How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching and Counseling in Difficult Circumstances | Page 136

This book is in B&W, not color - Print page in Grayscale for Correct view! about what it takes to signal empathically to an emotionally unexpressive friend that you know he or she cares about you.) And of course we’re not talking about pure emotions here. What needs to be deflected usually has a cognitive component as well as an emotional component. In the example I started with, your stakeholders were perfectly willing to acknowledge that they were worried. What needed deflection was how much of their worry might actually be about property values rather than health. Deflection is a core skill of empathic risk communication, and it is greatly underutilized. But it’s not for every situation. As I mentioned earlier, when people are well-aware of what they’re feeling, sometimes you can just go ahead and express empathy directly, without deflecting at all. Here is an example. A few weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a small number of people started receiving letters laced with weaponized anthrax spores. Several died. People throughout the country became afraid that they too might encounter such a letter. Many were reluctant to open their mail. Although some officials responded with ridicule, most tried to keep their reassurances respectful. Timothy Paustian, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin, quickly updated the anthrax section of his online microbiology textbook. The no-nonsense factual information he provided certainly didn’t ridicule people’s fears about their mail; it simply explained why the fears were probably unfounded. But it fell short of empathizing with fearful readers. Jody revised the new section using risk communication principles, and Paustian posted her revisions. Here is one before-and-after excerpt. Jody’s version addresses “you” the fearful reader without deflection, but nonetheless with empathy: Before: However, it will be very unlikely that you will receive one of these letters. Think about how many pieces of mail go out and how many people there are. Your chances are very low. After: You know it’s unlikely that you will receive one of these letters, but you’re still scared. You know how many pieces of mail go out, and how many people there are, but you can’t completely shake that inner worry. You know your chances are very low, but you find yourself reaching cautiously for the envelope, and you feel … just a little nuts. Welcome to the human race. In each situation you need to figure out which content is on the table already, which content is comfortable enough that you can raise it directly, and which content is too private and unacknowledged, too fraught, to handle so intrusively. For the content that you think is fraught, use deflection to get it into the room. 4. Questioning: “How Does That Make You Feel?” Questions aren’t always empathic. Sometimes they can feel too intrusive, more like an interrogation than a conversation among equals. The most intrusive questions don’t even feel like questions, but rather like patronizing or disdainful accusations: “Aren’t you really more worried about property values than about health?” But at a very fundamental level asking people how they feel is more empathic than not caring how they feel or telling them how you think they feel. As a rule, people like to tell their stories. They even like telling their stories to people they don’t like … and sometimes end up liking them more as a result. I am constantly surprised how reluctant my clients are to ask their stakeholders (especially their unhappy stakeholders) any questions at all. For example, I have sat in on dozens of planning sessions over the years to set the agenda for a public meeting. Invariably I suggest making a handful of phone calls to regular attendees to ask them what they want to talk about this time. My recommendation is seldom followed. Maybe it’s a control thing. A lot of my clients really want to do their own agenda-setting. They don’t mind guessing what their stakeholders want on the agenda – but if they actually ask, they’ll feel bound by the answers they get. For [email protected] Property of Bookemon, do NOT distribute 138