That's the heart of GP's critique. People are masking abusive and manipulative statements with the language of NVC. Here's a mild example: "Altcongnito, when I see you leave work and there are still tickets in the queue, I feel disappointed, because I need us to work as a team. Would you be willing to work late until we get through them?" What people rightly feel is a disconnect between the language of NVC and the spirit of NVC in these situations.
And what this reinforces to me is the importance of "professionalism" in a work place setting.
Requiring everyone in your workplace to engage coworkers with a level of emotional intimacy and care can impose even greater burdens on your employees. Sometimes it can be better to just try to impose fair rules on everyone, and straight forwardly convey to everyone where they stand in terms of expectations and performance.
Blame free retrospectives are also crucial in cases where things don't go well.
Instead of:
"You make me feel X way when you didn't close out your tickets."
Try:
"I generally hate asking anyone to work extra hours, but in this case if the ticket doesn't get fixed we are likely to lose the contract we are depending on to pay everyone's salary. Can you please stay late and get this done? We can work out a way to give you some extra PTO to make up for this in the near future."
I fully agree. Zooming in on your example: I think by the definition of NVC on Wikipedia, "I need us to work as a team" is not a need as in "universal human need". It's the deposition of an assertion ("team work means not leaving work before all tickets are resolved"), wrongly or maliciously expressed as a need.
IMO the best way to respond to that would be "Aaron-santos, I understand that you feel disappointed now. Unfortunately I absolutely need to leave at X o'clock. How about we make a plan for tackling this insane workload such that everybody on the team feels supported?"
Precisely this. The book refers to the difference between a 'need' and a 'request', and what differentiates the two. In this case, this would fall under the category of a request, and is not considered NVC.
I think what's missing is the consideration of how the other person is feeling. I use a three-step process 1) how I'' feeling 2) how I imagine they might be feeling and 3) say one thing to connect with love.
In this example above, if after saying "I need us to work as a team," the person were to say "and I imagine maybe you're leaving because you're worried about something at home or afraid you're gonna burnout or who knows what" and then ask "would you willing to work late (this time) until we get through them?"
I think what the NVC process lacks (or maybe I just don't know it well enough) is a way to show the other person we are considering how they feel. I have found it works absolute wonders at times, not only to show the other person I'm thinking of them, but also to actually get me to more consciously think of them, which can alter how I proceed. Maybe I even realize that the tickets aren't that important when I imagine they may be stressed to pick up their kids from school because their marriage might already be on the rocks and they don't want to push it overboard.
I've found the Kidpower Boundary Bridge to be a helpful framework when I know I need to speak up about something bothering me but I'm afraid of awkwardness and conflict.
It starts with a connecting statement where you put yourselves in the other person's shoes and you can include a disclaimer that you know they didn't mean to hurt your feelings. The rest of it seems similar to NVC.
One takeaway I got from Kidpower is that the minor conflicts I'm tempted to ignore because "it's not that big a deal" are actually great opportunities for me to practice being more assertive so I'll be prepared for situations where I do have to take action. Plus I think the act of resolving a conflict can strengthen and deepen a relationship when it's done well. So if I stay quiet out of fear of bad feelings, I'm leaving a lot on the table.
Ooo, I had never heard of this. Thank you for pointing it out, I'll check into it more.
At first glance, personally, I worry that I'll not remember all 7 steps so that's another reason why I like the three steps I use.
If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you're saying you first communicate to them what you imagine their situation to be and that they have a good intention, I think that can work as well. I've seen that sometimes when I do that, I will passively still be angry or frustrated and the person is just waiting for me to say "but" or "and"—discounting what I'm saying in the beginning waiting for the metaphorical hammer to drop.
> the minor conflicts I'm tempted to ignore because "it's not that big a deal" are actually great opportunities for me to practice
I strongly agree. I feel less afraid apologizing for being late for a coffee than telling someone I want to get divorced and can be a great way to practice. Another way that I've found to practice is that I actually run classes and have created audios to practice dealing with such emotional conflict/attacks. I've found that role-playing it can help me gain more confidence and skills in resolving it.
Additionally, I'm starting to believe more and more that almost all big conflicts are built of many little conflicts. E.g., two people get divorced often not because of one thing, but because of many many events that created more distance over time. In this way, the better I get at resolving the micro-conflict, at the little events that drive us farther apart, the less likely big conflicts will happen.
At the end of the day, I feel excited for whatever framework/tool/strategy works for you. Again, thank you for sharing this one and for trying to do this work :-)
If it's coming from a manager it hides the power relationship and creates the false impression that the participants are peers who share and care about each others feelings. It's actually a worse way to tell someone they aren't doing a good job because not only does it criticize their performance it implies that they are inconsiderate.
If it's coming from an actual peer, it's just weird.
Nothing is masked in that? It sounds to me pretty straightforward. The issue with that is content - the attempt to make you work late without good reason. There is no way to phrase the above to make it sounds good.
At least it sounds honest. The reason for late work is emotional (as often is) rather then rational reaction to unexpected business need.
Here's how the boss could deal with the same situation without sounding like a weasel:
"You're the only person we have who is able to fix these bugs, and if you don't fix them we'll go out of business. I need you to stay late until this backlog is cleared because if you don't, half our clients will drop us at the next renewal. I will make it up to you in your next performance evaluation."
(Substitute whatever urgent problem has lead to needing someone to work overtime.)
>the idea that a company will go out of business if one person doesn't work overnight is simply and factually false.
If you don't think that can happen, you don't know much about startup chaos. :-)
I agree with your implication, though, that when there is no need for the employee to work overtime, there is no right way to ask them to work overtime.
I am the sole founder of a startup that is now 10 years old and prior to this I've worked at 3 other startups either as a founder or CTO, so I think I know something about it.
At no point would I ever allow the existence of my company to rely on a single individual. That is simply irresponsible.
Then we agree, because we both know that people often do things that seem irresponsible in hindsight. It is especially common in business situations that require a lot of diverse expertise, in which case having any redundancy at all could mean doubling the size of your workforce. It is easier when you're talking about pure software, but even then a nontechnical founder could allow two programmers to segregate their responsibilities without realizing it was happening.
The thing about advice is it's easy to say, "don't get in to that situation," but every day managers wake up in that situation. If your startup grows enough, some of your own managers might find themselves waking up in that situation.
We do not agree because this is a matter of assigning causal relevance to a company failure and my position is that the causal relevance you're assigning is irresponsible and results in bad decision making and hence is wrong/invalid. If you are in charge of a business, it is invalid to assign causal relevance to a business failure over a single individual who does not work overtime.
A similar situation would be assigning causal relevance to an intern deleting the production database on a company failure. Based on how you're viewing the situation, it seems like you think that would be a plausible explanation to hold; certainly interns have deleted production databases by accident before and so certainly it would seem like such an action would cause a company to fail.
My argument is that the intern deleting the database is not the cause of the company failure and has no relevance in understanding the cause of a company failure. It is simply not possible to attribute a corporate failure to an intern deleting a database. The causal reason for the failure would be a failure to protect the production database from an intern.
Similarly it is simply not possible to see a company as failing because someone decided not to work overtime. That is never a criteria that a company failure can be attributed to.
I am confident based on my experience running a successful company that my assignment of causal relevance has stronger explanatory power and results in better judgement than the causal relevance you're assigning.
I would encourage other people looking to run a business to adopt my assignment over the one you're arguing in favor of. The company did not fail because someone didn't work overtime just like the company did not fail because of the intern. The company failed because someone in a position of authority failed to properly allocate resources, failed to have good policies in place to protect production databases, failed to have security policies in place, failed to properly incentivize work, overpromised beyond what could be delivered, or a host of other reasons that have nothing to do with blaming a small group of individuals. This assignment of causal relevance will yield greater insight into how to properly prepare for a vast array of scenarios and also appreciate the risks involved in running a business and strategies to mitigate those risks.
What you say about the ultimate root cause analysis of a company failure is spot-on.
However, if production is down regardless of root cause, having engineers work overtime to bring it back up is probably overwhelmingly the right thing for the situation.
If they don’t and the company fails, it’s not because they didn’t work overtime (agreeing with you), but it would have been better if the downtime was 8 hours rather than 3.5 days (what I think whatshisface is saying).
I don't understand your skepticism, if a deadline is in a contract, and the company is not heading towards meeting that deadline, someone has to speed up or else the client will be lost, or worse the penalty clauses will kick in. I think you're imagining B2C SAAS startups when making that assertion.
If your EULA indemnifies you from failure to provide service, and investor capital indemnifies you from failure to get revenue, then yeah it doesn't really matter what the engineers do - but that's hardly a universal principle of business.
Overworking people dont get you faster releases. It is magical thinking. This just feel good like doing something, but that is is.
Also, if you are really in this situation, you already lost, because mo way this late night code wont be complete crap. So you might just start prioritizing and negotiating now rather then later.
It's only lying if you copy and paste the HN comment without following the last instruction:
(Substitute whatever urgent problem has lead to needing someone to work overtime.)
Obviously if there's no reason for them to work overtime, you won't be able to find a reason for them to work overtime, but then instead of asking, you should... not ask.
The idea of teamwork and clearing all planned tickets aren't reasons to work overtime. Teamwork in isolation, $0. Tickets on the tracker, $0 in and of themselves. There must be some other reason behind suddenly caring more about the tickets than the manager did when making staffing decisions in the months leading up to the crisis, otherwise it wouldn't be an issue.
If you want to handle abuses of NVC, then learn some NVC!
To begin with, a fundamental principle of NVC is that when you make a request, you cannot expect the other person to agree to the request and if you are frustrated when they decline (let alone show frustration), then you were not making a request, but a demand masked as a request. As such, call them out on it! His behavior that you're describing is literally something the book says is a violation of NVC.
Given that context, NVC is not an appropriate way to communicate an order/demand. No matter the words you use: If it's a demand, it's not NVC by definition.
So respond NVC style:
"When you say your need is to work as a team, I am confused as I do not understand how that is a need. Would you be willing to expand on that?"
Or even more boldly:
"When you say your need is to work as a team, I am confused as that sounds like a evaluation/judgement/narrative and not a need. Would you be willing to clarify your need?"
(Judgements are a fundamental violation of NVC. If he's trying to manipulate you this way, call them out on it)
"When I work late to finish the tickets, I am [exhausted/dissatisfied/insert-feeling-here] as I need rest. Would you explain what will go wrong if these tickets are addressed tomorrow?"
The other NVC lesson I'd like you all to learn is that it is very explicit:
You are not responsible for other's feelings.
If your perception is the other party is offloading feelings on to you because they use NVC, understand that NVC itself tells you not to be burdened by it. The ideal is that you respond to people's feelings out of a sense of compassion, not out of obligation. And you're never wrong if you ignore their feelings (it's merely not ideal to do so).
Interesting, what's your objection to that? Seems like a reasonable way to make a request to me. Also seems reasonable to agree to or deny the request.
Not the parent, but my objection to that would be that your feelings are yours to handle, not me. And for this kind of request, saying that you feel disappointed because I don't have time to finish the tickets will definitely backfire, with a "you should adjust your expectations", and using emotion talk in this context will immediately frame the talk as manipulative.
Would it then be preferable for the manager to be more direct and assertive and state "In order to continue being employed here, you will need you to work overtime."
To me there needs to be a differentiation between communication style, and consequence. If it is the case that your job is at risk unless you work late nights, is it preferable to be direct about it, use assertive language, or is it preferable to use NVC, and express ones feelings and other details that form some sense of empathy?
My personal objection is that it purposely confuses things.
It's worded in a way that connects declining with not being a team player. Obviously that's an intentional construction and to some people it makes perfect sense. It also is emotionally manipulative because it intentionally seeks to manipulate the receivers emotional state so that they comply. Some people will comply to resolve that discomfort. The inherent power imbalance distorts the situation.
It also confuses the language of personal relationships (affective statements) with the workplace. To me, this is in the same realm as getting employees to view the workplace as a family. Again it hijacks the our relationship cognition centers in order to engage in exploitation. Declining in a regular relationship has regular relationship consequences. Declining this kind of statement from a boss has livelihood consequences.
The solution in the workplace? Just say it plainly. Bringing NVC into the workplace is fertile ground for emotional manipulation.
If I heard this, I would think that those words are coming either from a sociopath or from a very socially inept person who read a self-help book. There are probably cultural differences in how it's perceived but it sounds so fake, forced and manipulative that it would make me put my defences up immediately.
