Life Coaches Blog

In Empathy Before Solutions Part 1, I revealed the principle that helped me realize what I was doing wrong to piss people off, and helped me gain rapport and coach more effectively. In Part 2, I’m going to focus on what goes wrong when people good-naturedly offer solutions and suggestions to people but somehow the conversation ends up badly, why it happens and what you need to do instead.

The principle that I talked about in Part 1 is the one that Stephen Covey said best in his excellent book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

A word I like to use in place of understand is empathise; which the dictionary defines as:

Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.

But even though I had read about it, and sought to actively apply the principle in the way I talked with people, there were still times I missed the mark and stumbled. It’s not enough to know the principle, you have to be able to identify the 3 areas it works in before you can use it effectively.

3 Ways To Build Rapport & Coach By Understanding First

Putting the hundreds of hours I did into coaching and learning, sometimes painfully, from my own personal conversations, I discovered that there were 3 main circumstances in which this principle applies, and each circumstance modifies the approach differently, especially in the area of building rapport and coaching from being stuck to finding solutions.

1) Empathy Before Solutions

The mistake is not empathising enough and start jumping into offering solutions too early on in the conversation. Ever felt like someone didn’t really understand where you were coming from or that they weren’t listening? You can really frustrate someone if you violate this rule.

People need to feel that other people understand their feelings first before they’re interested to getting down to talking about what to do about it, especially if they’re stuck in very negative feelings like frustration or overwhelm.

2) Empathy Leads To Solutions

Sometimes, people naturally lead themselves to their own solutions by just talking about the problem, letting out their feelings and feeling understood. You only need to provide a listening ear, and a gentle probe from here to there to help them get it out.

3) Empathy Only, No Solutions Needed

And sometimes, people just wanna bitch, and once they let it all out, somehow the problem doesn’t feel that big anymore and they’re ready to move on. In a situation like this, you just need to listen and empathise.

How to you know when which is which? It’s a judgement call you’ll have to make, based on your own experience and what you know of the person and the situation. I know it sounds kinda fluffy, but trusting your intuition often works.

Drawing Out Solutions or Giving Them?

There’s a school of thought that says you shouldn’t impose your solutions on other people. There’s another school that says isn’t that what you’re there for?

The answer is it depends.

In some situations it’s enough to ask the right questions of the other person to help them draw out the solutions. Often this is when the other person is an expert in the problem area, it could be a problem at work or with their spouse.

(When you get good at listening and spotting conscious and unconscious communication patterns, it can become real obvious when someone already knows the answer to their problem and just doesn’t see it yet. It’s a lot of fun to observe!)

In other situations the person might need additional info or insight they just don’t have, and often this is when they’re not the expert in the problem area, like a new profession or country they’re in. A sign of this is when no matter what questions you ask, they seem to keep going around in circles or get into a stuck state. This is when it’s useful for you to chime in with some of your own opinions and suggestions.

What are some useful techniques you can use to help yourself empathise with the other person? I’ll be covering those in Part 3 of this series.