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I recently had a debate with a friend about what it means to be empathetic. He believes empathy is about feeling for an individual’s suffering and understanding what they go through. I think empathy takes more than just listening to alleviate suffering.
Neither perspective is wrong; it just depends on context. As a Registered Psychotherapist who practices career-focused counselling, empathy is complex, especially for clients with multi-faceted career issues.
My understanding of empathy consists of 3 parts:
- Understanding a person from their lived experience
- Recognizing their feelings, perceptions and thoughts
- Moving together to find a solution
As Career Development Practitioners (CDPs), clients come to us seeking guidance and counselling services. Expressing empathy is a counselling technique to establish an alliance with clients and create a safe space to explore their career struggles, thereby building a healing relationship.
Insoo Kim Berg (Solution-focused Behavioural Therapist) describes three types of client-therapist relations; I will use her paradigm to highlight the CDP-client relationship in the context of how to empathize with a client’s career-presenting issues. Also, I will describe the fourth type of CDP-client interaction that I have witnessed as a Certified Clinical Supervisor for Career Counselling.
The Visitor
Based on encouragement from others, these individuals are referred to explore job search/career counselling services. The individual may or may not be ready to change because of their hesitation and fears.
The CDP acts as a Host, actively listening to the Visitor’s concerns, which makes them believe they are not ready for change. If they are grieving job loss, it can affect their mental health. For example, they might say that unemployment is making them feel lonely and isolated from others.
Empathy for a Visitor is about the invitation to change. Let them tell you the story and actively listen to what they want. In this case, the Visitor wants to feel less alone. The CDP can invite the Visitor to a group workshop, which may help with their isolation, and they can passively think about job searching. The CDP might end the session with introductions to colleagues or clients, rather than an intervention.
These empathic gestures can help make the Visitor feel less vulnerable. Later, for the Visitor to feel you have not forgotten about them, the CDP can follow up with them by reviewing the workshop intervention and its benefits to alleviate their isolation and loneliness.
The Complainer
The Complainer is aware of how unemployment has negatively affected their well-being and comes to the session to describe their problems. The Complainer may be describing age discrimination, being labelled as lazy for not trying harder to find employment or not having opportunities to gain experience. The Complainer will continue to work with the CDP if they get to describe their problems, but they have not come to the awareness of how their behaviour can alleviate the problem.
“Offering solutions reflects an assumption that the Complainer wants to alleviate the problem.”
The empathetic stance when a CDP encounters a Complainer is to act as a Listener. Many CDPs play the role of an advisor or educator to convince the Complainer to change their interpretation or correct their job search. For example, the CDP might try to establish empathy by encouraging the client to “do more networking,” “make a list of your ideal jobs” or “cheer up and stay positive.” These statements cause the client to resist change.
Offering solutions reflects an assumption that the Complainer wants to alleviate the problem. Instead, the CDP’s empathetic stance should be to actively listen to the Complainant’s narrative on how they have been coping, what/when they felt less disturbed and who has been there to support them. This type of laser listening helps the CDP gain positive insights into the Complainer’s narrative so that those strengths can help the client persist with their job search.
The Customer
The Customer is the CDP’s ideal client because they are ready for change. They are invested in discovering new methods of finding meaningful employment. Furthermore, they know that their behaviour has been contributing to the problem and are now invested in addressing their behaviour.
The CDP and client are active participants and collaborators in this relationship. For example, the Customer may believe asking for informational interviews is akin to begging for a job. The Customer would work with the CDP to explore the validity of their thoughts rather than only teach informational interviews. This client and CDP engage in exchanges of ideas and follow through on their co-constructed plan.
The Polite Client
While providing clinical supervision for CDPs, I have worked with CDPs who unknowingly cultivated the Polite Client relationship, which is not part of Berg’s typology. During clinical supervision, the CDP complains that they cannot let go of this Polite Client, yet the client is not progressing with their job search. The CDP elaborates on how the Polite Client praises the CDPs for their ability to sympathize with them.
The Polite Client comes back with partly completed homework assignments. The CDP does not address the lack of follow-through on the plan. The Polite Client has gained the sympathy of the CDP by demonstrating minimal efforts to follow through on job search actions.
The type of session is not considered career counselling, and the CDP may have ventured out of the scope of their work. The CDP believes they are helpful because the Polite Client overly validates the CDP’s effort. The validations used by the Polite Client are to avoid change. It is a complex dynamic, and the CDP is partnering with the Polite Client to delay change.
In a career counselling setting, how we apply empathy with various clients can help foster positive changes in their lives.
