What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?) (Ed Batista)

Advice-Listening-Hug

My clients often report feeling that their needs aren't getting met in conversations with colleagues, friends or family members. This is one reason why they've chosen to work with a coach--over the course of thousands of coaching sessions since launching my practice in 2006 I've learned to intuit what a client needs in any given conversation, and I'm careful to clarify their needs whenever I'm uncertain.

But colleagues, friend and family members are more readily available than I am (and a lot cheaper), and I encourage my clients to think of me as merely one member of their "coaching team," albeit a full-time professional. [1] Their other conversational partners can't be expected to have this training--and in some cases their partners' helping impulses are actually counter-productive.

So I encourage clients to help colleagues, friends, and family members be more helpful to them by clarifying what they need at that particular moment. Without making this information explicit, even the most well-intentioned helpers are left to guess at what is really being asked of them, and as my clients' experiences demonstrate, we often guess incorrectly!

This need not be a complicated process--most help that we're seeking fits into one of three categories, so when you feel the need for some help, ask yourself the following:

Do I need advice?

Do I need someone to listen?

Do I need a hug?

These categories aren't mutually exclusive, of course. In some cases we can rely on a given colleague, friend or family member to supply all three effectively, and we can even obtain all three in a single conversation. But our helpers can't really help us unless they know what help we need right now, so we owe it them to clarify our request before enlisting their aid.

Advice

The primary challenge we face when our needs aren't getting met in these conversations is that the helper's immediate response is to offer advice when that's not really what we wanted. But many people have been trained to be helpful by offering advice, and when we turn to someone for "help" they automatically think that the request is for "advice." There's also a gendered aspect to this, as many men seem to be socialized to 1) view advice as the primary (or even only) form of help and 2) feel very free to offer advice even when it's not requested. (I've certainly been guilty of this in my own relationships.)

So the problem isn't usually a lack of advice, but a surplus. The solution is simple--if you want other forms of help, like those below, be explicit about what you want and what you don't: "I don't want advice right now, I just want [...]" Or if you're open to advice at some point in the conversation but not right now, you can make that explicit as well: "I'd love your advice, but first I just need [...]"

Listening

Another significant challenge when we turn to others for help is that we don't truly feel heard. The dilemma is that many people have never been taught what it means to listen in such a way that the other person feels heard. As I've written before,

It’s important to understand the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a cognitive process that happens internally--we absorb sound, interpret it, and understand it. But listening is a whole-body process that happens between two people that makes the other person truly feel heard. [2]

Making it clear that we don't want advice (at least right now) is often a first step toward evoking better listening from a helper, because they don't feel pressured to come up with something thoughtful on the fly. By clarifying what we want (and what we don't), we liberate our helpers from their preconceived notions and free them to simply be present. That said, it's also important for us to have a sense of their capacity to listen at that particular moment. We can't assume that they have an unlimited capacity. They may have ample time to be with us, or they may have just 15 minutes--or no time at all. If you simply want someone to listen, make that explicit and then be sure to ask them about their capacity at the moment and abide by their limits.

Truly listening can be more difficult when we're communicating virtually rather than in-person, but it's by no means impossible. (My coaching practice was always 25% virtual, and moving it to 100% last year was relatively easy.) If you're on a video call, the key is avoiding distractions--not only other devices, apps and alerts, but also the video and audio content of the call itself. Invest in a better camera, microphone, speakers and headset. Pay attention to your lighting and what's in your background. And one possibility is to bypass video entirely and simply make a phone call. [3]

A Hug

Sometimes we don't need advice, and we don't even really need someone to listen, at least not for long. We just need a hug. We need someone to empathize, to reach out (literally or virtually), to sit with us, to cry with us, to nod when we talk, and to be quiet when we're quiet. This is actually the most important form of help, and it's easy to get it when 1) we ask for it explicitly, and 2) we've built a relationship in which it's safe for both parties to make that request. But in the absence of either factor, it can be quite elusive.

When presented with a request for a hug (again, literal or virtual), many people don't really know how to respond. Their formative experiences taught them that hugging was 1) reserved for only the most intimate moments, 2) a sign of weakness, or 3) simply not done, and as a result they're "not huggers." But despite the many cultural factors that can discourage hugging, some research (and a whole lot of empirical evidence) suggests that it's good for us. [4]

So if you want a hug, you shouldn't just wait until you need one, because the helper you're turning to may not be prepared to reciprocate at that moment. The last thing you want to do is "extort a hug," which is what happens when, in-person, a hugger walks toward a non-hugger with their arms open wide. The former is making a whole host of assumptions about the latter's sense of safety and comfort. That said, I don't believe we're well-served by over-correcting in the opposite direction. The key is cultivating the relationship over time, so that both parties can make their needs and boundaries known in advance and modify one or the other--or both--in order to be truly helpful to each other.

I don't think there's a true virtual substitute for an in-person hug, but I do find that in my calls with clients and others my tone of voice and, on video, my body language can go a long way toward expressing the sentiment. A murmur, a sigh, a moment of silence, or an open hand on the chest all speak volumes.

For Amy, who taught me all this in the first place.

Footnotes

[1] Self-Coaching Is SOCIAL

[2] How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize

[3] Pick Up the Phone

[4] Hugs heartfelt in more ways than one (Harvard Medical School, 2014)

For Further Reading

Helping: How to Give, Offer, and Receive Help (Edgar Schein, 2009)