^I echo this sentiment. Someone coming into my work culture with NVC would get politely dismissed in public, and absolutely SAVAGED behind closed doors.
Well, it's the Marine Corps. It ain't a rose garden.[1][2]
>>>full of backstabbing jerks
Actually quite the contrary. If anything we are well-known for our solidarity.[3] Assuming there aren't issues due to rank/the command hierarchy, most personal disagreements are handled face-to-face. People try to stiff-arm work responsibilities off to other offices but I think that is endemic to any ridiculously large and sluggish bureaucratic organization.
>>> Am I misunderstand you?
I think so.
It's a work culture that is optimized for conditions of 100% stress, where people's lives are at stake. We have a communication system and culture that is built to support the worst conditions, and honed over 225+ years. Even though we spend 99% of our time at, say, 10% stress levels in an office environment, it's easier to "dial down" our methods rather than "dial up" something less robust.
NVC strikes me as the sort of methodology designed and tested for a 5% stress office environment. If you attempted to employ it in the most critical communications scenario (arguably a contested beach assault), it would be an utter failure. Based on the OP's link, Steps #2 and #4 are the biggest failure points IMO.
"How do you feel about NOT retreating away from your objective?" "What are your thoughts on possibly doing a frontal attack on that machinegun nest?"
We would end the day all face-down in pools of our own blood trying to communicate like that.
Now, one might be inclined to retort that as our organization has a selection process that weeds out those who can't handle 100% stress, there is an inherent bias in the viability of our methods to integrate with the regular civilian workforce. But the counter-examples are our on-site contractors, some of which have NO military experience. Most of them still integrate just fine. Not all though:
IT Contractor A: A direct speaker. About 40yo. Also a jiu-jitsu purple belt. Kinda a "quiet badass". Fits in well.
IT Contractor B: A smarmy, weaselly character. Late 20's. Can't handle people speaking harshly.
These two had an exchange that essentially went like this:
Contractor A: "Hey I need X. And it's a time-sensitive priority."
Contractor B: "Could you possibly ask nicer next time?"
Contractor A: "Could you possibly do your job next time?"
Then Contractor A came back to the office and shared the story, to which pretty much everyone, from the 19yo Lance Corporals to 35+ guys felt "OMFG, sometimes I wanna throat-punch that dude (B). Ask nicer? WTF? Like people are gonna be asking nice for things if Chinese ballistic missiles are ever raining down on us? Does he not know where he is? If he can't handle it he should go back to hiding in an office in Northern Virginia."
We would go on to have numerous problems with Contractor B, most of them stemming from his "feelings". I'm not gonna go onto a rant about direct-vs-indirect counseling methods and some additional leadership anecdotes/case studies though. Hopefully that added some clarity.
I'm generally a fan of direct communication but also find NVC interesting, and have thought about this a bit. Although I have nothing to do with the military now I trained to fly with the RAF volunteer reserve and I remember my instructor punching me once (not particularly hard, but the sort of thing that could easily get you fired in most jobs) when I messed up a turn. My folks knew a few high ranking army types some of whom had quite a bit of trouble integrating with civvy life when they left.
It strikes me that the military way of doing things, while appropriate in battle, might have downsides for those who end up flying desks. In particular if people are so accustomed to taking orders, how do you know whether or not you have an optimal balance of command versus information flowing upwards and initiative from subordinates? And does the authoritarian system produce good enough people in the highest ranks, or might top brass skills be better if they weren't so shaped by it themselves?
I guess you don't have to deal with longer term burnout issues as most people leave by the time they're 40.
>>>It strikes me that the military way of doing things, while appropriate in battle, might have downsides for those who end up flying desks.
I once read that the "Mad Men" business culture of the 60's, much of which is now considered "toxic", was largely built by WW2 and Korean War veterans. Guys who had spent years in those traumatizing battles had a unique perspective on work and communication that perhaps hasn't aged well for everyone else. Wish I could dig up a link to that....
>>>In particular if people are so accustomed to taking orders, how do you know whether or not you have an optimal balance of command versus information flowing upwards and initiative from subordinates?
1. The commander sets and disseminates alerts called "Commander's Critical Information Requirements" (CCIRs). These are key pieces of information that EVERYONE should be on the look-out for, and route up the chain as soon as possible. This is stuff that the commander considers to have great effect on his decision-making, possibly leading him to pursue a different course of action.
2. Mission-type orders.[1] This is where subordinates exercise their initiative. A commander tells you WHAT he wants done, you figure out HOW to do it best. You are usually only given a few hard restrictions on what not to do, but that's typically only to prevent things like fratricide or potentially screwing up the bigger plan. With mission-type orders, subordinate leaders are understood to be closer to the problem, and therefore better positioned to solve it quickly and efficiently.
>>>And does the authoritarian system produce good enough people in the highest ranks, or might top brass skills be better if they weren't so shaped by it themselves?
That's a very tough issue that the military is grappling with. Arguments have been made that career progression is too rigidly defined. General Petraeus said he had a highly unusual professional education and career path, contrary to the conventional wisdom of "how to get promoted". There's been numerous articles painting most US generals as "optimistic but otherwise mediocre yes-men".[2] The Air Force struggles with the "Fighter Mafia" because all of their leadership is men who spent most of their adult lives flying fighter jets, and they throw shade on pretty much every other priority or mission set. The promotion system worked when there were fewer "moving parts", fewer specializations. But with the explosion in complexity of warfare, both from a technical-level (UAVs, electronic warfare, cyber security, etc..) and from an operations perspective (full spectrum operations and the Three-Block War[3]).....guys who have spent 20 years just doing infantry work find themselves with some limitations in their professional experience. Especially considering how many of them were selected in the first place, when they were brand-new officers: cardio-respiratory endurance and "cultural fit", mostly. This is partly because the military, and the Marine Corps in particular, considers everyone an equally-competent generalist. It was probably true in 1945 but not today. Perfect example:
Me: "We're making changes to the Sharepoint site for the training exercise. It's gonna be heavier and eat up more bandwidth."
My (tank-driving) boss: "Is that gonna impact our...spectrum?" [context: the new General at the time was harping on the importance of EM signature management]
Me: "No Sir, because for this exercise all of that Sharepoint network traffic will be going over the fibre optic links in the ground, not over the air via our radio antennas or satellite links."
My tanker boss wasn't a dumb guy. But he has no formal education in electrical engineering, radio theory, etc... You can't just drop a white paper in his lap[4], and expect him to speak intelligently on the subject the next day. Especially at 50+ years old. He would just drop "...spectrum?" into conversations randomly whenever I mentioned a technical issue (which was often). Now, we do have very senior technical specialists, but they are almost never the operations officers or commanders of major combat formations. They play a support role, and rightfully so. Everything exists to SUPPORT Operations, which is almost always (infantry/armor/artillery). But how those Ground Combat leaders have been prepared for even 4th-generation warfare leaves a lot to be desired, IMO...
>>>I guess you don't have to deal with longer term burnout issues as most people leave by the time they're 40.
Our burnout timeline is simply accelerated. I've seen mid-career professionals (early 30's) with combat deployments burnt out in under 3 years at high op-tempo units. Talent management in the military is completely broken[5, pg6 of PDF]. The military has a 3-year work location rotation for most people, which means every summer we suffer ~30% turnover in personnel, which wrecks your local-level institutional experience and proficiency. There are certain multi-national military exercises we do annually and you see the same mistakes/friction points EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. As you said, most people quit around ~40yo....but Colonels and Generals usually need 20-25yrs to get promoted. So your senior leaders aren't necessarily the best...merely those who could endure the soul-grinding brutality of the system the longest.
On the topic of Critical Information Requirements and Mission-type orders: sure, in either military or civilian settings a manager can request information and delegate tasks, and any particular decision will end up being made at a particular level which may or may not be optimal. Perhaps NVC affects those decision levels, perhaps it doesn't; other management practices and org structure will surely have an influence. And what about deeper aspects like defining which questions are valid to ask in the first place, and which ones we want to focus on asking? I'm reminded of a recent article which said that the role of a CEO is primarily to set a culture - they aren't optimally placed even for high level strategic decisions so have to settle with generating the context in which those are made.
Are flatter hierarchies more effective as the problem space gets more complex? How does direct vs nonviolent communication style interact with all this? I wonder if anyone knows, I certainly don't.
I greatly appreciate your perspective here. Makes me think about whether certain communication styles work better in different contexts.
I remember asking a vet what the communication style was in the military and he said, "Someone who outranks you tells you what to do and there is always someone who outranks you." Now, I don't know how representative that is of the military as a whole, but it got me thinking: how would that vet respond if he were to tell his wife what to do and she said no?
I say this because maybe in the high-stress, high-urgency situation with a hierarchical organizational structure, NVC doesn't work well, but perhaps it would work better in the lower-stress, lower-urgency situation with a flatter organizational structure, and that it could be useful to speak the two languages, so to say.
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However, I think something like NVC could work in your workplace, as it seems like you showed it in that example.
> Contractor A: "Hey I need X. And it's a time-sensitive priority."
Sounds pretty much like NVC to me, just a much more efficient version of it. The thing you need (X), when you need it (~now), with an implicit ask of will you do it.
> Contractor B: "Could you possibly ask nicer next time?"
This sounds pretty far from the style of NVC. Jumps straight to the request step and buries the feelings and wants in the "possibly ask nicer" phrase.
If I were Contractor B, I would love if Contractor A spoke to me like that and would only wish Contractor A added, "Will you do it now?" at the end of it, so that I could close the transaction in the affirmative.
If A didn't ask (or directly tell me to do it) and I felt unsure if A wanted me to do it and when exactly to do it, then I might reply with, "I'm a bit confused, do you want me to do this and if so, by when do you want it done?" However, depending on how well I know the person and how they communicate, this may be unnecessary.
Anyway, I love this—thank you for writing all that you did and for bringing your perspective to the conversation :-)
>>>I remember asking a vet what the communication style was in the military and he said, "Someone who outranks you tells you what to do and there is always someone who outranks you." Now, I don't know how representative that is of the military as a whole
It's very accurate. ^_^
>>>but it got me thinking: how would that vet respond if he were to tell his wife what to do and she said no?
You have to foster "buy in". That's when leadership uses charisma to convince personnel to internalize the importance of the unit's mission. The husband needs the wife's participation in executing a task, that she should take ownership of her piece of the puzzle, in order to benefit them both. As a team. Shoulder-to-shoulder against the world. Hmmmmm, actually since you brought up relationship communication, the NVC process makes me think of parallels with some PUA principles and techniques....
>>>but perhaps it would work better in the lower-stress, lower-urgency situation with a flatter organizational structure, and that it could be useful to speak the two languages, so to say.
I think I understand your insights and comments on the scenario I posted. It's possible the key factor is the flatter organizational structure in many business environments, or cultures with less-transparent power structures (many Japanese businesses have a "soft power" leadership that isn't the official manager, for example).
Regardless of the nomenclature, the purpose and intent of the methodology is to build robust working relationships. If the methodology is sound, it should hold up when stress-tested. If he doesn't hold up, then there's negligible benefit from advocating for it. If the expectation is that the organization will never be subjected to such high levels of stress anyway....than almost all management styles are equally valid/equally useless.
Practices that are intended to build skills (or "robust working relationships") don't actually have to work in crisis situations - the goal is that the skill or relationship was developed to the point where it can be relied on in a crisis.
> Assuming there aren't issues due to rank/the command hierarchy, most personal disagreements are handled face-to-face.
It is easy to keep clear communication when there are no real stakes and positions at stake. Learned that hard way, in teams where communication looked good and mature and direct until power vaacuum happened.
