Five Steps for Defusing Defensiveness in the Workplace

We don’t always realize when we’re acting defensively—I was just telling the truth! It was all in good fun!—but it deflects blame in ways that can send negative effects rippling through the workplace, harming teams and colleagues. A study in the British Journal of Social Psychology looks at how people in conflict can approach each other in more productive ways.

The problem: Defensiveness sabotages our ability to honestly discuss or learn from events, because it triggers us to misremember and misrepresent. Once she goes into defensive mode to hide a minor on-the-job gaffe, a colleague might still be stuck in it a week later. If someone discovers the error, she’ll deflect more, throwing co-workers under the bus. “All of a sudden, your team has multiple working-relationship problems,” says study co-author Lydia Woodyatt, an associate professor of psychology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. The initial infraction has now mushroomed into multilayered, multiplying grievances.