The Key to Successful Empathy: Validation

Last night my husband and I attended a parents’ group aimed at developing some successful strategies. As a consultant and executive coach, I have always concerned myself with knowing how to build empathy skills. After all, empathy is critical for leaders at any level to develop for influencing, managing conflict, and effective interpersonal communication in general. I learned firsthand that the most challenging component of successfully expressing empathy and sympathy is validation. We learned how to verbally and nonverbally validate ourselves and others. This was really difficult for me. When I am emotionally triggered, this is the toughest skill I have ever tried to master.

What is validation? Validation communicates to another person that his or her feelings, thoughts, and actions make sense and are understandable to you in a particular situation. Remember that validation is not agreement. Validation does not necessarily mean that you like or agree with what the other person is doing, saying, or feeling. Validation means that you understand where the other person is coming from.

Why is validation helpful? It improves relationships! It makes empathy and sympathy truly work for the communication. Validation shows that we are listening, we understand, we are being nonjudgmental, we care about the relationship, and conflict is possible with decreased anxiety.

How can we validate others? 

1. Actively listen, make eye contact and stay focused with the other person while they are talking. It’s important to be mindful of both verbal and non-verbal reactions in order to avoid “invalidating” their feelings (e.g. rolling eyes, sucking teeth, walking away, saying “That’s stupid, don’t be sad,” or “I don’t care what you say”).
2. Observe what the other person is feeling in the moment. Look for a word that describes the feelings. Paraphrase what you hear or think they are feeling based on a past experience with them, i.e, “I know how much you get annoyed when someone is late.” Also, demonstrating a spontaneous expression of your validation such as saying, “I feel the same way when that happens,” or saying, “oh no!” or give a hug - which is an expression of “radical genuineness.”
3. Show tolerance, especially when you are feeling emotionally triggered. Look for how the feelings, thoughts, and action make sense, given the other person’s (or your) history and current situation, even if you don’t approve of the behaviors, emotions, action themselves.
4. Respond in a way that shows you are taking the other person seriously (with or without words). If someone is crying, give a tissue or a hug. If someone is presenting a problem, start problem solving immediately (unless the person wishes merely to be heard).

We can validate ourselves as well!  Self-validation involves perceiving your own feelings, thoughts, and action as accurate and acceptable in particular situations. This is, in fact, critical to being able to successfully validate others. We want to be authentic when we validate - and validating our own feelings will help us be present and non-judgmental as we validate other’s feelings.

Try this out yourself:

Your teammate didn’t follow through on a promise and is complaining to you about being judged harshly by the manager.

1. Now write down your first response (the one you naturally might make). 
2. Now write down a validating response. 

What did you write? My first response was “well that’s what happens when you don’t communicate you’ll be late.” My validating response: “That must have felt awful!”

Try this with some other challenging situations and build your “validation muscle.” Empathy and sympathy is much more powerful when others feel you “get” them. It lays the foundation for trust and problem solving, especially when emotions run strong.