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.’
