Defensiveness is rarely beneficial
One brilliant relationship psychologist, John Gottman, did an analysis of couples and their communication styles. He was able to find four no-no’s that when present consistently in a couple’s interactions predicted a high likelihood of divorce. I have embraced his findings and I try my best to avoid these four in my interactions with EVERYONE. The four no-no’s are CONTEMPT, CRITICISM, DEFENSIVENESS and STONEWALLING.
Yesterday, I was peripherally watching Olympics coverage with some friends when I overheard the US women’s volleyball players Branagh and Youngs having a “strategy discussion” on the sidelines as they were losing to the Chinese team. They were obviously getting their signals crossed and not playing as a cohesive team. One of them said to her teammate something to the effect that “you need to talk”, expressing that their miscommunication was hurting their play. Her teammate shot back with “I AM talking”. Being the communication guru nerd that I am, I took this chance to share with my friends some comments on the concept of defensiveness.
Defensiveness is one of the bigger communication problems present in our world. To me, I define it as spending more energy protecting oneself rather than really listening to what the other person is saying. You can see why this is a problem for couples. If a wife says to her husband “You never spend enough time with me,” the PROPER useful response is to inquire lovingly into why she feels that way and what he can do to address the problem. However, because those words are usually fired in such an accusatory tone, the most common response from the husband is to defend himself with replies like “What do you mean I don’t spend time with you? I spent all Wednesday night at home and before that, we were at your mother’s all weekend. And I’m with you now. What do you want from me?” But as you can see, while defensiveness is the natural response, it doesn’t lead us down productive pathways.
Once I heard the volleyball players interchange, I was pretty sure they were headed for defeat and that’s exactly what happened, as they had more unforced errors and moments of miscommunication. I would have loved to hear an alternate reply like this.
“You need to talk”.
“OK, you’re right. Let’s do it!”
Such a small simple difference changes the whole tone and feel of the situation.
