When Validation Matters More Than Solutions: Caroline Fleck’s Insights

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People Podcast, and today it's a special edition. We're coming to you from Honolulu, Hawaii. What you see behind me is not a virtual background. That's a real background. That is Waikiki. I'm near Diamond Head. I'm looking towards Waikiki the other way. Diamond Head is that way. Queen's Surf is that way. So I'm not here to be the Hawaii Visitors Bureau.
I'm here to help you be remarkable, and we have found a very remarkable person. She is in California right now. If I were in California right now, we'd be only about twenty miles apart, but now we're 2,500 miles apart. Our guest is Caroline Fleck, and I got to tell you, her book is the most interesting. I have to tell you, Caroline, I felt convicted in your book many, many times. Yeah.

Caroline Fleck:
Thank you.

Guy Kawasaki:
I feel like I'm a bad parent, bad spouse, bad everything.

Caroline Fleck:
No.

Guy Kawasaki:
Caroline is a clinical psychologist, and her practice is really focused on emotional resilience and communication, and she bridges psychology and real-world challenges. She's very famous for this concept called validation. So that's what we're going to talk about, okay, Caroline?
Yeah. I got to tell you, so first of all, I often go off the rails when I start a podcast, and that's going to be true today. So I have to tell you, there's one sentence in your book, when I read it, I stopped. I was reading the PDF. I selected it. I quoted it. I put it in my notes, and you will not guess what quote I took, but I love this sentence. I've never read a sentence like this in a business book, and I have to read fifty-two books a year.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, my God.

Guy Kawasaki:
The quote is, "An anecdote isn't a substitute for scientific evidence." Oh, my God.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, my gosh.

Guy Kawasaki:
Basically, you just indicted every nonfiction writer, my God, especially business book. Malcolm Gladwell is turning over in his grave right now. I love that.

Caroline Fleck:
I appreciate it.

Guy Kawasaki:
Then we're just going to fanboy out a little bit for a while.

Caroline Fleck:
Let's do it.

Guy Kawasaki:
So then I come to the end of your book, and I have to say that I think your epilogue is the best epilogue I have ever read in a book.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, my gosh.

Guy Kawasaki:
I hope I don't get in trouble with Madisun for saying this, and it starts with the sentence, "I have no boobs." I read that. I said, "That is not a typical epilogue start." Then you go into discuss cancer and all, like, "Wow, what a powerful epilogue." Anyway.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, my gosh, you are so kind. Thank you, and thank you for reading the epilogue actually, because a lot of people, they don't even finish the book, much less read epilogues these days, so I appreciate it.

Guy Kawasaki:
I loved in the middle of the book where you said something like, "Well, if you're gone this far, I really thank you and you don't have to read the rest of the book because you probably read more than most people ever read in a book."

Caroline Fleck:
Yes, it's true.

Guy Kawasaki:
I looked at that, I said, "That's probably true." I'm going to put that line in my next book because one of the key skills we talk about is copying, and I know how to copy people. I work for Steve Jobs. If anything, I learned what to steal, and that is a concept worth stealing.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, I love that. I love that, want to steal. I hadn't thought about copying in those terms, but you're exactly right, it is.

Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I think there's a very famous Picasso quote, something along the lines that real artists steal or something like that.

Caroline Fleck:
Yes. I know what you're saying. I know, and it rang true to me as well.

Guy Kawasaki:
Thank God for Xerox PARC is all I can say. Listen, let's just start off really basically. Could you just explain what is validation? I don't mean for your parking ticket at the restaurant or the hotel. What is validation to a clinical psychologist like you?

Caroline Fleck:
Validation is simply a way of communicating that you're there, you get it, and you care, and that you accept the other person non-judgmentally. It's the feeling of feeling seen or feeling heard. When we have that experience, what we are experiencing according to clinical psychologists like myself, is validation.
We feel validated. We feel like somebody sees us. They understand us. They see the rationality not just in our thoughts, but also in our emotions. It's probably that latter part that seeing the rationality in our emotions that really does something for us.

Guy Kawasaki:
Now, are you telling me that everybody's feelings are valid? Are there not cases that you shouldn't validate them?

Caroline Fleck:
Leave that to the psychologists, and I mean that so seriously because, and this is serious, the effects of invalidation on children, on adults, on everybody, it's devastating. So coming from an environment in which a child, for instance, was exposed to pervasive invalidation, meaning when they said they felt sad, the parents said, "Walk it off," right? If they were frustrated, it's your being a baby. Basically, whatever emotion they expressed was dismissed or criticized.
That type of invalidation leads to some of the most serious types of psychopathology or psychological disorders that we know of. So it's not small stuff. So if you don't understand where someone's coming, you can disagree with their thoughts or you can argue with their reasoning. Just don't be in the business of telling people that they don't feel what they're telling you they feel. A psychologist can unpack that. You just focus on something else.

Guy Kawasaki:
You haven't been talking to my children, haven't you?

Caroline Fleck:
Well, yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So just give me a definition of what are the qualities of what's valid?

Caroline Fleck:
You raise a good point, which is is everything valid? As psychologists, when I'm working with patients, I need to form a relationship and I need to do that quickly and the quickest, swiftest way to form a relationship is through validation. Okay. It's by validating them in some way.
I've got three things I could validate. I could validate their thoughts, their emotions, or their behavior. Okay. Thoughts are valid if they're logical. Behavior is valid if it's effective. Emotions are valid if they fit the situation. All right. But you only need to focus on one of those. Does that make sense?

Guy Kawasaki:
It does.

Caroline Fleck:
Do it. Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
Let's hypothetically say a politician shows up in your office and says, "I believe it's Jewish space lasers that's controlling the weather." Are you going to validate that?

Caroline Fleck:
No, I'm not. Those thoughts are not valid. However, if they say to me, and I am terrified about the implications of that, "I want to get out and raise as much money and get as much support as I can to protect us from this manipulation," that emotion, I understand that emotion based on what they're thinking.
The thoughts are not valid, but the emotion makes sense in light of what they're thinking. That is my whole job, both as a clinical psychologist working with folks who have thought disorders and all sorts of things, and frankly, as a parent to a young kid. A lot of what they're saying, I'm like, "That's not rational. That does not quite make sense," and yet her emotion is real, right?
I don't need to validate the thought to speak to the emotion and this is the critical thing. You stand no chance of changing someone's opinion, of getting through to them, of challenging their assumptions if they don't feel accepted by you.

Guy Kawasaki:
Are you telling me that validation is not at all the same thing as agreement?

Caroline Fleck:
It is not. I'm so glad you flagged this because this is where folks get stuck. We're afraid. Well, I don't want to say that I agree, right? I don't agree. I'll give you an example. I am a vegetarian for animal, ethical and environmental reasons. That said, I see a lot of valid reasons why somebody would choose to eat meat. Okay. I don't agree with them. I make a different decision. But if I just wanted to validate what's logical there, there's tons that I could focus on.
Now, if I wanted to try and change their opinion or change their position, I could come at that a different way, but I don't have to agree with someone to see the facts that they're building off of and to see the logic and what they're saying, presuming it's there.
In the case of the politician that you described, the logic wasn't there, and so I couldn't validate that. But this is the game. It's trying to find the kernel of truth, what's valid in this person's perspective, and zoning in on that first rather than what do I disagree with and let me hammer that over and over again until I get through to them.

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm going to ask you to tell the story, which was my favorite story of the whole book, because I felt convicted, I've done things like this, of Havana and the tick. Can you please tell? That is a great story. Every parent will be able to relate to Havana and the tick.

Caroline Fleck:
Havana is my daughter. She's eleven now, but I think she was maybe seven. We were going on a hike. All right. I was very excited going down to one of my favorite places to hike. It's a drive. It's like thirty, forty minutes. We get there, and Havana is in a mood. You know that feeling when you open, one of your kids is off and it's just the entire afternoon hangs in the balance like, "Which way is this going to go?" She was feeling a little carsick and she was crabby.
So we start hiking and she's kind of dragging, but she's doing it. We're not even five minutes in and she screams like she has been shot. Okay. She says, "Oh, my gosh, this tree mom, it stabbed me." I'm like, "Where?" She lifts up her shirt, I don't see anything. I'm like, "Let's keep going. Come on, come on." That's it. The trip is over from that point for her, every five minutes, she needs to stop to rest her back, and she wants us to carry her.
I find myself being like, "We got to keep going. Come on, come on. I don't want to reinforce this. I don't want to just give into this. I'm a behaviorist. I understand how this works." Then, oh, golly, oh, boy, we get home and she's still complaining about her back. So she goes to get in the shower. I'm helping her get in the shower.
She says, "It hurts too much to lift my arm." I'm like, "Oh, my golly." I lift off her shirt, and I see she has this huge tick lodged in her back. I actually had a picture of it that I was going to include in the book, but it was too grainy because it looks so gnarly. Okay.
All of a sudden I realized that the emotion, the frustration, the pain that she was describing was valid and I had spent the last however many hours invalidating her with, "We can't be overdramatic. If you're upset, you can use your words," but all the traditional parenting stuff and I just had this moment of like, "Well, that stepped in that one."

Guy Kawasaki:
Well, in a sense, I'm glad to hear that even a clinical psychologist, an expert like you, blows it.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, that's the whole name of the game, right? But it really is about, as you describe in your book, that growth mindset that I can do better. I think it's critical to look at skills like validation as skills. You develop them over time. You grow into them through practice, through exposure and through understanding. So yes, please go screw it up. That's the whole point. That's the only way you learn.

Guy Kawasaki:
Now, you draw a very clear dichotomy between validation and problem solving. So let's explore the relationship between those two things. We've talked about validation. Is validation now a precursor to problem solving, or is it a substitute for problem solving, or is it a foundation for problem solving?

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, my gosh. The relationship between the two is almost like a Zen koan.

Guy Kawasaki:
A what?

Caroline Fleck:
A Zen koan, like a riddle.

Guy Kawasaki:
I know what a shave ice cone is. I don't know what is a Zen koan.

Caroline Fleck:
It's like a riddle. It seems like two things don't go together, but to figure out the riddle, you have to understand how they can coexist, but it doesn't make sense because they seem diametrically opposed. At the core of this is the idea that acceptance, accepting someone is actually critical to helping them change. So, how is that? I mean, if you accept someone, you can't also want them to change.
That doesn't work, and yet it does. So problem solving, problem solving is an attempt to change how someone feels, how they're reacting, whatever outcome they had. It comes from a good place. Our kid comes home, they didn't do well on their quiz. They're so upset. We jump in with, "It's okay. It's not that big a deal," which is a subtle attempt to change how they feel.
I'm challenging their thoughts in that moment. I'm trying to reframe it. I could then come at it and say, "Next time, let's just review your words on the drive into school." There, I'm trying to problem solve or change their behavior so that we get a different outcome next time. That is all change focused.
It's very different from saying, "Ah, you must be devastated. When I was your age, I failed a math quiz and I remember crying in the bathroom at school. I was so upset, and my mom had to come pick me up." Really just leaning into that is a very different response.
Usually, and I can say this some authority as someone who speaks to people day in and day out about their problems, when folks come to us with an issue, they are seeking validation and not problem solving, at least initially. They need to trust that we understand if they're going to listen to us down the line anyway, right? I don't take the advice of people if I don't think they understand the situation or can relate to where I'm at.

Guy Kawasaki:
So where do you draw the line? Okay. So I understand the validation part. You had a bad quiz. I understand. I had the same thing. You're attending. You're copying.

Caroline Fleck:
Yes.

Guy Kawasaki:
I got the whole acronym. I got all eight stages okay. So you attend. You copy. You do all that. But then after you do all that, then do you suggest ways to study for the next quiz, or you just lay off that completely?

Caroline Fleck:
It depends. It's the most frustrating answer in the world, it depends, for several reasons. The first of which is that if you do this well, you will be surprised by the other person's ability oftentimes to come up with solutions themselves. All right. So you're all ready with your arsenal of things that you think they should do, but just in feeling accepted or understood, as they start to talk it out, they often, not always, but there are times when they get there themselves.
If not, then I have to decide is this the right moment? So we're really eager to get that problem solving in there. But sometimes in the example with the spelling test, it's fine to just let that sit. I can circle back the next day and talk about study strategies. I don't need to do it right then. I know I need to get there. It's about being intentional and focusing on being effective rather than just getting it out there. There's no point in getting out your great ideas if they're not going to be received. It just doesn't matter.

Guy Kawasaki:
Did you just put every tutor out of business?

Caroline Fleck:
No, because tutors are hired for problem solving, right? That's what they're asked to do. It's very clear. But when someone comes to you for support, they're not necessarily asking for you to solve whatever it is they're dealing with. They might just want to hear. "Yeah, it's really hard raising teenagers," not, "You need to validate your kids more if you want them to," right?

Guy Kawasaki:
So if you were a high school tutor and you started off with validation, you would become a better tutor in general, wouldn't you?

Caroline Fleck:
I think so. Yeah, I do. I think this is a weird language perhaps to use in the context of tutoring, but validation is really at the core of relationships. It is what it means to feel loved in a sense, right? Because it communicates acceptance. If we don't feel accepted, it's hard to feel loved. I think that's a really, really critical point that we confuse or lose in the shuffle that acceptance is critical in that sense.

Guy Kawasaki:
As soon as this recording ends, I'm going to start validating Madisun. I'm going to practice on Madisun, so I get good at validating, then I'm going to go to my kids and my family.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, just do it all. Do it all at once. Don't hold back. Don't hold back at all.

Guy Kawasaki:
Have you noticed a difference in validation skills by gender?

Caroline Fleck:
Wow, what a great question. In my book, there's eight different validation skills that we as therapists are trained in. We learn these skills. We have to master them so that we can go out and validate our clients and establish an therapeutic alliance and trust and everything else. Of these eight skills, one of them is called taking action. It's weird because it sounds a little bit like problem solving in that it has you intervene, go in there and do something, right?
If somebody got a flat tire and they call you and they say, "I'm on the side of the road," and you say, "Oh, my gosh, you must be so upset and worried," right? They can validate all day long, but if they don't take action and come and get you, you're not going to feel like they really appreciate the situation.
My hypothesis, I don't know if I ever formulated it in this way, but I always assumed that men would be more receptive to taking action, in other words that they would be seeking taking action more from their partners perhaps as opposed to emotional or verbal types of validation and that has not proven to be true. On the contrary, and this is just again, anecdotal from my clinical work.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. But wait, you said, "Anecdotes is not a substitute for scientific evidence.”

Caroline Fleck:
Not a substitute for scientific evidence. It's true. If we had data on it, I would refer to that data. In the absence of it, I will just give my anecdotes and that did surprise me. In my work with couples, it's often about helping them figure out what it is they're actually seeking, what actually helps them feel seen and heard because it's not often what the other person would expect.

Guy Kawasaki:
Have you also noticed differences for validation by culture? Are there different cultures that validate more, validate less?

Caroline Fleck:
There's huge differences in the extent to which we validate emotions. Even with an American culture, there's been somewhat of a revolution. We didn't talk about emotions forever, much less validate them or make an effort to really go out of our way to validate them. So I think there are differences.
The most meaningful thing, however, is within your culture is if you are receiving more or less validation than is typical of, say, a child in that culture, if that makes sense. In the same way that we see punishment, different types of punishment may be perceived as more damaging, more abusive to a child who is being raised outside of a culture or raised in a country where the cultural practices do not apply in the same way, and so they feel more targeted, if that makes sense.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yes, it does. Okay. So the last variable is age. As you get older, do you get more able to validate people?

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, do you get better at it? That's interesting. I thought you were going to ask, do different ages require different types of validation?

Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, that's a good question too. Yeah, just to validate your question.

Caroline Fleck:
That one I think you know the answer to because you have four kids.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.

Caroline Fleck:
Is that right? Some out of adolescence or in adolescence, any of them.

Guy Kawasaki:
Depends how you define adolescence.

Caroline Fleck:
Adolescence. That's right. I'm sure you notice that when your kids are younger, they just want all sorts of, "I see how hard you tried," all of that type of warm, fuzzy, "You really worked hard on that." If you try that with a fifteen-year-old, they are going to just squirm inside. They're not feeling validated, they're feeling annoyed.
So as they get older, they need much less in the form of that, "I see you," type of stuff because they don't really want to be seen, they want to be respected, right? So validating their thoughts or their rationale goes a lot further than going in with the, "I see your effort there. I see what you did." Then they move back out of that into adulthood a little bit and become more balanced.
Do we get better at validation as we get older? It really depends. It depends on what is modeled for you. I say this because we know, as I said, with folks who were exposed to chronic invalidation and then have different disorders where they end up in treatment, one of my jobs as a psychologist is to teach them how to validate themselves and others because it was not modeled for them.
Validation is very much like a language. It is a language we should be teaching kids at a young age because they pick it up so fast. It is fascinating to me trying to teach a ten-year-old versus a twenty-year-old how to validate themselves or another person. The ten-year-old picks it up. The twenty-year-old, it takes two, three times as long. They don't develop that language capacity in the same way.

Guy Kawasaki:
Your practice is in Silicon Valley. Now, we can edit this answer out, but do you look at these what has been labeled the nerd-reich? Do you look at these nerd-reichers, these tech-bro-billionaires? They are the richest people in the world. They have everything. They have wealth. They have power.
They have visibility. They have everything, and yet they seem to be primarily concerned with long-term capital gains rates and making crypto successful. Why aren't they taking the high road and helping society instead of just trying to make more money? You think it's because they weren't validated when they're young, or am I just trying to criticize these shitbags?

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah. There are so many shitbags, let's just be clear, in Silicon Valley. I think, again, we search for validation in different ways, and I think that money is a sense that we are valued and that we are valuable. Once you've had that hit, that little dopamine hit of, "Ooh, I'm valuable. People see my worth," you continue to seek it out in those ways.
But as you will see, it's an unsatiable thirst because you're not actually giving yourself water. It's like coffee, right? It dehydrates you more. So they're actually seeking validation, acceptance through the wrong sources, and therefore they consume more and try and get more and more because it just keeps dehydrating them.

Guy Kawasaki:
Is there a fine line between too much and too little seeking external validation? I would think it's healthy to seek external validation. It's reinforcing. It's feedback. On the other hand, I would say that maybe our current president is just obsessed with external validation. Where's the fine line between too much and too little? How can you tell if you're trying to get it too much?

Caroline Fleck:
Good question. We talked about the difference between validation and agreeing, right? I said it's not the same as agreeing. It's also not the same as praise. Praise is a positive judgment. It's positive, but it's a judgment nonetheless. It says, "Good job, you're great." It's a heart emoji on Instagram and it reinforces facades.
It reinforces us for exceeding expectations and tweaking ourselves and filtering ourselves to be seen as better than to get that positive. Validation is about acceptance. It says, "I accept you independent of how you look or perform." So when people say, "We shouldn't rely too much on external validation," they're really talking about praise.
Praise can be good, right? You need that feedback as you were in some ways, but if you build your life around, it's hollow, because you will have to distort yourself to continue to get it, right? You have to just keep putting yourself out there and pushing and pushing. There is no sense that you're accepted just as you are.
Radically, I would say no, there is no amount of external acceptance that is too much. That has not been my observation. The more accepted we feel, the greater the sense of belonging, the more we flourish. That has been consistently my observation, and it is what the evidence supports. Again, I can't say that for praise. If you go around chasing praise your whole life, it's going to get Trumpian very quickly.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now, what happens if validation doesn't necessarily address the underlying causes of issues, or are you saying that validation puts you on the path to address the underlying causes?

Caroline Fleck:
That is right. In my line of work, I work with folks who have severe behavioral issues, folks who are suicidal, folks who are hurting other people. I need to change that quickly, right? It's not like, "Oh, I just hope I go in there and I accept them and everything." I need to make sure that that behavior changes.
So, acceptance is a piece. It is a piece of that puzzle. It puts me on the right track. It opens the door for collaboration and feedback so that when I do give advice or skills training or whatever it may be, the other person listens to me. At least in a therapeutic sense, that's kind of the name of the game.

Guy Kawasaki:
But is there no role for friction and conflict and struggle and shame and healthy development? To put it in parental terms, what if you're a helicopter parent or a lawnmower parent? I'm a lawnmower parent. Are we defeating ourselves?

Caroline Fleck:
How so?

Guy Kawasaki:
Well, I mean, if we are helicopter parents or lawnmower parents and we always are in problem-solving mode, how does a person become their own problem solver?

Caroline Fleck:
How do you become your own problem solver?

Guy Kawasaki:
No. How does my kids or how do they work for me solve their own problems?

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah, you need to back off of the problem solving. That's for sure. 100 percent. It's problematic. Absolutely. I would subscribe to that. Now the question is the question, do you need feedback on that in order to get there?

Guy Kawasaki:
I think your whole book was feedback to tell you the truth. I bet a lot of people listening to this podcast can relate to this concept of helicopter or lawnmower parenting. So, where is the line?

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah. I think, again, the emphasis is on effectiveness. You had someone on your podcast recently that was talking about neurologically what happens in a young person's brain when they hear nagging. The short of it was that the parts of their brain that would actually be needed to take in that feedback and do something with it shut down. Just hearing that nagging, they shut down.
That's the point with the helicoptering is that at some point you're background noise, right? You're always in their face telling them what to do, what to do. They listen to you less over time, and they don't develop the capacity to do it themselves. So those are the costs. We have to call them what they are.
Now, there are valid reasons you're helicoptering, and it's important to see that as well. You're trying to keep your kids safe in a world that has become incredibly dangerous psychologically. I think as parents, the world feels dangerous for our kids with social media and the internet and all of these things. The question is what's going to be most effective? And the answer is that helicoptering is not it.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Helicoptering is not it, but what is it?

Caroline Fleck:
How would you define helicoptering? Let's break it down.

Guy Kawasaki:
I would define helicoptering as always hovering over your kid. It's like the golden dome of parenting that no missiles get through.

Caroline Fleck:
Okay. Does it include lecturing, in your opinion, lecturing the kids, or is that separate?

Guy Kawasaki:
I would say that's unavoidable because every time you fire an anti-missile missile, it's a lecture.

Caroline Fleck:
Okay. Again, I'll reiterate, it's valid that you want to protect them, but is helicoptering protecting them? No, because they're not developing the skills they need to do it themselves. So what you need to do is be able to step back and let them fall. You have to trust in the wisdom that growth happens through "failure," that when you try and protect your kids from failure, you're ultimately protecting them from growth.
Once you accept that, that is the mantra you have to return to again and again to come out of that helicoptering mode. Now, does that mean no oversight whatsoever? No, of course, not. But it means challenging yourself because when we get into a mode like helicoptering, it's become default. We're not thinking, "Is this effective?"
It's just what we do. They ask, "Can I go out?" "No, no, no, not unless so-and-so goes with you and all these other things." Just stop. "Is this a moment where I could loosen up? What's the worst that could happen here?"

Guy Kawasaki:
So now that we solved all the parenting issues, let's move on to self-validation. How does one self-validate?

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah, such a great question. We don't learn this, do we? This is something that really, really strikes me working with folks. As an executive coach, you've got these, like you said, tech billionaires, to folks struggling with severe psychopathology. What I see across the spectrum, honestly, I have yet to have someone come into my office who was really good at validating their own emotions, be it tech billionaire or person struggling with bipolar disorder, right?
What we do instead is we tend to criticize ourselves and lash ourselves into doing better, and this is incredibly problematic because we don't trust our emotions. We see shame or sadness as indications of failure, again, failure rather than opportunities for compassion, the belief that we should treat others the way we would want to be treated. I think actually the reverse is true. We should treat ourselves the way we would treat somebody else who was struggling.

Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. That's interesting.

Caroline Fleck:
Right though, because if someone was to come to you feeling deeply ashamed, you wouldn't twist the knife and say a bunch of other things that they did that proved how worthless they were, right? But that's often what we do to ourselves. We go through our history and collect all the supporting evidence as to why we suck, and we're never going to X, Y, or Z. But you would never do that to a friend. That would seem cruel.
Back to children, one of the reasons I am so adamant about validating children is because I want them to develop the capacity to validate themselves. That doesn't mean that everything they think or do is correct, but it means that they should be able to see the validity in what they're feeling.
So I'll often say, "It's not okay to yell or scream or whatever. It's okay to be upset. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be frustrated." The behavioral expression is different from the emotion. So being able to validate your own emotions, being able to see, "Why does it make sense that I feel this way?"

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So now let us get to the validation ladder. I would like you to explain the validation ladder so that people have a sort of a framework to understand your work. So please explain the ladder.

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah. This is a collection of skills. We've got eight different skills that you can use to validate someone. These are basically just little communication tactics. If you use this skill, it will convey some degree of validation. To understand this, it helps to break down validation. I said it really quick at the beginning, but the key components are mindfulness, understanding and empathy.
All right. You're trying to convey those qualities in such a way that the person feels accepted and you're like, "How do you do that? How do you do it in such a way that they feel?" This is how with these skills. The first set are just we call mindfulness skills. They're just helping you project that mindful awareness. All right. If I am sitting across from let's say Donald Trump.

Guy Kawasaki:
Let's say.

Caroline Fleck:
Let's just say. I'm just trying to picture myself debating this guy, I would just say so. I would honestly love it. I feel like it would be the ultimate test of my validation skills here. But he's going to be saying inevitably a lot of stuff that I do not understand, not just don't agree with, but logically do not understand.
When that is the case, all I can do is be mindful. Okay. All I can do is attend or copy. These are the two skills we have to be mindful and to show that we're mindful. That's a pretty low level of validation you might think, right? It's just awareness, but a couple of things there.
One, awareness is incredibly powerful. Attention is one of the most reinforcing experiences that we can provide. If we want to torture somebody in this country, the method we use is to deprive them of attention by putting them in solitary confinement, right?
When we remove attention, people struggle, and they struggle deeply. All right. But now negative attention doesn't necessarily feel good, right? The task is just to be just non-judgmentally aware, and that's what these two skills help us do, attending and copying.

Guy Kawasaki:
I got the basics of attending about it's contact, it's proximity, it's gesturing, and it's nodding. So I love all those things. But what do you do in a virtual world where it's Zoom?

Caroline Fleck:
Gosh, this is such a great question. Again, as a psychologist, someone who's working with emotion and people every day, the pandemic was such an immediate and visceral. It created this visceral sense of disconnection, and I think we all experienced it over time. As a psychologist, I got to tell you, it hit me right away because these tools that I rely on to connect were taken away. If you're Zooming or whatever the case may be, you have to just be more intentional about those cues.
For instance, I will make a point of leaning in and make it clear that I'm leaning in. I will adjust my monitor so that my eyes are as close to the camera as possible so that it's as close to eye contact as possible. You can see it in this interview in the recording, I do a lot of gesturing and I'm making a point of doing it up here, right?
I'm showing that I am engaged through those non-verbals, but you have to be more intentional about them. That's the key. The worst is to do the camera off. You're just listening or something, and people can't see. That is the absolute worst, and yet that is where many of us reside. So with the non-verbals over virtual, you just have to be more intentional about it. That's all you can do.

Guy Kawasaki:
You made a point, and I cannot remember which one of the eight skills it was affiliated with, but I love this point, which is that you should find a way to help the other person make their point. First of all, refresh my senile mind. What is this concept of helping people be a better communicator by suggesting things? What is that associated with?

Caroline Fleck:
So there's two things at play there. One of them is attending. Okay. So that's that we were talking about you can use these non-verbals, and then the other way to attend is in how you listen. It's a little game that you play with yourself where you're thinking as you're listening, what's this person's point and why does it matter to them?
You're streaming information trying to figure that out. Then, and this is critical, how could I do a better job of making this person's point? Again, not do I agree with it? Not how could I defeat it or argue it? What's my rebuttal? No, it's how could I articulate this better than they're doing right now?

Guy Kawasaki:
But isn't that going to create hostility? Who the hell is this person to tell me how to do this better?

Caroline Fleck:
Sure. At this point, you don't tell them. This just informs how you are listening. If you watch great late night show hosts, you will see that they are all playing some version of this game. They're trying to get the best interview they can. As a podcast host, I imagine there's some of this in what you do as well.
You're trying to help the guest message, get that message across as effectively as possible, and it's reflected in how you listen and the questions you ask and that's what we're going for here. It's not about like, "Ha-ha, I'm so much smarter than them. These idiots, let me come in and do this better than they're doing it." No, it's more just you would ask questions differently if you were trying to flesh out your understanding or their point.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, I have to admit that I slightly misinterpreted this thought and then I said, "Okay. So this is a great thought. What can I constructively offer Caroline about her book?" I came up with some ideas, but now that you tell me that, maybe I should just keep them to myself.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, no, I want to hear them.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So take this in a spirit of one author to another.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, please.

Guy Kawasaki:
Some slight changes that I would do. Okay. Positively, I want to validate your great book. You wouldn't be on this podcast if I didn't like what you did. I have one idea. In the back of your book, you have this appendix and this appendix lists, these are the eight skills. This is a summation. This is an example, right?
There's a one-page appendix. I think you should move that up into the first time you discuss the ladder, because when I read about your ladder, I have to admit, I had some mental fog. I had to go back several times because it was like, "She just said there's eight things, but then she's talking about three things, mindfulness."

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
Is it the three or is it the eight?

Caroline Fleck:
The eight. Right.

Guy Kawasaki:
It took me quite a while to figure out the three contain the eight. The eight is divided into three sections of mindfulness, understanding, and empathy, and those eight things add up to those three things. So that took me a while to figure it out, but your appendix, when I saw that appendix, I said, "Aha, now I get it."

Caroline Fleck:
This is such frustrating feedback because between you and me, this was such a fight. I agree. I wanted that earlier in the book and the concern was that it would be too much content too soon.

Guy Kawasaki:
I have to invalidate your editor or publisher. They're wrong about that.

Caroline Fleck:
Right. Because you need to see it all.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. I mean, you need to understand the big picture that these three subsections are made out of eight skills add up to the ladder. I have one more comment. I got to tell you, when I read this, I thought this is the most interesting story. This cannot possibly be true. So I went to ChatGPT, and I asked this question, and of course, it is true.
You say in your book that there's a golden rule, and the golden rule is that in a court case, a lawyer cannot suggest to the jury, "Put yourself in this person's place. Isn't that how you would react?" You cannot appeal to empathy. It is illegal to do that. I read that. I said, "That cannot be true," and it is true.

Caroline Fleck:
It's true.

Guy Kawasaki:
It is really true. I had no idea. Can you explain that? Because that was shocking to me.

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah. So this is getting at some of those understanding skills. How do you understand and connect with someone else's experience? One of the things always told is to put yourself in the other person's shoes, but really that is quite effective. It is a skill to be able to say, "How would this feel to me?" In that same way that we were talking about, do they need acceptance or problem solving?
Put yourself in the kid's shoes. What do they want to hear after getting a bad grade? Do they want to hear how to study better or do they want to hear, "That sucks. How awful, X, Y or Z"? So when you do that, it immediately changes your perception of the experience. Interestingly, it's so effective in doing so that yet you're not allowed to do that as a lawyer in appealing to the court. You can't ask jurors to think from that angle because it could make them empathize and that could influence their decision, right?

Guy Kawasaki:
Isn't the whole point to be tried by a jury of your peers?

Caroline Fleck:
I know, right? But there seems to be this concern about objectivity being tainted by emotion. I don't know if I agree with that per se. I think that's part of the reasoning, is the emotional logic that goes into it. I see them as very equally important in making smart judgments and wisdom.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. If you were a prosecuting attorney and you said, "Put yourself in the place, there's three cops holding you down. One has his knee on your neck and you're choking. Put yourself in that place." Or how about if you are an immigrant and you've been here forty years, you've raised kids, three of them are Marines, and now you get arrested in Home Depot for what? For what? You pay your taxes. You do everything, right?

Caroline Fleck:
Yeah. Again, another really visceral. I don't know why I keep coming back to kids on this part. I'm not usually this kid focused, but I think of often tell parents, especially a big guy, "You're 200 pounds yelling at somebody who is three feet tall. Think about how that would feel. Do that kind of perception shift and let that inform your reaction because you may not feel like you're being scary, but that's terrifying."

Guy Kawasaki:
Yes. We are at the one-hour mark.

Caroline Fleck:
Oh, I can't believe it.

Guy Kawasaki:
Maybe I should change this podcast to the Remarkable Parenting podcast.

Caroline Fleck:
I know. I don't know why I went so far in that direction. I apologize.

Guy Kawasaki:
No, I took you in that direction.

Caroline Fleck:
Okay. All right.

Guy Kawasaki:
I wanted to go in that direction. What else is more important than parenting?

Caroline Fleck:
I know. Yes, I've come to believe that more and more. I have so much more faith in our children than in us. I hate to say it.

Guy Kawasaki:
Maybe I should interview Havana and say, "Havana, listen, your mom says she validates you all the time. Is that true? Does she problem solve for you, Havana, or she lets you figure everything out?"

Caroline Fleck:
You know what Havana says? She says, "I know you're validating me and it feels good, but I know what you're doing." She'll say, "It feels good, but I know what you're doing."

Guy Kawasaki:
She going to read this book someday and say, "My God, mom, you have used the pseudonym or something."

Caroline Fleck:
Yes, exactly.

Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I have one last question, and it's about Havana. Why Havana? There must be a story that you didn't call her Houston or Dallas or Mar-a-Lago or Los Angeles or Portland. Why Havana? Are you a socialist?

Caroline Fleck:
My mother fled communist Cuba and she grew up in Havana. Her middle name is after her grandmother on my husband's side, and then her first name is not after my mom, but speaks to her experience. Yeah.

Guy Kawasaki:
You don't meet many kids named Havana.

Caroline Fleck:
I know. We found one. We have found one, and it's through Instagram or something, and I feel just like such a kinship to this young child that I've never met.

Guy Kawasaki:
All righty. Caroline Fleck, as you can tell, I really learned a lot from your book. Now, we only did attending really and copying, and there's six more skills. I really recommend this book. I hate to tell you, Caroline, but I recommend that you start with the appendix. If you start with the appendix, you will really understand.

Caroline Fleck:
Start with the appendix, just the first page. Yeah, I agree. I support that. So read this book backwards. Basically, what we've said is the appendix is good and the epilogue is great, so just start at the end and go backwards.

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm all about the recency is more important than primacy or whatever the opposite is.

Caroline Fleck:
That is right.

Guy Kawasaki:
All right. Caroline Fleck, thank you so much for being on this podcast. I think people listening to this and reading your book will have a very good tool to be remarkable, so thank you for coming on my podcast.

Caroline Fleck:
Thank you so much for having me. This was an absolute blast.

Guy Kawasaki:
I bet you say that and validate all the podcasters who interviewed you.

Caroline Fleck:
No, just you.

Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, I believe you because I need validation so much.

Caroline Fleck:
I know. We all do.

Guy Kawasaki:
All righty. So, now I want to validate the rest of the Remarkable People podcast staff, which is Madisun Nuismer, this ace producer and co-author, Tessa Nuismer, our researcher, and co-producer, Jeff Sieh, and finally, sound designer, Shannon Hernandez. That's the Remarkable People team. So until next time, be remarkable and go out and validate somebody. Actually, start by validating yourself and then go out and validate people.