In a conversation, do you ever get stuck on how to respond to what the other person just said?
What are you supposed to say then?
YouTube and the rest will tell you, half-baked, to repeat the end of whatever they said. If you’ve tried it you already know it doesn’t work (sadly). They call it mirroring, or shadowing. The other person isn’t an idiot, and there’s no chance they read a trick that shallow as real empathy.
The biggest problem with the parroting method is that the pattern is simple enough to see through instantly. The other problem is that it leaves the other person with nothing to say, so the conversation stops. A conversation runs on taking turns, and if I only repeat your words, you’re effectively talking to yourself. A few exchanges in, the energy drains and the conversation ends.
So what kind of empathy do we actually want?
To know what good empathy looks like, you have to start with why people talk at all.
Why people talk
People talk because they want to be understood. They want you to understand their feelings, their knowledge, their sense of who they are. Someone gets angry because they want their anger and its reason understood. Someone tells you their troubles because they want their tangled state of mind understood. Someone shows off what they know because they want you to see how impressive it is to know it, and someone explains what they know because they want you to understand it too. Understanding the literal meaning of the words isn’t enough. The core of a conversation is understanding why they said it.
From the manga ‘A Healthy and Cultured Minimum Standard of Living’
People want their personality, experiences, feelings, thoughts, interests, identity and hopes understood. Identity and hopes together are what people now call the self you’re reaching for. If you know the six versions of themselves people usually reach for, deep empathy gets easy, right? That’s why the last post covered the six social needs.
Since people talk to be understood, a good response is one that makes them feel understood. The book “Never Split the Difference” defines empathy along the same lines, as ‘showing the other person that you understood them’.
So how do you talk in a way that makes someone feel understood? There’s a very good method for it.
Want practical tips that make you a little smarter every week?
I cover persuasion, marketing, writing, and the other skills modern life demands.
Subscribe now and get notified when a new post goes up!
Complex reflection: guessing carefully
The easiest way to practice empathy is complex reflection. It comes from a counseling approach called motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewing is effective enough to change someone’s behavior in a single one-hour session, and complex reflection is the core of it.
Reflection holds the other person’s mind up like a mirror.
How do you do it? The simplest way to put it: complex reflection is guessing carefully at the other person’s state. Say someone tells you, “I know I should start working out, but I have no time.” You guess at why they said they have no time and answer, “Sounds like you’ve been really busy lately.” That kind of response gives them the feeling of being understood.
Guessing their feelings and landing on the right one isn’t the point. What matters just as much is listening actively and hard. You can even overshoot or undershoot on purpose, which helps them say more.
Them: Work was rough today.
Response 1: Sounds like something enormous happened at work. (overstated complex reflection)
Response 2: Sounds like you got a little tired today. (understated complex reflection)
Them: No. Actually, what happened was ~~~.
Even without getting it right, this builds the conditions for a deeper conversation and more understanding.
Two ears, one mouth
Even when you do empathy well, almost nobody stops and says “how are you so good at this?” What happens instead is that they get more absorbed and keep talking. Good empathy doesn’t pull attention onto you. It makes the conversation comfortable enough that the other person can say something more honest and go deeper. So rather than waiting for the compliment, listen and keep guessing at why they said what they said.
In a letter to aspiring writers, Hemingway put it this way. “When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.” Complex reflection isn’t a technique for talking well either. It’s a way of listening very deeply. And your ability to speak can never outrun your ability to listen.
Want practical tips that make you a little smarter every week?
I cover persuasion, marketing, writing, and the other skills modern life demands.
Subscribe now and get notified when a new post goes up!
P.S. One more motivational interviewing tip. In the example above, “I know I should start working out, but I have no time,” you could reflect the “feeling that I should work out” instead. Then the conversation drifts naturally toward making a workout plan. The other person hands you the options, exercise and time, but where you put your attention inside those options changes the flow of the conversation and their thinking. That’s another core piece of motivational interviewing.
Did you enjoy this one?
Then read the conversation series and the nonviolent communication series too!
Resolving conflict with nonviolent communication - Nonviolent Communication (NVC) - 1
References:
You might like these too!