But the examples given as "observation" read as passive-aggressive to me. Whether you say "Eleanor procrastinates" or "Eleanor wait to do all her studying the night before the exam" it's still the same thing. If you hear this type of comment regularly (eg you have ADHD) then it'll still affect you negatively.
It is not. The latter is a fact. The former is an interpretation of that fact showing how the person saying it judges this fact. If you perceive the former while someone says the latter, then that is a result of your own expectation of judgement.
I have ADD and had to unlearn this myself.
Maybe she waited because she's lazy, maybe because she was waiting for her anxiety to decrease, maybe because she was working two jobs.
When we make a judgement and say that she procrastinates, we shut ourselves out from the rest of the story and insert our own.
"Eleanor waited to do all her studying the night before the exam" — that's data: it would show up on a video recording of the scene.
"Eleanor procrastinates" — that's a judgement/interpretation/opinion: it exists in someone's mind (i.e. the person making the judgement).
This isn't to say "judgements bad, don't make judgements". That would be nonsensical. We all make judgements/interpretations all the time, they're a necessary part of the human experience.
But (in my experience) it's really _really_ helpful to differentiate between these two categories. It opens the whole thing up and allows things to proceed more smoothly and effectively (in conjunction with other tools in the toolset - but this is core).
To expand on the example: if, as Eleanor, I hear the judgement I'm probably, yes, more likely to shut down and get defensive - which gets none of us anywhere. OTOH if I hear the data, there is then perhaps more room to have a conversation about what's going on. It might be that my ADHD is contributing to this behaviour, and perhaps if I get that it has a negative impact on someone else, I might decide to ask them (or someone else) for support in working out a better way to deal with this. Or I might simply be asking for more understanding, different structures. I don't know. But the kind of mutual acknowledgement of experience, feelings and wants that I'm talking about tends to be shut down by unowned judgements presented as fact.
NVC would be more like: "I saw Eleanor study the night before and I did not see her study before then. I interpreted this as procrastination, which makes me anxious because something similar happened at time X, you want her to succeed, fear a pattern will prevent that, and feel powerless to change it."
Maybe Eleanor did study secretly. Or knew the stuff. Or had a death in the family. Or it is unimportant. Maybe she forgot and could use reminders.
ADHD was a great tool for me + team. Basically autopilot and a low bar. One downside is people mistake things like this and blameless.postmortems as you cannot confront people and publicly, or do not bc of the work... While in reality, it provides a baseline framework for it when you have nothing better.