NVC Competencies

You will have the opportunity to deepen your capacity for the following:

  • Presence: Being attentive to what is happening right now.  Not lost in thinking, emotional reactions, etc.

  • Observing: Noticing (and possibly describing) our sensory and mental experiences, and distinguishing these experiences from the interpretations we ascribe to them.

  • Feelings awareness: Ability to identify and experience our physical sensations and emotions.

  • Needs consciousness: Awareness of (and the willingness to honour) needs, the essential universal elemental qualities of life (like sustenance, love and meaning).

  • Request consciousness and making requests: Willingness to ask for what one wants, with openness to any response; not attached to any particular outcome.

  • Empathy: Being present with another's experience, with unconditional acceptance of the person.

  • Honest self expression: Owning one's experience and having the willingness to express authentically without blame or criticism.

  • Facilitating connection: Facilitating empathy and honesty in dialogue with an intent to create connection.

  • Flexibility in relating: Openness and versatility in interacting with others.

  • Open-hearted flow of giving and receiving: Transforming scarcity thinking into thriving creatively; joyfully contributing and receiving.

  • Cultivating vitality: Tuning in to oneself to support balanced self-care; cultivating the energy to serve life.

  • Sharing power: Transforming domination; valuing everyone's needs with mutuality and respect; transcending submission and rebellion.

  • Awareness of response-ability: Freely choosing one's responses to what shows up in life, owning one's part in what happens. Not owning others' parts, and acknowledging that one's actions do influence others.

  • Reconnecting to self and recovering from reactivity: Reactivity is internal resistance to what is: Recovery is letting go of that resistance.  Re-connecting to self is being with one's own experience with presence and compassion.

    Reference: Pathways to Liberation Self-assessment
    (Copyright © 2011 Jacob Gotwals, Jack Lehman, Jim Manske, and Jori Manske)

Key distinctions

You will have the opportunity to deepen your understanding of the following:

  • Vulnerability vs. weakness

  • Feeling vs. feeling mixed with thoughts

  • Giraffe honesty vs. jackal honesty

  • Idiomatic vs. classical (formal) Giraffe

  • Persisting vs. demanding

  • Shift vs. compromise

  • Appreciation vs. approval, compliments or praise


    Reference: CNVC.org Certification Preparation Packet (CPP)

NVC processes

You will have the opportunity to practise and deepen your understanding of the following:

  • The NVC model: the 3 modes: inner self connection, expressing honestly and receiving empathically; the four components, the Giraffe Dance; three types of requests

  • Expressing ‘No’

  • Hearing ‘No’

  • Experiencing, expressing and receiving gratitude and appreciation

    Reference: CNVC.org Certification Preparation Packet (CPP)