Thought Leadership

It’s been a disturbing and discombobulating week in terms of global events and geopolitics.

Discussing it with my son, Matt, who, like me, loves to listen to political and news podcasts, we shared our concerns, and a sense of powerlessness hung in the air.  I could feel the seductive pull of my standard life mantra, ‘It’ll be fine.’

The instant optimism of this response tends to annoy both my son and my husband at times, and I sensed this might be one of them.

Equally, as a parent and someone whose professional life is about empowering individuals to exercise their own agency, I didn’t want to leave the conversation there.

This is often the case when you’re talking to colleagues about their own situations, or when decisions are made that negatively impact them but that won’t, for whatever reason, be changed.

You’re caught between not wanting to say anything trite or unrealistically optimistic and not wanting to leave them in a powerless place.  In many cases, it would be seen as your responsibility to ensure that they remain motivated and engaged in their work.

In these situations, I have found that true empathy, avoiding assumptions and carefully exploring options are the coaching skills that create the most fertile environment for hope, efficacy and agency to grow.

Empathy (but only if it's genuine)

Empathy is all about coming alongside someone and saying you aren’t alone; it’s ok to feel what you feel.

Empathy is one way you demonstrate that you are holding a non-judgemental space.

It also demonstrates that you are expecting someone to share difficult thoughts and feelings and that you are open and ready to engage with them.

But beware.

When trying to show someone empathy it can be easy to fall into the trap of false empathy; expressing thoughts or stories that sound empathetic but are really about shutting the conversation down, even if you aren’t consciously aware of that as your intention.

One way you can do this is inadvertently making the conversation about you and not the other person.  In an attempt to show that ‘you know how the other person is feeling’ (you don’t), you might share a story of when a similar thing happened to you and how you overcame it and what the outcomes were.

Instead of showing true empathy, you’ve now limited the scope of the conversation, and your non-judgement, by suggesting that your approach is the appropriate response in this situation too.

Another problematic statement, which I’ve already alluded to is the disastrous, ‘I know how you’re feeling’ or a version of it.

Keep empathy statements simple and factual.

‘This is a difficult situation.  How are you feeling?’

‘I can understand how challenging you must be finding this.  How are you feeling?’

When they share their feelings, give a simple response like, ‘I can imagine that’ and/or ‘that sounds really difficult.’

You don’t need to share your situation to show that you get it.

As an aside, sometimes someone reacts in a way that feels excessive to us in the circumstances.  It can be hard to show empathy in that scenario.  Having experienced this a few times in my own life and experienced the very negative impact of expressing that to the person I was speaking to I now make sure that I respond with, ‘I can see this is affecting you very deeply and I’d like to understand more about that’ or whatever version of that fits the moment.

Don’t assume.  Ask.

It’s easy to think that you know how someone else is feeling, what might be concerning them, how a situation may impact them and what they should do about it.

And you may well be right.  The problem is that when you come to conclusions and solutions too quickly you are reducing someone’s concerns to something that it so easy to understand it can delegitimise them wanting to discuss it in the first place.

If it’s so easy to sort out, they may feel ‘less than’ for wanting to have the conversation at all.

Also, a key phrase I try to remember as a lifelong giver of advice is, ‘the presenting problem is rarely the real problem.’   This is especially true when someone is in a situation out of their control or when there are systemic forces at play that inhibit their agency.

When someone has told you what they are feeling, it’s worth going deeper and asking more questions that establish what they are most concerned about and what else is happening in the ‘system’ of their life.

It can be helpful, as you talk, to summarise and list what they are concerned about, so the concerns are seen and your understanding of them can be checked.

Ask follow-up questions to make sure you have given them the chance to go deeper.  You don’t need to have coach training and you’re not engaging in therapy here.  A simple, ‘Is there anything else about this that concerns you?’  Or, ‘Are there any other ways [name a specific concern] impacts you?’

Shift to options (carefully)

At some point, you will want to move the conversation towards options.  In situations where an individual has very little control, like Matt and I discussing geopolitical tensions (!), it can be tricky to do without burdening the individual further.

I find it helpful to firstly acknowledge that the systemic issue may be out of their control, and the impact of that, and to either depersonalise the search for options by asking something like, ‘What options are there here?’ or share the responsibility, ‘What can we do?’ or check what an individual needs before looking at options, ‘What needs to be in place so we can begin to look at options?’

In my conversation with Matt, it went something like this:

Me: “Well, it’s pretty shit.  What are we going to do?’

Matt: “Nothing.  What can we do?  Just get on with life and hope for the best I guess.”

Me: “Getting on with life doesn’t sound like nothing.  Which bit of life are you going to get on with?”

We then had a more empowered conversation about making plans to spend time with friends, do work we found fulfilling, focus on new skills we were working on and the parts of life we were most having fun with right now.

You may be tempted to go straight to this part of the conversation.  I know I am.  The problem then is that you encourage fake, and often toxic, positivity.  You have the illusion of finding a solution and being back on track and happy.  Underneath this ‘positive mindset’ is a person potentially struggling with problems and worries that are deep and systemic and now feeling that they can’t share them with anyone.

It’s hard to be patient but start with empathy and curiosity, avoid assumptions and carefully explore options, especially when there are systemic issues at play, and you’ll have a much more long-lasting plan and will have deepened a relationship.