Brian JohnsonChairman & Philosopher in Residence at Heroic

How do I coach someone through defensiveness?

23 Apr 2023 · 1 min

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0:46

A short coaching clip by Brian Johnson about how to handle defensiveness in conversations. Johnson recommends acknowledging that no one is 100% right or wrong, looking for partial truths in the other person's perspective, expressing agreement where possible, and responding humbly to reduce defensiveness.

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What happens in defensiveness from my experience is the other person is both not open and they think we think they can't figure it out and then it gets really weird really fast. So if we can allow that maybe our perspective certainly isn't the only one and perhaps could use some improvement in itself that would help. One thing that's helped me is to recognize there's always a partial truth in every perspective so no one is ever 100% right or 100% wrong and that's been really helpful for me because then I can say I know I'm not 100% right but I also know the other person isn't 100% wrong. Then I can start to look for the things that they are saying that are true and rather than saying you're wrong and this is the truth I can say I totally agree with this. How can you get down on your knee and kind of be humble about it and feed their little defensive dog if you will and.