Basic Empathy

The main two advantages of listening and attending are, first, contributing to the
relationship building experience and laying the foundation for the helper’s responses to the client.

The Three Directions of Responding

Skills: Perceptiveness, Know-How, and Assertiveness
The communication skills involved in responding to clients have three dimensions:
perceptiveness, know-how, and assertiveness. These three principles apply to basic empathy and
to challenging skills.

Perceptiveness. Your responding skills are as good and as accurate as your perceptions,
which are the the basis for your responding talents. Mario, a manager, is counseling Enrique, a
new member of his team. Despite doing a great load of good work for his cause, Enrique also made
a horrible blunder and his mind is only directed in that path for now. Mario, thanks to his
perceptiveness, senses the trap and starts a useful dialogue with Enrique reminding him of his great
work and explaining how future blunders could be avoided. A resounding success for Mario,
thanks to his perceptiveness and ability to defuse a tense situation.

Know-How. Once you realize what kind of responsibility is called from you, you need
to be able to deliver for the call. For example, if a client of yours is anxious because this is his first
visit to a helper, you should not let your knowledge of this get locked inside you.
Frank and Beth argue about his “anger”. Frank gets up and leaves. Beth thinks that she is right, but
the next day Frank goes to see his minister. The minister not only is perceptive, but also knows
how to address Frank’s anxiety and hesitation: “I need to recognize his anxiety and gently offer an
opening.”

Assertiveness. Accurate perceptions and excellent know-how are meaningless unless

they are actually used when called for. If you see that self-doubt is a theme that weaves itself
throughout a client’s story and search for a better future and if you know how to challenge him to
explore his tendency but fail to do so, you do not pass the assertiveness test.

Basic Empathy: Communicating

Understanding to Clients
Basic empathy represents the skill that enables helpers to get in touch with the world
understanding of their client. The term basic empathy is used to distinguish it from empathic
listening, and from another form of empathy, “advanced” empathy. A secure starting point in
helping others is listening to them carefully, struggling to understand their concerns, and sharing
that understanding with them. Empathy, then, becomes a value, a philosophy, a cause with almost
religious overtones. Covey (1989), naming empathic communication one of the “seven habits of
highly effective people”, said that empathy provides “psychological air”; that is, it helps people
breathe more freely in their relationships.

The Key Elements of Basic Empathy

This section is a kind of anatomy lesson. That is, we are going to take basic empathy apart
and look at the pieces. Further on, we’ll put them back together again.

The Basic-Empathy Formula

Basic empathic understanding can be expressed in the following stylized formula: You
feel…[name of the correct emotion expressed by the client]…because (or when) …[here indicate
the correct experiences and behaviors that give rise to the feelings]…
The formula is a beginner’s tool to get used to the convept of empathy. The formula is used
in the following examples. For the moment, ignore how stylized it sounds. Ordinary human
language will be substituted later.

Experiences, Behaviors, and Feelings

as Elements of Empathy
The key elements of an empathic response are the same as the key elements of the client’s
story – experiences, behaviors, and feelings that make up that story, which represents the next part
of the “anatomy” lesson.
Respond to the client’s feelings!!!
The words sad, mad, bad, and glad refer to four of the main families of emotion, whereas
sad, very sad, and extremely sad refer to different intensities. Note that the client may actually be
talking about emotions felt in the past – that is, at the time of the event discussed – or expressing
feelings about the event that arise during the helping session, or both.

Tactics for Communicating Empathy

The principles outlined previously provide strategies for the use of basic empathy. Here
are a few hints – tactics, if you will – to help you improve the quality of your empathic response.
Give yourself time to think! Beginners sometimes jump to quickly to a response, which in
many cases may be the wrong one.
Use short responses! Best used in dialogues, where the responses are quick, frequent and
have a much bigger chance at being true and honest.
Gear your response to the client, but remain yourself! If a client speaks animatedly, telling
the helper of his elation over various successes in his life, and she replies accurately but in a flat,
dull voice, her response is not fully empathic.