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Welcome to Episode 116 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast, I'm Jack Shitama. Before we get into today's episode, I want to share with you that we are going to be doing a four-week course on Compassionate Communication in The Non-Anxious Leader Network. It will start on Wednesday, April 14th, at 1:00 p.m. EDT. Each session will be one hour and they will be recorded so you can access them whenever you like. If you are not a member of The Non-Anxious Leader Network, it is free to join. Just go to network.thenonanxiousleader.com and ask to join. After you are approved, you can go to the course link on the left hand side bar and find the Compassionate Communication info.

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The course is going to be led by Rev. Todd Bartlett, who has studied this material for the last decade. I will also be a part of it. Todd is going to teach us how to communicate in healthy ways, and I will be showing where I believe self-differentiation and family systems theory connect with compassionate communication. Now, without further ado, here is Episode 116, "How to Talk with a Child (or Someone Who Acts Like One)."

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Marshall Rosenberg is the founder of what is called nonviolent communication, also known as compassionate communication. The difference is that people who have been trained but who have not been certified are asked to use the term compassionate communication instead of nonviolent communication, which is what Rosenberg originally has called this material. I actually prefer the former myself. I think nonviolent communication is a little bit less clear in terms of what it is trying to achieve. But in any event, as you can probably tell from some of my recent podcasts, I'm really learning a lot about compassionate communication and how it complements family systems theory.

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Today's episode is based on a lecture that Rosenberg gave called "Resolving Conflicts with Children." It is in a podcast series and I'll put a link in the show notes. Rosenberg lays out a three step process for dealing with children, especially when you are involved in conflict with them. Remember that when we are talking about a conflict of wills, we are trying to avoid engaging with people where we are trying to tell them that we are right and they are wrong because that almost always results in pushback and entrenchment in the other person's position.

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Rosenberg would affirm this and say this is especially true with children. Or I would say with immature people, people who act like children. I'll go through Rosenberg's three step process and then I will come back and unpack each step individually. The first step is to translate all of your value judgments into the language of giraffes. This is going to need a lot of explanation when I come back to it. The second step is to respect the life in the child's no, that is in the child's answer of no. The third is to abstain at all times from any ecologically unsound strategies.

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If this is all sounding like Greek to you, I get it. Compassionate communication is very much like family systems theory at first. It is very challenging to understand and it takes really unpacking and learning and going deeper. I've mentioned this before. I feel like my journey with compassionate communication is very much like when I first started with family systems theory. I'm starting to understand it somewhat, but I'm still having a hard time practicing it.

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One of the reasons I want to share it with you is because I do find it complements family systems theory and also because by studying it and learning it, I'm hoping to get better at it myself.

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Step one, in talking with children or people who act like them, is to translate all your value judgments into the language of giraffes. And of course, this requires the explanation of what a giraffe is versus what a jackal is. Marshall Rosenberg uses these terms, jackals and giraffes, and basically says there are two kinds of people in the world. There are jackals and there are giraffes. And sometimes we can go back and forth in operating between the two modes.

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Jackals operate the way most people do. They often blame others for their own condition. They make demands of others to meet their own needs. Most of life is about getting what they want instead of giving to other people.

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Giraffes, on the other hand, have the biggest hearts of any mammal in the world, and giraffes care about making genuine emotional connection. They are able to say what they need without demanding. They are genuinely interested in the needs of the other person, but realize that those needs are not their responsibility.

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In short, giraffes are self-differentiated. Value judgments are all about self defining, about saying what we believe, about saying what we are concerned about in a healthy, non-anxious way, especially in a difficult conversation. When Rosenberg explains what he means when he's saying translating value judgments into the language of giraffe's, what he is saying is that we want to avoid certain words like should, must or have to. We know that nobody likes to be told what to do. So when we tell somebody what they should do or must do or have to do, we're going to automatically engage in a conflict of wills and get pushback.

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Giraffes, on the other hand, will say something like, "I would like you to, but please don't do it unless you are willing to, otherwise we both lose." Notice how similar this is to saying what you believe while giving the other the freedom to disagree?

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One example I can think of is if you have a teenage child or perhaps someone who is home from college, you might say something like, "I get worried at night when you are out late. So I'd like you to call or text me if you are going to be later than midnight."

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Now, if you are a parent, especially if you are the parent of a teenager, you are probably saying, "what you're just going to ask them? You're not going to demand, you're not going to tell them they have to be home at a certain time or else?" But Rosenberg says that the quickest way to get push back is to demand something or even to set rules.

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As we know from family systems theory, this is a way to precipitate a conflict of wills. And when the person, a child or adult, is told what they have to do, they are likely going to push back.

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So you're probably asking, "Well, what do I do then if I'm just going to ask my child to comply, but give them the freedom to disagree?"

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This leads to Rosenberg's second step in the process. Respect the life in the child's No. Rosenberg believes that rules should always be made with the consent of those who are going to follow.

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I guess he bases this on the idea that nobody likes to be told what to do. We can request that somebody agrees to follow the rule, but we need to give them the freedom to say no. This is self-differentiation at its heart. But we don't think about doing this with children. We may not even think about doing this with immature people. When Rosenberg was asked in this lecture, about how to get a child to do what you want them to do, he said that's not what giraffes do.

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Giraffes don't try to get other people to do what they want them to do. Giraffes care about emotional connection, empathy and honesty. Again, this is what self-differentiation is, its emotional connection, and it's the ability to self-define. It's the ability to say what you believe, what you think, what you feel. What Rosenberg means when he's saying respect the life in the child's No is that if a child is refusing to agree to a rule, if a child is refusing to comply with something you want them to do, he would say giraffes don't want other people to do things anyway, giraffes take responsibility for self and not others.

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But if a child is expressing no, then the giraffe is going to want to make an emotional connection and is going to want to listen and to hear what need is being expressed in the child's no. This is all about valuing the other person as opposed to trying to define them. The challenging thing about this is that we think we need to tell children what to do for their own good. What Rosenberg is saying is that we need to be able to express what we feel, what we believe to a child, and then give the child the freedom to respond.

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Rosenberg goes even further and say that he believes that parents should not use either reward or punishment to get children to do what they want them to do. His thinking here is that this teaches the child to value extrinsic motivation, either reward or fear of punishment, rather than making choices for herself, rather than learning to define herself and to express herself and to self-differentiate.

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This leads to the third step in the process, which is to abstain at all times from any ecologically unsound strategies. He mentions three ecologically unsound strategies. The first is fear induction through the threat of punishment. When people are fearful, they may do what we want them to do, but they are going to resent it. They are ultimately going to push back even rebel.

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The second is using guilt inducing language. This is dependent behavior because it is really causing other people's actions to define your own condition. It's blaming others for your own condition or making it dependent on other people's behavior instead of defining yourself based on your own beliefs and values.

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The third ecologically unsound strategy is shame inducing tactics, which usually results from us using judgmental language about another.

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The reason Rosenberg says we need to avoid these types of strategies is that even if we get people to do what we want, whether that is a child or somebody in a system that we are leading, somebody on a team that we are leading, if we get them to do what we want through one of these strategies, we create an environment that is highly toxic.

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In family systems terms, instead of saying what we believe, saying where we think we should be going, saying what we think we should be doing, and then giving others the freedom to jump on board or not, when we use fear, guilt and shame, we may get the short term results we are looking for. But in the long term, we are creating people who are not going to be self-differentiated because we are not self-differentiated. And think about the anxiety levels that are created when we use these types of tactics.

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This is the exact opposite of being a non-anxious presence. Going back to my original example about the teenager who is staying out late at night, Rosenberg would use listening skills in respecting the life that is in the child's no. If the child says, "No, I don't want to text or I don't want to call, who are you to tell me what to do?" Rosenberg would use reflective listening skills to try to identify the unmet need being expressed by the child.

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He would then try to find a request that he could make of the child that the child might agree to so that they could both move forward in a way meets Rosenberg's need of feeling not scared, of feeling at peace at night when the child is out, while at the same time respecting the life in the child's no. If this all sounds foreign to you, I want to encourage you to listen to this particular lecture. It will help you to understand Rosenberg's approach.

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But what I want to share in terms of family systems theory is that this is the essence of self-differentiation. It may be harder to do this when we are talking about raising a child, parenting a child. It certainly does not come naturally to me. But I think when we are thinking about adults and we are thinking about leading people as a non-anxious presence, it really makes an important point. And that is our primary role as a leader, as a non-anxious leader, is to say what we believe needs to be done without forcing other people to agree with us.

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And when people start to push back, then we have to go into a different set of skills. Remember that when people are pushing back against something, when we are not even demanding from them, then there is something going on in them and not us. What Rosenberg says about giraffes is they never take things personally because they know it's about what is going on in the other person. There's an unmet need there. Something that's causing frustration, anxiety. A giraffe is able to listen, is able to stay emotionally connected, is able to remain a non-anxious presence even in the midst of the other's anxiety.

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As I've mentioned, this is very new to me. I'm really not proficient at putting it into practice. I'm much better at being a non-anxious presence by being playful and being paradoxical. But I do want to learn these skills because I think they add to the repertoire of the non-anxious leader and help her to be a non-anxious presence, to remain connected, but to stay rooted in her goals and values. And I believe that's what we need to do if we are going to help our teams be the best that they can be.