Defensive Communication (1961) | Hacker News Reader

Defensive Communication (1961)

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138 pointsrzk65 comments

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.

" 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.

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

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?"

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.

> 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.

> 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.

That sounds like a significant overreaction

Yeah, I think a sizable portion of people who are ultimately worth keeping around will occasionally go off in this ostensibly toxic manner, such that one would be quite lonely running away from them all. If it gets to be overwhelming, sure, but usually there's a lot more to consider.

What would you say makes it toxic? The fact that a cutlery draw seems like a minor thing? I didn't say anything about the manner in which it was brought up; it could have been totally respectful.

I would not say it's toxic. I was commenting on then-GP's characterization of it being toxic, specifically that I find it to be ostensibly (i.e., purportedly, but probably not actually) toxic, and rather a bit closer to normal if very occasional.

In any case, I think the conversation had already shifted from analyzing defensiveness to analyzing the way people nitpick regardless of how they communicate it.

That we interpreted this tangent so differently is an awesome showcasing of issues with effectiveness of communication!

It's normal for people to have pet peeves. You need to be able to resolve them without running away.

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

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?)

“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.

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.

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

Number 14 is “Claim Victory Despite Defeat” - coincidentally, there was a lot of “14/88” being thrown around in recent weeks in USA politics.

And a metric shit-ton more than that thrown around in 2020.

I think recent events have shown clearly that, regrettably, offensive communication works wonders in convincing people.

Luckily it didn’t work well enough.

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.

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.

If you're talking about Trump, I feel like the offensive communication there has done a bad job of convincing people who the offense is aimed at, and only a good job of motivating people who perceive themselves to be aligned with the offense.

Or if they’re talking about those calling people extreme names like Hitler and fascist, it didn’t do a very job convincing people to vote the way the name-callers wanted.

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.

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.

Well, isn't a communication behavior that triggers defensiveness in the listener an offensive behavior by definition?

I think lawyers do a really effective job of offensive communication. Their job essentially boils down to redirecting the conversation.

One side poses a question that the judge or jury needs to answer. The other side then responds with: "The question we really need to answer is...". I.e., "You're trying to solve the wrong problem. Let me show you the real problem that needs to be solved."

Reframing the conversation is offensive communication.

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.

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.

As someone reasonably early in their career, I'd be really interested to hear from you or other people with experience in this area. How does one handle this correctly? I'm sure it's a case-by-case basis, but what are the commonalities of the solutions in those cases?

I provide this because it was the basis of this paper: "”Be Nice”: Wikipedia Norms for Supportive Communication" https://reagle.org/joseph/2010/06/reagle-nrhm-special-collab...

> Wikipedia is acknowledged to have been home to “some bitter disputes”. Indeed, conflict at Wikipedia is said to be “as addictive as cocaine”. Yet, such observations are not cynical commentary but motivation for a collection of social norms. These norms speak to the intentional stance and communicative behaviors Wikipedians should adopt when interacting with one another. In the following pages, I provide a survey of these norms on the English Wikipedia and argue they can be characterized as supportive based on Jack Gibb’s classic communication article “Defensive Communication”.

I used to be defensive a lot, that's when I realized one of the main reason was due to low self-esteem and lack of self acceptance, many times people weren't trying to devalue me or offend me but because of I couldn't really accept myself, I usually thought they were attacking me instead of actually engage in the conversation to see if they really meant to judge me.

After therapy, lots of reading and learning to accept myself, now I feel better and more efficient communicating, sometimes I don't even notice people are judging me or making fun of me, because now I seek very little validation from people, this makes me focus on the issue and supporting kind people around me.

it's still a work in progress, but this new perspective of the world brings me more freedom and happiness.

this is a very good read, and I did found some of the mistakes I sometimes make in communication, this is one of the post that'll make me want to reread in the future.

> 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.

Defensive communication applies to interpersonal relationships. A business is not your friend.

You certainly have interpersonal relationships with the people you work with, but not the business itself.

> Neutrality and Empathy

i have somewhat ..doubts.. about the latter. Showing Empathy and Being Empathic are different things, first being just a theather, easily overdone and moving into familiarity (How are you Honey, today? You're so great! from some random nurse in hospital. Or hairdresser.. Like that robot from Wall-E..). And that puts me into defensive, or maybe even, "ignore-those-BS" mode. Maybe i've seen too many Fake smiles.. and i overreact it. But IMO the border between above two is very difficult to walk.

> Transcribed from a mimeographed paper discovered at the University of Toledo, 4/88. Edited only to reduce gender-specific references.

Why do people do this? By all means write new documents the way you like, but… it’s from 1988, just let it be.

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