What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Nonviolent Communication
Folding judgment into what you say the moment something goes wrong is the specific trap Nonviolent Communication names; telling a co-founder or contractor what they did wrong, laced with your evaluation of them, almost always triggers defensiveness before the actual problem gets solved.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Describe what happened without judgment
Separating a plain description of what happened from your evaluation of the person is what keeps a hard conversation from becoming a fight before it starts.
A founder tells a co-founder "you don't take this seriously" when what actually happened is that a deliverable came in two days late; the co-founder hears an attack on their character and defends it, not the deadline.
Before your next hard conversation with a co-founder or contractor, write down only what happened, with no adjective describing them, and check it reads like something a camera could have recorded.
Name the actual feeling underneath
Naming what you actually feel, rather than a thought disguised as a feeling ("I feel like you're cutting corners"), gives the other person something to respond to besides a judgment of them.
A founder says "I feel like you don't care about quality," which is really an accusation, and the co-founder responds to the accusation instead of hearing that the founder is genuinely worried.
The next time you're frustrated with a co-founder, name the actual feeling in one word (worried, disappointed, relieved) before saying anything else.
Connect the feeling to a need, not a blame
Tracing your frustration back to a need of your own, rather than to what the other person did wrong, is what turns a complaint into something they can actually help with.
A founder tells a contractor "you're careless," when the real issue is the founder's own need for predictable delivery dates to plan around; naming the blame instead of the need leaves the contractor with nothing concrete to change.
The next time you're about to criticize someone's work, name the need behind your frustration out loud before naming what they did.
Make a clear, doable request, not a demand
A specific, doable request the other person can actually say no to lands very differently than an open-ended demand, even when the words are similar.
Moving fast and communicating this carefully aren't opposites — a thirty-second version of this process is usually faster than the week lost to a co-founder relationship that's gone cold.
Name one thing, honestly
Is there a co-founder or contractor conversation you've been avoiding because you know your first draft of it comes out as judgment?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
The next time you're about to criticize someone's work, name the need behind your frustration out loud before naming what they did.