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Making Decisions We Won’t Regret:
Creating a World that Works for All One Decision at a Time
- Learn how every decision we make perpetuates the status quo or brings us closer to the vision of a world that works for all
- Find out about our big brain capacity to integrate needs, impacts, and resources to make decisions that work for everyone
- Understand why power differences interfere with collaborative decisions and what can be done about it
- Discover tools that support collaboration in larger groups and organizations— even across power differences!
Sundays, August 10-September 14, 2025 (six sessions)
7:30-9:30am Pacific (California) Time • What time is it in your location?
Online via Zoom
DESCRIPTION
“We can’t win at somebody else’s expense. We can only fully be satisfied when the other person’s needs are fulfilled as well as our own.” – Marshall Rosenberg
- Do you long to find a way forward when you are caught in an internal conflict?
- Are you curious about how to make decisions, even in difficult circumstances, that are free from control and coercion and hold everyone’s needs with care?
- Are you intrigued by the vision of full collaboration between adults and young people?
- Do you want to learn to make decisions that are responsive to needs, care for impacts, and are within capacity?
- Would you like to learn about processes and tools that support collaboration in larger groups and organizations, even across power differences?
Marshall often said that needs are never in conflict. The purpose of this course is to translate this simple and provocative perspective into practical tools for making decisions within the complex realities that so many of us face at this unprecedented time in human evolution.
This task starts with rethinking the very foundations of how we orient to making decisions. Our evolution has equipped us with big brains that are extraordinary at solving problems with all available information to arrive at solutions that work for everyone involved. Then we can see decision-making as a potent force for identifying relevant information and integrating across divergences. Even as we don’t all have the same access to resources, we can all take steps, however small, to participate in shaping our collective reality.
The shift towards full collaboration leans on a set of principles and practices that are simple, radical, practical, and difficult.
The first step in making decisions we won’t regret is identifying all relevant information: all the known needs, impacts, and resources related to the problem we are trying to solve.
The second is to bring to bear our magnificent human creativity to integrate across any divergences that remain to actually arrive at a decision that works for everyone. Given global crises, this would now also include keeping all beings that form the web of life on our one and only planet in our awareness.
As all of us make decisions all the time in many contexts, this course is designed to address decision-making from its most internal applications all the way to imagining what fully collaborative global governance could look like.
Our hopes for those who participate wholeheartedly
- An embodied understanding of the power of integrative decision making.
- A firm grasp of why Marshall said that needs are never in conflict.
- A way of making clear and visible the needs, impacts, and resources that, when engaged with, can make fully collaborative decisions possible.
- An understanding of why power differences interfere with collaborative decisions and practices for how to lovingly compensate for them to bring people together and strengthen any decisions made.
- Sufficient tenderness towards ourselves to find wisdom even in our most challenging inner messages, so we can make decisions that attend to all that matters to us.
- Pathways for applying the learning directly within our families, schools, workplaces, and communities.
Together with you, we hope to grow our collective capacity to seed collaborative decision making more and more potently as part of turning around the march towards extinction.
What we are offering
- Six sessions packed with dense content from Miki’s decades of experience with aligning decision-making processes and systems, at all levels, with the deep principles of nonviolence, including NVC.
- A mix of interactive presentation, practice, and slides to enable organic shaping of the space based on who is there and the specific focus of the week
- Opportunities to integrate and practice the material in breakout groups
- Pointers to learning packets and additional resources for those who want to go deeper into exploring each of the areas
- Light support for self-organized learning outside session times to build collective capacity and for mutual support
- Multiple pathways for learning to fit a wide range of learning needs: stories for inspiration about how these tools are applied; framing and foundational principles in support of conceptual integration; practical tools and tips to give guidance about how to apply what we cover; and vision to pull us all forward towards imagining new possibilities
What we are asking of you
- To come ready to participate actively during our weekly 2-hour session, at least in the breakout group, as this course is designed to be a collaborative, co-created experience
- To be open to being stretched beyond your comfort zone, into discovering something new about yourself, other humans, and life as a whole
- To be committed to carrying what you learn out into the world, whatever this looks like for you
The focus of this session is to introduce the overall framework of the course and what a nonviolent approach to decision making can mean. This is no small task, given our socialization into patriarchal societies has left us with “should” instead of connecting with needs; blame and shame instead of sharing impacts on us; and fairness and deserving instead of making resources available to care for needs. And in addition, the only options we see are to win, to lose, or to compromise. No wonder it’s so hard for so many of us to make decisions!
The gap between the either/or frameworks and control that we currently live within and the vision of making decisions that work for all of life is wrenchingly immense. Like any journey, bridging this gap through re-learning the integrative pathways of collaboration our brains were designed for starts with baby steps. Such steps include restoring our capacity for choice despite pervasive powerlessness, so we can begin to access the soft belly of our existence where needs and impacts reside. Ultimately, to be able to make decisions that care for everyone, we need to restore togetherness and trust in life. Even more is needed when we want to care for the whole in the context of power differences.
Questions we might touch or include:
- Why is decision-making so challenging for us?
- What makes either/or frameworks so compelling and why is it so hard to collaborate?
- What is the relationship between nonviolence and decision making?
- How do power differences interfere with caring for everyone and what can we do about them?
The focus of this session is on decisions that we make on our own, without input from others. This focus can serve as a microcosm within which to explore the radical possibilities of integration. The centerpiece of this session is the process of Self-Integration developed by Inbal Kashtan, in which we engage with the variety of messages, voices, or parts that arise within us in relation to any issue we want to address. Through physical movement between different “parts” and loving application of NVC practices, we can then move forward in a way that cares for all that matters to us. One of the key breakthroughs that this process supports is finding the deeper wisdom behind inner messages, even ones that may be self-destructive. Through this process, we expand our understanding of empathy to include what Inbal referred to as the “willingness to be moved” by what we hear. This capacity is a core aspect of mutual influencing, which is how integration happens on the practical plane.
If we want to make decisions with others, the starting point is dialogue. Dialogue is what we lean on to collectively identify all the information that will support us in getting there. Dialogue takes place in the here and now, without changing ourselves or others. Dialogue is what supports us to restore togetherness when disagreements arise, especially when they result in conflict. We can shift from there to a dilemma we hold together by speaking truth with care, listening with empathy and curiosity, and asking questions to move the dialogue forward.
Given the depth of separation and mistrust within which we live, most of us no longer have access to the simple dance of putting on the table all known needs, impacts, and resources and then looking for a creative solution. Often enough this calls on us to engage in the transformative practice of needs choreography, which is when we consciously compensate for low trust and separation. We do this by holding our needs alongside others’ needs and choosing the next step in each moment, from this depth of care for the whole. What we can choose in each moment is based on a wide range of “moves” that we can lean on in support of weaving us towards togetherness.
Engaging in dialogue with children instead of telling them what to do is a demanding practice with few role models. Embarking on it calls on deep courage and oodles of trust in ourselves and the children in our lives. We also face immense obstacles that are not of our making: societal constraints (such as compulsory school attendance), norms, others’ disapproval of what we do, and the devastation of the depth of isolation within modern capitalism. We cannot single-handedly compensate for all that happened to humans in the last 5,000 years, though we can, with enough support and practice, create a tiny island of intergenerational collaboration in a high-trust environment. To get there, we need deep and compassionate understanding for what makes it difficult to show up in the way we want and to engage with children as fellow human beings. Despite the immense power differences at play, everyone in any family, school, or community, whatever their age, has the same needs and longs for trust and a way to care for everyone’s needs without cost to anyone.
Additional topics might include:
- Trusting children to know what they need
- Putting our needs on the table as adults
- Making it easy for children to say “no” as a step towards agreements that stick
- Relying on natural human generosity and willingness instead of forcing
Bringing the principles of collaborative decision making to group settings such as communities and workplaces brings with it a host of new complexities that call on additional capacities. The complexities include having many more stakeholders, the presence of a purpose that sometimes comes before relationships, and a host of specific norms, constraints, and systemic considerations that we need to navigate. What stays the same is that regardless of setting, all humans have the same needs. What is different is that power differences and other elements of organizational contexts mean it takes more intention and capacity to bring to the table the needs, perspectives, ideas, and concerns of everyone to find a solution that works for all.
Additional topics might include:
- How explicit systems can support collaboration without all of us needing to be saints
- How reframing what leadership means can support any of us to care for the whole while making decisions
- Who needs to be involved in decisions for them to be collaborative?
- How can we fully combine efficiency and collaboration?
- What can be done to support everyone, regardless of position and access to power, to bring their needs, perspectives, ideas, and concerns?
- How to exit the trap of trying to make everyone happy and focus, instead, on everyone finding willingness
Given how much our collaboration muscles have atrophied in the last many centuries, and especially since capitalism tore us all from land, we need all the support we can get for collaboration to work well. The main focus of this session is on one tool and two processes that can dramatically increase collective capacity to function collaboratively without waiting for all of us to liberate ourselves. The decision-making matrix supports collaboration by registering who would be involved in which types of decisions and in which way. The Advice Process offers a way of radically distributing power and leadership while efficiently engaging with input from relevant people. And Convergent Facilitation makes it possible for groups to reach collaborative decisions without getting bogged down in endless discussion.
As this course wraps up, the focus returns to vision, this time reaching for the wild possibility of creating a global governance system that supports full local to global collaboration through applying on a global scale all the materials from this course.
Meet Your Trainer: Miki Kashtan
Miki Kashtan is a practical visionary pursuing a world that works for all, exploring the application of the principles and tools of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to social transformation. She dreams of local and global systems based on care for the needs of all life.
In her work with individuals, she focuses on supporting movement towards rapid empowerment in service of the whole. In her work with organizations, she focuses on creating and supporting collaborative systems and processes. In her work with multi-stakeholder groups, she focuses on transcending polarization and advocating for solutions that work for everyone.
Inner freedom, nonviolence, dialogue, collaboration, interdependence, leadership, conscious use of power, and a commitment to structural change are the lenses through which she looks at every moment and interaction. Miki strives to bring together theory and practice, spiritual commitment and conceptual clarity, radical vision and practical applications, heart and mind, self and other, personal change and social transformation.
More about: Miki Kashtan
BONUSES
- You’ll have access to several learning packets and additional resources
- Video recordings of every session
- Forum discussion available in the classroom
- Lifetime access to the classroom
- Zoom sessions feature translated captions available in 30+ languages
PAYMENT INFORMATION
There is no set amount for this course. Though we offer below guidance to people in choosing how much to give, it is intended as support for you, not as specific requests. We invite people to register using a gift economy approach so that everyone can have access and our work can also be sustainable. We ask that you give the most that you can do without overstretching or resentment. You can learn more about our thinking and about choosing your amount here.
- Supporting Others to Attend: $610 Covers your registration and supports others who may not be able to give the full amount.
- Sustainability for Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) and NVC Academy: $420 Supports Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) and NVC Academy to continue offering NVC programs.
- Payment plan: 4 payments of $105 if registered by July 27. Installment payments are offered to support your ease.
- Increased Accessibility: $50 If you are from a marginalized group; or part of the global south, regardless of where you live.
- Choose your amount If the above options are still a barrier for you to join, please choose the amount you can give, even if it is $0. Restoring the gift flow means, also, stretching into receiving.
SIGN UP NOW GIVE AS A GIFT
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I REGISTER?
When you register, you will receive an email with complete instructions on how to access your course.
Note that course recordings display images of active speakers only, and are made available to all registrants.
DATES & TIMES
Dates and times are adjusted to your location. You can select a different time zone at the bottom of the list.
