put on my oxygen mask first and only then attend to others. Following the "violent Christian altruism", I should first help others put on their masks and only after put on my own. If I did it in that order, however, I could very well lose consciousness while helping my neighbors put on their masks; the result would be catastrophic because not only would I perish but also all others whom I could have helped.
Charity begins at home. We can find many other examples similar to the one above; unlike in the western culture, in the Ethiopian culture, the breadwinners eat first and the children eat after. It may sound strange to us but in fact if a mother is breastfeeding a baby and she does not feed herself first then her baby is not going to be fed either. NVC suggests a win-win situation; if one wins all win, if one loses all lose.
If someone agrees to our request out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, or the desire for reward, this will compromise the quality of connection and trust between us. When we are able to express a clear request, we raise the likelihood that the person listening to us will experience choice in their response. As a consequence, while we may not gain immediate assent to our wishes, we are more likely to get our needs met over time because we are building trust that everyone’s needs matter. Within an atmosphere of such trust, goodwill increases, and with it a willingness to support each other in getting our needs met.
There are then two types of requests: request for connection and request for action. Requests for connection must precede those made for action because it is only after a connection has been established between the parties involved, that is, when a mutual understanding of feelings and needs of each one has been created, that solutions or ways to satisfy the needs of both are to be sought.
To go straight to solving problems without making sure that both parties are tuned to the same wavelength is a recipe for failure. The order of the communication is therefore connection first, solution after.
Requests for a greater connection, empathy and mutual understanding
At any given moment, it is our connection with others that determines the quality of their response to our request. Therefore, often our requests at the moment are “connection requests” intended to foster connection and understanding, that is, made to determine whether we have connected sufficiently to move to a “solution request.” An example of a connection request might be, “Would you tell me how you feel about this?” An example of a solution request might be, “Would you be willing to take your shoes off when you come into the house?” There are various ways of making requests to promote greater understanding between the two parties:
Request for understanding – To make sure that what we are expressing is correctly understood by the other, we can simply ask, “Could you tell me what you heard me say?”, that is, was my message received and understood just as I have sent it. We must never take for granted that we are able to express what we really want to express and that the other person interprets our words exactly as we interpret them.
To make sure that we are on the same wavelength, in NVC we ask the other person, “Would you please tell me what you have heard me say?” And if what we have said was not what the person understood, we can conclude, “I am grateful to you for telling me what you heard, and I can see that I did not express myself as clearly as I’d have liked, so let me try again.”
Request for empathy – “How do you feel about what I told you?” We may be understanding at the level of thoughts, but not at the level of feelings; feelings, however, tell more about a person than thoughts, for this reason to connect at the level of feelings is extremely important, so to be able to formulate a request for action.
Request for time-out – “I find myself confused and would like some time to think.” This type of request is made to avoid saying more than we would like. Nonviolent Communication is not as automatic as violent communication; to react and communicate from our reptilian brain is easy and fast, but to connect with our rational brain is more difficult and requires more time.
Requests for action, solution or strategies to fulfill needs
Requests for action must be made in the present for the present and not future. They must be concrete and specific, not vague or ambiguous; in addition, they must be expressed using positive action words and verbs, not negative ones, they must be doable and realistic, not abstract.
Present versus future – A request should not be made to be fulfilled vaguely sometimes in the future. For example, “Could you wash my car tomorrow?” or “Promise me now that you’ll wash the car tomorrow afternoon”; the car is to be washed tomorrow afternoon, but today I obtain the commitment that this will be done. A bird in hand is worth more than one hundred flying.
Concrete versus vague and ambiguous – “I would like you to respect my privacy” is an ambiguous request because it can refer to many things so it is not realistic nor doable; instead, we can ask, “I’d like you to agree with me that you’ll knock before entering my office”. This is a request for a concrete action that can be done and that contributes to respecting privacy, or has this as its final goal.
Positive versus negative – Ask for what you want and not what you do not want. Oftentimes, for fear of asking directly what we want, we formulate our request using negative language, that is, we say what we do not want the other to do in the hope that the other reads between the lines and guesses what we really want him to do.
This strategy can easily backfire as is the case of the next example that Rosenberg writes in his book: a woman wishing that her husband would spend more time with her at home, asked him not to spend so much time at work; some weeks later, he came home and announced that he had signed up for a golf tournament! We should, therefore, make request of what we want and not of what we do not want.
Doable and realistic versus abstract – In addition to ambiguity, many of our requests are abstract because they do not refer to something concrete that can be done immediately, but to something that has more to do with attitude than with acts. For example, “I would like you to accept me as I am” refers to an attitude rather than a concrete act. It can be replaced by, “Can you give me an example of something that I do that you like?”
Express requests, not issue demands
The goal of NVC is to create a commendable empathy and mutual understanding so that it allows us to give to each other compassionately and from the heart. Anyone who thinks that the goal is to change the behaviour of others or to make others do what we want, is outside the spirit and philosophy of NVC.
In fact, from the moment the other realizes our determination and obstinacy to get what we want, he will see our request not as a request but as a demand that is more or less camouflaged as a request.
When the person making the request does not accompany his request by expressing his feelings and needs, it is more likely to be received as a demand and not as a request. Demands include threats of punishment or promises of rewards, and the use of fear, guilt, shame and manipulation to obtain submission or compliance.
Requests are received as demands when those who hear them believe that they will be called to account or punished if they do not comply. Requests lead to cooperation, while demands provoke resistance. Following a demand there are only two options: submission or rebellion; both are very costly and wreak havoc on interpersonal relationships.
The perception of a request as coercive will immediately diminish the possibility of a compassionate response; the more people hear demands from us, the less they like to associate with us.
Sometimes it is not easy to differentiate a request from a demand; a good test to know whether a question was expressed as a demand or as a request is to see the reaction of the other person to a “no”. If the respond to a “no” is an argument, a threat or a criticism then a demand was issued and not a request. Let’s look at the response of a “no” in the following dialogue:
-“I feel lonely, could you spend the night with me?”
-“Not tonight, I’m very tired.”
-“If you really loved me, and seeing how lonely I’m feeling, you’d spent the night with me.”
The appropriate use of the fourth component of NVC is a proof that we are assimilating well the three previous components and are able to contribute to our and others’ well-being, enriching the lives of all. Choosing to make requests rather than demands means that we are more focused on the quality of the connection we want to build with others than in the fulfillment of our current needs.
NVC in action
Observation – You said that you’ll only have the report ready by next week.
Feeling – I am feeling frustrated and worried.
Need/Value – It is important to me to meet the deadlines so to improve the efficiency of the company.
Request for action – Could you tell me what the problem is, and what can be done so the report is finished by 4:00pm tomorrow?
Observation – You returned the car to me with the gas tank empty.
Feeling – I am feeling irritated.
Need/Value – I need the car to get to work tomorrow.
Request for action – Could you fill up the gas tank tonight?
Observation – You said that you’d like to go out dancing tonight.
Feeling – But I feel tired and stressed.
Need/Value – I need to rest and relax.
Request for connection – How do you feel about what I just said to you?
In addition to building greater empathy and understanding in relationships, ironically, NVC is also the only way by which the needs of all can be met voluntarily, compassionately and from the heart without additional cost to anyone.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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