9 Tactics To Avoid Defensive Communication During And After Your Ideas Presentation

(#29 on How You Communicate Your Ideas Series)

It is common for idea huggers and enthusiasts to see their ideas as the best and thus refuse newer and fresher and challenging inputs from others. And hence, defensive communication strategies to rebuff any perceived intrusions or encroachments from those perceived as ‘attackers and outsiders who do not see my visions.’

What Is Defensive Communication?

This defensiveness posture of human ideas and territory is not a new phenomenon; it is as old as all of the animal species. It is called “turf defense,” in tactical warfare; “territorial integrity,” in nationhood defenses; and “warding off the enemies,” in tactical defenses. In all wars and competitive sports it is cultivated in all soldiers, warriors, players or sports aficionados as well as military tacticians as “strategic defenses.”

In all of humans’ non-collaborative encounters we all have been acculturated to be defensive of our emotions, territories, physical, bodily, spatial, cultural spaces, and everything that we claim to be ours. For example, men go to wars to defend their homes from intruders and invasions. Gang warfares are nothing new in the mentality of men who defend their turfs and homesteads.

Men kill other men for violating their wives, daughters, and family members. Women do same when other women ‘steal’ their husbands and lovers.

We all go to court or combats when our properties are stolen or invaded or encroached upon.

So, to many reasonable humans, invasion of one’s space or territory is an act of aggression that we must not allow to stand or stay without a counter force.

So, when our ideas are attached and threatened by even the slightest perception of hostile or unfriendly inquiry, the first natural reaction is to defend our ideas as valid, worthy, prescience, and pristine.

For an egotistic ideapreneur for instance, an attack on his or her idea is a frontal attack on his or her intelligence, ambitions, dreams, persons, and integrity; and by extension an attack on ones intelligibility. So we fight back.

That is defensive communication! It is neither needed nor warranted in the ideas presentation ecology and stratosphere.

Strategies Of Defensive Communication

When we are attacked physically or verbally, we can either surrender, sabotage, withdraw, or fight back.

Most ideapreneurs will either withdraw or fight back to justify their ideas and defend the practicality and profitability of their ideas.

Defensive communication as natural as it is whenever one perceives an attack from others in, or outside of one’s group, is often counterproductive, most especially in the arena of idea selling and idea marketing.

Most war models in all of human communication is counterproductive. And defensive communication adopts a war model strategy.

Why Is Defensive Model Unproductive?

Here are reasons not to take attacks on ideas as personal:

1. Persistent defense detracts from the speaker’s credibility.

2. Consistent idea defense in the presence of prospective investors gives them the impression that you are stubborn and not amenable to inputs and feedback from others.

3. Insistent on your ideas pitches leads prospective investors to see you as the one with all the answers and thus not ready to negotiate towards the bottom line.

4. Your tendency to give ready-made answers to every concern raised by the investors gives you kudos for well preparedness; but it leaves a sour taste of an arrogant ideapreneur who is unwilling to add to his or her stock knowledge to move the idea into the process mode for actualization.

5. Belligerence in words and demeanor comes off as unteachable and betrays a character flaw to profitable business relationships.

6. Over-defensiveness of one’s ideas to a group of prospects may compel some members to become saboteurs. These are persons who will listen to your pitch but have the silent agenda to frustrate your plans and idea take-off because they just don’t like your presentational styles and attitudes.

Does it therefore mean that ideapreneurs must be docile doormats for every tom-dick-and-harry to trample upon on their matches to billionaire lands?

Not at all.

Ideapreneurs are not roll-overs or walk-over carpets.

Ideapreneurs are not standing pools of water on the road for everyone or anyone to come wash their feet on their ways to prominence and fame.

Ideapreneurs instead, are men and women of integrity with strong convictions; but they also must be realists and pragmatists intent to turn ideas to profitable products and services, or to practical policies to solving myriads of human and societal problems.

9 Tactics To Avoid Defensiveness Communication On Ideas Presentation

1. Listen to critiques from investors for a purpose(s).

2. Recognize and validate every commentary and criticism.

3. Promise and offer to integrate the critiques and suggestions to the final prototype.

4. Request to meet with the critic for further elaborations and collaboration if they would be so ‘gracious to oblige.’

5. Remember these people are investing in you and your temperament before even considering your ideas. So if you do not come across as mentorable they will most likely not put their monies onto your brilliant ideas.

6. Investors invest in the persons first and foremost, and then on the ideas last.

7. Investors love to see ideapreneurs that can shepherd ideas with them to profitability.

They want to take informed risk in you and your ideas. So to be informative and humbled in your enthusiasm is vital to that much needed chemistry.

8. Be humble in speech and be passionate with your ideas without coming across as obstinate and antagonistic or utterly defensive.

9. This is a playing field that is not equal.

You have ideas and they have the monies to give your ideas a day under the sun. And so you negotiate.
This is where the skills of negotiations come to the table.

Remember investors want to make profits. So do you. The percentage is the deal breaker that you must be comfortabe with for your ideas to see light of day.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

1. Ideas matter; but ideas without execution is as good as no ideas.

2. Be humble in ideas presentation.

3. Gentle and kind words at the pitching time for funding can win over resistant hearts to your side.

4. Let emotional appeals match facts; but overwhelm with empathy and softer speech cadences.

5. Communicate supportively to build rapport over factoid reportage.

Investors can crank out the numbers; but they want to see the human face and the attitude that can churn out those numbers from mere mortals on the common streets.

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