Seeing Defensive Behaviour In Your Team? Let’s Stop It

If you’re seeing defensive behaviour in your team, you aren’t the only one.

Defensiveness can arise for a bunch of different reasons in a team, and it can cause tension when it does.

You might see it when you need to give feedback to a team member, or when you’re having a hard conversation about behaviour or performance.

And if it’s not handled well, it can spiral out of control and damage relationships or give rise to further unwanted behaviour.

So in this post, I’m going to look at what defensive behaviour is, what might cause it and then how you can put a stop to it in your team.

What Is Defensive Behaviour?

Defensive behaviour comes in different forms, but when it comes to team members the signs I’d look for include:

• Dismissing or ignoring feedback
• Blaming others for their own actions or performance; and
• Emotional outbursts such as anger, irritability or frustration.

You might also find a team member being “short” with you. This might mean they don’t respond to conversation and try to shut it down as quickly as possible.

One problem with defensiveness is that it can create an unpleasant tension in a team, and between you and the team member.

But defensiveness can also be a sign that the team member is not taking ownership of their own challenges or areas for improvement.

Learn More:  Thoughtful Leader Podcast #249: Challenging conversation? Follow these principles.

So What Causes Defensive Behaviour?

Well it might seem obvious, but if someone is being defensive, then there is a decent chance that they are feeling attacked.

You wouldn’t defend yourself unless someone was attacking you, would you?

One key point to note here is that when you’re noticing defensive behaviour, it means the person probably feels like they’re being attacked.

This doesn’t mean you have necessarily gone and intentionally attacked them, but it does mean your behaviour may have been perceived that way.

Providing feedback about poor behaviour or performance can give rise to defensive behaviour, and this may involve having a difficult conversation with a team member.

But underneath the surface of these problems often lie other causes, such as:

• Perceptions of unfairness: “Why am I being criticised when other people are getting away with it?”
• Feelings of a lack of control: “I didn’t have everything I needed to do the work properly.” or “It’s not my fault the client was nasty” or
• Feelings of insecurity: “I don’t know how to do the work and I’ve never done it before.”

Given these potential causes, now we’ll start to look at some ways to hopefully reduce the defensiveness when you’re dealing with team members.

Learn More:  Get Thoughtful Leader’s Difficult Conversations eBook.

But First, Some Things to Note About Defensiveness

It’s worth noting a few things about defensive behaviour when we see it from our team members.

First, as the name suggests, it’s a defence mechanism.

Your team members want you to leave them alone, because they are (rightly or wrongly) feeling attacked.

Next, just because they may be feeling attacked, it does not mean you should stop doing what you’re doing.

If you are providing constructive feedback, for example, you need them to hear this.

You need team members to take ownership and accountability for their behaviour and performance. You can’t just let things slide.

Otherwise, you may give the impression that their performance or behaviour is justified, which sets a nasty precedent for the future.

How to Reduce the Chance of Defensive Behaviour

If you’re providing feedback or having to critique someone’s performance or behaviour, defensiveness will be a barrier.

So ideally what you need to do is reduce the chance that they will feel like they are being attacked.

This can open them up to taking ownership of the feedback or issue.

Otherwise, defensiveness will get in the way and they’ll resist what they need to hear.

In other words, defensiveness may prevent them from accepting that they can do something about the problem, and that they need to.

I wrote a post about the Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action model previously which may help with this idea: Encourage Change With This Simple Model.

Let’s look at how we might do this.

1. Be curious and talk tentatively

First off, if you want to stop defensive behaviour, it’s usually a bad idea to go into a conversation with all guns blazing.

This is going to feel like an attack, which is likely to put the other person on the defensive.

Instead, ideally you want to be curious about the other person.

Why are they acting this way? What could be behind it?

Share what you’ve noticed with the other person (about their behaviour or their work) and then ask questions to get their take on it.

Tentative language can also be useful here, to reduce the perception that you’re on the attack.

For example, rather than:

“You’re not committed to the team”,

you could try saying:

“From my perspective, it looks like you’ve lost a bit of motivation lately – what do you think?”

Instead of speaking in absolutes or definitive language, you’re instead approaching in a less direct manner, which hopefully will reduce their defensive behaviour.

This approach also allows you to be wrong. You’re really just testing your observations with the other person, instead of saying “this is how it is.”

2. Be authentic

There are few things worse than when you are in a conversation with someone who has clearly learnt some phrase or technique and they are trying to use it on you.

If we’re not careful, we can come across as robotic or inauthentic, especially if we don’t usually talk that way.

Here are some phrases that I find can seem a bit forced:

“Help me understand …”

“What I’m hearing is …”

“Let’s work together to see how we can…”

I”m not saying that you can’t use any of these phrases. The point is that you need to speak in a way that sounds like the real you.

Otherwise, people may spot your approach and think you’re trying a “trick” on them (even if you have their best interests at heart!).

Learn More:  Should You Be Yourself or Adapt to Your Audience?

3. Focus on the behaviour, instead of the person

A major cause of defensiveness can arise when people make personal attacks or label others.

For example, if somebody hasn’t done their work properly, a label could be “You’re lazy”.

This is a judgement about the person, rather than addressing what they’re actually doing that you’d like to improve.

Instead, we need to try to focus on what we’re observing.

For example, we can replace “you’re not committed” to “you’ve arrived late 3 times this week”.

This is more specific, it’s not judgemental, it’s something you have noticed, and it is harder to argue with.

Defensive behaviour is far more likely to occur if someone feels as if they’re being judged.

Learn More:  Got People Problems? Here Are 5 Reassuring Thoughts.

4. Use “I” statements

A popular technique in assertiveness training is the “I-statement”.

The format of an I-statement goes like this:

• “When <state what you’ve noticed>”
• “I feel <state the feeling you have> because… <add the reason why>”
• “I’d like to talk about how we could work out a solution.” (or substitute another collaborative phrase).

This format can be effective because you are:

• Stating what you’ve observed (which is factual)
• Owning your emotions, which are hard to argue with… because they are your emotions; and
• Inviting input from the other person.

The opposite of this approach might be “When you <do something> you make me so mad!”

Can you see the difference? Instead of owning up to your emotions, you are blaming them on the other person, which is likely to bring a defensive response.

An Example I-statement

When you come in late to work, I feel frustrated

because it means there is more pressure on the rest of the team to set up before we open for business.

I’d like to discuss what we can do to stop it happening in the future.

Sometimes these types of formats can feel a little formulaic, so be aware of point #2 above, and make sure you adapt them to be closer to the way you might normally talk!

Defensive Behaviour Is Unpleasant, and Blocks Progress

Defensiveness is a reaction to a perceived attack, and it’s worth remembering that when we’re trying to deal with it.

Ideally, we want to work with the person in such a way as to reduce the chance of defensive behaviour.

Otherwise, it will be hard to come to an outcome because there will always be a barrier in the way.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the other person will respond to our efforts in a positive way.

But without adjusting your approach, you might continue to be banging your head against a brick wall.

What sort of defensive behaviour have you noticed? And what did you do about it? Let me and all the thoughtful leaders know in the comments!