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Subject: Demand made. Game on
Hi there, %user.name_f%. Yvette Erasmus, here. In case we have not met before, hello! 👋 I’m running a course via the NVC Academy in April and Mary’s invited me into her inbox to tell you about it. Except, with her permission, I’m going to tell you a story instead. We’re going back to 2006 when I was teaching in Bali. I got into a massive power struggle with a 12th grade student (let’s call him James). He had a sense of entitlement learned - in part - from his well-known and powerful father. The school served students with many nationalities and was used to divergent cultural norms. I was struggling to establish norms in my classroom that worked for everyone — especially me. In an effort to adapt to these varying norms, I had been accommodating late work and moving deadlines. But it was wearing me down — I was getting annoyed by how much late work I was constantly fielding from students who had an endless bucket of excuses. Eventually, tired of making “exceptions” for students, I announced one morning that I absolutely would NOT accept any final papers coming in late the next day. Students were to place their final drafts in my assignment collection tray on or before 8:00am the next morning, or risk a zero on the assignment. James, sat back in his seat and looked at me sideways. He raised his hand, “So … what if I drop it off at, like, exactly 8:01am?” My heart tightened and sank as I walked straight into a classic power struggle. “If you can get it here by 8:01am, then you can get it here by 8:00am. Make sure it’s on time or I won’t accept it.” Demand made. Game on. Except, every time we make a demand, we set up a power-struggle in which others can choose to submit (usually resentfully), or rebel. Predictably, James swaggered casually into my classroom the following morning, looked directly at me, and dropped his paper dramatically and ceremoniously into the tray at 8:01am. Technically late. Seeing no other options at the time, I hit the play button on an old script. One that has never ended well. I told him I wouldn’t accept his paper. Cue James’s massive rage. He stormed out of my classroom, announcing that he wasn’t submitting to “this bulls**t” and walked out of school. Fifteen minutes later, the principal arrived in front of me. James’s father had called the school to demand that I be fired for gross incompetence. And asked the principal, where did she get her teachers from, anyway? Drama ensued. Domination scripts are driven by fear and control — they breed fragmentation and force. I often think back to this situation, because it fundamentally expanded my own relationship with authority, particularly when I am the party wielding the power. In this situation, the magic happened when I recognized myself in James. I have been THAT student. I admire people who have the courage to call out authority when needed. But this time, I was the one enacting and enforcing the “dumb rules.” Instead of entrenching myself in the power struggle and then continuing to behave in ways that just didn’t feel good to me, I took some time – as Marshall Rosenberg would say – to bring myself back to life again. I connected more deeply with what I was feeling and what actually deeply mattered to me about this. Then I imagined what mattered deeply to James, his father, and the school administration team. Seeing our shared humanity and taking multiple perspectives in that moment widened my range of options. When we open our hearts to our collective humanity, we draw on a deeper wisdom and begin to ask different questions:
With some help from a highly-skilled third party, James and I sat down to talk. I dropped my attachment to the trivial timing of the paper, and focused instead on what I really valued. I held my strategies lightly, and my needs tightly. I expressed empathy for his desire for meaningful structures and for being treated with respect. I wanted those things too. I shared a vision with him of a relationship in which we drop the roles of “student” and “teacher” and engage with each other as human beings, learning from each other. I wanted to trust that he – and other students – both cared about the needs I was trying to meet for myself, and also about developing personally meaningful habits that would serve them in the future. It was one of the most impactful conversations of my career. James expressed understanding for the role he played in escalating the situation with me. And we reached a place of mutual care. The rest of that academic year was productive and fun. Magic. Every time we want to “make” ourselves or others do something out of ideas of “rightness,” we lose our connection to what really matters to us all. Care, growth, learning, discovery, mutuality — these cannot be forced or demanded. They are innate, emergent and have their own intelligence. And they come to life when we share power. Curious to hear more about stepping out of power struggles, %user.name_f%? 
It’s happening Monday, March 11 at 9am Pacific (California) Time. If you can’t make the time, no worries — NVC Academy will send you the replay. The key details:
Even if you only want to join for the free info, do so! That’s totally fine by us.
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