The Future of NVC Mediation
Where We Have Been, Where We Are, Where
We Might Go
By Ike Lasater
With Julie Stiles
When I was on the board of CNVC, a position I held for 6 years, I noticed that people wanted to contribute to the growth and expansion of NVC in the world, and no one articulated a clear road map of what that growth might look like and how people could contribute. This is not necessarily a problem; when people are motivated and spend enough time in the community it becomes obvious what their role is and what they can do. However, for many people there is a certain stage when it can be a real support to have someone, like myself, write down one vision for how NVC and NVC mediation can grow and change and affect the world, and the possible roles people can take on to help that vision become a reality. This article is my first attempt at floating a mental model of how I see the expansion of NVC mediation occurring and the different roles I envision people taking on to support that expansion. I welcome comments and additions to this vision; I see it not as my vision, but a vision that I invite others to help shape and clarify and hold, as it will take all of us to bring it into being.
I would like to start with my vision of NVC mediation, how I
would like to see it develop and the role I would like to see it play in the
world.
I envision NVC and NVC mediation as household words; the
general public knows about their potential and how to access the knowledge when
needed through a broad base of grassroots stakeholders. Communities have people
available with NVC skills ready to respond to local issues, whether through
restorative justice, group decision making to resolve community dilemmas, or
mediating conflicts between individuals. NVC is utilized in schools to resolve
conflicts in a way that children grow up with knowledge of the distinctions and
how to communicate with others.
NVC mediation is a known, accepted, and highly valued
profession within the larger profession of mediation and conflict resolution.
This means all the trappings of a profession are in place: a community of NVC
mediators sustaining themselves doing the work full time and furthering the
collective knowledge; professional support opportunities for those in the
community in the form of conferences, regional and international networks; and
a wealth of support materials such as a periodical journal, books, and
newsletters. The profession is worldwide, with mediators practicing in all
languages.
NVC and NVC mediation are well known and valued in the halls
of leadership on a global scale, and are the first choice for those in power.
NVC mediators or people versed in NVC hold key positions in both government and
the private sector around the world, ready to respond to the many challenges I
see befalling us in the future, such as conflicts over population growth,
climate change, and resources.
NVC provides the first choice for resolution of issues,
whether those issues are individual, local, national, or international in
scope. Due to the prevalence of NVC in culture at large, people in conflict with
others see the possibilities of connection and resolution and are willing to
work towards that outcome instead of resorting to more automatic and
destructive responses. As a result, communities and nations are more peaceful
and enormous energy is released that we direct to continuing to improve the
quality of life.
If this is one version of a vision of NVC mediation, where
are we now and how do we work towards turning this vision into a reality? IÕd
like to start with taking note of where I see that we currently are in the
evolution of NVC mediation and how we came to be here, then look more at what
we are currently doing and the many roles I see that others might play to help
further the possibility of NVC making a difference in the world on a large scale.
Where are
we?
Marshall Rosenberg developed NVC over the last four decades, and began both applying it and offering NVC training. In these trainings, he often demonstrated the application of NVC for people who are in conflict. Many people who witnessed these demonstrations began seeing a new hope and possibility for resolving conflicts in a way that restored the community through each person getting connected with their deepest motivations.
The general pattern with any new system or idea is that after
the innovator comes up with the model (and sometimes begins applying it),
others get enrolled in its possibility and begin to apply the innovation in
diverse situations. NVC, of course, has a wide application; MarshallÕs coverage
of mediation is a small percentage of the topics he covers in workshops. NVC
mediation is not an area that he has invested the central part of his career
in, nor has he focused his efforts in teaching people how to mediate or train
others in mediation. Some of us who have witnessed his demonstration of
resolving conflicts and are interested have begun the task of applying NVC to
mediation.
We are still in the first and second generations of people
attempting to take what theyÕve seen Marshall do on the stage in a workshop and
apply that to the day-to-day mediation world. The current practitioners of NVC
mediation are in fact still developing what NVC mediation is. In addition, a
few of us are developing ways to train others to mediate using NVC.
To put this in some context, IÕd like to share my own
history of learning to mediate using NVC. IÕve been practicing NVC mediation
since 2002, but the way I learned to mediate using NVC is certainly not an
effective or efficient pedagogical method. When I first began to learn NVC, I
was coming from 20 years as a trial lawyer, during which time I had been in
hundreds of settlement conferences and mediations. When I saw Marshall
demonstrate resolving a conflict on the stage, I had never witnessed anything
like it in my many years as a lawyer. I wanted to be a part of what I saw
happen. I began to see a possibility, dim though it was at first, that what I
saw happen to people when they worked with Marshall was something I could be a
part of daily as a professional mediator. It touched my heart in a way that no
settlement conference ever had; it was incredibly satisfying to see the
transformation that happened with people, and I could imagine nothing more
nurturing and fulfilling than to be able to contribute to creating that for
others.
Well, what I saw happen on the stage did not happen the
first few times I tried to apply it in the real world! At that point I began to
deconstruct what I had seen on stage. While I realized that some of the results
that Marshall achieved in demonstrations had to do with his skill and
experience, I also saw that there were a lot of preconditions that were
embedded in the context. For example, the people participating had sat through
his presentation on NVC, had learned his terminology and seen his approach, and
perhaps had already seen a demonstration. They also were intensely motivated
and in agreement to participate, and were in front of a whole audience,
sometimes hundreds of people, with the expectation that something was going to
happen. This creates a completely different context from what we deal with in
the everyday mediation world. I was prompted to begin thinking about how we
could create what happened the workshop context by using different strategies
that would work for the real world mediation context. This, for me, began the
process of delineating what NVC mediation could be and how to practice it as a
professional mediator.
I then began offering training in NVC mediation, along with
my colleague John Kinyon. John and I have been offering trainings for seven
years now, finding ways to break down the expertise of using NVC to mediate
conflicts into layers so that it can be taught. I only know of a handful of
people who are offering NVC trainings around the world. Undoubtedly there
are more. I am looking forward to finding out who they are and meeting
them.
In general, then, weÕre at the early stages in the evolution
of NVC mediation. We are still developing NVC mediation as a profession,
feeling our way forward in terms of how as practitioners to make a living doing
this work. We are trying to become better known in the broader community, both
the mediation community as well as the general public. Finally, as trainers, we
are still learning how to train others to be able to mediate using this method.
Working
Toward the Vision
To move toward the vision of what NVC mediation could be, we are doing many things at once:
¯ Increasing public awareness of NVC
mediation so that there will be more clients who want disputes mediated using
our methods
¯ Expanding the number of practitioners of
NVC mediation (training practitioners)
¯ Creating more trainers of NVC mediation
(training trainers)
¯ Creating professional support and
continuing learning opportunities for both practitioners and trainers
IÕll
discuss a little more about the efforts we are undertaking in these areas.
Increasing
Public Awareness
At this point, writing is the main focus to increase public awareness of NVC. The hope is to get the word out to the general public so that they become familiar with the terminology of NVC, and see how they can benefit by choosing an NVC mediator. In addition, we are reaching out to the mediation community through articles to broaden the connections with the larger profession of conflict resolution. Liev Larsson has recently written a book on NVC mediation that is being translated into German, English, and Polish, and John Kinyon and I are in the midst of writing a book that we hope to have published in 2011. I, along with Julie Stiles, have written and continue to write articles that are available on my website (WordsThatWork.us), Mediate.com and CNVC.org.
Training
Practitioners and Trainers
My personal goal in terms of training others to mediate is
to have practitioners and trainers working in the five most spoken languages in
the world within five years. These languages are Mandarin, English, Spanish,
Hindi, and Arabic, though of course people speaking any language are welcome. I
would like to have more and more NVC mediators in all parts of the world
sustaining themselves doing this work, and growing personally and developing
their skills with ever more challenging disputes, so they will be ready to
respond to the looming challenges coming in the next decade or two. When I
think ahead to what is coming, I feel an urgency to have more people practicing
NVC mediation and more people training others to practice it.
For me, it has been around an eight-year process of trial and error to begin to have confidence as a practitioner, and toward the end of that time I also began learning how to train others to be practitioners. John Kinyon and I find that in our trainings, depending on the skills and life experience people bring to the training, it takes between 18 months and three years to be highly skilled and confident as a practitioner of NVC mediation. When people begin who are already NVC certified trainers or have other mediation experience, it often is within a year that they are confident and beginning to help train others in the approach that John and I have developed.
The current training model that John Kinyon and I use is
based on a year-long training program. People can attend for multiple years in
a kind of tiered learning. At first, people in our trainings are really
learning how to mediate their livesÑhow to apply the principles of NVC and NVC
mediation to their internal conflicts and their conflicts with other people.
When they become somewhat versed in mediating their lives, people then might
take on the additional challenge of lending their skills to others who are in
conflictÑin essence they become mediators or practitioners. Finally, when they
become more confident and skilled at being able to mediate conflicts between
others, they might take on the additional role of training others to mediate. I
see these as nested roles; the trainer is also a practitioner who is also
mediating their own lives.
When someone comes into the training with no experience with
NVC or mediation, it might take them three years to fully embody these three
roles; the first year they learn the basics of how to mediate their lives, in
the second year they enhance their skills as practitioners who lend their
skills to others, and if they so choose, in the third year they learn to train
others. Of course, depending on their previous experience and skills someone
may move through the training much more quickly. The training is designed so
that someone can always dial their learning to where they are at their learning
edge all the way through the training.
At this time John and I can support four year long
programs in different places around the world. Right now we have programs
starting in the western and eastern US, Australia, and Poland. I would like to
have many more training programs happening than I am able to do. My commitment
is to provide training in an area for three consecutive years. During that
time, I and the other trainers request for people to self-select to enter the
trainer track. In the training we then provide support to those participants
who are interested in training others besides mediating their lives and
developing their skills as practitioners. After the three years (or at whatever
point they are ready), the folks who have self-selected to be in the trainer
track will then take over the one year training program in their area and
further proliferate the training. What I see myself doing, then, is seeding
more of these programs in more areas and languages, personally only staying in
one area long enough to establish practitioners and trainers.
Providing
Professional Support
To begin supporting those professionals in the field
currently, we are helping to connect people and develop resources. At this
stage there are a number of practitioners around the world, and many of them
are beginning to aggregate to form a loose community. One of the places people
can hook into this community is through the NVC Mediation group on Facebook.[1]
We are also working on the first international NVC mediation conference, which
is scheduled for October 2009 in Warsaw, Poland.
Developing resources at all levels is another important
aspect of professional support. I mentioned earlier the writing that has been
done to increase public awareness, but we are also writing articles for
practitioners and developing training manuals so that trainer candidates can
more quickly and with greater ease and confidence begin training without having
to develop materials themselves.
We are using the open source model for these training
manuals; rather than trying to copyright or limit their use, we prefer to promote
their use with the condition that anything developed from them will also be
made available to people under the same open source terms. We want people to be
collaborating on these manuals and sharing materials and best practices with
others. This, we believe, is the best way to grow the profession. At times,
after an innovator creates the model, either when it grows to a certain point
or the innovator is no longer around, the model or method splits into a number
of factions, sometimes these factions even turn against each other in their
belief that theirs is the one true way. Perhaps this is inevitable, but we hope
that with the open source model for training materials that we can maintain a
sense of collaboration and sharing as the profession of NVC mediation grows.
How You Can
Contribute
IÕve already covered some of the roles that a person might
take on if the vision I have outlined speaks to them; let me just summarize the
ones IÕve mentioned and then expand on some other areas where I see that folks
could contribute.
First, itÕs a huge contribution to have people go through
our training program who are simply interested in mediating their lives. When
people take on this practice, they can affect many people around them as they
work internally and lend their skills in informal ways to others. Anyone who
has taken an interest in NVC and is mediating their lives might eventually
introduce NVC to their community. For a teacher to introduce it to the school
they work in, or a manager to introduce it in their workplace is an invaluable
service, especially if training is then organized for those interested to learn
for themselves. As mentioned, we would also like many more people to become
practitioners of NVC mediation, using their skills to formally mediate
conflicts and lending their skills in their area of work, as well as some of
these people becoming trainers.
Another crucial function is for organizers for the
trainings; the unsung heroes of NVC trainings are the people who use their NVC
mediation skills to create the training. ItÕs an opportunity not only to
contribute to bringing this training to their area, but also to take on the
commitment of utilizing the skills they are learning in the process of
communicating with others to put on the training. This role is a crucible for
developing and honing NVC mediation skills in a very practical way.
At the same time as trying to train more mediators, we need
to find more ways to get the word out so that those mediators have clients who
want this form of mediation. We encourage other people to write about their
experiences as a way of letting the broader public know about NVC mediation.
The more people who write about their experiences mediating their own lives and
lending their skills to others in conflict the better, whether in the form of
online articles and blogs or through print media. Practitioners and trainers
can also be writing about their experiences as a way to share knowledge among
others in the community and the wider conflict resolution community, and as
enough material is generated to support a professional journal, people will be
needed to coordinate the creation of content as well as edit and publish it.
In addition, there are many more kinds of content that could
be developed at all levels. Ideally, besides written content such as articles,
books, and manuals, it would be great to have multi-media content available,
utilizing video and audio as well as the many interactive opportunities
provided by the web. Those folks more versed in these areas than I could
probably come up with interesting ideas to further the spread of NVC using
these tools.
Though we are at the very beginning stages currently, as the
professions of NVC mediator and trainer grow, the support community will
hopefully also grow. Professional associations and conferences need
organization, and we need people willing to take on leadership roles to create
and maintain these forms of professional support. Since the community is
global, the relatively new medium of social networking may prove to be an
important feature of ensuring communication flow among members, and people
versed in the effective use of this form are welcome to help out in this area.
Although I have experienced the efficacy of NVC personally
and professionally, I recognize the importance of scientific research in
providing the necessary rigor to establish the effectiveness of the methods
used. We need institutions and researchers willing to take on this type of
research and publish their findings.
Last but not least, an important aspect of incorporating anything new into culture is through the arts. Artists can often comment and critique society as well as offer solutions in creative ways that get past peopleÕs defenses; though I know no examples currently, I would welcome seeing NVC principles in some way emerge through novels or visual arts. I would also love to see people finding creative ways to incorporate NVC into the entertainment side of media as well; a powerful way to introduce and insinuate the promise of NVC into the general public would be to incorporate it into TV and radio shows. For example, IÕve long had an idea for a reality TV show based on conflict resolution using NVC. It is incredibly engrossing to observe real life conflicts being facilitated in a way where connection and resolution result; to have a reality show that enlightens society as it entertains would be a nice change from the usual reality fare.
Conclusion
IÕm sure there are many more functions people could play in helping the spread of NVC; I have merely tried to outline a few that I see in the hopes that it stimulates discussion and encourages those of you who are new to the community to see ways that you can contribute. No matter what your background, experience, and interests are, if the vision of a more peaceful world, where everyone has access to the skills that help create connection and satisfying resolution to conflicts, speaks to you, there is a way for you to help make this vision a reality. At whatever level you want to become involvedÑwhether through learning to mediate your life, becoming a professional in the community, taking on a leadership role in creating structures that perpetuate the spread of NVC, or bringing NVC to the halls of governanceÑplease find a way to contribute your knowledge and skills. The more of us that get involved and work together, the quicker we can turn the vision into reality.
What do you want your contribution to be?