Dealing with Defensive Employee Behavior

We hear a lot about the need to build up our own personal levels or self-esteem or self-worth, especially during our teens and in early adulthood. The reason for this is simple. If our self-esteem is too low or too negative, we will not develop in positive ways or learn to get on with people as we should (often failing to become effective enough at communicating with others, working in teams or helping to manage change for example). The simple idea here is that we can’t readily like others and manage relationships with them well until we can learn how to like and manage ourselves well.

While these ideas from modern psychology are interesting and potentially accurate for many people in theory, pointing out that an individual has low self-esteem does little to change the situation and in practice leads to these individuals often developing coping approaches that may stay with them for years (and even life) if left to fester or they go unchallenged. Perhaps the most common of these is to develop what might be a whole range of defensive behaviors that act to protect the person (or prevent currently relatively low levels of self-esteem falling even lower). So what are these defensive behaviors?

When any adult individual feels threatened he or she may show some or many of the following physical signs of defensiveness in their behavior. They have been categorized into four clusters:

Emotional State/Behavior

• Being erratic/agitated/worried
• Not smiling/losing any sense of humor
• Being overly obsessive
• Being self-deprecating
• Taking offense very easily
• Feeling resigned/listlessness

Sensory response

• Addictive behavior (smoking, drinking, eating, shopping, gambling, etc)
• Having butterflies or tight stomach
• Experiencing faster, shallow breathing
• Experiencing increased heart rate
• Head or body-ache or showing illness
• Skin feeling too hot/sweaty or too cold

Body language

• Overly energetic body movements when talking (finger pointing/eyebrow arching)
• Not moving at all (being zombie-like)
• Averting the eyes/looking down
• Rolling the eyes/head shaking/gritted teeth
• Being distracted/unfocused
• Sudden tiredness/yawning/slump
• Turning away/arms folded across the body

Tone Of Voice/Vocal style

• Mocking vocal expression
• Mimicking the speaker
• Speaking too loudly/raising voice
• Speaking very softly
• Mumbling/missing words in sentences
• Speaking hurriedly all the time
• Inappropriate laughter/giggling/fixed grin
• Monotone or delayed response

Clearly, not all of these will be exhibited (and not at the same time) but the chart above provides a useful list of the visually observable behavior that could be seen in a few of these areas and thereby give a clue that the person concerned is feeling somewhat defensive about a particular experience in the workplace.

In addition to physical, defensive signs are the often more subtle but nonetheless observable mental signs of defensiveness that some individuals may exhibit when feeling defensive about a situation. Once again, only one or two of these may be shown at any one time but it may nonetheless signal that an alternative approach may be called for. As in the physical signs of defensiveness there are four categories or clusters of behavior to look out for.

Internal Dialogue

• Feeling resentful; overly angry
• Engaging in self-denial
• Feeling confused
• Felt need to work harder to please
• Feeling anxious/up-tight
• Feeling victimized
• Feeling misunderstood
• Feeling worthless

Defensive language

• Personalizing everything
• Being sarcastic/making cynical remarks
• Withdrawing/being silent
• Being evasive/Procrastinating
• Selective deafness to people speaking
• Rejecting a point out-of-hand
• Agreeing too much/being compliant
• Shifting blame to others

Attacking language

• Always wanting to be right/correct
• Being judgmental/argumentative
• Trivializing people’s input/remarks
• Haranguing behavior and remarks
• Being overly critical/condescending
• Acting in a childish manner
• Intellectualizing/scoring points

Negotiating behavior

• Jumping too quickly to conclusions
• Over-explaining minor points
• Preaching/evangelizing
• Showing disinterest/boredom
• Constant interrupting
• Changing the subject frequently
• Lying/distorting information

The goal in providing lists of physical and mental signs of possible defensiveness in the charts above is not to turn supervisors and managers into amateur psychologists or possible counselors to employees who may need professional help in some cases. However, it does aim to raise awareness in leaders at all levels that they are managing individuals who may be struggling to deal with a range of issues, with low self-esteem often being at the core of the challenges they face. By at least understanding or basically appreciating that defenses such as those described above are a coping mechanism, leaders can therefore perhaps adjust their approach or style (even in subtle ways) and help a given individual in more emotionally intelligent ways not to feel quite as marginalized and to feel that they are part of a supportive workplace climate in which that can learn to deal with any issues more readily, and perhaps develop a greater level of overall personal resilience.