Communication Matters: Needs and Strategies – what they are and how they are related to each other

By Jeyanthy Siva
(4th of the Weekly columns published on “The Nation”, an English language newspaper in Sri Lanka on 17th Oct, 2009)

This is a column on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), aka compassionate communication. NVC shows a path, a step-by-step process, of how to go from disconnection and violence to connection, compassionate understanding and cooperation – with ourselves, the people around us and the world we live in. It is a language of mutual respect, empathy and honesty, and is often described as ‘the language of the heart.’ In this column, I discuss the principles and philosophy of NVC and provide additional resources and workshop information if you are inspired to learn to practice it.

Today, I want to talk about the worldview (or paradigm) which underlies the NVC process. Starting and ending with talking some more about what we mean by needs and how are they different from the strategies we use to meet the needs.

One way to speak of “needs” is that it is the life serving motivation (life energy) which underlies human behaviour. As you can imagine, when we start talking about what makes human beings do what we do, the deep motivations for our behaviour, it can get tricky. The theory we hold in our minds (often below our everyday awareness) about the nature of human beings will greatly influence our answer to the question of what motivates human behaviour. If we believe that at base, human beings are barbaric and savage and if given half a chance, will take advantage of each other, then answer to the above question will be different than if we believe that human beings come from divine energy and are at base manifestations of divine spirit.

Which theory were you taught in your childhood? When you reflect on situations where you were “taught,” please consider not only formal teaching setting with a teacher and classroom, but also include what was modelled for you in everyday behaviour by the adults around you.

When I look back to my childhood, I realise that I was taught both theories each in different context. In religious context, I was taught the first but when it came to ascribing reasons for behaviour of people, it was often the second. For example, I grew up with stories of the divine nature of infants. I remember a saying in Tamil that translates roughly as “the divine and the infant dance in the same place” and stories of how infants and young children reflect the light of the gods. I also witnessed how what they did or said was often given so much love and value. One would presume that if children come from god spirit and what children do is expression of the divine spirit, than human beings come from god-spirit and what we do are also expressions of the divine, right? After all, what are we except grown up children?

In actuality, that seemed to get lost somehow. From childhood to adulthood, the story of human beings went from being divine spirits to essentialised categories of “good people” or “bad people.” A simple example of the way I was taught to think about the nature of human beings: An aunt used to say “he is such a good boy” when her 23-year-old son did things that pleased her. For example, if he went to the shop and bought groceries or if he swept the yard or if he made tea for everyone. But if he was to go out with his friends for two days in a row and didn’t do things to help around the house, then all of a sudden the “good” boy became “bad.” Now he was “inconsiderate” or “selfish” or “uncaring.”

Even as a child, I sensed there was something “off” here. If the reason for my cousin’s behaviour was his fixed essential nature, how was the nature of my cousin able to change so much from day to day? Besides, to me, he seemed the same, most of the time. Some days he got pleasure from doing things around the house and some days he got pleasure from being with his friends. What made him “good” one day and “bad” the next? It seemed to me that on the days my aunt was pleased with him he was called “good” and on the days my aunt was displeased with him, he was called “bad.” Those terms of good and bad seemed more to do with my aunt than with her son.

With my current adult perspective, I would say it thus: On the days his behaviour met needs (such as support or care) for my aunt, he was labelled good and on the days his behaviour didn’t meet her needs, he was labelled “bad.” There is so much more than can be said on this but I will leave it here for the time being and go on to talk about what we mean specifically by needs in NVC.

Need words are an attempt to name the un-nameable, the divine energy, the motivation that underlies human behaviour. As such, they are always abstract (non specific). As soon as we start talking about any specific person, place, thing or action, we are talking about strategies. By “strategies,” we mean the ways in which we human beings go about trying to meet our needs.

Needs are also universal. This means, all human beings (regardless of race, class, caste, ethnicity, nationality, gender or age, etc.,) share the same needs. Different needs will be present for each of us at different times, but there are no needs any one of us has, which are not shared by other human beings.

Examples of needs: Respect, care, love, appreciation, acknowledgement, food, water, shelter, learning, belonging, safety, connection, companionship, freedom, contribution, etc. And many more (to see a list of needs, go to our website and click on the resources button). As you can already see from small the sample above, needs are things that all human beings share. Do you know anyone who doesn’t have need for respect at some point in their lives? Or need for care? Or a need for freedom? Or any of the other needs listed? If so, they are lucky because that need is probably met so well and consistently for them, they are not aware of having the need (I say this because often we become consciously aware of our needs, only when they are not met).

On the other hand, strategies are the ways in which we try to meet our needs. For example, when I want to learn, I may choose to read a book on the subject that interests me. Or I might attend a class. Or I might ask someone to show me how to do the thing I am interested in learning how to do (e.g., perhaps I want to learn to fix a bike or maybe I want to learn how to ride one). All of these are different strategies that would meet my need for learning.

The point here is that each need has many possibilities of how we can meet it. And the strategies, which involve specific people, things or action, are the means by which we try to meet our needs.

(For information on NVC trainings in Sri Lanka, visit www.sandhi.org)

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