The Peace Alliance hosts monthly conference calls intended to support you in your communication challenges with regards to your work, using the methods of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to enhance the effectiveness of the Department of Peace campaign.

Next Call: Thursday, January 31, 2008

DETAILS:

These 90-minute calls are typically held on the last Thursday of the month. However, please check dates each month to confirm there has been no change.

Time: 6:00 p.m. pacific; 9:00 eastern.

Call in number: (605) 772-3001

Access code: 470821#.

Call in and you will then be prompted to enter the code. There are no fees for this call other than your normal long distance rates. (Please note: These calls are recorded for publication on our website.) The call will ask you to announce yourself. PLEASE IGNORE THIS REQUEST IF it might interrupt a conversation in progress.

We are grateful to have Miki Kashtan, from Bay Area Nonviolent Communication, volunteer her time to facilitate these calls and support us all. The calls are usually scheduled for the last Thursday of each month (except when otherwise noted), and last for an hour and 30 minutes starting at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern.

Below are some of the areas that appear to be prevalent in your work; we will add additional ones as we go month by month, and we also welcome any other specific challenges you are facing in your work in the areas of connection and communication:

1. How can you enhance your relationships with each other, so that you have tools to meet with compassion and care and resilience your differences of opinion about how to act to achieve your goals; the irritations which happen when someone does something you don’t like; the disappointments and confusion which so often accompany decision making; etc.

2. How can you reach across the divides between you and the representatives you are trying to influence, and maintain and deepen connection even when you are faced with an aide you don’t trust is really hearing you.

3. How can you create a compassionate “conversation” within yourself when your own actions are not in line with the values of peace and love that inform your work?

The skills we will generally focus on will be the following:

1. How can we express what is true for us, what we believe and want, in a way that takes ownership of the experience as ours without requiring the other person to agree or disagree with us? The concrete skills we will focus on are expressing what we feel, what’s really important to us, and what we really want back from the person we are speaking with.

2. How can we listen empathically to another person, even when we deeply disagree with them, and hear the underlying experience beneath the position or action or belief we disagree with? The concrete skills we will focus on are guessing what might be going on for the other person underneath the words they are choosing, to see what matters to them that they would like us to really hear and understand.

3. How to be able to choose clearly which of the above we are doing, based on what’s more likely to contribute to connection, which would then further everyone’s goals?

4. How to distinguish between what’s happening and our stories and interpretations about what it means and who and what the people are who are doing or saying what we are reacting to?

If you have no prior experience with NVC, you may choose to purchase and read Marshall Rosenberg’s book: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, or go to www.baynvc.org and look for the (much briefer) introductory materials which are posted there. There is also a great new .pdf at: http://www.baynvc.org/reference.php

Each time we hope to work with a few individuals on real live issues, and so we ask that if you have any specific challenges, you send them to us by emailThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for possible inclusion in the next call (we will contact you if we want to use your issue on the call, so you will know ahead of time):

1. Who do you want to learn how to express yourself to with more clarity and authenticity? What’s the situation?

2. Who do you have trouble responding to with compassion? What’s the situation? (Might be issues dealing with your congressional offices).

3. Do you have anyone you struggle with that you believe both of you would be willing to receive support during the call? Please contact us immediately, so we can talk before the call.