- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
- by
- Read: Sep 12, 2015
This has been recommended by many people I work with as a wonderful resource about positive human communication. And as - especially in a growing engineering org - communication is one of the most important skills to try to master, I decided to finally read this one. It’s a very interesting book with an approach to communication that is rarely taught especially not to men. It focuses on a collaborative rather than a competitive style of communication and the goal to reach agreements over winning arguments. The examples in the book are often pretty extreme coming from the author’s work as a diplomat. And even though those are great to demonstrate how this way of communicating can work in the most extreme cases, it also shifts its focus a lot on explicit diplomatic style discussions. There are more examples that are more directed towards every day situations and even though the author is very explicit about this being useful in regular work meetings as well, I had a very hard time understanding how to practically apply those lessons in a meeting for example. That being said however it made me think a lot more about the way I communicate and what I’m saying versus what I want to say. I have also applied that way of communicating successfully at least once since reading the book. And I look forward to try it out more.