Make the Other Person Feel “Felt”
Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.
—ABRAHAM MASLOW, PSYCHOLOGIST
“How much longer will this take? I’ve got better things to do,” grunted Hank, a gray-haired senior partner at a prestigious L.A. boutique entertainment law firm. I’d been called in to smooth out the relationship between Hank and Audrey, another senior partner. Audrey, whose name preceded Hank’s on the door, brought in most of the firm’s business. She was a good lawyer, but she really shined as a rainmaker. Hank was a brilliant lawyer, but he’d rather eat nails than schmooze to bring in business.
Unfortunately, rather than admiring and appreciating Audrey’s talents, Hank saw her as a loudmouth who frequently disrupted the office with her excited outbursts after she’d been to an event, appeared on television, or been interviewed by a magazine or newspaper. Compounding the problem, Audrey wanted Hank’s admiration more than anyone else’s in the firm, a carryover from wanting respect from her father and never receiving it.
Hank’s stubbornness stemmed in part from his background. His mother, an emotionally overwhelming person, made life miserable for his dad, his brother and sister, and Hank. When Hank left home, he swore that he’d never let anyone bulldoze him like that again. And Hank experienced Audrey as a bulldozer.
Since they shared cases, it was important that they work together more cooperatively, especially since their friction was spilling over to the rest of the firm and distracting everybody. My job: to get these two talking—and working—like a team.
At the moment, it was an uphill battle. The exchange between the two kept growing more heated, with Audrey’s voice turning shrill and accusatory. Hank talked down to her in front of others, she said. And he snickered at her comments, making her feel humiliated.
Hank barked sarcastically, “Hey, she doesn’t need any help from me to humiliate herself. She does a pretty good job of that on her own.”
“See! What did I tell you?” Audrey chimed in.
Audrey’s barrage continued for several minutes, with Hank looking alternately at the ceiling and his watch and saying on several occasions, “I really do have a lot of work to do. Can I leave yet?”
One of the services I provide to firms is what I call “Rent-an-Adult.” At this point I certainly was the only adult in the room, and my patience for this exchange was growing thin.
As I listened to them, I realized that the issue wasn’t Audrey’s belief that Hank refused to listen to her. Even Hank’s disrespect wasn’t the whole answer. The key was that Audrey didn’t feel felt. When I understood that, I asked myself what she was feeling, and it came to me.
I stopped them both. Then I looked at Hank and asked, “Do you know that Audrey feels that you find her utterly repulsive and disgusting a lot of the time?”
Bull’s-eye. The flood gates opened, and Audrey started crying so hard that she could no longer engage in the stupid dance-of-death debate. Her deep sobbing revealed tremendous pain, but also relief and the awareness of “feeling felt.”
With the tug-of-war abruptly ended, Hank became disarmed, and genuine. “Look,” he said, “I don’t think Audrey’s repulsive or disgusting. She’s an amazing rainmaker. She’s one of the best business development lawyers in this town, which is something I’m miserable at and feel miserable doing.” He repeated, “I don’t find her repulsive or disgusting. I even like her. It’s just that sometimes she comes in and she’s so hyper that she upsets the whole applecart of this office. And I … well, as you can tell … I prefer there to be more order.” He looked at Audrey, whose tropical storm of tears was beginning to lift, and said, “Audrey, really … I don’t think you’re repulsive or disgusting. You just drive me frickin’ nuts sometimes.”
I looked at Audrey and asked, “And what redeeming characteristics do you see in Hank?”
She responded, “He’s one of the smartest lawyers I know. Even if he’s grumpy a lot of the time, he can size up what’s wrong with any case and redirect any lawyer in the firm, including me, in a direction that will be more successful. I guess that’s why it’s so important to me that he thinks I’m a competent lawyer.”
With those two seismic shifts, the tension started to lift and some of the warmth that these comrades-in-arms felt underneath their anger started to show through. In just minutes, they went from resistance (“I hate you”) to considering (“maybe we could actually get along”) on the Persuasion Cycle.
At that point, Hank added: “Audrey, you are a good lawyer”—and then he smiled, not able to give a compliment without taking something away—“it’s just that you can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.”
“You had to say that, didn’t you?” I commented in response to Hank’s sarcastic rejoinder.
In a moment of humility, Hank replied, “Just like a zebra can’t change his stripes, neither can an asshole.”
After this chance to get past venting and exhale, the two reached a point where they could commit to communicating better. For Hank, it meant being less caustic; for Audrey, it meant calming herself down before she came into the office following the adrenaline rush from some business development activity that had her all charged up. The result of their détente: a more cooperative and productive office and less time spent fighting each other.
Audrey’s and Hank’s story is so common it’s almost universal. Look around your office, and you’ll probably see at least a couple of smart, high-achieving people who can’t stand to be in the same room with each other. Look higher, and you may spot a CEO who treats dedicated team members like enemies and has an astronomical staff turnover rate to show for it. If you’re in sales or customer service, think about the clients who seem more interested in making you miserable than in getting service. In each case, look behind the façade and you’ll probably spot a failure to “feel felt.” You’ll also find an opportunity to fix things.
WHY DOES “FEELING FELT” CHANGE PEOPLE?
Making someone “feel felt” simply means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. When you succeed, you can change the dynamics of a relationship in a heartbeat. At that instant, instead of trying to get the better of each other, you “get” each other and that breakthrough can lead to cooperation, collaboration, and effective communication.
The Cold War, in fact, may have ended on just such an empathic tipping point. In a now-legendary moment, President Ronald Reagan’s talks with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev seemed to be at a standstill when Reagan looked behind his adversary’s stubborn face to see a leader who truly loved his people. In a moment of brilliant simplicity, he invited Gorbachev to “Call me Ron” (as opposed to “Let’s keep fighting president-to-president, digging our heels in and getting nowhere”). Gorbachev not only accepted the invitation, he joined Reagan in calling an end to the Cold War. That’s a buy-in of global proportions!
One explanation for the effectiveness of making a person “feel felt” lies in the mirror neurons I talked about earlier. When you mirror what another person feels, the person is wired to mirror you in return. Say “I understand what you’re feeling,” and the other person will feel grateful and spontaneously express that gratitude with a desire to understand you in return. It’s an irresistible biological urge, and one that pulls the person toward you.
Despite the power of this move, people often resist using it because they hesitate to poke around in other people’s private feelings—especially at work. But if your relationship with another person looks like it’s going nowhere, making that person “feel felt” is your best bet for achieving a breakthrough.
I used this approach recently in a meeting with John, a 45-year-old whose brusqueness bordered on hostility.
John was the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company. When his firm merged with a smaller one, the newly formed company needed to make major changes from the top down—and those changes created resistance from the bottom up. One of my specialties is helping firms manage the turmoil of transitions, so I’d come to offer my services.
Earlier, John had hired a big-name consulting firm to handle this same task. The firm made recommendations that looked wonderful on paper but proved completely unworkable. John escaped from that disaster unscathed, because he’d used a basic CYA strategy: Hire a prestigious consulting firm, and if it goes badly, you can say, “Don’t blame me: After all, they’re supposed to be the experts.” The good news: He didn’t get in trouble. The bad news: He still needed to solve the problem, and now he had a reduced budget—which is why he was speaking with me.
I knew this back-story, and I sensed the emotions that lay behind John’s covert antagonism. In fact, I’d felt them a time or two myself. So instead of launching into my presentation, I paused and said, “You’ve been burned before, haven’t you?”
“What?” retorted John, completely blindsided by my non sequitor.
I repeated myself, “You’ve been sold or told things before by consultants who didn’t deliver on their promises. Maybe you even had some close calls explaining to a boss why your decisions didn’t work out. And after you nearly escaped those, you said to yourself, ‘I’ll never put myself in such a vulnerable position again.’ Now you don’t know if what I’m offering will deliver the results I’m promising. Isn’t that true?”
He nodded sheepishly in agreement, no doubt remembering some of those close calls and now surrendering to the fact that he couldn’t hide from me.
“Hey, don’t worry,” I reassured him. “Everyone makes decisions they regret. I’ve made decisions I regret.” He nodded slightly.
“So here’s the deal,” I continued. “Knowing what it’s like to believe promises made by people who didn’t keep them—and knowing how awful that felt—I would never do that to anyone else. And if I did do that to you, I think you should come after me. Now, that said, there are always bumps in the road as I work with a company. Often these relate to the company agreeing conceptually with something that turns out not to be workable. When that happens, I’ve found the best way to work through that to be….” And I explained how we’d work through any rough spots.
Bottom line … I got the engagement.
How come? Something I know about seemingly confident people, and especially people who work in large companies, is that often they’re more afraid of making a mistake than they are of wanting to do something right. (That’s especially true for managers or CEOs in their mid-forties, and even truer if they’re men.) That’s because they’re afraid of being pounced on if things go badly and afraid of the hit their self-esteem will take if they screw up.
When these people make a mistake and feel criticized or embarrassed from without and humiliated from within, they often promise themselves, “Never again will I put myself in a position to be beaten up like this.” This unconsciously holds them back when they have to make a new decision that might turn out to be a mistake.
It’s critical to know this, especially in situations in which you make a clear, concise, and reasonable presentation to someone who nods in acceptance but then fails to agree to it. At this point most salespeople or managers try to elicit further objections that they can overcome. Sometimes that works, but often it doesn’t. That’s because what the other person is thinking but not telling you is, “I’m afraid—terrified—of making a mistake.”
By addressing this dynamic head-on and showing that you understand and accept how the person feels and that you’d feel the same, you make these frightened clients “feel felt.” When people feel felt, they feel less alone, and when they feel less alone, they feel less anxious and afraid—and that opens them up to the message you’re trying to send. They shift from defensiveness (“Get away!”) to reason, and they’re capable of hearing your message and weighing it rationally.
THE STEPS TO MAKING ANOTHER PERSON FEEL “FELT”
You might think, “Mark, this is all easy for you to say or do. You’re a psychiatrist with 30 years experience.” My response is, “Don’t kid yourself. You don’t need a medical degree to do something this simple.” Here’s all you need to do.
1. Attach an emotion to what you think the other person is feeling, such as “frustrated,” “angry,” or “afraid.”
2. Say, “I’m trying to get a sense of what you’re feeling and I think it’s —————…” and fill in an emotion. “Is that correct? If it’s not, then what are you feeling?” Wait for the person to agree or correct you.
3. Then say, “How frustrated (angry, upset, etc.) are you?” Give the person time to respond. Be prepared, at least initially, for a torrent of emotions—especially if the person you’re talking with is holding years of pent-up frustration, anger, or fear inside. This is not the time to fight back, or air your own grievances.
4. Next, say, “And the reason you’re so frustrated (angry, upset, etc.) is because…?” Again, let the person vent.
5. Then say, “Tell me—what needs to happen for that feeling to feel better?”
6. Next, say, “What part can I play in making that happen? What part can you play in making that happen?”
This script isn’t cast in stone; use these questions as a starting point, and go where your conversation leads. Here’s an example:
CARMEN, TRYING TO FIND OUT WHY HER EMPLOYEE DEBBIE IS STALLING ON A CRUCIAL NEW PROJECT: Debbie, I’m sensing that you have some strong feelings about me asking you to take on this project.
DEBBIE: Well … yes, I guess I do.
CARMEN: I’m trying to get an idea of what you’re feeling, and I’m wondering if you’re feeling a little scared about trying something so new and different. Or maybe even a lot scared. Is that right?
DEBBIE (STARTING TO VENT): I was afraid to say anything, but … you know I’m not an expert at graphics, and it’s so much to learn all at once. And it’s just so much pressure, and Johnny’s babysitter just quit so things are crazy at home, and … I’m just feeling overwhelmed, I guess. I know it’s a great opportunity, but I’m scared that I’ll blow it.
CARMEN: I can see why that’s a whole lot to handle at once. I’m wondering what needs to happen to make this easier for you. Would it help if I ask Theo to give you a little training in using InDesign? He’s pretty good at it.
DEBBIE: That would really help a lot. I’d feel a lot more confident if I didn’t need to figure everything out all by myself.
CARMEN: Great. I’ll ask him. Is there anything else that would make taking on this project easier?
DEBBIE, RELAXING AND STARTING TO THINK POSITIVELY ABOUT HER NEW ROLE: I’d like to get a little formal training in graphics and layout if you want me to do more projects like this. Do you think there’s some money for that in the budget?
Sometimes another person’s response when you touch on a powerful feeling will surprise you.
Several years ago I spent months trying to schedule a meeting with a CEO, only to find him distracted and cold when we finally got together. Frustrated, I finally blurted out, “How much time do you have to meet with me?”
He looked at me with a look that said, “I don’t know, but it’s just about over right now!” I thought he was going to throw me out at that point, but he fumbled with his appointment book in an obviously offended manner and replied, “Twenty minutes.”
I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said, “what I have to say is worth your undivided attention, which you can’t give me because there is something on your mind that is much more important than meeting with me. So here’s the deal. Let’s stop now at minute three and reschedule our meeting when you can give me all of your attention, but you take the remaining 17 minutes and make a call to take care of whatever is weighing on your mind, because it’s not fair to your people, people outside like me, and even yourself to not be able to listen.”
There was a pregnant pause and then he looked right at me —he was totally engaged now—and then his eyes started to water. He said, “You’ve known me for three minutes and because I’m a very private person about personal matters, there are several people within 20 yards of where we are sitting who have known me for 10 years and don’t know what you know. There is something that is bothering me. My wife is having a biopsy, and it doesn’t look good. She’s stronger than me and told me that I would be better off going to work. So I’m here, but I’m not really here.”
I replied, “I’m sorry to hear that. And maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
Then like a wet dog shaking off his drenched fur, He continued: “Nope. I’m not as strong as my wife, but I am strong. Served two tours of duty in Vietnam. I’m better off being here and taking care of business. You’ve got my undivided attention and you’ve got your full 20 minutes.”
What’s the moral of this story? It’s easy to focus so intently on getting something from someone else—more work from a coworker, more respect from a boss, a sale from a client—that you lose sight of the fact that inside every person is a real person who’s just as afraid or nervous or in need of empathy as anyone else. If you ignore that person’s feelings, you’ll keep hitting the same brick wall of anger, antagonism, or apathy. Make the person “feel felt,” on the other hand, and you’re likely to transform yourself from a stranger or an enemy into a friend or an ally. You’ll get less attitude, less obstruction, and more support—and you’ll get your message through.
If it sounds too simple to be true, try it. You’ll be surprised.
Usable Insight
Inside every person—no matter how important or famous—is a real person who needs to “feel felt.” Satisfy that need, and you’ll transform yourself from a face in the crowd to a friend or an ally.
Action Step
Think of someone you’re trying to reach who either makes excuses or pushes back in some manner. Put yourself in the person’s shoes and ask yourself, “What would I feel in this person’s position? Frustrated? Scared? Angry?”
Approach the person, and say, “I need to talk to you about something. I was so busy feeling upset with you and then acting impatient and irritated that I stepped on your toes instead of walking in your shoes. When I stopped to do that, I thought if I were you, I’d feel frustrated (scared, angry, etc.). Is that true?”
When the person tells you what he or she feels, find out what’s causing the feeling and what needs to be different for the person to feel better and achieve more.