the requests all sound very passive aggressive to me. eg, “ would you be willing to only eat the food that you buy?”
The characteristic of true passive-aggressive responses is to avoid direct confrontation, to mask conflict. For example, maybe by making a "joke" ("How's that food of mine that you're eating?") or by saying that somethings okay but not really meaning it ("I totally don't mind that you're eating all my food") or various other techniques.
Well, it's the Marine Corps. It ain't a rose garden.[1][2]
>>>full of backstabbing jerks
Actually quite the contrary. If anything we are well-known for our solidarity.[3] Assuming there aren't issues due to rank/the command hierarchy, most personal disagreements are handled face-to-face. People try to stiff-arm work responsibilities off to other offices but I think that is endemic to any ridiculously large and sluggish bureaucratic organization.
>>> Am I misunderstand you?
I think so.
It's a work culture that is optimized for conditions of 100% stress, where people's lives are at stake. We have a communication system and culture that is built to support the worst conditions, and honed over 225+ years. Even though we spend 99% of our time at, say, 10% stress levels in an office environment, it's easier to "dial down" our methods rather than "dial up" something less robust.
NVC strikes me as the sort of methodology designed and tested for a 5% stress office environment. If you attempted to employ it in the most critical communications scenario (arguably a contested beach assault), it would be an utter failure. Based on the OP's link, Steps #2 and #4 are the biggest failure points IMO.
"How do you feel about NOT retreating away from your objective?" "What are your thoughts on possibly doing a frontal attack on that machinegun nest?"
We would end the day all face-down in pools of our own blood trying to communicate like that.
Now, one might be inclined to retort that as our organization has a selection process that weeds out those who can't handle 100% stress, there is an inherent bias in the viability of our methods to integrate with the regular civilian workforce. But the counter-examples are our on-site contractors, some of which have NO military experience. Most of them still integrate just fine. Not all though:
IT Contractor A: A direct speaker. About 40yo. Also a jiu-jitsu purple belt. Kinda a "quiet badass". Fits in well.
IT Contractor B: A smarmy, weaselly character. Late 20's. Can't handle people speaking harshly.
These two had an exchange that essentially went like this:
Contractor A: "Hey I need X. And it's a time-sensitive priority."
Contractor B: "Could you possibly ask nicer next time?"
Contractor A: "Could you possibly do your job next time?"
Then Contractor A came back to the office and shared the story, to which pretty much everyone, from the 19yo Lance Corporals to 35+ guys felt "OMFG, sometimes I wanna throat-punch that dude (B). Ask nicer? WTF? Like people are gonna be asking nice for things if Chinese ballistic missiles are ever raining down on us? Does he not know where he is? If he can't handle it he should go back to hiding in an office in Northern Virginia."
We would go on to have numerous problems with Contractor B, most of them stemming from his "feelings". I'm not gonna go onto a rant about direct-vs-indirect counseling methods and some additional leadership anecdotes/case studies though. Hopefully that added some clarity.
[1]https://donshomette.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/rose1.png?w=...
[2]https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQJOCLU...
[3]https://www.forbes.com/sites/donesmond/2014/11/13/marines-ta...
It strikes me that the military way of doing things, while appropriate in battle, might have downsides for those who end up flying desks. In particular if people are so accustomed to taking orders, how do you know whether or not you have an optimal balance of command versus information flowing upwards and initiative from subordinates? And does the authoritarian system produce good enough people in the highest ranks, or might top brass skills be better if they weren't so shaped by it themselves?
I guess you don't have to deal with longer term burnout issues as most people leave by the time they're 40.
I once read that the "Mad Men" business culture of the 60's, much of which is now considered "toxic", was largely built by WW2 and Korean War veterans. Guys who had spent years in those traumatizing battles had a unique perspective on work and communication that perhaps hasn't aged well for everyone else. Wish I could dig up a link to that....
>>>In particular if people are so accustomed to taking orders, how do you know whether or not you have an optimal balance of command versus information flowing upwards and initiative from subordinates?
1. The commander sets and disseminates alerts called "Commander's Critical Information Requirements" (CCIRs). These are key pieces of information that EVERYONE should be on the look-out for, and route up the chain as soon as possible. This is stuff that the commander considers to have great effect on his decision-making, possibly leading him to pursue a different course of action.
2. Mission-type orders.[1] This is where subordinates exercise their initiative. A commander tells you WHAT he wants done, you figure out HOW to do it best. You are usually only given a few hard restrictions on what not to do, but that's typically only to prevent things like fratricide or potentially screwing up the bigger plan. With mission-type orders, subordinate leaders are understood to be closer to the problem, and therefore better positioned to solve it quickly and efficiently.
>>>And does the authoritarian system produce good enough people in the highest ranks, or might top brass skills be better if they weren't so shaped by it themselves?
That's a very tough issue that the military is grappling with. Arguments have been made that career progression is too rigidly defined. General Petraeus said he had a highly unusual professional education and career path, contrary to the conventional wisdom of "how to get promoted". There's been numerous articles painting most US generals as "optimistic but otherwise mediocre yes-men".[2] The Air Force struggles with the "Fighter Mafia" because all of their leadership is men who spent most of their adult lives flying fighter jets, and they throw shade on pretty much every other priority or mission set. The promotion system worked when there were fewer "moving parts", fewer specializations. But with the explosion in complexity of warfare, both from a technical-level (UAVs, electronic warfare, cyber security, etc..) and from an operations perspective (full spectrum operations and the Three-Block War[3]).....guys who have spent 20 years just doing infantry work find themselves with some limitations in their professional experience. Especially considering how many of them were selected in the first place, when they were brand-new officers: cardio-respiratory endurance and "cultural fit", mostly. This is partly because the military, and the Marine Corps in particular, considers everyone an equally-competent generalist. It was probably true in 1945 but not today. Perfect example:
Me: "We're making changes to the Sharepoint site for the training exercise. It's gonna be heavier and eat up more bandwidth."
My (tank-driving) boss: "Is that gonna impact our...spectrum?" [context: the new General at the time was harping on the importance of EM signature management]
Me: "No Sir, because for this exercise all of that Sharepoint network traffic will be going over the fibre optic links in the ground, not over the air via our radio antennas or satellite links."
My tanker boss wasn't a dumb guy. But he has no formal education in electrical engineering, radio theory, etc... You can't just drop a white paper in his lap[4], and expect him to speak intelligently on the subject the next day. Especially at 50+ years old. He would just drop "...spectrum?" into conversations randomly whenever I mentioned a technical issue (which was often). Now, we do have very senior technical specialists, but they are almost never the operations officers or commanders of major combat formations. They play a support role, and rightfully so. Everything exists to SUPPORT Operations, which is almost always (infantry/armor/artillery). But how those Ground Combat leaders have been prepared for even 4th-generation warfare leaves a lot to be desired, IMO...
>>>I guess you don't have to deal with longer term burnout issues as most people leave by the time they're 40.
Our burnout timeline is simply accelerated. I've seen mid-career professionals (early 30's) with combat deployments burnt out in under 3 years at high op-tempo units. Talent management in the military is completely broken[5, pg6 of PDF]. The military has a 3-year work location rotation for most people, which means every summer we suffer ~30% turnover in personnel, which wrecks your local-level institutional experience and proficiency. There are certain multi-national military exercises we do annually and you see the same mistakes/friction points EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. As you said, most people quit around ~40yo....but Colonels and Generals usually need 20-25yrs to get promoted. So your senior leaders aren't necessarily the best...merely those who could endure the soul-grinding brutality of the system the longest.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics
[2]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War
[4]https://tinyurl.com/yym2vlpv
[5]https://news.usni.org/2019/07/17/gen-bergers-strategic-guida...
On the topic of Critical Information Requirements and Mission-type orders: sure, in either military or civilian settings a manager can request information and delegate tasks, and any particular decision will end up being made at a particular level which may or may not be optimal. Perhaps NVC affects those decision levels, perhaps it doesn't; other management practices and org structure will surely have an influence. And what about deeper aspects like defining which questions are valid to ask in the first place, and which ones we want to focus on asking? I'm reminded of a recent article which said that the role of a CEO is primarily to set a culture - they aren't optimally placed even for high level strategic decisions so have to settle with generating the context in which those are made.
Are flatter hierarchies more effective as the problem space gets more complex? How does direct vs nonviolent communication style interact with all this? I wonder if anyone knows, I certainly don't.
I remember asking a vet what the communication style was in the military and he said, "Someone who outranks you tells you what to do and there is always someone who outranks you." Now, I don't know how representative that is of the military as a whole, but it got me thinking: how would that vet respond if he were to tell his wife what to do and she said no?
I say this because maybe in the high-stress, high-urgency situation with a hierarchical organizational structure, NVC doesn't work well, but perhaps it would work better in the lower-stress, lower-urgency situation with a flatter organizational structure, and that it could be useful to speak the two languages, so to say.
--
However, I think something like NVC could work in your workplace, as it seems like you showed it in that example.
> Contractor A: "Hey I need X. And it's a time-sensitive priority."
Sounds pretty much like NVC to me, just a much more efficient version of it. The thing you need (X), when you need it (~now), with an implicit ask of will you do it.
> Contractor B: "Could you possibly ask nicer next time?"
This sounds pretty far from the style of NVC. Jumps straight to the request step and buries the feelings and wants in the "possibly ask nicer" phrase.
If I were Contractor B, I would love if Contractor A spoke to me like that and would only wish Contractor A added, "Will you do it now?" at the end of it, so that I could close the transaction in the affirmative.
If A didn't ask (or directly tell me to do it) and I felt unsure if A wanted me to do it and when exactly to do it, then I might reply with, "I'm a bit confused, do you want me to do this and if so, by when do you want it done?" However, depending on how well I know the person and how they communicate, this may be unnecessary.
Anyway, I love this—thank you for writing all that you did and for bringing your perspective to the conversation :-)
It's very accurate. ^_^
>>>but it got me thinking: how would that vet respond if he were to tell his wife what to do and she said no?
You have to foster "buy in". That's when leadership uses charisma to convince personnel to internalize the importance of the unit's mission. The husband needs the wife's participation in executing a task, that she should take ownership of her piece of the puzzle, in order to benefit them both. As a team. Shoulder-to-shoulder against the world. Hmmmmm, actually since you brought up relationship communication, the NVC process makes me think of parallels with some PUA principles and techniques....
>>>but perhaps it would work better in the lower-stress, lower-urgency situation with a flatter organizational structure, and that it could be useful to speak the two languages, so to say.
I think I understand your insights and comments on the scenario I posted. It's possible the key factor is the flatter organizational structure in many business environments, or cultures with less-transparent power structures (many Japanese businesses have a "soft power" leadership that isn't the official manager, for example).
It is easy to keep clear communication when there are no real stakes and positions at stake. Learned that hard way, in teams where communication looked good and mature and direct until power vaacuum happened.
Body language, tone and cadence all affect how this request is understood.
Words read on a screen are often filtered through your presumptions of the writer's tone, rather than the actual tone that was meant.
Passive aggressiveness is an indirect action/inaction to get your way.
Is this not indirectly saying: "Stop eating my (or other people's) food"?
This can certainly be construed as passive aggressive.
Edit: To add, I would prefer the direct approach. I hate the word dancing that goes on with trying to soften the tone. It comes off as patronizing to me.
The person could say "Yes" and then nothing will change, because this is not a "direct ask" to them in the first place.
For example, the other person could respond with "Yes, I would if you clean the kitchen after making food".
That's the way I feel when people use it on me.
The appearance of caring about my feelings, the apparent empathy, is only a facade. The other party doesn't care about my feelings, they care about my compliance. The apparent care for my feelings is motivated by their belief that presenting themselves as empathetic will make my compliance more likely.
The overall experience is dehumanizing.
How would you have phrased (empathetically) the ask that someone stop eating your food? Let's pretend you're asking me.
If I wanted to, I could take anything you say the wrong way. NVC is generally good for avoiding most of the easy pitfalls.
They're approaching the conversation with a goal-oriented mindset, where engineering circumstances that result in my compliance is a puzzle they've been tasked with solving.
That covers everything from persuasion to manipulation to managing to parenting.
I doubt that this is actually your criterion, because in the course of a single week you will approach a conversation in a goal oriented way many times. Every human does this unconsciously. People who claim they don't just don't realize that they do.
I'm explicitly pushing you on this point because you have yet to make any suggestions for how to actually construct what to say. It's like if I asked an engineer how they would implement a sorting algorithm and they stopped their answer at "I would make sure it satisfied the requirements of the problem." That answer doesn't require you to put real stakes on the table.
Everyone I have ever asked had their own framework. What's yours? How would you actually do it?
> it feels like they are treating me like a cog in the machine that needs adjusting.
You’re using the NVC pattern in this comment, almost exactly. It’s very close. The part missing is where you suggest a course of action. How would you like to be treated?
Suggested course of action: stop talking to people using modes of communication you learned at corporate seminars.
As you said, NVC is good for 'forcing people to do something they don’t want.'
I’m not sure why the “not a friend” part comes into it. Most people I talk to are not my friends. When people who aren’t friends treat me like a friend, it is creepy and alarming.
Feel free to substitute "friend" with "somebody you treat pleasantly with the typical degree of respect". A manager who uses NVC is little different from a used car salesman who gives firm handshakes and throws around warm smiles.
Just think of NVC as a tool in the toolbox, for how to initiate a difficult conversation and be understood without being as likely to provoke a defensive or derisive response... that then can grow into that genuine, comprehensive human interaction.
I think why you may find it dehumanizing is that, if I were using those four steps above, I would just be reflecting on my own humanity, and not on yours. So, by the time I end those four steps, the only connection I've really had to you is asking if you will do something.
--
I use three steps (yes, another formula) that seem to solve the dehumanizing problem:
Step 1) TRUTH: Tell the truth about how you actually feel in the moment.
Step 2) FAIR PLAY: Tell the other person how you imagine they might feel.
Step 3) LOVE: Say one thing to connect with love.
Step 1 is not so different from the second step of NVC, really just focusing on me and what I feel/need/want/etc and being honest about that. In the workshops I've run, I've seen most of us skip this step.
Step 2 is the kicker, it's not about connecting with me, but connecting with what you might feel/need/want/notice/etc. And it's about imagining what the person might be feeling, not knowing that the person is feeling X.
Step 3 is the closer, finalizing the connection between the two: thank you, I'm sorry, I hope you have a good day, will you help me, etc.
--
I'm stoked that this conversation is happening on HN, excited that you said what you said (in typing this response I have learned even more about NVC and my work), and tired—I definitely should head to bed after this. And I imagine you might be frustrated with all this NVC stuff, perhaps nauseated by another formula or maybe even curious, or perhaps pleasantly surprised, I have no idea. Thank you for making this conversation happen.
I think it's passive aggressive, yes, but I also understand why it is done. It's not done to make it a "direct ask" though, as this process specifically makes the requests less direct as part of the strategy.
The less-direct wording is both able to be seen as passive aggressive (as evidenced by other comments here) as well as a helpful hint to more smoothly continue a conversation.
"Passive" means inaction, it doesn't mean indirect or sneaky. You can be actively indirect, but it still originates with an (active) action. There is no passive action, just as there is no active passivity. This doesn't mean the wording is perfect, just the passive aggressive label doesn't apply here.
Also, without full information, we don't know who is in the right. Perhaps it was in a designated communal fridge; perhaps it wasn't labeled properly; perhaps the person actually had permission; perhaps the person was facing a potentially dangerous blood sugar crash. Etc..
If you think the style of communication is bad then just say so, don't try to invalidate it by questioning the premise as stated.
"Oh yeah dude I ate that, I'm really sorry, I didn't even think about it."
"That's all right man. Would you be willing to help me find some food for tonight? I'm sort of beside myself."
"For sure, here, let me see..."
Conversation resumes when player one is not hangry. Left as an exercise to the reader.
"Would you be willing to only eat the food that you buy?” isn't really a question because "no" isn't really an acceptable answer so there's something dirty about phrasing like a question but I can't quite put my finger on what.
That's not because of the phrasing. That's because eating someone else's food without their permission is widely seen as a dick move.
No matter how you word it, if you clearly mean that you intend to continue eating someone's food without their permission, that makes you the bad person in this type of situation.
Sneakily, it expands the scope of "please don't eat my food without permission" to "please agree to never eat any food that you did not purchase." The scope of the apparent infraction, as well as the scope of the remedy, are greatly increased.
The trap and the expanded scope make it much worse than "please don't eat my food without permission."
To me it does sound more passive-aggressive to circumlocute vs just directly ask. I guess specifically because it implies a "no" would be due to simple unwillingness, which in a sense is always implicit but sort of routes around that a person may have reasons beyond simple obstinate refusal to grant the request.
FWIW, in my limited Spanish language experience, requests at least with friends are often far more direct e.g. "dame el agua" (give me the water) vs. "could you give me the water?" in English. Took me a while to get used to, but made me consider the way we phrase requests in English, and the importance how one intonates speech.
> To me it does sound more passive-aggressive to circumlocute vs just directly ask. I guess specifically because it implies a "no" would be due to simple unwillingness, which in a sense is always implicit but sort of routes around that a person may have reasons beyond simple obstinate refusal to grant the request.
Not necessarily. It gives them the opportunity to explain. Compare with "Please stop eating my food." "would you only eat the food that you buy?" as someone else mentioned. The first invites no response. The second requires the other person be somewhat confrontational to provide clarification. There second requires that they escalate to negotiate. If you don't want to invite negotiation, that's fine, but then you weren't earnestly engaging in NVC.
If someone says "would you be willing to only eat food that you bring", it naturally invites a followup "then why aren't you"? There may be varying levels of legitimacy to answer this. Consider a few: "I can't afford to bring my own food" (I realize this is unlikely as coworkers, but it's possible in similar situations), "I'm an asshole and I don't like you", "I always forget to pack a lunch", "I find that the food you bring is delicious and I enjoy it more than my own".
All of these invite may invite different responses. Some may require escalation to HR or whatever, but some may be solvable without escalation. You may be willing to chip in for lunch for a coworker who can't afford it, or complain to the boss about wages, or if a coworker really enjoys the food you bring, a solution may be to bring extra and share sometimes, and perhaps get paid for it.
Or maybe you don't want to do those things, and that's alright too. But the idea is that those options wouldn't be available if you hadn't allowed the clarification.
(Note in a situation that's much more like a negotiation without an obviously correct party, NVC sounds more normal: "We feel that feature X is very important, would you be able to prioritize it and complete it this month?")
Amusingly, "would you only eat the food that you buy" was a suggestion by another person for a less manipulative suggestion. What most people took issue with wasn't the "only eat what you buy" part, but the "would you be willing to <actual request>?" part, which many people took as forcing the other party to answer "yes".
Again, if you're coming from the preconception that someone (normally the other person) is "wrong", you shouldn't use NVC. Earnest NVC requires that you not assign blame or fault. That's the entire reason that you speak only about your feelings and needs and perceived actions of the other party. Granted, "It upsets me when I get to lunch and don't have anything to eat, would you stop eating my food" is also fine in the NVC framework, as I understand it.
> "why did you eat my food?"
This doesn't begin to solve the problem, you're not yet addressing the conflict. In fact, you haven't necessarily signaled that there even is a conflict that needs to be addressed. And note that you're putting the other person on the defensive by not being open about what your goals are. You're acting from a position of uneven information instead of earnesty.
To me the issue of asking "would you" sounds like the request is optional and they can say, "no I won't". In this case there is no negotiating.
If the answer is no, then like I said, negotiation probably won't work, so you escalate. The point of something like NVC is to avoid escalation when possible. Sometimes it isn't possible.
Another way of putting this is: NVC assumes good intent. When that assumption is invalidated, other strategies are superior, but you lose very little by assuming good intent for a while.
I'm not sure I agree it sounds passive aggressive. But couching everything with "would you be willing to" sounds odd.
You could also ask "hey, do you know what happened to the brown bag that was in the fridge this morning? That was my lunch but now I can't find it." That feels a bit parental maybe, but it also explains what happened and leaves it open-ended "oh, it probably got thrown out when we cleaned the fridge" or, "oh I totally thought that was a leftover sandwich from the meeting so I ate it" or whatever.
That's what I'd rather be on the receiving end of.
I wonder why nowadays you have to be ultra-PC with everyone. If everyone gets used to that, won’t everyone’s sensitivity for non-PC drop? I feel like we’re creating a generation of people that can’t take a punch anymore.