See if you can find a link between the following short scenarios: Your partner leaves the room in anger after another argument; A friend lashes out at you despite you having done nothing wrong; Your children’s constant disobedience makes you extremely frustrated and causes you to yell and do things you regret.

Why do the above scenarios, or similar situations, constantly play out in your life? There are thousands of situations like the ones listed above that all have a common thread. We know there is a better way to handle the situation, but we cannot figure it out. Our emotions often get the better of us as we poorly handle the situation. We know something is wrong and that we can fix it, but how? The answers to these questions and the secret human need I will show you how to fulfill is through a method of communication called “nonviolent communication”, also known as NVC.

An Overview of Nonviolent Communication: Your Key to Compassionate Communication for Shared Understanding

The process I am about to discuss in this article is one created by the Center for Nonviolent Communication. The organization is a nonprofit organization founded by Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Rosenberg and a couple hundred other NVC trainers, conduct workshops throughout the world where they teach people their nonviolent communication model. The NVC process has changed millions of people who learned the techniques directly from trainers or Rosenberg’s book, and people who have been fortunate enough to have those trained in the NVC process use the model on them.

If you are after a process that changes a person’s behavior, NVC is not the best one to use. NVC builds a deep intimate relationship and connection with effective communication by satisfying people’s needs. It achieves a level of connection most people never experience. It can be used to change a person’s behavior, but the primary purpose of the process is to help people face what matters with compassion to connect at a very intimate level.

Once you have sufficiently gone through certain steps in the process, then you can use your negotiation skills to persuade the person. If you try to persuade the person upfront before you use NVC, you will often find the person resists you and ignores what you have to say.

When a person disagrees with you, refuses to comply with a request, or is angry at you, a poor communicator tries to firstly express oneself. The person seeks to be understood before seeking to understand. An NVC user, on the contrary, seeks to understand the person, which in turn leads to their own need of being understood. Once you understand others, they will want to understand you.

The commonality amongst the situations I mentioned earlier, and hundreds of situations you experience throughout the week, is people’s desperation to be understood. Your angry partner wants to be understood. Your friend wants to be understood and will have almost zero frustration once you understand. Your children want to be understood, which will naturally compel them to talk with you about intimate issues. Nonviolent communication helps you understand people and have them understand you.

The need to be understood is possibly the greatest unmet human need. Fulfill this need and you will trigger new experiences, intimate sharing, and connect with people at the heart. Thanks to Dan Kennedy, a great marketer that I intently learn from, I came across a quote by Cavett Robert, founder of the National Speakers Association, who said, “Most people are walking around, umbilical cord in hand, looking for a new place to plug it in.” If you can be that “socket” by understanding the person and empathically receiving their needs, you automatically share an electrifying connection with the person. Something about the person will change before your eyes. They will know something deep is going on without knowing what you are doing.

Unfortunately, the majority of people never arrive at this stage of electrifying intimacy. Answer this question truthfully: How many people truly understand you on a frequent basis? Think about the question for some time because it is important to understand understanding.

I ask this not to make you blame others for their failure to understand you, but to show you the scarcity of people who seek to understand. If you are like most people, you will not have one person that frequently and truly understands you in conversations. Few people care about understanding others, which causes themselves to be misunderstood. People who complain that “no one understands me” are constantly misunderstood because they live on a one-way street seeking to receive before they consider giving.

Violence is widespread because one person or group desperately wants to be understood while another party they are in conflict with also wants to be understood. The failure to see each other’s needs means neither gets one’s needs fulfilled. The result is an outbreak of emotional or physical destruction. So much pain in the world is caused by misunderstandings.

The anger and frustration present in everyday situations appears to be irrelevant to deeper issues, yet it is our inability to effectively face conflict that contributes to a global scale of war and hatred. Our everyday wallowing in resentment, frustration, and misunderstandings has as much – but probably greater – impact on peace and love than kind actions. If you cannot resolve your minor nuances in relationships that are suppose to be intimate and love-filled, you cannot expect nations who have hated each other for centuries to resolve major conflicts. To understand another person is a secret of world peace. “Peace cannot be achieved through violence,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “it can only be attained through understanding.”

The nonviolent communication process is a simple once you know the process; though it’s not always a fun slide to ride on because emotional pollution clogs your use of it. With practice, you will become better at NVC and be more successful in your communication and relationships. Over time, provided you continually practice the techniques and polish your skills, you will become excellent at the process.

The Four Step Process

The process has four steps: observing, feeling, needing, and requesting. There are really eight steps, however, because you firstly apply the four steps to the other person, then you apply them to yourself. Remember what I said before about seeking to understand before being understood? The first four stages make you understand people so you can be understood when you apply the four steps on yourself. This is the most critical part of the concept to grasp.

Unless the person is a compassionate communicator, go through the four steps first on the other person otherwise he or she will not listen to you. Use the visualization of a vacuum empathically “sucking up” the person’s communication. Until the person feels “cleaned”, you will be unable to clean yourself. Once you have sucked up the person, and hence understood them, you are then ready to use NVC on yourself.

Most people identify a few problems in firstly focusing on the other person. If you have not identified one of these now, you will as you continue to read about the process. The biggest concern I had with NVC is that you forgo your own needs, concerns, and emotions like anger. NVC prevents destructive expressions of anger and frustration via harmful attitudes and behaviors (think of the sarcastic teenager or the employee who does poor quality work). The process encourages you to express intense emotions – especially anger – in a healthy way that fulfills the underlying need.

At first glance, I understand the model may overwhelm you, but keep at it and reread the pages in this article to refine your ability to understand people and be understood. The NVC process as described in this full article will give you a good idea of what to expect in my Communication Secrets of Powerful People Program should you want to invest in it. It could be one of the greatest investments you make. Once you know how to understand people and help them understand you, you can mold your relationships however you want. It is time to kick into the first stage: observing.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
2. The Heart of Effective Communication: How to Love People
3. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management
4. The Benefits of Communication Skills
5. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication

As I drove, the open car park gave me an invitation to have a little fun with my car. If landscapes could talk, this one was whispering into my ear that I should spin the wheels. “Besides, it’s late at night. No one is around and you’re feeling great. It’s an open car park with no danger. Do it!” Like a vulnerable teenager succumbing to peer pressure, I accepted the invitation.

The car became an extension of my body as it began to mimic my ecstatic mood. I put my foot down hard on the accelerator as I spun the wheel left around the first corner. As the rear tires lost their stability and the car went side-ways, I entered the next turn and spun the wheel right. The sound of screeching tires was water fertilizing my increasing smile. Smoke filled the rims of my tires and a shot of adrenaline filled my body.

Following the two consecutive drifts, I straightened the car and approached a set of traffic lights on the main road that would take me home. Had this been during the daytime, about seven cars would be in front of me before the upcoming traffic lights.

My friend who had left before me had passed through the traffic lights three seconds ago so the lights were still green. Keeping in the mood, I put my foot down on the accelerator to catch the green light. I would safely make it. I turned around the corner with a soft screech of the tires. 20 meters in front of me on the side of the road were two police officers beside their vehicle. Lucky me.

The police pulled me over. Opposite to what you might be thinking, I was not concerned. I was still in my elevated state. I smiled. I wound down my window and an angry officer came charging at me, yelling, “What the hell are you thinking? What the hell is going through your mind?” I paused momentarily, unaffected by his aggressive state. I said smilingly, “I’m just happy, I guess.” Not a smart response. Not a smart response at all.

It hit me I was out of it. I knew I should have said something else. I gulped. My mind rushed to think of some communication techniques I could use as a life boat to save me from drowning in the conversation. The moment was intense and all that came to mind were some techniques on getting out of a speeding-ticket. I thought to myself that I will give the techniques a shot. I had annoyed the officer enough. Surely it couldn’t get worse.

As I was thinking how to approach this difficult situation, I was still happy. My happy mood seemed to pour fuel on his already raging fire. “Bloody hell mate! I could just give you a ticket right now!” My smile began to lower. I no longer made eye contact with the officer. The officer’s raging mood began to infect me. He was making me feel angry. It was as if my body was overcome by an emotional virus from the officer who was the virus’ host.

I thought of the techniques to get out of a speeding-ticket and realized I was already beginning to use them. It was too late to make the officer feel safe as he approached the car, but I needed to no longer act oblivious to my mistake. I needed to show respect as officers are in a clear position of authority and often experience disrespect throughout their day that only makes them more determined to convict guilty citizens. “You’re right,” I replied. “I was stupid and careless.”

The officer was still enraged and continued to threaten me with a ticket. I knew he could easily write me a ticket, but he was not writing one possibly because officers hate the paperwork created from citizens breaking the law. I kept myself aligned with the officer’s reality by remaining in a “Yes I’m wrong, stupid, and shouldn’t have done that” mood. I continued to play psychological judo, and match my mood with his own, until two minutes later he said to drive away. And oh, no ticket!

I drove off – though feeling pleased I had beaten a reckless driving ticket – in an irritated state. The officer had destroyed my happy mood. It took two minutes of talking with the officer to completely transform my happy state into a joyless, gloomy mood, which I remained in for another two hours until I went to bed.

Emotional Contagion: When Two Minds Infect One Another

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou, poet and actress

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” – Mark Twain, highly quoted writer

“You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” – Anonymous

“I am involved in all of mankind.” – John Donne, 16th century poet

My story I described is probably a perfect depiction of your reality with emotions. Everyday you interact with people in different moods. Sometimes you are happier than people; other times they are happier than you. Whatever the case, emotions transfer between people. This is a fascinating peculiarity with emotions. Have you ever noticed how we feel in our interactions is not only dependent on our internal state?

• How did you feel when someone really annoyed began talking to you? You became more annoyed.
• How did you feel when someone unhappy began talking to you? You began to be unhappy.
• How did you feel when a depressed person shared their misery with you? You felt depressed and miserable.
• How did you feel when a charismatic person talked to you? You felt his energy and you began to feel happier.

Psychologists call this phenomena “emotional contagion”. It is a psychological and physiological process – a transference of emotion that can occur from mimicking body language. Elaine Hatfield, a professor at the University of Hawaii, in a study with John Carlson and Christopher Hsee, had college students watch a videotape of a man describe two very emotional experiences: his life’s happiest and saddest events. While the college students watched the tape, they were taped so the researchers could record the students’ emotional responses. The students were also asked what feelings they experienced for each story at the end of the video.

The researchers found that students showed and expressed the recorded person’s emotions. The student’s felt happy when they watched the man describe his happiest event. The students felt sad when they watched the man describe his saddest event.

Hatfield and her two colleagues, John Cacioppo and Richard Rapson, in their co-authored book Emotional Contagion, say the psychophysiological phenomena occurs from automatically matching facial expressions, vocalics, postures, and movements. Hatfield says, “People tend to experience emotions consistent with the facial, vocal, and postural expressions they adopt.”

When you empathetically listen to a friend, true empathy puts you in their shoes to experience the discussed events. The friend describes an argument with an ex-partner, the yelling, the misunderstandings. You can vividly see what your friend talks about. The experience lets you feel the pain your friend feels. Well-known psychologist Albert Bandura says the shared experience results in a shared feeling. That is the price of listening: not only can you catch a cold, but you can catch an emotional cold.

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
2. Dirty Tricks of Psychology for Mind-Reading and the Roots of Empathy
3. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
4. Review of Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
5. The Greatest 15 Myths of Communication

Carl Rogers, a pioneering psychologist in the 1950s on human relations, said love, genuineness, and empathy are three essential pieces to constructive communication. Many studies since then support Rogers’ theory. When we fail to love people, it is hard to communicate in a way that supports ourselves and people. Love is the core of powerful communication. Think about it for a moment and I’m sure your experiences will confirm that love is the heart of effective communication.

It is unfortunate we are not taught how to love people. Instead of learning how to love, we learn to fight. Instead of learning how to love, we learn to defend ourselves. Instead of learning how to love, we learn to get our point across and debate. It is no wonder society is deprived of the core energy – love – that drives humanity.

This article will help you love people more. It is not about falling romantically in love with someone, though the advice can help you in that sense. You will learn how to love people to empower your communication. I will give you a logical eight lesson plan that you can easily follow. Loving others will bring an abundance of love among many great things into your life.

What is Love?

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” – Sophocles, 496-406 B.C.

“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things, instead of using people and loving things.” – Author Unknown.

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” – Bible, New King James Version, 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.

Love is a tough subject for anyone to address. Not many people agree with a common description of love. As Haddaway’s classic hit is titled, “What is Love?” Some say it is a willingness of sacrifice, some say it is blindness to flaws, while others say it is unexplainable. Some say it is an intense devotion or affection, but that can be neediness.

Just hearing about the subject of “love” makes me cringe. Love is twisted by society – not only by younger generations who are often picked on in this area – into a form that destroys its pure meaning. People think they are in “love” because they feel attraction or have been in a relationship for many years, but this does not comprehend pure love.

I’m not particularly fond of most material on love because the subject tends to be categorized into romance. “Do nice things like give gifts and the person will love you.” Romance does not describe love – not even an act of love because romance by itself can be superficial and manipulative. Love is beyond actions. Love is beyond reactions. You don’t wait for love to be created. Something deep works in pure love.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg attempted to explain love in his triangular theory of love. The theory is applicable for interpersonal relationships. It categorizes love using three scales: 1) intimacy, 2) passion, and 3) commitment. Variances in the three scales produces types of love. It is only when all three are present that a pure form of love, known as “consummate love”, can develop. Consummate love is the ultimate form of love an individual can desire.

A more applicable description of love to the style I am writing about in this article is explained by Susan Hendrick and Clyde Hendrick in their love attitude scale:

1. Eros love is based on physical appearance. It describes superficial love.
2. Ludus love is a game based on conquest. Pick-up artists (PUAs) often experience this type of love. PUAs love to conquer women. When one succeeds at getting a woman into the bedroom, he quickly loses interest in her.
3. Storge love is gradually built from similarities and friendship. The transition from friendship to love is often unclear.
4. Pragma love is more rational than other types of love as it is based on practicality. An extreme form of Pragma love is prostitution where financial gains rationalize attachment.
5. Mania love is very possessive and unstable. Strong feelings of insecurity, neediness, and jealously are experienced.
6. Agape love is selfless, unconditional, and often spiritual.

Agape love most accurately describes the type of love we wish to have towards family and friends. We want to unconditionally love those with whom we desire to effectively communicate; not just when these people do something nice for us or when we are in a good mood. Agape love does not change when the mood or circumstances change. Agape love remains when the person you feel agape love for does something mean to you. It is unconditional and withstanding – almost divine. It is our goal in this article to develop an agape form of love.

The Role of Self-love

The selflessness in agape love we wish to develop is one beyond sacrifice. It is beyond confining boundaries and a lack of concern in fulfilling one’s needs. Selflessness is about focus, attitude, and action towards others while retaining self-love. It is not about sacrifice and ignoring your needs.

Rarely are selfless actions self-less. Selfish actions misinterpreted as “self-less” fail to remove the self from the action. Unselfish actions that overlook the giver’s needs builds emotions like resentment that destroy the selflessness in the action. When the person ignores his or her own needs or desires, the person feels invaded and discounted. The person being self-less may be a people-pleaser quietly harboring dangerous amounts of resentment that will kill a relationship.

Unhealthy selfishness worsens by its supposed solution of selflessness. Selflessness in an area you lack resources can lead to unhealthy selfishness. Neediness comes from poor self-love. There is nobody more unloving than one void of self-love. Desperacy for love diminishes the love you give and receive.

Be selfish in the healthy sense before you are selfless. Ignore your parents and teachers that say selfishness is wrong. Greediness is different to healthy selfishness. In mathematics and life, you cannot give what you do not have. (Most people, however, wait to be loved by others.)

To give love you must firstly have love. You can only be truly selfless when you love yourself. It is in selfishness and the selflessness of agape love that we get our first lesson on how to love someone:

1. Love yourself to love others

If you are not into religion, the most reliable source for love is from yourself. You do not need to approve of everything about yourself, but you do need to accept yourself. You will always have flaws you dislike. Accept it. Only by loving yourself can you love others.

Give-Take Relationship of Love

As babies, we were entirely dependent on our parents or guardians. We would cry to be feed, cry to be warmed, and cry to be loved (some adults have hardly changed). We wanted to receive without giving. The only thing we gave was emotional warmth and love, yet that was out of our control, accidentally created from people’s perceptions towards us. Perhaps the only true thing we gave as a baby was regurgitated food.

As we began to age, we became more “independent”. We were able to feed ourselves, make ourselves warm, and put a shelter over our heads. Rarely does our growth extend beyond this independence or dependence. We are still that crying baby who wants everything without giving.

On the rare occasions we give, we do so in hope of receiving something of equal or greater value in exchange for our gift. Our giving comes from reciprocation. A part of this problem comes from our teachers and parents advising us to avoid people who take advantage of us. We get conditioned to not be conned by someone who fails to return a favor.

The principle of reciprocation is a double-edged sword that can empower you. It states that humans have an inherent desire to return favors. When something is seen as a favor, not an obligation or expectation, we react by reciprocating something to the person of equal or greater value. By giving we usually receive more than what we gave. Give love to others to receive things you cannot comprehend.

Unfortunately, when we do give and do not instantly receive, our giving stops. The expectations we create are the demise of our giving. Our expectations, which exceeds results, makes us dissatisfied. If you think you need to receive love from others in order to give love, you are living reactively. The more you get, the more you want. Neediness disables a person from loving people.

Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says most people interpret love as a feeling, a reaction from events. We are driven by Hollywood to think love is a product of a circumstance – a feeling out of our control. People who live reactively to their environment blame others and situations for a lack of love.

Covey says “proactive people make love a verb”. They create the life they want. The greatest lovers in the world are people who live by their value of giving love instead of reacting to the moment. It is through loving that love is created. This is our second principle:

2. Simply start loving to love

We live in an interdependent society reliant on people, as they are on us, so we need to give. When we love others, they in turn love us, but not necessarily in the same form as our love. It is much easier to love someone who first loved us. The purpose of loving yourself is to create love in your life so that you can love. An active creator of one’s personal universe does not wait for the right circumstances – the person does what he or she wants done.

Agape love is not dependent on firstly receiving love. Agape love does not have limiting conditions. It gives without receiving. Mildred Norman Ryder, also known as the “Peace Pilgrim”, nicely said, “Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return”. This gives us our third lesson of loving someone:

3. Give love without any expectation of receiving love

I know people fear giving love and receiving none in return. Rejection is scary, but protecting yourself blocks the flow of love into your life. The need to receive love in exchange for love is needy, approval-seeking, and destructive. Reduce your need for someone’s approval to empower yourself to love the person. Remember, agape love is unconditional. Loving someone without the expectation of being loved in return, takes you one step further towards radical personal responsibility and unconditional love.

Daniel Goleman in his revolutionizing book Social Intelligence, which looks at the science of human relationships, emphasizes the need to go beyond ourselves. When we overcome self-absorption, we can connect with people and love them. “When we focus on others, our world expands,” says Goleman. “Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.”

Scarcity and Abundance of Love

The worry of giving without receiving comes from scarcity. We fear being conned, taken advantaged of, and receiving unfair treatment. Scarcity assumes love is a limited resource. It means there is a finite amount of love in the world so you had better keep what you need to yourself. No wonder we keep what we can to ourselves because our survival becomes dependent on it.

Extend your self-love to others. Self-love is one step forwards to an empowered giving of love compared to the limitations of giving it from guilt, ego, and scarcity. “Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay,” said the singer Michael Smith. “Love isn’t love until you give it away.”

Though scarcity can work against us when loving others, it can also work for us. The principle of scarcity states that we value a resource more when it is rare. Knowing love is scarce in the sense it can be lost, will make you value it more. This gives the fourth lesson to love someone:

4. There is no better time to love than now

Those who have lost loved ones know the value of love. Some people are too late to express their love. They regret failing to communicate their love to someone no longer with them. Do not become someone who devalues what is in their life until it disappears. A love-filled person knows their love in a person’s life counts.

Transforming Pain Into Pleasure

Change your perception of scarcity into abundance to start transforming pain into pleasure. If you struggle to feel grateful to transform this aspect of your life into pleasure, something that always helps me is to think about the meaning of “appreciate”. To appreciate is to increase in value. Therefore, to be grateful for everything in your past and present, you increase your feelings of value towards your experiences and the world around you.

You need to overcome feelings of anger, blame, and resentment before you can feel grateful and love those who hurt you. When you experience these limiting feelings, you fight an uphill battle that discourages you from loving the person who “caused” you these feelings. Remove the pain to experience the gain. The elimination of emotional pain gives us our fifth lesson on how to love someone:

5. Remove blame and resentment to make love possible

Anger is not bad – it signals a problem. When you blame someone or feel they cause your anger, that is a sign you lack radical personal responsibility. It is a sign you are reactive rather than proactive. Men who complain that women are “bitches” and women who complain that men are “jerks”, are two examples of people who lack personal responsibility. Once you accept radical personal responsibility, you no longer blame others and possess feelings of anger towards people.

Will the acceptance of radical personal responsibility remove all anger? No. It is not about the removal of anger, but about removing the victim mindset that people cause your pain. You will feel anger towards someone sooner or later, but that is just a sign you lack personal responsibility. Every second you decide how to respond to the world. Use the part of you that has you behave beyond everyday annoyances to help you accept radical personal responsibility.

Resentment comes from blame, but it needs a mention by itself because of its destructive capabilities. Resentment is an unusually powerful emotion that builds in size when you fail to forgive someone or take radical responsibility. Learn the art of forgiveness to erase resentment. We think we hurt others with an attachment of resentment against them, but we only hurt ourselves.

Love is Not Liking

When I teach people to love others to improve their communication, they often complain they cannot love, forgive, or even like certain people in their life. They think there is something unique in their history that excludes them from being able to love. While this hints that the person is yet to forgive, they may mistake love for liking.

Love is not liking. You can dislike someone you love. Jewish philosopher Martin Buber saw that love is a choice while liking is more reactive. We don’t really choose what we like, but we can choose who and what to love. Love is not a series of feelings, but feelings often accompany love. Hollywood tricks us to believe that love is a reaction out of our control. You can make the choice to love people and want the best for them just like you make the choice to love yourself because that is best for your wellbeing. This gives our sixth lesson:

6. Want the best for people and constantly remind yourself that loving is not liking

See the Abundance of Love

Here is a useful exercise to help you love people you resent. It will make you grateful for everything in your past and present, and create an abundance of love in your life. This exercise will create our seventh lesson:

7. Be grateful for everything in your past and present

Think of the significant positive and negative main events in your past. Summarize them on a piece of paper in separate rows. If you have a painful memory of how your parents brought you up, you could summarize it as, “I dislike my upbringing by my parents”.

Once you have listed the significant events, write down what you are thankful for about the event besides its summary. Identifying a lesson in a problem is difficult – and you may need to think about it for sometime – but it does exist – it always exists. What do you appreciate about the “negative” or positive event? If you disliked how you were raised by your parents, you could be thankful for:

• The independence they created in you
• Your new knowledge on how not to raise children
• The desire they gave you to lovingly raise your children

People who value lessons and opportunities, instead of being absorbed in pain and problems, are sometimes accused of delusion. Negativity and pain is no more real than positiveness and pleasure. Hate is no more real than love. You decide to be grateful for everything in your past and present. You decide to be loving. You decide to communicate well.

Being grateful for everything in your past and present removes pain. It makes you aware of the abundance in your life that you previously ignored. Now we have our eighth and last lesson on how to love someone:

8. See abundance and you will be exposed to an abundance of love

Love is everywhere. It is in our past and present. It will reside in our future – more so if you follow the advice in this article. “Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,” says Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan, “they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture.”

It is your choice to see the abundance of love because it is real. It is also your choice to use your biological gift of compassion and love to bring an abundance of this precious energy into your life. “Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain,” said love expert Leo Buscaglia, “can we truly know what love means.”

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. Review of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
2. 101 Conversation Starters People Love
3. The Complete Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Process for Compassion, Understanding, and Peace
4. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication
5. Why Smart People Have Poor Communication Skills – and What to Do About It

The law does little to protect victims of workplace conflict. Nearly all laws do not take into account verbal conflict, but if the verbal and other emotional abuse approaches physical abuse, the issue can become a legal concern. The typical employee who faces a difficult manager, however, needs to handle the workplace bully through a series of skills one can get in this article.

Most people who lack the communication skills to deal with a bad boss either:

• Endure the bullying. They endure the bullying boss and intimidation. These people may lack self-respect or assertiveness. They may think their job will be put at risk if they address their boss about the problem.
• Bully the bully. These people face their boss by reciprocating their boss’ aggression. It is quite common for the problem to intensify as the two individuals yell at one another in intensifying conflict.

First Common Reaction: Endure the Bullying

The first reaction to a bullying boss is a passive response. In this response you forgo your needs while your boss tramples you. The last thing you should do during abuse is accept the abuse.

You must address the issue in the correct manner otherwise your confidence, happiness – and in this situation – your work will suffer. Recipients of aggressive behavior who incorrectly handle aggression are known to develop health problems such as strokes, heart attacks, suicide, migraines, escalated stress levels, insomnia, and terrifying nightmares. One anonymous person often dreamed her boss pointing a gun at employees so they would complete their work.

Passive people suppress their own needs and get dominated by others. They live in frustration. Their anger bottles up inside. They lack the communication skills to address the problem, hoping the abusive person stops bullying out of goodwill.

Sometimes people in this first category of responding to an aggressive boss avoid the issue out of fear. If you currently experience workplace intimidation, you may accept it because you fear repercussions that could arise if you face the problem. You may avoid defending yourself in a work situation – especially with someone that has authoritative power – from fear of losing your job, being demoted, or undergoing further abuse.

I’m not hear to tell you your fears are irrational. A fear of losing your job is a real threat because most people who stick up for themselves do so aggressively, which creates further problems. The end result for people that choose this first response is a win for the bully and a loss for the passive person.

Second Common Reaction: Bully the Bully

The second common reaction to facing a bully is aggression. People who aggressively defend themselves usually have more confidence than passive individuals. They think the only way to get what they want is through retaliation. It becomes fire against fire. When an aggressive employee faces an aggressive boss, a fight starts as two individuals take to a verbal boxing ring, mentally beating each other’s minds.

People can be aggressive for several reasons:

• They were abused by their parents at an early age or placed under other emotional trauma.
• They are mentally ill. I’m not jokingly referring to a mental illness, but a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia or a personality disorder.
• They think the only way to stop someone else’s abusive behavior is to reciprocate the abuse.
• The aggression is a release of anger often caused from responding passively like the first situation. This type of behavior is otherwise known as “passive-aggressive behavior” where the person is frequently passive, but randomly explodes to release their frustration. After the occasional and often unexpected outburst, the person returns to his or her passive behavior.
• The person is in a high pressure environment. This type of aggressive behavior is common in work environments where individuals are under high loads of stress.
• The aggressive individual may try to prove his superiority, toughness, control, discipline, or results-focus to others through aggressive behavior.

While aggression in the workplace may create sufficient productivity, it is strongly correlated to a high turnover rate (said to be an average of 1.5 years) and other commitment problems. Employees fake sick days, become miserable, sabotage work, and lose passion for work. Aggressive managers create unproductive employees who comply to their superiors, yet the employees stay under the radar doing nothing that could draw attention. The aggression exchanged between the employee and manager is a loss outcome for each.

A Third Rare Action: Assertive Communication with the Boss

The first common reaction is a passive response. The second common reaction is an aggressive response. A median response known as “assertiveness” exists between these two common reactions, which produces a win-win response. Where passive communication fails to respect yourself and aggressive communication fails to respect the other person, assertive communication respects both individuals.

Assertive communication techniques can stop bullying, stop your fear of facing difficult issues, and build your self-confidence to create a nice working relationship with your boss. Assertive skills can transform your inner and outer conflict.

A Step-by-Step Approach with Techniques to Cure a Bad Boss

In this section I will share a series of techniques in a scenario to help you face an aggressive boss. Learn from the scenario and use as many techniques as you can in everyday life because assertive communication does more than help you handle an aggressive boss. Assertiveness helps you face aggressive people and other difficult personality types.

The first step to handle an aggressive person begins before you open your mouth. Prior to approaching your boss about the problem, ask yourself: “What can I change in my behavior to solve the aggression?” Asking yourself this question helps you own your behavior. It builds your responsibility and stops you blaming other people for what you can control. Sometimes this first step may solve the problem and eliminate aggression because you were the problem.

Additionally, before you approach your boss, develop a plan of what to say and how you can solve the problem. Prepare to make the conversation productive. Though you may think of good solutions when preparing for the conversation, remain flexible and willing to adjust your behavior to satisfy your boss. A willingness to compromise is assertive.

Once you approach your boss, be calm and responsive. Calmness is not enough because it can show ignorance and increase aggression from a lack of responsiveness. Behaving unresponsive hurts empathy and makes it difficult to diffuse an aggressive person’s emotions. You don’t want to ignore an angry boss!

When you are calm yet responsive, you will not become aggressive. When you remove your aggression, you will reduce your boss’ aggressive communication because the two of you are no longer in a destructive cycle of anger. Fire needs some sort of fuel to stay alight. By keeping calm yet remaining responsive, you remove the psychological fuel needed to keep your boss’ aggressive fire burning.

Have the right mindset of resolving the problem at hand. When faced with a difficult person, it is easy think you are right. Guess what? Your boss also thinks he is right! This is why conflict feels like swimming with a shark – you sometimes have to compromise yourself to move the problem forward. Be the first one to step towards problem resolution.

Now that you understand these concepts and techniques, it’s time to approach your boss. Find the best time to talk with your boss. Do not try and solve this problem in an intense emotional situation. You may need to wait until the end of the day, or even the end of the week, until you believe the boss is approachable.

As you address your boss, the best thing you can do is ask for his opinion and point of view on the matter. If the person is unaware of his aggression, bring up a specific situation where the person became aggressive. This is an excellent technique that builds an awareness of someone who refuses to acknowledge their aggression.

When you begin a tough conversation by asking for the person’s point of view, instead of blurting what you think and feel about the situation, your persuasive ability builds from a newfound perception. You may see a new side to the story when you practice good listening skills. Asking for your boss’ point of view will help you understand, and even help, your boss understand why he is aggressive. Your boss will feel understood when you actively listen, which can lead to many great outcomes.

After your boss has made suggestions, you can begin to give your ideas about the problem. Keep calm and stay focused on resolving the problem while avoiding personal attacks. Ask for your boss’ feedback on ideas. Make it a joint solution so each of you follow through with the final plan. A mutual solution is always followed through by both parties more consistently than a solution forced on one person.

Take note of the positive points your boss shows in his behavior during the discussion then compliment him on these. Tell him how happy you are for him to listen and be in the conversation with you. Keep the conversation positive as problem solving can seem negative – even though it is good for people.

If none of these techniques work – provided you have talked with others about the problem and tried your best to stop your boss from behaving aggressively – ask yourself: “What’s more valuable to me: my happiness or my work?” Without knowing your exact situation, your happiness is more valuable. If your boss continues to treat you poorly, have the courage to respect yourself, stand up for your wellbeing, and solve the problem. If solving the problem means quitting your job because of an awful boss, so be it.

Work is a task many people hate for 40 years of their life. It does not have to be that way. You no longer have to be in an unproductive, unhappy working relationship when you follow the advice in this article. You can develop a productive, and possibly joyful, working relationship for your own good and your organization’s good. Value yourself and do something about your aggressive boss the next time you go to work. Your livelihood depends on it.

(The techniques presented in this article have been adapted from my Communication Secrets of Powerful People program. This program is a revolutionary way to charismatically change minds – even in difficult situations that contain a cruel boss.)

Other Articles That Might Help You

1. The Four Parenting Styles in Passive, Aggressive, and Assertive Behavior
2. How to Manage Stress in Relationship Communication: Keep Calm with Scientific Stress Management
3. Principles and Tips to Deal with Difficult People
4. Controlling People – Signs of a Controlling Person and How to Deal with Them
5. Why People Remain Quiet, Shy, and Non-Assertive: The Benefits of Passive Behavior and Communication