About the programme

The Key Differentiations Programme is a six-month journey for those who want to take their Nonviolent Communication practice to the next level. It is built on Cracking the Communication Code, by the Swedish NVC trainers Liv Larsson and Katarina Hoffman, together with additional differentiations from Inbal and Miki Kashtan.

Fifty-four key differentiations — the nuances at the heart of NVC, the concepts most often confused, and the perspectives that shift things — are worked through systematically. Each meeting takes two or three differentiations, weaving concepts together with live practice.

The Clumsy Giraffe (Acemi Zürafa), the practice strand of the programme, helps us internalise where these differentiations meet us in daily life, and makes speaking Nonviolent Communication more fluent.

Who is it for?

This programme is for those who have completed at least one foundational NVC training — a year-long programme. At least one of the following is recommended:

Having completed a year-long NVC programme (36 hours or more)
Familiarity with NVC concepts (the four components: observation, feeling, need, request)
A working practice of listening with empathy and expressing with honesty

What the programme covers — four packages

The programme is built from four clusters of differentiations:

1. Core differentiations Learning to perceive the fundamentals of Nonviolent Communication through the lens of key differentiations — which in turn shows you how to make NVC easier to explain to those who do not know it.

2. Empathy differentiations The subtleties of listening with empathy. You learn, in theory and in practice, what each move during active listening actually gives rise to.

3. Giraffe–Jackal differentiations Meeting the Giraffe and Jackal symbols that make NVC easier to learn, and discovering where putting them to use genuinely serves communication.

4. Power differentiations Exploring what can be done differently when the language of Nonviolent Communication proposes nonviolence in the use of power, in the context of social change. The collective and systemic effects of how we each use our own power come into view.

Structure

Length: 6 months / 33 sessions
Format: Online, one session a week
Group size: 8–15 people, for small-group dynamics
Where: Zoom

Each session follows the same shape:

Arriving in the body (10 min) — a short somatic awareness practice
Opening the concept (30–45 min) — the ground beneath the differentiation
Live practice (90–100 min) — working with real situations
Small groups (30 min) — practice in pairs or threes
Integration and closing (15 min)

What you will take away

By the end of the programme you will:

Understand the 54 key differentiations of NVC in depth
Be able to draw on them spontaneously in your everyday relationships
Notice and work with the blind spots in your own NVC practice
Stand on firmer ground for teaching or facilitating NVC for others
Have developed greater capacity in situations of disagreement and conflict

From a participant

“Fifty-four differentiations sounded daunting at first, but the way Gonca presents them made every concept both understandable and something I could actually put into practice — that made the whole thing easier.”

Registration and enquiries

Use the contact form to register, or email directly. You can also sign up to be notified first when a new round opens.