You will be able to hear a complaint or criticism as an expression of feelings and needs, using Marshall Rosenberg's model.
"You always send the numbers at the last minute." "This report is useless." "Nobody on your team ever picks up the phone." When someone says something like that to you, the natural move is to defend yourself or hit back. The words sound like an attack, so you treat them as one.
There is another way to hear them. Most complaints, however badly put, are the other person telling you that something they need is not being met. If you can hear the need, you have something to work with. If you only hear the attack, all you can do is fight or fold.
The psychologist Marshall Rosenberg developed a model he called Nonviolent Communication, set out in his book of the same name. It breaks communication into four parts: observations, feelings, needs and requests.
An observation is what actually happened, without judgement, so "the numbers arrived at 5.30pm on the day of the meeting" rather than "you're always late". The feeling is the emotion the person has about it, such as worry, embarrassment or frustration, and the need is the deeper thing that matters to them and has been left unmet, such as predictability, respect, support or clarity. Finally, a request is a specific action that would help meet the need.
Rosenberg designed the model for both speaking and listening. You will use it for speaking in module 6, especially in lesson 6.4, End with a clear request, not a hint. Here the focus is on listening, because when someone else is upset, their complaint usually arrives with the four parts tangled together, and your job is to untangle them.
Rosenberg argued that when people judge or criticise others, they are expressing an unmet need of their own in a distorted way. "You're useless" is a poor way of saying "I needed support with this and didn't get it". The judgement is what you hear. The need is what is really going on.
Take the complaints above. "You always send the numbers at the last minute" probably comes from a need for time to prepare, and perhaps from worry about looking unprepared in front of their own boss. "This report is useless" might come from a need for clarity: they could not find what they were looking for. "Nobody on your team ever picks up the phone" usually signals a need for support or responsiveness, often from someone who has been stuck waiting.
The need is almost never about you as a person. That is what makes it easier to hear.
When Siew Ling replayed Ravi's comment from the sprint review, "product keeps changing the scope", through this lens, she heard frustration and a need for predictability. His team could not plan when the target kept moving. That was a need she could do something about.
Once you have a guess, you can offer it to the other person as a question. Rosenberg's own examples often take a form like: "Are you feeling frustrated because you needed the numbers earlier?"
Said aloud, the question shows you were listening, and it moves the conversation away from what you did wrong and towards what they need. It also gives the other person an opening to say more, which they usually take.
The wording does not have to be textbook. In many workplaces, a phrase that copies Rosenberg's structure word for word can sound stiff. Put it in your own voice. "Sounds like the late numbers left you scrambling before the meeting. Is that it?" does the same job. With a client, it might be: "It sounds like you needed to hear about the delay earlier than you did. Is that fair?"
Avoid guesses that sound like diagnoses. "You seem very stressed" can land as a criticism. Keep the guess tied to the situation and the need, not to the person's state of mind.
People hesitate to guess because they might be wrong. That turns out not to matter much. If your guess is wrong, the other person will usually correct you, and in doing so tell you the real need.
Siew Ling tried this with Ravi: "Is the main problem that the dates got promised without your team's input?" Ravi shook his head. "I don't mind you promising dates. I mind finding out about scope changes after you've already agreed them with the client." That was a different need. He wanted a say in what got built, and he was happy to leave the dates to her. Her wrong guess got her to the right one in one sentence.
Compare that with arguing over the original complaint. "We don't keep changing the scope, it was two changes" would have been accurate and would have got her nowhere.
This kind of listening is hard in the moment, especially when the complaint is about you. It gets easier if you have practised translating complaints on paper first, while you are calm, so the habit of looking for the need is ready when the next one arrives.
In the activity below you take three complaints you have heard recently and write the feeling and the need you think sits behind each one.
Take three complaints you have heard recently and write the feeling and the need you think sits behind each.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).