Course Info

Compassionate Communication (Non-Violent Communication) Course

Background

In today’s times, the complexity and ever-changing environment that we operate in – throws up challenges while dealing with people and situations. This requires us to develop the ability to adapt. Communication is one of the most important tools that helps us to adapt with ease. Powerful communication facilitates the ease to inspire and take people along. At the base of powerful communication is one’s ability to connect with self and others. Normally communication is reactive. It emanates from the surface layers of our thoughts, judgments and fixed ideas about how one should be moving ahead; tackling an issue. Positional power and force are often used to make a demand and gain agreement. While short term results may be possible, this results in disconnection and breakdown in communication and eroding of relationships. Understanding the ‘why’ of communication is extremely essential. This is more so for students of communication. Understanding this ‘why’ enables us to create a ‘communication environment of compassion’ in which we are able to hold conversations and/or create situations that powerfully promote or encourage peaceful interpersonal and intergroup relationships. It helps us position ourselves in relation to our personal goals and vision. Compassionate Communication certainly offers an elegant and practical framework for students of communication. It allows not only a deepening of one’s self-awareness but also one’s emphatic engagement with other persons in a compassionate way, either through interpersonal means or through the ‘communication products’ one produces.

Four-Fold Integration of Compassionate Communication

1. Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity
2. Language: understanding how words, images and sounds contribute to connection or distance
3. Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to listen to others in disagreements, how to dialogue and move toward solutions that work for all
4. Means of influence: sharing “power with others” rather than using “power over others”

Compassionate Communication Serves our Desire to do Four Things

1. Increase our ability to live with non-violent choice, meaning, and connection.
2. Connect compassionately with self (self-compassion) and others to have more satisfying relationships.
3. Share resources so everyone can benefit.
4. Contribute to a more peaceful world.

Programme Objective

• Build awareness of default patterns of listening and speaking, and their impact/Also default (or mainstream) patterns of media communication narratives
• Study and understand the Non-Violent Communication Model of Self Awareness and Compassionate Communication
• Apply it in areas like dealing with triggers and conflicts
• Build practices for applying it in day-to-day communication contexts

Programme Duration

• 10 hours
• 2 days