Hear a complaint or criticism as a statement of feelings and needs, using Marshall Rosenberg's model.
Siew Ling works on the product side and deals with Ravi's team most weeks. At a sprint review, Ravi says that "product keeps changing the scope", and she hears it as a criticism of her.
Complaints usually sound like attacks, so most people treat them as attacks. They defend themselves or they hit back. But most complaints, even badly worded ones, tell you that one of the other person's needs is not being met. If you hear the need, you have something to work with. If you hear only the attack, you can only fight or fold.
The psychologist Marshall Rosenberg developed a model he called Nonviolent Communication, and he set it out in a book with the same name. It splits communication into four parts.
An observation is what actually happened, stated without judgement. For example, the numbers arrived at 5.30pm on the day of the meeting (an example figure). A feeling is the emotion the person has about what happened, such as worry, embarrassment or frustration. A need is the deeper thing that matters to the person and has gone unmet, such as predictability, respect, support or clarity. A request is a specific action that would help meet the need.
Rosenberg designed the model for both speaking and listening. You'll use it for speaking in Module 6, mainly in lesson 6.4, "End with a clear request, not a hint". The focus for now is listening. When someone is upset, the four parts usually arrive tangled together, and as the listener 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, and the need is what is really going on.
Take some complaints you may well hear at work. "You always send the numbers at the last minute" probably points to a need for time to prepare. The person may also be worried about looking unprepared in front of their own boss. "This report is useless" usually points to a need for clarity, because they could not find what they were looking for. "Nobody on your team ever picks up the phone" often comes from someone who has been stuck waiting and needs support or responsiveness. The need is almost never about you as a person, and that makes it easier to hear.
When Siew Ling replayed Ravi's comment this way, she heard frustration and a need for predictability. His team cannot plan when the target keeps moving, and she could act on that need.
Once you have a guess at the feeling and the need, offer it to the other person as a question. Rosenberg's own examples often follow a pattern like "Are you feeling frustrated because you needed the numbers earlier?" Asking out loud shows you were listening. 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, and they usually take it.
You don't need the textbook wording. In many workplaces, copying Rosenberg's structure word for word sounds stiff, so use your own voice. With a colleague you might say, "Sounds like the late numbers left you scrambling before the meeting. Is that it?" With a client you might say, "It sounds like you needed to hear about the delay earlier than you did. Is that fair?"
Tie the guess to the situation and the need. Keep it away from the person's state of mind. A guess that sounds like a diagnosis, such as "You seem very stressed", can come across as criticism.
People hesitate to guess because they might be wrong. That matters less than most people think. When a guess is wrong, the other person usually corrects you, and the correction tells you the real need.
Siew Ling asked Ravi, "Is the main problem that the dates got promised without your team's input?" Ravi shook his head. He said he didn't mind her promising dates. What he minded was finding out about scope changes after she had already agreed them with the client. That pointed to a different need: he wanted a say in what gets built, and he was happy to leave the dates to her. Her wrong guess got her to the right need in one sentence.
She could instead have argued, "We don't keep changing the scope, it was two changes." That reply would have been accurate, and it would have got her nowhere. Arguing about whether a complaint is accurate gets you nowhere, even when your correction is true.
This kind of listening is hard in the moment, especially when the complaint is about you. It gets easier if you first practise translating complaints on paper while you are calm. Then the habit is ready when the next complaint comes. The method is the same each time. Assume the complaint signals an unmet need, untangle it into observation, feeling, need and request, and write down your best guess at the feeling and the need, tied to the situation.
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.
Write down three complaints you have heard recently. Next to each one, write the feeling and the need you think is behind it.
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