Between persuasion and empathy

Advanced Communication

In short

Training in difficult conversations, honest feedback and listening, based on Nonviolent Communication and Deep Democracy. We teach the technique and work on the intention behind it, because the intention is what the other person picks up.

For anyone who has hard conversations
In person, worldwide
NVC & Deep Democracy

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When the technique is right and it still goes wrong

Someone says "I hear what you are saying", and you know for certain they did not hear you. Plenty of communication skills training produces exactly that: people who know the technique and miss the person.

I taught communication skills for years and I know every trick: open questions, I-messages, starting from common ground. In my TEDx talk I describe what happened when I tried them all on my wife. She felt manipulated, and she was right. Without the right intention, any technique becomes hollow.

Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love.Thich Nhat Hanh

So this training teaches both: clear, careful communication, and the willingness to understand the other person, also when you disagree.

In the room

The conversations we practise

Imre Végh teaching respectful disagreement during a communication training — Part two of the training: respectful disagreement.

Imre Végh teaching the Challenger case during a communication training — The Challenger disaster: engineers warned about the risk and were not heard.

The programme

What we practise

Each training is put together for the group. The full programme covers seven themes, a single day takes two or three.

01Speaking up, and being heardWhy smart people keep quiet in meetings, from the Challenger disaster to your own team, and what it takes for a dissenting voice to land.
02Respectful disagreementFrom positions to interests to needs, after the Harvard Negotiation Project. Six principles to bridge a difference without giving up your own view.
03Seeing clearly in an argumentIntellectual humility: checking your own assumptions before defending your conclusion. What is the real problem, does the claim hold up, do the pros outweigh the cons?
04Nonviolent CommunicationMarshall Rosenberg's method: observing without judging, naming your feelings and needs, and making a request instead of a demand.
05FeedbackGiving it so that it lands, receiving it without armour, and raising the stakes step by step when behaviour does not change.
06Deep DemocracyListening to the minority voice: the colleague who disagrees, the doubt nobody says out loud. Group decisions get better when every voice has been heard.
07Listening, also across culturesListening in a way that makes the other person feel understood, which takes more than paraphrasing. And the eight scales on which working cultures differ, after Erin Meyer, before you decide a colleague is being difficult.

9.3average rating /10

5,000+people trained worldwide

20years experience

How we work

We work with conversations from your own work. Expect to practise the one you have been putting off.

Training days can stand alone or form a trajectory over several months.

Psychological safety training, when a team has gone quiet.
Team coaching, when a team needs guidance more than training.
What is compassionate leadership? Where this work comes from.

There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect.John O'Donohue

What participants say

being clear, honest and yourself and expressing that through communication is the best in life.

★★★★★

Communication is key, I learned how to express myself. I realised how much I struggled talking and discussions helped me get over that.