Dear Crucial Skills,
Why do people get defensive about a normal question? Isn’t that a “you” problem?
Signed,
Don’t Get It
Dear Don’t Get It,
Yes, when people get defensive about a normal question, it’s a “you” problem. But if you hope or need to communicate with them, it’s also your problem.
Before I explain, let me first clarify for other readers what a “you” problem is.
When I complain about congested traffic to my twenty-year-old, she will listen kindly and then reply, “Sounds like a ‘you’ problem, Dad.” When I asked my sixteen-year-old daughter to define the term, she said, “It’s a problem only you can fix.” And in the words of one of our readers, “If I’m triggered, it’s about me.”
So, yes, a person’s emotional state is their problem, or responsibility. That’s how I see it, anyway.
But that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. If you care about the relationship or results that depend on communication, it’s also your problem. What will you do?
Most of us tend to react to defensiveness, concluding only a neanderthal would bristle at an innocent question. Do that, and you’re guilty of the behavior you criticize: taking offense where none was intended or responding with defensiveness, which only worsens the situation. Just when you thought you were above such infantile behavior!
People get defensive because they sense a threat, whether real or imagined. What you’re essentially asking is, “Why would a person sense a threat when there isn’t one?” The answer: because “normal” is relative to the beholder. What’s innocent to you may trigger another, and vice versa. It’s a matter of perspective.
It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that personality shapes perspective, and perspective shapes behavior. The Strength Deployment Inventory® (SDI), our workplace personality assessment, helps people understand how this occurs, particularly as it relates to interactions.
For example, I value directness, and virtually every personality assessment I’ve taken, including the SDI, confirms that. If given the choice, I’d rather be hit with a bomb of truth than a watered-down or candy-coated version of it.
What this means for me is that, if I don’t bring awareness of my motives to my interactions, I’m likely to find myself irritated when people take offense to clear and direct communication, prioritize feelings over clarity, or share their opinions in ambiguous niceties. Maybe you can relate.
In the SDI typology, there are Reds, Greens, Blues, and Hubs. Reds are motivated by Performance, Greens by Process, Blues by People, and Hubs by Perspective, or flexibility.
These terms—People, Process, etc.—are shorthand for the dominant or prevailing motives of each personality type. Understanding that different personalities have different driving motives can help you appreciate why someone might take offense to a “normal” question.
For example, if your chief motive relates to performance (Red), a normal question for you might be, “Did you get that done yet?”
But if you’re a Green, whose chief motive is Process, you might hear, “Did you rush that through?” Rushing a job can spark conflict for someone who is process oriented. A defensive response may follow.
Conversely, a normal question for a Green might be, “Can you send that to our copyeditor first and then over to proofing before you send it to the printers?”
A Red might hear that as, “Can you slow down and delay the project?” A Blue might think, “A ‘please’ would be nice, thank you very much.”
The point is we find ourselves triggered by the innocuous behaviors of others because we interpret their behavior through our own motivational lens. We think of what we would do and say, and we judge the actions of others accordingly. If you want to communicate better and not chalk up defensiveness to a “you” problem, you should work on your perspective first.
For myself, it helps me to think of the motives that other people have as a kind of principle, because that’s how I think of my own. I value process and method, which are a kind of “truth” in my world. After completing the SDI with some of my peers, it occurred to me that those who prioritize kindness, consideration, and loyalty see people as a kind of principle. And those who take risks, act quickly, and buck convention see achievement as a kind of principle. It’s their modus operandi.
The SDI can help you get to know yourself and others better, but you can also ask questions, pay attention, and listen more.
For most of us it’s not hard to notice when someone gets defensive. The challenge is to not get defensive ourselves and then dismiss the other as having a “you” problem. It takes little courage and patience to correct misunderstandings. Knowing that such misunderstandings are often the result of differing personalities and perspectives—and finding it within yourself to respect those differences—is half the battle.
The SDI inventory has been the best personality test that I have ever taken. It helped explain so much of my behavior. I am 2/3 a blue people person! This is the first time that I finally understood, that, in unresolved conflict, I will want to separate and think about it, then go back and talk about it. I had always seen that as a “flight” response and not my natural conflict response. Not that I don’t have a flight response, but this is a healthy choice for my personality type when I can’t figure how to resolve in the present. It also helped me understand why I strive to resolve conflict as quickly as I am able to restore the relationships. I also saw how, when I allow myself to get pushed to the limit and not resolve earlier in the conflict, I can be so aggressive as a last resort. I also learned that I am the type of person who really does like that “please” and “thank you.” I have started to actually ask for it from the other personalities, and they are fine saying it to me. It actually feels really good to ask for something for myself. I know that SDI has helped me understand myself much better. I am still learning how to understand my friends/co-workers in light of it. Thanks for the interesting question and the great answer. As a people person, it makes me happy for us to be thinking about how what we do affects another person even when it makes absolutely no sense to you.
Yes: what we consider “normal” will come from the lens of our own personality. It will also come from the “hidden rules” we’ve internalized due to our culture, our upbringing, our experiences, and our position in society. What is a “normal” question to a person with relative power (whether that be because of job title, or because of factors like gender, race, ability, religion, etc.) may be threatening to someone who faces more hurdles in getting and keeping a job, for example. If you don’t get it, maybe that’s because you’ve never considered (or taken time to learn about) the lived experience of another person.
I think this would make more sense from the first line if it was called a “them” problem instead of a “you” problem. In the example, is the teenager saying the traffic jam is the father’s problem? Inside the father’s mind, only a problem because he thinks it is? Or outside of the father, something he could remember that he can’t control? I think “you” is too ambiguous for this context. I guess I’m just trying to say that the explanation of what a “you” problem is wasn’t clear, so this left me struggling a bit for the remainder of the article, even though I think I understood by the end that even though the issue might be with how the question is heard, the speaker has a role to play in preventing the defensiveness. Is that right?
I can see why that was confusing. I don’t know if this will clarify things, but here’s what I was trying to say: If a person feels defensive, it’s nobody’s responsibility but their own—we’re all responsible for our own feelings. But if you meet with defensiveness, it’s up to you how you respond. We can become dismissive or defensive ourselves, or we can find more productive ways to respond. In this article I highlighted one productive way: learning about the differences in personality and perspective that might be contributing.
“..those who prioritize kindness, consideration, and loyalty see people as a kind of principle. And those who take risks, act quickly, and buck convention see achievement as a kind of principle.”
Do you think this insight is helpful to understanding what differentiates the different groups that are in contest with each other over the actions of the President?
It is a nice theory, nice to talk in a class with too simple example to upscale in a complex human interations. when facing the real situation, many times you will become predator or prey. Yes, Emotions belong to us. however, the situation likely affecting on how we react.