Peacebuilding &conflict transformation A ... - Peaceworkafrica

ing on specific behaviours it came out for example “He tells stories about his familyor various other life experiences during meetings, resulting in limited time forthe issues on the agenda and in meetings running over schedule.”The next meeting with manager and staff members took place and themanager interrupted in every topic discussed with “this reminds me of the timewhen I…” and elaborated on a life story. The staff did not voice their frustration,anger and criticism of his behaviour in words, but by nonverbal signs like rollingtheir eyes, yawning, staring at their watch or out the window. When asked to voicetheir criticism, one member said “Mr. Manager, you have a big mouth.” Thisshows clearly how difficult it is to change long-used habits of evaluating into theability to clearly describe the specific behaviour that leads to the evaluation.The “big mouth–statement” was clarified by listing specific behaviour; themanager responded “why didn’t you tell me before?” and continued to admithis story-telling habit at length by telling a story… He was then stopped andreminded that he was doing the same thing again. Everyone together developedmethods on how to remind or stop him whenever he tells stories at an inappropriatetime or place.Feelings – indicating a state of well-beingThe second component of nonviolent communication entails the identification andexpression of feelings. For many people it is quite unusual or even strange to talkabout emotions. In many cultures feelings are not considered important or are seenas a luxury. But as the following explanations will show, everyone has equal feelings.What is different from person to person and from culture to culture is if one has avocabulary of feeling and/or if a person voices their feelings (verbally or nonverbally).Feelings can be described as indicators of how we are, physically or mentally.They provide information about one’s state of well‐being, which can be categorizedas follows:▶ physical comfort or discomfort: I feel cold, exhausted, comfortable,hungry▶ level of involvement in intellectual activities: I am interested, confused▶ fulfilment (or not) of our needs: I’m happy, joyful, frustrated, sad, angryFeelings can also arise as a result of interpretation or if what happens is in harmonyor not in harmony with our values:▶ anger as a result of judgment: ‘he’s ignorant’,▶ shame as a result of thinking: ‘I should have done…’,▶ fear as a result of interpretation ‘I will not approach this guy, he looksvery dangerous with all those tattoos’214 V I . N O N V I O L E N C E