the common way for viewmodels to communicate between themselves
is implimentation of theMediator design pattern
here is how it is done in MVVMLight
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpf/thread/27aaefff-e463-451c-87d9-37367a343e0e
in Prism is:
http://blogs.u2u.be/diederik/post/2011/01/15/Using-the-Prism-40-Event-Aggregator.aspx
in Caliburn is:
http://www.mindscapehq.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/01/caliburn-micro-part-4-the-event-aggregator/