ARTICLE.

An Obstacle to Collaboration: Defensiveness

And How to Minimize Its Negative Impact on Our Professional Life.

Let’s talk about a particular situation.

Your yearly annual performance review in your office is going on. Your direct manager has sat down with you to speak about the performance, the great stuff you have achieved, and along with that, your development area. Your manager pointed out that the last project you have handled had some weak areas that could be improved or enhanced in the coming time. And deep down in your mind, you also know that.

But once your manager started to talk about your improvement areas, you started blaming the other personnel who were directly involved with you in the project, although it was not his/her fault. By blaming that personnel, you started to explain the scenario, which was your fault and subject to the improvement area.

What have you just did?

You just performed the defensive mechanism to protect yourself. And, that is the topic I’m going to write about today.

Defensiveness (noun) According to the Cambridge dictionary, it means- ‘speech or behavior in which someone is very eager to avoid being criticized.’

It is the part of the body’s mechanism to keep a person comfortable, and basically, it emerged from childhood to date. Defensiveness is crafted based on the coping nature in different scenarios of criticism to become armor for protecting the person.

Based on different experiences, our body starts to develop the coping art to suit ourselves in a severe scenario, and the armor works differently for different people. Some person hides themselves according to their defensiveness or in a similar situation, another person shouts out loud.

So, why am I talking about this particular character trait today?

Defending yourself is not bad, but continuously defending yourself from every argument and criticism makes it worse for a person. And it hinders the possibility of new opportunities, constructive criticism, and openness to new challenges, learning, and growth.

How do we generally show the defensiveness?

Following are some typical defensiveness response: • Blaming others • distancing ourselves from the mistakes, we do, • indicating external factors as the causes, • drinking too much to forget, • shouting and screaming, • Obsessive thinking, • Trying to ignore the conversation and situation • Trying to show yourself as better than others unnecessarily etc.

According to a post by Melissa Hereford in the article ‘OVERCOMING DEFENSIVENESS (1), during the criticism, we respond through any of the following coping methods. • Fight (talk louder, blames others) • Freeze (brain wiped clean with no appropriate response) • Flight (ignore the scenario, get quite and wait for the last minute to respond).

During the vulnerable time, defensiveness seems like the option to cope up with the scenario. But eventually, this habit of pushing ourselves inside the armor of protective traits undermines us, and we are drawn into deeper trouble or difficult situation.

Defensiveness and team collaboration

The reason I’m writing about the topic today is because of the struggle we face in our teams and projects in our professional life — the team collaboration effort. Defensiveness shatters it down.

How?

Sometimes people inside a team portray others as inferior performers to showcase themselves the best or better than the others. Sometimes inside the organization, some people do not want to discuss their challenging areas because they fear that that will reveal their weakness, hence might impact their performance rating. Some people want to blame the system and other people without any valid reason.

And in every case, the team fails short to achieve what they could have achieved if defensiveness of the person could have been minimized.

As Jim Tamm mentioned in TEDxSantaCruz video (April 2015) (2),

Defensiveness does not protect us from other people. It defends us from fears we don’t want to feel.

He also mentioned that there are three fears connected to it; fear of our own significance, fear of our competencies, and fear of our likability. It is basically not to be touched by those fears what bring our defensiveness in light.

Based on the video, it is clear that we should look into a couple of important aspects for finding out whether we have the defensiveness mechanism & to what extent. While we are defensive, several outer behaviors scream out from us, which we might not realize at first — as those are natural to us. We can ask our family members or friends to identify those signs, and finding out those are the first step in solving the puzzle.

So, Jim Tamm mentioned that the following are the things we should adhere to: • Please acknowledge that you have defensiveness and it is terrible for you in most of the scenario • If you are feeling agitated or feeling a hostile situation, slow down in your conversation or thoughts, take a pause • Do check negative self-talk • Create an action stop and • Start over (which is the recovery phase)

And, please try to identify the outer behaviors that are a prelude to your defensiveness, try to signal yourself with the early warning system and try to identify your action points and practice to ignore the symptoms.

There are other ways to ignore the defensiveness when you feel it is coming to influence your behavior. In one of the Harvard Business Review articles (3), it is mentioned that you should take three deep breaths before responding to a criticism that is causing your defensiveness.

In the first breath, whatever reaction comes, please do not act upon it, and the same goes for the 2nd reaction. However, after the first two, once your mind is settled to take in, find a solution that is doesn’t contain any of the first two reactions — which is usually an excellent response to go with. You can also build on the other person’s talking point or ask clarifying questions or ask the person to elaborate to take more time before responding. Usually, when you take pauses and moments, your head becomes clearer on which action or response to make.

My strategies on defensiveness

Based on my 11+ years of experience in diversified industries across different countries, I have learned plenty of strategies to overcome the defensiveness scenario.

Am I perfect in all the scenarios?

Not really.

But, did I improve my behavior to shield myself from defensiveness?

Yes, of course.

So, here goes the ways you can deal with your defensiveness mechanism during any scenario:

• You can see the criticism with openness and with relevant feedback to improve your ability. The way to embrace it is to validate the criticism by asking elaborative questions, asking for suggestions, and asking for sharing the experience from the person criticizing yourself. By having the growth mindset with openness to criticism, you will be able to overcome the defensiveness and might find out better opportunities or development tools to improve yourself.

• You can pause at the moment, take a breath, and buy more time to flash out the defensiveness cornerstone out of your mind. The way to do it is to wait before you react. Asking a complementary question is a good idea. You can also use filler words (can you say more about this or go one, or can you please elaborate more details on this) to let the other person speak, which will give you more time to think and respond.

• You can stop using ‘you,’ ‘they,’ ‘those’ statements during the conversation. When you speak with those pronouns during your defensiveness, the response always sounds like blaming. Instead, you can use ‘I’ statement, because, in your mind, you will still be cautious when you are putting yourself in the conversation.

• You can let the other person do the talking for a while to recollect your thoughts. So, do not interrupt, probably to allow the communication flow continuously. And after getting your act together and thinking about a positive/neutral response, respond.

• You can take a time-out if possible. It will provide you ample time to rethink or at least ease down the tension. Go for a coffee or tea break, go to the washroom to recollect your thoughts or go for a walk if it’s possible.

Question again.

Did it work for me? — Yes, it did it so many different scenarios.

Will it work for you? — It depends on your willingness to deal with it. The ways I have mentioned are diverse, and those will work differently for different personality types or scenarios.

The overall things will work only if: • You acknowledge that you have defensiveness in scenarios which are not beneficial for you, • You identify the relevant outer symptoms or signs for early warning signs • You try on the strategies in different situations to find your suitable action points • And you practice the consistent approach that suits your personality.

As humans, we all have defensiveness, and it is not bad in all the scenarios. By acknowledging it, we can make ourselves better as individuals and can contribute to establishing more collaboration in the teams for sure.

And, I hope my words can put some light to guide you there.

Source links: 1. Leading with Question. Link: https://leadingwithquestions.com/personal-growth/overcoming-defensiveness/ 2. TEDxSantaCruz. Link: https://leadingwithquestions.com/personal-growth/overcoming-defensiveness/ 3. Harvard Business Review. Link: https://leadingwithquestions.com/personal-growth/overcoming-defensiveness/