Validation in coaching

A friend had a terrible experience with her family. They had hurt her feelings and caused other damage. However, since this was all well intentioned on their side, they ended up accusing my friend of being “overly sensitive” and “ungrateful”. You can imagine how terrible my friend felt. Not only were her feelings hurt, but the “perpetrators” refused to acknowledge that she had a right to feel like she was feeling. Sounds familiar? I think we all go through scenarios like this every once in a while.

What my friend needed in this situation was validation of her feelings, like we all would. As social beings, we depend on others to allow us to feel safe and cared for. “But are we not responsible for our own feelings?”, I hear you say, especially if you have been recruited into an individualistic worldview that privileges agency and independence. In my view, we are more like deer or horses who need a community, a tribe, a herd. Would you criticize a deer for feeling helpless when it looses its herd? No.

Two narratives were making it hard for my friend: a) She was being told that she had no right to feel the way she was feeling b) She should be in control of her feelings and not feel hurt by the lack of validation from her family.

I say: * insert favorite expletive * These narratives are so unhelpful!

Imagine you hear a story like that in coaching, as you probably will. Superiors hurt employees feelings, peers hurt each other, subordinates hurt superiors and the hurt will not always be recognized. The corporate narrative is often that showing emotions is “weak” or “inappropriate” which exasperates this dynamic: Hurt is not acknowledged, resentment builds up, relationships are damaged, and people come to unfortunate conclusions about each other’s identities which in turn causes them to stop listening to one another and the circle re-starts from the beginning.

What can you do helpfully as a coach?

Acknowledge the hurt. Even a little self-disclosure about how you would feel the same way might help. Anything that communicates: “Of course, you feel this way!”. Letting people know that they have a right to feel like they are feeling allows them to rejoin the tribe as a “normal” person.

Ask for what the client wants.

Maybe the acknowledgement is already enough for the client. Maybe they would like to plan how they can raise the issue with the other person. Maybe they just want to come to terms with what happened on their own, for example, if they don’t see hope that the other person will understand.

Coach them on that.

Some helpful resources may be inquiring on what they would think about the situation if it happened to a friend. Or inviting the client to think about environments in which they feel validated and can be safely vulnerable. When someone’s feelings are hurt, it might also be that they feel strongly about something. For example, if their ideas were “stolen”, they might feel strongly about fairness. Or if someone diminished them in public, they might feel strongly about kindness and compassion.

Ask about what is emerging for them.

There might be some learning in the experience and maybe the client wants to harvest that learning for the future. There may also be no learning in the experience, and it was simply a * insert favorite expletive * thing to have happened. It is important that we don’t assume that there is something to take away.

I want to invite you to support your friends, colleagues and clients by letting them know that they continue to be part of “the herd” when their feelings are hurt and that it is ok to want to belong (again, not assuming that everyone does, just that it is ok if you do).

If you want to discuss these or other topics around coaching, practice, learn about our classes, bring a case or just hang out with us, why not join one of our free meetups and exchanges?

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