#defensiveness — Blog — Co-Creating Inclusion

One of the communication strategies we talk about in our DEI workshops with organizational clients is what we like to call the “tell me more” strategy - in other words, leaning into curiosity in order to de-escalate a situation and foster an environment and culture where difficult conversations across difference can take place.

While it is not always the right strategy, particularly if hearing more from someone is likely to only cause more harm (you actually have to genuinely be ready to hear more) it can even be a strategy for responding to aggressions, micro or otherwise.

On not taking things personally

A pattern that we often see with our client organizations is where those more proximate to institutional power seem to “personalize” feedback from those less proximate to power. This is a form of defensiveness where feedback from staff, usually given in good faith and not meant as an attack, although often not with frustration, pain and anger, is experienced by leadership as a personal attack.

Learning builds trust

It is interesting to me how defensiveness functions in an environment where the goal is to shift towards equity and inclusion. Defensiveness is a natural and human reaction, but it often functions in the exact opposite way than we intend and would like.

Perhaps within a hierarchical environment, defensiveness helps us maintain power by shutting down feedback or criticism that feels like an attack. We maintain credibility and trust by being able to shoot down other perspectives, thus proving ourselves to be “right.” In academia, you are expected to literally defend your thesis. It’s a pretty standard format in debate, courts of law, art school critiques and… well, pretty much everything.

Inclusive LeadershipAlethea FitzpatrickAugust 7, 2022#defensiveness, #learning, #trust, #lipservice

Lip service

I'll admit that, up until recently, I had thought more of lip service as saying something when you don't actually mean it.

What we're seeing is a kind of lip service where the organization or person may actually genuinely mean what they say, or think that they do, but when it comes to taking action, especially actions that come with some sort of cost, they balk.

It's the gap between intention and action that we have long seen, recognized, identified, and named, but only recently have I started to connect that to lip service.

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