If you haven't listened to Episode 181, part one of this two part series, then I encourage you to go back and listen to that first. In Episode 182, I looked at nonviolent communication or compassionate communication and gave a family systems take on it. In summary, nonviolent communication has four components. They are:

Observation - What is actually happening without any interpretation.
Feeling - How does that make me feel? What am I feeling?
Need - What is the unmet need that is behind the feeling?
Request - The request that we make to help meet that need. And we do that as opposed to a demand. We make a request, but the other person should feel free to not actually respond positively to that request.

We know in family systems theory that when we give people the freedom to disagree, there are actually more likely to consider it, or at least they're not going to automatically push back.

So observation, feeling, need request. There is a formula that Marshall Rosenberg, who developed compassionate communication, uses. It goes like this: When _____ (observation), I feel _____ (feeling), because I am needing _____ (unmet need). Therefore, I would now like _____ (request).

An example of that might be, "When the meeting starts late, I feel frustrated because I need to know that my time is respected. Therefore, I would now like you to let me know if we are not going to start on time."

Breaking that down "when the meeting starts late" is the observation. There's no blame there. There's no interpretation about intent. "I feel frustrated" is what I'm feeling. Frustration. "Because I need to know that my time is respected," is a need for respect. "And then therefore, I would now like you to let me know if we are not going to start on time," is the request. Please just let me know if we're not going to start on time.

That is the basic formula for non-violent or compassionate communication. As I mentioned last week, I believe that what understanding compassionate communication does is help us to understand self-differentiation. This is the essence of self-differentiation, of taking a non-anxious stand, of being a non-anxious presence. It's stating what we feel, stating what we need, without judgment, without defining the other and without accusing the other.

I had a friend who is trained in compassionate communication ask me how it has impacted my life. What I said was right now it's still mostly in theory. I'm still working on figuring out how to actually do this in practice. But I compare it to my own early understanding of family systems theory, which took place nearly 30 years ago in the early 90s.

At that time I understood family systems theory in theory. I understood it in my head, but I wasn't often able to translate it into being a non-anxious presence. It has taken a long time of study and practice and trying. Having it not work or not doing it well and over time getting better and better at it.

I believe that this type of communication I will learn to get better at, as well. What is helpful to me is to understand that with self-differentiation, which is to be able to claim our own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure, non-violent communication helps us to understand what that unmet need is, helps us to understand how to express that and make a healthy request.

When you bring the two together, I think it will help us to grow as non-anxious leaders, if we are willing to do the work and realize that it takes time. The question I raised last week is, "What do we do when we are communicating in a healthy way, but we are met with anxiety, even anger?"

In compassionate communication terms, this will typically come across as blaming or a moral judgment about the wrongness or badness of what we have done or said or perhaps something somebody else has done or said.

In family systems terms, what we understand is happening is the other is not taking responsibility for self. We may have communicated a request using the rubric from compassionate communication, but we might get a response that is anything but. So how do we respond when somebody else blames us or someone else for their own condition? If you follow my work, you know that paradox and playfulness, as well as listening, are ways that we can respond without arguing and without giving in. But compassionate communication provides an opportunity to go deeper in the way that we listen.

Before we do that, we need to regulate our own reactivity. Taking a deep breath and reminding ourselves that something else is going on in the other that probably doesn't have anything to do with us is essential in self-regulation. In compassionate communication terms, the first thing that we might ask ourselves is, "What is the unmet need?" Marshall Rosenberg would say in any type of unhealthy response, there is always an unmet need behind it.

In family systems terms, we know that when somebody responds to us with their own anxiety, it is more about what is going on inside of them and perhaps in their own family of origin, than about us. This makes it easier to self-regulate.

One helpful concept is the difference between triggers and causes. What we might say to others is the trigger, but it is not the cause of their anxiety. It is not the cause of the response. The cause of the response comes from how the other person is interpreting what is going on, and this usually comes from an unmet need. So while we might have been a part of the trigger, the cause is within the other person.

Another way to understand this is to flip this around and remind ourselves that nobody can make us feel anything. Whatever stimulus comes from outside of ourselves, how we feel about it, how we respond actually comes from within. And that's when taking responsibility for self and owning our own response is essential to self-differentiation and being a non-anxious leader.

As we are self-regulating, the first thing we do is recognize that something is going on in the other. Compassionate communication would ask what is the unmet need that's being expressed?

Family systems theory would go a different direction and ask what is going on in this person's own family of origin that is being expressed here in the form of anxiety. Either question may be helpful, but before we get into how we go about finding the answer, we need to do a quick review of empathy. Understanding that the other is not taking responsibility for yourself, that there is some unmet need, not only helps us to self-regulate in these situations, but it also enables us to have greater empathy for the other.

The most important component of this is the ability to understand where the other is coming from. This is called perspective taking or cognitive empathy. And this is being able to understand the other person's point of view. A second component of empathy that is important is to show empathic concern. This is the ability to show that we care for the other. It is the essence of emotional connection. Being able to express empathic concern in a non-reactive way, without arguing or giving in, creates healthy emotional space that allows for progress to be made.

Both compassionate communication and family systems theory would say connection is important. This empathic concern, this ability to show that we care without arguing or giving in is critical. When we combine this with listening as a form of perspective taking, listening as a way to understand the other's point of view, then we are likely to get somewhere positive. How do we do this?

Well, it's simple, but not easy. We take the four components of compassionate communication and we listen for them. We listen for observations, for feelings, for needs and requests. To do this, we use open ended questions like "who, what, when, where and how." I always emphasize not to use "why" because people don't understand why they do what they do or feel what they feel. And listening is the key to staying connected as a non-anxious presence.

Getting to better understand what is going on with the other by asking open ended questions may help to reveal the first two components of compassionate communication. If you ask, "When does this happen?" Or "What circumstances result in you feeling this way?" it's possible that you will hear about situations where this occurs, where there are feelings and unmet needs that are expressed in unhealthy ways.

Asking, "How does it make you feel?" Or "How do you respond?" Can help you to uncover the feelings that are being expressed. But open-ended questions will only take you so far.

Most people are not in touch with their unmet needs. At this point, it will be helpful to reflect back what you might guess the unmet need is. For example, let's say that you've made a non-anxious request for somebody to repeat themselves and they get very anxious. They get frustrated, even angry, and as you start to ask them questions, you find out that this happens often to them in their own family of origin. One way to reflect back to them is to say, "It sounds to me that when I ask you to repeat yourself, you get frustrated because you don't feel heard."

This type of situation is where family systems and compassionate communications intersect because in the compassionate communication realm, we are trying to get at the feelings and the unmet needs. But in family systems theory, we're also trying to find out what is the root of the anxiety, where does it reside in the family of origin.

In compassionate communication I would want to try to restate a request on their behalf in a way that would meet that unmet need. I might say something like, "In the future, before I ask you to repeat yourself, would it help if I tell you that I'm trying to understand?" This communicates that I am aware of their need to feel understood. If we can get to some agreement in that respect, if we can bring the anxiety level down in the interaction, then from a family systems perspective, I want to get at what is going on in the family of origin. I might ask to tell me more about when this happens in your family.

The idea here is to shift the conversation to their own pain within their family of origin and to become an ally with them, to walk alongside them. This is not to say that we're going to try to solve their problem for them. What we are trying to do is stay emotionally connected and walk with them through the pain that they're experiencing in their own family of origin. I have found in leadership situations when I am able to do this, I become an ally for the other and they actually grow stronger in their support for the things that I'm trying to do, I don't do this as manipulation. I do this as a way to break the cycle of anxiety, to bring the anxiety level down and to help be a non-anxious presence for those that I'm working with.

The ultimate goal is to create healthy emotional space between you and the other, while at the same time helping them to learn to take responsibility for self. That is what non-anxious leaders do. I see compassionate communication as an effective way to understand unmet needs in ourselves and to learn how to understand the unmet needs of others. In so doing, it also helps us as non-anxious leaders, because if we understand family systems theory, we recognize that this is an important way to take responsibility for yourself and to help others do the same.