Empathic Confrontation

Jamie Lee:
Welcome to Negotiate Your Career Growth. I'm Jamie Lee, and I teach you how to blend the best of negotiation strategies with feminist coaching so you get promoted and better paid without burning bridges or burning out in the process. Let's get started.

Are you struggling to get heard and get through to difficult people in your career or in your life? Let's keep in mind that negotiation is a series of conversations often with some of these difficult folks, and maybe these folks have a tendency to bulldoze their way through conversations, including negotiations, and you find it hard to get your word in edgewise.

Or here's a situation I often coach on, usually a manager or some folks in leadership say things or communicate in a way, maybe it's lack of consistency, that have you feeling hurt and you struggle to stand up for yourself because even though your feelings are hurt, you don't want them to get angry. You don't wanna burn bridges.

If that's you. Try this empathic confrontation. Let me give you two sample statements of empathic confrontation. 

If they keep dominating the conversation and they bring up irrelevant topics, I suggest you put your hand up to signal, please stop.

And then you say, "I understand this is important to you, and let's discuss it later. Not now. This is not the time, this is not the place for that particular topic."

Or here's another example. If they say things that make you feel uncomfortable, maybe it's sexist, maybe it's racist, maybe it's ableist, maybe it's ageist. 

You can, again, I suggest put your hand up to signal, stop and say, "I know you don't intend to do harm. But when you say those things, I feel very uncomfortable. I suggest we change the topic of our conversation."

Give empathic confrontation a test drive, see what happens. And today on this podcast, I like to break empathic confrontation down so that you understand how the components work together, why it works. And I think it can be a powerful tool in your communication toolkit to advocate for yourself and to negotiate for your career growth.

I learned about the art of empathic confrontation from Wendy Behary and she worked as a therapist. She founded the Cognitive Therapy Center of New Jersey, and she wrote the book, Disarming the Narcissist. I will link to that in the show notes.

At the talk that she gave, and I attended that talk, Wendy Behary made it really clear that we all have some degree of narcissism, but there's a distinction to be made between adaptive and maladaptive narcissism. 

She described a maladaptive narcissist as someone who is overly arrogant, someone who shows an extreme lack of empathy and accountability, someone who has an inflated sense of entitlement, and someone who routinely exploits other people, and someone who engages in exaggerated, grandiose thinking about themselves. 

As you hear that, you might be thinking, yeah, I can think of certain business people, a politician two, or a dozen, some people that I know who have those traits.

At her talk, Wendy Behary taught that empathic confrontation is a tool that you can use to stand up for yourself against the maladaptive narcissist. And more specifically, she talked about when that narcissist is embedded in your life, maybe you are married to one, maybe you had children with one, even though you're divorced now, or maybe you are working for one, and it's really hard for you to quit your job.

If you are thinking, yep, that's my manager, that's my partner, that's my colleague who's a maladaptive narcissist, check out her book and try empathic confrontation.

But for me, when I first heard her explain what this is, my immediate thought was, this is a great negotiation tool. This is a great communication strategy, and I think you can use it with just about anyone, even if they aren't a maladaptive narcissist. Your conversation, your negotiation counterpart does not have to be a narcissist for empathic confrontation to work.

I know this to be true because I realized I've been using empathic confrontation in my coaching with clients for years, and not all of my clients are narcissists. And I also use empathic confrontation in my own life. And I'm going to give you a specific example of that later on in this podcast. And those folks in my life aren't overly arrogant. They, they don't have a grandiose self-concept. They don't exploit people.

In fact, I believe that my former client, Amy, whom I interviewed in the last podcast, episode 14, so if you haven't checked it out, if you haven't listened to it, please do so because that is a masterclass in the power of empathic confrontation. I believe the reason why Amy was able to speak up directly to her manager and address her manager's unconscious bias and get through to him, you know, in fact, he thanked her for speaking up.

He's like, thank you for bringing this to my attention. He didn't get mad when Amy called him out on his unconscious bias. And I think the reason why this happened is because she engaged in empathic confrontation. She probably said something like, "Hey, I know you don't mean harm, but I think you may be unconsciously biased against me because I'm the only female on the engineering team."

So let's talk about what empathic confrontation is. Let's break it down to its components, and then let's think about why it works so well. 

There are three components. Number one, body language, number two, empathy. Number three, confrontation. So let's start with number one. I suggest that you put your hand up if you want your counterpart to please stop. You put your hand up to show them. Please stop. 

And Wendy Behary at the talk that I attended, she also suggested physically moving your body away, like pulling away from your counterpart to again, to send the clear message, please back off. I need space here. Or You are invading my space. 

When we communicate, our non-verbal communication carries a bigger punch than just the words we say, how we carry our body, our physiology, and the tone with which we speak say a lot more than just the words. And in fact, people will remember how you said it more often than what you said.

And to give you an example from life, you know when a toddler is lying, <laugh>, maybe, I'm just gonna think of a scenario here. Let's say you told a toddler, maybe this toddler is like a four year old kid and you told a toddler, please stop eating cookies from the cookie jar. It's time for you to brush your teeth and go to bed. But you know, they snuck down back into the kitchen, they ate more cookies instead of brushing their teeth, you see them in the hallway, you stop them and you ask, so you haven't eaten more cookies, you've brushed your teeth?

And then they say, no, I haven't eaten more cookies. But you can tell, you can just tell they're lying because their shoulders are bent forward. They can't make eye contact with you, <laugh>. They're not confirming they brushed their teeth either, and their voice is trailing off as they say, no, I haven't eaten more cookies.

Yes, toddlers are terrible liars, and we are always unconsciously looking for congruence, for that agreement in how people communicate verbally and non-verbally. 

So when you use empathic confrontation, putting your hand up to signal, please stop or shifting your body away to signal, I need space that creates congruence between your words and your physiology. You're telling them both with your body and your words. I mean what I'm saying. 

It's kind of like writing a sentence in a Google Doc and then underlying and then bolding the sentence. It signals, I mean it seriously.

So let's talk about the second part. Empathic and empathic confrontation, of course, refers to empathy, which should not be mistaken with feeling responsible for the feelings of your counterpart, whether that's your boss, a colleague, or a friend. Empathy is not about making or keeping other people happy. That's not empathy, that's people pleasing.

Empathy is something we're all neurologically wired to do. Recently, brain scientists identified specific types of brain cells that are solely dedicated for empathy. They're called mirror neurons. And these mirror neurons fire up when you can imagine other people's thoughts, feelings, and intentions. 

So whether that's through instinct, intuition, or maybe you just have experience dealing with this particular counterpart, this particular person, your mind can grasp what it's like to be in their shoes, what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what their intention maybe. And that is empathy. And empathy is a really powerful tool in negotiation.

Every book written about negotiation will hammer this point, and so will I. Empathy is a negotiation power tool.

So let's go to the third part. Confrontation. Confrontation is, in this specific context we're talking about, it's not about getting angry or getting defensive, right? You're not getting up on their faces. Confrontation in this example is about you saying what you need to say. It's about saying your truth. It's about establishing the boundary that you want to and that you need to set so you can honor yourself, you can honor your needs, you can protect your space in this interaction, in this dynamic with this person.

So let me give you some examples. Let's go into concrete examples. And I wanna tell you about how I use empathic confrontation in my personal life. 

There is a person who I love and who loves me, who likes to share lots of cautionary tales and give me lots of unsolicited advice, especially when it comes to my business and somebody who basically tells me how things can go terribly wrong.

Yes, if you have guessed it, it is a family member. And honestly, in the past, I would just get so annoyed. I would just get so angry by their behavior, why won't this person just trust me? Why won't they look on the bright side as I like to do? Why won't they agree with me?

But when I decided that, hey, I'm not in control of their feelings, I'm not in control of what they do, but I'm in control of how I respond, I'm in control of how I think and feel about this person. I decided to ask myself, what could this person be thinking that has them taking this action? What could this person be thinking that has them telling cautionary tales and giving me advice I didn't ask for? And telling me that the things that I'm setting out to do can go terribly wrong?

I kept in mind that this person loves me, and of course they do. And then when I got curious about their intent behind their actions, and when I went beyond my own judgment about this person's behaviors, I realized, I realized that this person simply wanted to protect and to help me.

Underneath the action of telling me how I can do it wrong, <laugh>. And underneath the fear that something can go terribly wrong for me was the positive intent to help protect me from harm. And what I perceived to be something that is just annoying and a lack of trust in my abilities, which were just my thoughts, what was underneath it was actually a loving intention. So when I came to this realization, whenever this person gave me more unsolicited advice, I started to engage in empathic confrontation.

I didn't put my hand up <laugh>, I didn't get so dramatic, but I did say, "Hey, you know what? I know you wanna help me. I know your intention is to, you know, help me protect from harm and liabilities. I get it, and I appreciate that, but I'm going to seek out business advice from my business coaches." 
 
So in other words, I said, "I understand you wanna help, but thank you and no thank you."

Let me give you another example from one of my clients. One of my clients works under an overly critical boss, somebody who tends to hyper focus on the little errors and give little air time to validation and acknowledgement. And this boss sent more emails about these tiny clerical errors that my client had made than saying, oh, you're doing a great job. Keep going. So of course, my client was feeling hurt, and I asked her to imagine that beneath their criticism, beneath the criticism of this particular boss is perfectionist thinking.

And when we imagined that, my client was like, yeah, I can see how this boss is even more critical with themselves and underneath that perfectionist thinking is the positive intent to be excellent at everything.

So I suggested that my client say, Hey boss, "I understand you want things to go really well, and I do too, and I assure you that I've got this. I will handle the details as we have already discussed."

So there you have it empathic confrontation. I think it's a really powerful communication negotiation tool. I'd love for you to try it out in your own life, in your own career, and feel free to reach out and let me know what the impact of that was for you.

Like Amy, like my client Amy, whom I interviewed in the last podcast, it can help you fast track your promotion. It can help you build and enhance relationships instead of burning bridges.

It can help you maintain your sanity, your emotional wellbeing when you work with strong-willed difficult people. 

I hope you enjoy this podcast and I will talk to you soon.

If you enjoy this podcast, come to jamie lee coach.com, j A M I e L E E C O A C h.com to get your free ebook. How to ask for a big pay raise and get it. And if you want expert guidance in your corner to help you achieve greater self-confidence and greater career satisfaction as you grow your skills in negotiating, leading, and influencing as a woman professional, I invite you to book your free one-on-one sales call with me to find out how executive coaching can help you do exactly that. The link is in the show notes. Talk soon.