|
|
166 of 180 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good material, but presentation leaves a bit to be desired, April 6, 2004
I borrowed this book from the local library after it caught my eye, sitting on the "new books" display. It's a pretty good book, although I do have some reservations about it./Nonviolent Communication/ is a rather easy read. This is both good and bad - good, because you're not slogging through lots of academia-speak and technical jargon; but also bad because you might breeze through the book too quickly to truly absorb the rather useful and insightful information it is offering. The idea behind the NVC process is rather simple - it's mostly about learning to be more precise in expressing your feelings, their cause(s), and what you would like done to resolve them. Rather than saying "you never clean the !@#$ kitchen," the NVC approach would be to say something along the lines of: "When you do not take out the trash in the kitchen, I feel __________." And so on. NVC also encourages you to be receptive to what other people are saying and feeling, even if (or perhaps especially if) they do not word things with as much precision and care. The approach is very sound, but I have reservations about the way the book presents it. Most of the example conversations are so unbelievably robotic, at times I just wanted to laugh out loud at how absurd they were. My initial thought was that I was being unreasonable - after all, they're just words on a page, and perhaps they would seem less laughable in person with real emotion behind them. And then I realized that was the key that was missing - the conversations were little other than the facts of the situation, and the exact words the people said. There was no emotional context, no insight into the feelings that were being expressed. I found this to be extremely ironic. A book about expressing emotions, with lots of examples that HAD no emotion! I think if you can get beyond the rather mediocre examples, and put genuine *thought* into the principles the author outlines, you will find much of value in the book. Before reading /Nonviolent Communication/, I didn't think much about how the imprecision in our wording can cause a great deal of conflict. "You are so inconsiderate!" versus "When you leave your dirty dinner plate on the table and go watch football, I feel very angry. Would you please rinse the plate and put it in the dishwasher?" It's a world of difference, and I believe there is much benefit to this approach. Final thought: there's a lot of good stuff in this book, but the presentation could use some work. Read the book carefully, and do not go as quickly as the breezy writing style allows - the material here needs careful consideration for it to truly benefit you.
|
by Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD
by Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD
by Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD
by Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD
See all Editorial Reviews
