This informal CPD article ‘Curiosity, resilience, and relational working: The role of empathy in social care’ was provided by OnePlusOne, a leading research and innovation charity with over 50 years’ experience in relationship science.
Empathy is one of the core aspects of relationally capable working – it’s part of what makes us human. If you work in a client-facing role, empathy is an essential part of your toolkit to make meaningful connections with your clients. It’s a skill you can develop that will help your clients feel understood and more willing to make progress. It can also support your own work-life balance, protecting you against burnout.
Whether you are a family practitioner, a social worker, or someone working in social care or support, you can make your practice more effective by honing your empathetic skills and creating a more relational space for your clients.
What is empathy?
Empathy is the capacity to recognise another person’s mind and think about what might be going on for them (Eisenberg, Miller 1987).
Unlike sympathy, where you feel sad or worried about someone, empathy allows you to connect and identify with another person’s feelings, whether positive or negative. It’s not about taking that person’s emotions on as your own. It’s the act of stepping into their emotional experience and standing alongside them (Howe, 2017).
When you incorporate empathy into your practice in a conscious way, you’ll be using lots of different facets of your relational skills, including compassion and self-reflection.
This starts with self-awareness, as the ability to recognise someone else’s feelings comes from having experienced similar ones yourself. You also need to maintain a healthy boundary between your client’s feelings and yours, imagining the situation from their perspective without getting overwhelmed (Gerdes and Segal, 2009) (Raatikainen et al, 2022).
How is empathy used in social care?
According to one study, social workers with higher levels of empathic skills tended to use more open questions and reflections in their interactions with clients (Lynch et al, 2019).
If you’re looking for ways to incorporate empathy into your practice, or to be conscious about how you are doing this, try to stay curious. In your daily interactions, this curiosity will be characterised by showing understanding and focusing on feelings.
Staying curious
When you are curious, you’re showing an interest in your client’s experience. Ask open questions about what they’ve been through and how they are feeling. This gives them more opportunities to open up about their unique situation, and share their perspective.
If you are juggling a busy caseload, it might feel like you need to get straight to the heart of the matter with a few direct ‘fact finding’ questions. This direct approach can feel like a box-ticking exercise for your clients and can make them shut down. Aim to keep your questions open and exploratory: “How did that make you feel?” “What might this all mean for you?”
While you are the professional in the interaction, your views and opinions should never dominate the conversation – create space for your clients to express themselves and aim to listen more than you speak.
Showing understanding
If you notice your questions are leading to short one-word answers, or if you feel like you’re the one doing all the talking, take a step back.
When you’re working from a position of curiosity, you’re seeking to learn from your clients, to find out what they think and feel about the situation. This creates space for your client to share their thoughts, feelings, and perspective, allowing you to show understanding by really listening and taking on board what they’re saying.
Focusing on feelings
It can feel uncomfortable when another person talks about their feelings, particularly in a professional context. When your client is being vulnerable, you might have a sense that you’re holding something important for them, something that requires care and attention.
Resist the temptation to set those feelings aside or move onto the next thing. Don’t jump straight to sharing your professional concerns or offering practical advice, as this could put them in a defensive position. Learn to embrace a bit of discomfort and sit with your client’s feelings as you invite them to explore those emotions further. (Lynch et al, 2019)
Empathy can help build a stronger connection
Why is empathy so important?
Empathy can help build a stronger connection between you and your client. They might feel better supported and more willing to move forward with the work. It can also help improve your work-life balance and protect you from burnout.
How empathy helps your clients
Empathy plays an important role in developing the relationship between practitioners and the families they work with. In fact, research suggests that service users want practitioners to be empathetic. Clients who experience empathy from practitioners also tend to have better outcomes and see more effective results from interventions(Raatikainen et al, 2022) (Lynch et al, 2019).
Empathy can create a stronger connection between you and your client, and many clients say they feel better when their social worker is actively trying to understand them. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything your client is saying – just that you’re trying to see it from their point of view (Howe, 2017).
All this work goes towards improving the quality of the practitioner-client relationship. Several researchers have even found that the quality of this relationship is as important as the methods you use when it comes to determining outcomes for your clients (eg Castonguay, Beutler 2006) (Howe, 2017).
How empathy helps you
Relational working isn’t just good for your clients – it’s also good for you. Empathy has also been shown to improve work-life balance for practitioners and even protect against burnout (Raatikainen et al, 2022).
If you work in health or social care, emotions are an important part of your role. Being able to recognise your own emotions allows you to regulate them, making you a better listener and communicator. Consider the way positive emotions like excitement or enthusiasm can be turned to a client’s advantage, or how your understanding of frustration allows you get a client unstuck and moving forwards (Skarbaliene, 2019).
Your emotions are part of what guides your actions. They are directly related to how you organise your caseload, how you manage your performance, and ultimately how satisfied you are in your role (Carminati, 2021).
What does an empathetic worker look like?
We’ve seen that practitioners displaying high levels of empathy are more likely to form good quality relationships with their clients. So, what does that look like in practise?
The following qualities are useful to have in mind:
- Warmth. When you are friendly and compassionate, your clients are more likely to engage in the work. Show them that you’re on their side, that you really care.
- Collaboration. Think of your work as ‘doing with’ rather than ‘doing to’. You’re there to help your clients, so get alongside them and let them be a part of finding solutions.
- Purpose. Your clients will appreciate having a sense of purpose with structure and direction. Set goals together and work towards a specific aim.
- Feeling understood. Perhaps most crucial of all is your ability to show your client that you understand their experience and worldview. Listen to what they have to say, and support them to explore their feelings around the situation before moving into the solution phase (Howe, 2017).
Working with resistant clients
Some clients might be resistant to working with you. Don’t take this personally – they may be coming to you from a place of distress or mistrust. If they’ve had negative experiences with social services in the past, they might be guarded or suspicious. Be prepared to spend some time tuning in, getting alongside them, and working together to better understand their situation (Howe, 2017).
If your clients are feeling anxious or insecure, they won’t be able to turn their minds to solving problems. Feeling seen and being understood is the first step towards supporting people to make positive changes in their lives.
Your client’s emotions are not something that need to be dealt with or pushed aside. They are valuable pieces of information that create a fuller picture of your client’s situation and the support they need from you (Skarbaliene, 2019). Set aside judgement and let go of any need to evaluate and compartmentalise (Howe, 2017).
As a professional, you have the power to create a safe space and set boundaries for your clients. Use open-ended questions that give your client the opportunity to share what’s important to them, and don’t be afraid to meet them with an emotional response (Raatikainen et al, 2022).
When you approach your work with empathy in mind, you’ll find it starts to come more naturally, improving your working relationships, your clients’ outcomes, and your own work-life balance.
Reflections
If this article has got you thinking about how you use empathy in your own practice, you might want to consider some of these questions:
- How do my personal experiences and background influence my approach to empathy?
- In what ways do I demonstrate professional curiosity when I engage with service users or clients?
- How do I recognise and manage both my own and my clients’ emotions during interactions?
- Which qualities would I like to develop in order to show more empathy?
- How might I maintain professional boundaries and manage emotional responses?
- What strategies can I employ to create an environment that encourages open and empathetic communication?
We hope this article was helpful. For more information from OnePlusOne, please visit their CPD Member Directory page. Alternatively, you can go to the CPD Industry Hubs for more articles, courses and events relevant to your Continuing Professional Development requirements.
References
Carminati, L. (2021). Emotions, emotion management and emotional intelligence in the workplace: Healthcare professionals' experience in emotionally-charged situations. Frontiers in sociology, 6, 640384.
Castonguay, L. G., & Beutler, L. E. (2006). Principles of therapeutic change: A task force on participants, relationships, and techniques factors. Journal of clinical psychology, 62(6), 631-638.
Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P. A. (1987). The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. Psychological bulletin, 101(1), 91.
Gerdes, K. E., & Segal, E. A. (2009). A social work model of empathy. Advances in Social Work, 10(2), 114-127.
Howe, D. (2017). Empathy, social intelligence and relationship-based social work. Zeszyty Pracy Socjalnej, 22(1), 1-12.
Lynch, A., Newlands, F., & Forrester, D. (2019). What does empathy sound like in social work communication? A mixed‐methods study of empathy in child protection social work practice. Child & Family Social Work, 24(1), 139-147.
Raatikainen, E., Rauhala, L. A., & Mäenpää, S. (2022). An educational intervention focused on teaching Qualified Empathy to social work students in Finland. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 14(1), 409-423.
Skarbaliene, A. (2019). Emotional intelligence in healthcare. Medical Science Pulse, 13(1), 40-42.
