Intentional Society: Relating to (relating to?) NVC and feedback
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After two weeks of fishbowl observation-and-debrief, the topic of feedback seems like a useful direction to pursue. I haven't settled on how, though! Let's use a few paragraphs to orient to strategies.
The grand-daddy of feedback processes, from my awareness of the landscape, is NVC — Nonviolent Communication, synthesized by Marshall Rosenberg 1972-1992 and published as this book which I have in my hands here. Looking through it again this week, I'm struck by how Rosenberg was introducing these ideas against such a low previous baseline, and by how much these ideas are now "in the water" and taken for granted! So much work in the psychology/development/communication fields has stood on these giant shoulders.
But the point of standing on the shoulders of giants is to see even further, and NVC itself... seems to me a bit outdated now. It feels a bit heretical to say that, and risky as I have no deep expertise from which to judge it. But I've never clicked with NVC's framing and language of "I need X" (in the "observations, feelings, needs and requests" sequence) as the spot where the process bottoms out. To take many kinds of needs as ontologically basic, as well as a person's evaluation of their needs, as unquestionable ground truth — well, that seems like an assumption begging to be deconstructed.
Indeed, looking at the five principles of Circling Europe as an example, I can see the direct mapping to NVC in observation (Staying With the Level of Sensation) and feelings (Owning Your Experience), but saying "I need X" in a Circling group would probably get you a confused look and questions about what it's like to have the experience of being identified with that claim and what would it be like if you didn't get X?
So now, how to explore feedback with the Intentional Society relationauts (did I just coin that term? No, Google has exactly one previous usage) this week. Do the "let's learn and practice NVC together!" thing? Nope. Maybe "teach the controversy" and discuss the pros and cons? Meh, seems too analytical-intellectual and in-our-heads. Explore some other model or feedback method instead? There are a ton out there, and I have a low opinion of most I encounter because they're usually rooted in a cocktail of unhelpful frames like "I need you to change" and "You won't want to hear this" and "You should value my judgement as much as I do" etc.
Now I'm pretty close to taboo-ing the word "feedback" itself as unhelpful, but there's something it conveys about not just delivering personally-relevant information, but also the emotionally charged nature of the communication to the recipient and to the relationship. There's a relational uncertainty hanging on it: will the recipient receive my sharing of my (possibly negative-valence) experience as a gift or as an attack?
Does the best feedback not feel like "feedback" at all? I could get behind that claim - much like the best conflict doesn't "feel like conflict" at all, but like a joint exploration of differences. What would "the Intentional Society guide to feedback" look like, and how much of it would be deconstructing our pre-conceived attachment to needing to change others? I wonder how wide we can usefully open that aperture in our Community Practice Session. Now I'm excited to find out in a few days. If you're still reading this, thanks for coming along for these written wanderings — you have, in a way, contributed to the quality and the field of our session! 🙏🏻
Thanks,
James