Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides)

by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Many mediators define their role as a “third head” trying to think of a way to get everybody to come to an agreement. They are not at all concerned with creating a quality of connection, thus overlooking the only conflict resolution tool I have ever known to work. When I described the NVC method and the role of human connection, one of the participants at the Austria meeting raised the objection that I was talking about psychotherapy, and that mediators were not psychotherapists. In my experience, connecting people at this level isn’t psychotherapy; it’s actually the core of mediation because when you make the connection, the problem solves itself most of the time. Instead of a third head asking, “What can we agree to here?,” if we had a clear statement of each person’s needs—what those parties need right now from each other—we will then discover what can be done to get everybody’s needs met. These become the strategies the parties agree to implement after the mediation session concludes and the parties leave the room.