A friend sent me a link to the 2006 short film Validation, a 16-minute parable that wraps a conventional boy-meets-girl story around a novel idea: A parking lot attendant re-interprets his job description and rather than just stamp customers' tickets he truly validates them with heartfelt positive feedback. People respond so avidly that the line for validation stretches out of the parking lot. The attendant embarks on a global effort to spread the love, and widespread happiness ensues...except in his own life, because he can't win over the (improbably beautiful) driver's license photographer at the local DMV. He tries, fails, eventually succeeds. The End.
"Validation" did make me smile, as expected, and it also made me think. Validation is central to my work as a coach, and what the film gets right is how hungry we all are for it. But what the film gets wrong is that, despite this hunger, validation makes most of us feel very uncomfortable. We don't stand in line to get it--we run away from it. These two responses are interrelated, of course: We resist validation so much precisely because we want it so badly. The depth of that desire makes us incredibly vulnerable--so much so that we're willing to avoid any validation in order to insure that we're never embarrassed by our hunger for it or--even worse--by falling prey to inauthentic validation from manipulators or phonies. When we say we want candid feedback, we typically expect that it's going to be hard to hear criticism--and it can be--but it can be even harder to hear (and truly acknowledge) real praise.
I belong to a group of 12 people that meets for an evening once each month. We're all current or former facilitators in Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics class (aka "Touchy Feely"), and most of us are professionally involved in helping people grow and develop in one way or another. We began last month's session with an exercise that involved one person volunteering, and then the rest of the group speaking up and sharing affirmative words or phrases that came to mind as we reflected on that person. In the abstract it sounds so simple and easy as to be meaningless--but in person it was surprisingly difficult.
I found the idea stimulating, and I volunteered to go second. And it was rewarding, at first. People said things like "direct," "genuine," "savvy," "loving," and "loyal," and that felt great to hear. But I soon grew so uncomfortable my palms began to sweat, and I actually felt embarrassed. Bear in mind that I was sitting comfortably with a handful of people I know well and trust implicitly. I honestly appreciated everything they said, and the whole process probably took less than 2 minutes. But even in those circumstances, I almost couldn't bear to be validated; it's no wonder that we usually find the experience practically traumatic.
I don't have a pat answer to this dilemma--it's been nearly 5 years since I first wrote about the problem with positive feedback, and it's still an issue I wrestle with, both personally and in my work with clients and students. But I have learned that our refusal to accept validation, like all resistance, should invite our curiosity, not our collusion.
It's also noteworthy to me that had I asked the group to stop when I began to feel uncomfortable, I would have missed out on the most meaningful piece of feedback I got: One of the very last things someone said to describe me was "walks the talk." I can't think of any higher praise than that, and I feel a little surge of pride just remembering it. I also feel myself pulling back from sharing it here, as though I were boasting--but I'm not going to collude with that feeling. I do try to walk my talk, and while I certainly don't always succeed, it means a lot to know that I succeed often enough that people take notice.
Postscript: My friend and colleague Inbal Demri-Shaham, who led the exercise described above, was thoughtful enough to write down the list of words and phrases the group shared with each person. I brought my list home and put it up on the fridge, like a kid's report card. And, like a kid, I felt both proud and sheepish showing it to my wife the next morning. She enjoyed reading it, until she came to "savvy," which she mis-read as "sexy." "Sexy? What the hell???"
