[HN Gopher] Defensive Communication (1961)
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Defensive Communication (1961)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-11-12 07:11 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reagle.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (reagle.org)
| n4r9 wrote:
| This is an insightful read. Especially for its time! I struggle
| with being defensive at home; for example if a mistake that I've
| made is pointed out, my first reaction is to deny or look for
| excuses rather than to empathise with the other person, who may
| be feeling upset and unheard as something has happened for the
| nth time. For some reason, this doesn't happen to anywhere near
| the same degree at work, where I am fully able to own my mistakes
| and look for ways forward.
|
| Text at this level of emotional abstraction can be quite
| difficult to internalise, especially for those with less practise
| or who might be "on the spectrum". It's helpful to have one or
| two illustrative examples in each category. For example:
|
| Evaluative: "Sort out your code before sending it for review,
| it's an absolute mess yet again and wastes my time."
|
| Descriptive: "After an initial review I can see code style issues
| A, B, C, some of which also occured in PRs X, Y, Z. Please make
| sure you're checking through for these in future review request
| as it would greatly streamline the review process."
|
| Also, listing out a set of categories is useful, and even
| sufficient for many people. But it doesn't tell you _how_ to stop
| being defensive, just what being defensive looks like and how to
| deal with defensiveness in others. Defensiveness often stems from
| some insecurity about yourself. Reassuring that insecurity can
| resolve the issue. In my above example with Evaluative and
| Descriptive text, the speaker may be more evaluative if they 're
| stressed about time-pressures and resent having to mentor more
| junior employees. It might be helpful for them to cultivate the
| part of themselves that values broad, long-term knowledge and
| skills growth in the team, and to take some perspective regarding
| the relative seriousness of those time pressures.
| taylorius wrote:
| " for example if a mistake that I've made is pointed out,"
|
| If it is unambiguously your mistake, then fair enough - but in
| my experience, "stop being defensive" is often used when
| defending oneself is a perfectly legitimate thing to do in the
| circumstances.
| chikere232 wrote:
| Also, as the article points out, there are better and worse
| ways to point out a mistake
|
| If someone completely flips out over a relatively minor
| mistake, going on the defensive or disengaging isn't
| necessarily a bad response
| n4r9 wrote:
| I would say that "being defensive" is different to "defending
| oneself". Given the semantic overlap it's very easy to see
| why they'd be conflated. Being defensive is an emotional
| response that serves to protect ones ego. It often lashes
| out, invokes absolutes, dismisses the other, deflects all
| responsibility, and avoids resolution. Defending your
| behaviour in an assertive manner need not do this.
|
| Let's take an example. Say that my wife finds the cutlery
| draw in a messy state. She's previously brought it up with me
| and I had agreed to make an effort to help keep it tidy. It's
| potentially ambiguous in that it's not clear who's "fault" it
| is. But that doesn't actually matter in terms of resolving
| the conflict.
|
| Defensive me: "Huh? _I_ dunno! I 've just been putting things
| there like normal as far as I can remember. And anyway I've
| been having to do the clearing up as well as putting the kids
| to bed this week so what do you expect?! You're always taking
| me to task for stuff like this. Why are you so wound up about
| a draw? If it's so important to you why don't you just tidy
| it yourself?"
|
| Assertive & empathetic me: "You know what, you're right. The
| draw is in a state. And I can understand why that's
| upsettting as you have brought it up before, and it is
| frustrating to have to root around to get what you need. To
| be honest, I don't remember being very scrupulous about
| keeping it orderly, but I'll make sure to focus on it. I've
| been finding it a struggle to stay mindful about what I'm
| doing in the evenings this week as I realise I've taken on
| quite a lot of chores, so it's very possible I overlooked
| this. Shall we try doing XYZ to make it easier to place
| things back neatly?"
| taylorius wrote:
| Thanks for responding. You'll be happy to hear I have
| disagreements with what you've written! :-)
|
| "Given the semantic overlap it's very easy to see why
| they'd be conflated." - I agree with the definition you
| gave, but I think such conflation is often intentional. The
| accusation of "Being defensive" is used to shut down a much
| broader range of responses.
|
| " it's not clear who's "fault" it is. But that doesn't
| actually matter in terms of resolving the conflict." - This
| is technically true - but only a sufficient analysis if
| resolving the conflict is the sole concern. I posit that
| there are often broader issues that mean justice is not
| being served by just resolving the conflict at any cost.
|
| "Assertive & empathetic me: " - I hate to say it, but your
| last paragraph doesn't sound very assertive to me. It
| sounds like someone who is hoping to resolve an argument
| quietly regardless of the cost, rather than have it blow
| up.
|
| Anyway, thanks for listening, man. I hope you take my
| answer in a spirit of honest debate. I'm not trying to be
| rude or anything.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > your last paragraph doesn't sound very assertive to me
|
| I reread what I wrote and agree with you. In fact it's
| made me want to reflect on whether I go too far in that
| direction. For which I thank you, too.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > Say that my wife finds the cutlery draw in a messy state.
| She's previously brought it up with me
|
| Picky picky. This sounds unpleasant. I wouldn't deal with
| this kind of nitpicking and would get out of what seems
| like a toxic situation.
| chikere232 wrote:
| The article seems to talk more about how to avoid other people
| going on the defensive, than how to avoid being defensive
| yourself. Both things are probably useful as neither party in
| such an exchange can solve it completely on their own.
|
| Being non-defensive towards someone actively emotionally
| abusive is a bad idea for obvious reason. Conversely if someone
| if sufficiently insecure or fond of the victim role, no amount
| of softness in the approach will help
| rawgabbit wrote:
| This is my take on the article using your example.
|
| 1) Do not use judgmental language (e.g., sort out your code);
| instead use language that is asking for clarity or asking for
| more information (e.g., the code has issues A, B, C; any reason
| why the code cannot be refactored?).
|
| 2) Do not assume the other person is stupid (e.g., wastes my
| time); instead use language that addresses the problem (e.g.,
| please see best practices document 1.2.3 and 4.5.6 to how it
| should be written.)
|
| 3) Do not use cold language that makes you distant and detached
| (e.g., This is the third time your code has these issues);
| instead use language that you would use to a friend (e.g., Is
| there something going on that I should know about?)
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| The first pair (evaluation/description) is especially tricky to
| separate in a management situation. I have seen many times an
| employee make a mistake and be given proper descriptive feedback,
| they will take it as evaluative and their performance will
| degrade due to the added pressure - and eventually be let go.
| Similarly, if the manager doesn't mention the performance and is
| unconditionally supportive, the employee will continue to do poor
| quality work, will be let go and then complain that they were not
| given enough feedback and the chance to do a better job. It takes
| real finesse to understand the person, see their potential and
| set a path for improvement.
| the5avage wrote:
| It depends on so many things, but in a climate where someones
| income depends on the performance it is easy to understand they
| behave defensive.
|
| As a counter example I worked for a small company where the
| owner is a very good software engineer. I knew that he knew
| that I know what I'm doing.
|
| So we could freely talk about problems without the toxicity
| that often comes with it.
| dkarl wrote:
| I wonder, is there any research on _offensive_ communication?
| Like, people who seize control of a conversation by going on the
| attack, who respond to another person 's statements by changing
| the subject to something they've done wrong. Defensive
| communication is unattractive and tends to be ineffective, and I
| think there are people who pursue a consistent strategy of trying
| to make others look bad by triggering defensive behavior in them.
| the5avage wrote:
| It's quite old but german philosopher Schopenhauer wrote about
| it in "The art of being right"
|
| He talks about dirty tricks to win an argument regardless of
| the content
|
| You can easily see that behavior in politics
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right
| russfink wrote:
| Number 14 is "Claim Victory Despite Defeat" - coincidentally,
| there was a lot of "14/88" being thrown around in recent
| weeks in USA politics.
| daveguy wrote:
| And a metric shit-ton more than that thrown around in 2020.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I think recent events have shown clearly that, regrettably,
| offensive communication works wonders in convincing people.
| briandear wrote:
| Luckily it didn't work well enough.
| watwut wrote:
| Trump won twice. That is pretty clear signal that what
| works the best is to attack, insult and throw a lot of
| outrage to whereover it sticks.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Works and works best may be far apart. His approach was
| not battle tested against very many alternatives and only
| against alternatives saddled with severe constraints.
| zczc wrote:
| It's all in the article, the "offensive" communication examples
| you describe fall into author's definition of defensive
| communication categories, which he names "Control", "Strategy"
| etc.
| dkarl wrote:
| The paper says about those, "Behavior which a listener
| perceives as possessing any of the characteristics listed in
| the left-hand column arouses defensiveness." So the author
| doesn't describe it as defensive behavior, and he's not even
| concerned with it as behavior, only as a perception that
| might arouse defensive behavior.
| jkaptur wrote:
| > Besides talking about the topic, he thinks about how he appears
| to others, how he may be seen more favorably, how he may win,
| dominate, impress or escape punishment, and/or how he may avoid
| or mitigate a perceived attack... Such inner feelings and outward
| acts tend to create similarly defensive postures in others; and,
| if unchecked, the ensuing circular response becomes increasingly
| destructive.
|
| Interesting to read in light of the other recent item "How I ship
| projects at big tech companies":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42111031
|
| > You only know you've shipped when your company's leadership
| acknowledge you've shipped. A congratulations message in Slack
| from your VP is a good sign, as is an internal blog post that
| claims victory. For small ships, an atta-boy from your manager
| will do. This probably sounds circular, but I think it's a really
| important point.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Defensive communication applies to interpersonal relationships.
| A business is not your friend.
| jkaptur wrote:
| You certainly have interpersonal relationships with the
| people you work with, but not the business itself.
| sirspacey wrote:
| "As a person becomes more and more defensive, he or she becomes
| less and less able to perceive accurately the motives, the values
| and the emotions of the sender."
|
| Such a great insight. The content of defensive communication
| isn't a requirement here. Anything that increases the
| defensiveness of the communicator/listener lowers the ability to
| perceived.
|
| Fear makes us stupid. No plan for future civilization can succeed
| on fear-based tactics alone.
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(page generated 2024-11-12 23:01 UTC)