The Community Leadership Development Program (CLDP) brings you this recording from our monthly sessions intended to give leaders and potential leaders insights into how they might improve their leadership skills in the ManKind Project and other non-profits. This session, titled Leading with Heart presented by Marion Little, a Center for Nonviolent Communication Communication Certified Trainer, was recorded on March 21, 2021*. Additional documents are available which were included as supplemental materials for this session: see bottom of this post.
Disagreement, tension, stress, and conflict are part of all relationships, teams, and communities. There’s no magic pill to make it go away. But, there are ways to get through it with everyone’s dignity intact. It’s possible to respectfully hear each other across deep divides. The people around us may have all kinds of different beliefs, ideas, and cultural practices but, as primates, we share the same underlying needs.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a way to bridge the gaps through assertive honesty and compassionate listening. Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of NVC, was inspired by the leadership practices of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He was also a Humanistic Psychology student and colleague of Carl Rogers. He developed break through approaches to communication through his civil rights work, facilitating inclusive integrated schools, and mediating gang conflict. NVC is a way to strengthen both our independence AND our interdependence.
During this 1.5-hour introduction to NVC training, Marion Little considers:
- Distinctions between Partnership Power and Domination Power
- The core concepts of NVC: Observations, Feelings, Needs & Requests
- Self-regulation, Self-control & Emotional Intelligence
- A core practice of balancing Honesty and Empathy
We invite you to reflect on the following questions:
- When others have exerted power in relation to you (think about your favorite and least favorite teachers and coaches), what do you appreciate about their use of power and what triggers resistance in you?
- When something is really bothering you, and you need to get it off your chest, what do you want most from a team leader (at work, in community, in the MKP)?
Marion Little, MA Dispute Resolution, CNVC Certified Trainer, manages Community Services and Training at The John Howard Society of Peterborough, Ontario — including mediation, conflict resolution, violence prevention, communication skills and mentorship programs. A Mediator Trainer and a Restorative Justice Trainer, she has taught university courses in dispute resolution, ethics and reflective practice, collaborative leadership, and non-profit management. Marion is an HR specialist regarding institutional sexual abuse prevention and violence prevention policies.
Supplemental Materials
- NVC Workbook
- NVC Tree Diagram – credits to Inbal Kashtan, 2008
- Leading with Heart Slides
* People participating in this call agreed to allow posting of the recording of that call with them in it, as long as their names were not provided. No personal information is included in their comments, just general questions were made of Marion.
T.P.Caruso 