Supportive and defensive behaviors of people
Why are we worrying about climate and why should we spend some time thinking about the supportive climate?
Because in some ways people behave very much like animals, specifically when we feel like we are being attacked or threatened. What are you going to do? What they do is they stay for just a second to realize what is going on, they listen, then they look and can see the threat, and maybe they can see the threat, what are they doing when they see threat? They often run away. They think they are going to run away from it. Or they stay in ground and fight. And if their go is to stay to start a fight so the goal is to win. And how is the ultimate win? To kill the other animal or whatever that threat is that makes them feel threatened, they want to hurt them, so they can get away from whatever was causes them to feel threatened.
Sad reality is people are very much like that. With the exception that our response is not physically with the threat we receive, we act a little differently, not as much as the animal fight tendency. Jack Kyab, in classic article identified 6 specific behaviors when we realize what we likely trigger in distinctive reaction without even thinking about it we respond defensively. He also identified contrasting behaviors that we can do to preserve the supporting climate surrounding us, a climate that makes it easier to talk whatever the issue is rather than to react defensively
What gives defensive climate? So that the sender of messages or as a receiver of messages do not fall in the trap and act like the animals in the wild. They are defensive climate not physically but attacked.
Defensive Climate Behaviors:
1) Evaluation:
What we identify in terms of evaluation is where we are judging people. And there are many instances when we have to judge people. When we have the supervisor of an employee and has to judge people for their performance, if you are in relationships sometimes we evaluate other people, and what we want to avoid in this kind of evaluation is how we get defensive which means labelling or judging other people. Evaluative words would be like “You are so lazy! How can you be inconsiderate!” if we think about it when someone says this to you, your natural distinct will be that you want to scratch the person evaluating us to feel defensive as an instinctive reaction as it is normal to us to respond instinctively when we are being judged.
This is the first behavior that might instinctively trigger a defensive reaction when we feel like I have to defend myself. I’m not willing to listen to what you are saying because what I focus on is to defend myself. The fight tendency when I feel I have to defend myself.
2) Control:
There are many instances ways to control when we supervise we have to do some variations of controlling other people. In a working environment there are many instances we can control. Now when this is triggered to create an instinctive reaction is what we feel is someone is putting his thumb on you to try to get you to do what they want because they can. “I’m the boss and I can control this on you, you can’t even think about that” I don’t know, but when someone puts their power on us and control us in some way, we feel like we want to bite that thumb and that control over us, and do anything to defend ourselves because we feel like we’re being attacked and that’s instinctive and tend to be a normal reaction.
3) Strategy:
And in this sense strategy does not mean strategic thinking and thinking about what might happen if. Strategy for Gayb means manipulation. In Gayb’s terminology what triggers a defensive reaction and instinctive defensive reaction is “I’m trying to manipulate you and I make a strategy what I want maybe without you knowing what I want, so I’m trying to manipulate you”
When people discover that they’re being manipulated, their instinctive reaction is not, okay fine, I know what you want, I’ll do what you want, it’s rather to show them that we don’t get away with this and we start to respond defensively.
4) Neutrality:
Sometimes we think about neutrality that it is not bad to be neutral in a position as it is not completely right or wrong it is just neutral. What Gayb meant by neutrality is maybe what puts it in the category of “lack of consider”. As neutrality in Gayb’s world is “I do not care what you think, you have an idea I completely ignore it and do not give her enough attention and my time and my response is that you have to be silent in such problems. We’re thinking about what our reaction should be if we have someone who’s dealing with us like that? We try to scratch figuratively and in most cases we will try to attack that person because you attack me and to me my opinion does not matter or I do not know enough about this situation, or by neutrality you just ignore me and you did not pay attention to what I was saying. For example I said something in class and you just ignored it. This will tend to an instinctive defensive reaction.
5) Superiority:
Superiority can mean I know more than you, I am the boss and you have to do what I say because I am better and smarter than you. As we said it is very easy to think that reaction would be to someone who operates superiority we get defensive and we try to attack them because we feel that we are being attacked.
6) Certainty:
Certainty is I know I’m right because I know I’m always right, we’ve been doing this for 25 years, that’s what we’re going to do, or we’re going to do it because I said we’re going to do it, any of these things that you convey the communication perspective that you are absolutely right and all the other answers must be absolutely wrong.
When someone treats us with certainty our reaction is to prove them wrong. They are wrong because we felt an attack. Although they may not say it directly, but the idea that he is always right means I’m wrong. Which makes me feel attacked and ignites my instinctive reaction, not yes, you’re right and always right, it tends to provoke a defensive reaction.
The communication perspective that you are absolutely right and therefore the other answer must be completely wrong.
We do not focus on those behaviors because sometimes we evaluate people, sometimes we have to control situations, or treat each other impartially because we do not have enough time to listen to them or because we are in charge or because we are superior position. We still need to remember that if we want to send a message that sounds as evaluation, control, strategy, neutrality, superiority, or certainty, that the natural reaction we are going to get to that will be either physically leave and shut down or attacking. They can be completely physically attacked and can choose to remain silent. They can be looking to us but are not listening to us. Or we fight back usually verbally, we fight back with words because we feel that we have to, because we feel that we are being attacked.
The good news is that Gibbs has also identified six other behaviors that counter each of those defensive climate behaviors:
Instead of evaluation or judging you or telling me that I’m inconsiderate or rude, we can’t intangibly see what inconsiderate means as those are describing behaviors of what rude or inconsiderate actually looks like.
Supportive and Defensive Climate Behaviors:
1) Description —– vs. Evaluation:
to be not evaluated, but to describe: the description means to say in my mind what is rude means before I say it with my mouth, wait a little and tell myself what it means to be rude? What does he or she do or said was rude? When we describe the answer to ourselves thinking about what I heard you say or what I saw doing from you. And that’s the language we use to deal with problems if we talk about a problem we’re facing or a situation, and usually some evaluation if we’re solving a problem. Easier to deal with a problem if I am describing behaviors that I have observe. “If we decide that you are rude because you laughed before I was ready or you did not show up for class on time, here I am evaluating what is rude”. What would be better for me when we talk about it, for example: I’m concerned because you did not show up for class more than once, or I’m bothered by yesterday example when you laughed when I was not ready for that. This is should be the language when we are describing.
Will I use this description to move away from defensive climate reactions? The sad reality is no. Because we can’t control other people “even if we want to” what we can control is just controlling our behaviors. And if we talk about what we’ve seen or heard about there’s less likely to hear from other people to stay in self-defense because they’re less likely to hear that they’re instinctively feeling threatened, they’re going to act on that feeling, and that’s what we’ve been trying to avoid, we’ve been trying to create a supportive climate, a climate where I feel welcome and encouraged to talk, I feel like if I talked, I wouldn’t be attacked from someone in return, and that’s what we want to do in description.
2) Problem Orientation —– vs. Control:
We talked that control is i control you with my thumb and you have to do whatever I say whatever happens, because whatever the reason I will tell you what to do and of course the reaction to that instinct is self-defense as we said.
If I control you and tell you to do this on a specific day, I have to ask myself “Why?” why is it triggering that need for me, and this is what we should be reacting.
What we need to do is to the problem orientation, I think the easiest way to think about the direction of the problem is that we can separate the problem from the person we are talking to.
If you do something for me you have to stop doing, what we have to do is put the problem in front of us figuratively and imagine it in front of us, take the problem apart from the individuals.
“You need to show up in class on time” this description but also control and lead to a direct instinctive defense instead of “you need to show up on time” we say “the office should be opened by 8AM, and because you are the person who comes late, that’s critical” so that is the problem is the office has not been opened on time for the past 3 days, or that the problem is that the trash is not getting out on time for the weekly trash collection, or that the clothes are still on the ground instead of being in their place. So we think about what the problem is by using the separation between the problem and the person itself, trying to talk about the problem as if it were something in front of us, this will help us to create and maintain a supportive climate.
Is that guaranteed? The sad reality is no, but if you think about it from your own perspective when you see someone in control of you, don’t take it in a way that you need to defend yourself instinctively because you feel that you are under threat. If we have someone in front of us to ask about a problem that needs to be solved, we’ll be less likely to feel attacked, and that’s what we have to do.
3) Spontaneity —- vs. Strategy:
As we have said, manipulating do not encourage a supportive climate for understanding, but if they think about being open and spontaneous this will reduce the likelihood of a sense of defense in the other. I’m open and honest with you, I’m not trying to manipulate you or hide issues —-.”
4) Empathy vs. Neutrality:
We also said that neutrality conveys the feeling that I don’t care about you or what you say and we will do what I say and opinions make no difference to me. Empathy is that I really try to see things from your own perspective, I do care about you and your opinions, I may not agree with your opinions but I am communicating to you that I care to hear your opinions and understand your point of view and value your perspective. i can say that the point of view is not effective for this problem but at first I want to hear many different opinions with points of view I want to hear your point of view, I want to take care of your perspective on this view, if people suspect that there are other important and effective opinions said by a co-worker that matters a lot and will lead to creating and maintaining a supportive climate between people a place where I feel that I can share my opinions and people will care to hear them.
5) Equality —- vs. Superiority
As we said superiority is i am smarter and better and more beautiful than anyone else. I know more about her than my colleagues in it, for example, but I also want to realize very well that they also know things That I do not know and that they are better than me, and that’s what we mean by equality.
If you keep this perspective, we are all equal unless there is something that needs someone who has experience in this matter, and there are situations where I need to hear you and act based on what You said. If we treat some with equality, we will have a much greater opportunity to create and maintain supportive climate in which we feel more comfortable in solving problems and dealing with issues.
6) Provisionalism — vs. Certainty:
As we said certainty is there is no place for opinions only my opinion is the right temporary behavior is to open the door a little bit for discussion because I am likely to be wrong.
Provosionalism is to leave the door a little to open up the space to accept opinions and it is possible to be true and help us more. It’s easy to do that if we want to. It’s easy to say “I know” instead of “I think this is the right thing to do.” Or “I think the last Friday we used that method and it worked and we both agreed on this” we have to recognize and accept that we might forget some memories and we are not always tend to be right.
What we have to think about is that we want to use behaviors if we are the one sending messages because we send messages to be sure that we are focusing on description, open and honest to the opinions of others, treat all people equally and open the door to change and accept different ways. The sender of the messages must maintain those behaviors.
Yes, it’s not easy, but that’s what sets us apart from the way wild animals think. Wild animals don’t think but act based on their instinctive feelings. People also have a instinctive feeling, but we are critical in thinking about what we’re going to choose how to behave. I’m going to choose to act not personally in self-defense, and I can. I can suck it up and say I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. I can force myself when I’m receiving messages that I control my feelings and try to get the person in front of me to get to a place that understands us supporting the behaviors that we mentioned as a receiver, I don’t want to fall into this trap that I act in self-defense without thinking, I can be aware of my feelings and instincts but I want to act in a way that helps to maintain an supportive climate and this is more difficult if we receive messages from someone who attacks us we have to think about how we have to think. Unfortunately, personal communication is not guaranteed, but what we have to do is to improve communication in relationships: by maintaining a supportive, not defensive, climate. Both, the sender and sender of communication messages using behaviors that contribute to a supportive climate.
prepared by Dr. Fatin Mirza
Why are we worrying about climate and why should we spend some time thinking about the supportive climate?
Because in some ways people behave very much like animals, specifically when we feel like we are being attacked or threatened. What are you going to do? What they do is they stay for just a second to realize what is going on, they listen, then they look and can see the threat, and maybe they can see the threat, what are they doing when they see threat? They often run away. They think they are going to run away from it. Or they stay in ground and fight. And if their go is to stay to start a fight so the goal is to win. And how is the ultimate win? To kill the other animal or whatever that threat is that makes them feel threatened, they want to hurt them, so they can get away from whatever was causes them to feel threatened.
Sad reality is people are very much like that. With the exception that our response is not physically with the threat we receive, we act a little differently, not as much as the animal fight tendency. Jack Kyab, in classic article identified 6 specific behaviors when we realize what we likely trigger in distinctive reaction without even thinking about it we respond defensively. He also identified contrasting behaviors that we can do to preserve the supporting climate surrounding us, a climate that makes it easier to talk whatever the issue is rather than to react defensively
What gives defensive climate? So that the sender of messages or as a receiver of messages do not fall in the trap and act like the animals in the wild. They are defensive climate not physically but attacked.
Defensive Climate Behaviors:
1) Evaluation:
What we identify in terms of evaluation is where we are judging people. And there are many instances when we have to judge people. When we have the supervisor of an employee and has to judge people for their performance, if you are in relationships sometimes we evaluate other people, and what we want to avoid in this kind of evaluation is how we get defensive which means labelling or judging other people. Evaluative words would be like “You are so lazy! How can you be inconsiderate!” if we think about it when someone says this to you, your natural distinct will be that you want to scratch the person evaluating us to feel defensive as an instinctive reaction as it is normal to us to respond instinctively when we are being judged.
This is the first behavior that might instinctively trigger a defensive reaction when we feel like I have to defend myself. I’m not willing to listen to what you are saying because what I focus on is to defend myself. The fight tendency when I feel I have to defend myself.
2) Control:
There are many instances ways to control when we supervise we have to do some variations of controlling other people. In a working environment there are many instances we can control. Now when this is triggered to create an instinctive reaction is what we feel is someone is putting his thumb on you to try to get you to do what they want because they can. “I’m the boss and I can control this on you, you can’t even think about that” I don’t know, but when someone puts their power on us and control us in some way, we feel like we want to bite that thumb and that control over us, and do anything to defend ourselves because we feel like we’re being attacked and that’s instinctive and tend to be a normal reaction.
3) Strategy:
And in this sense strategy does not mean strategic thinking and thinking about what might happen if. Strategy for Gayb means manipulation. In Gayb’s terminology what triggers a defensive reaction and instinctive defensive reaction is “I’m trying to manipulate you and I make a strategy what I want maybe without you knowing what I want, so I’m trying to manipulate you”
When people discover that they’re being manipulated, their instinctive reaction is not, okay fine, I know what you want, I’ll do what you want, it’s rather to show them that we don’t get away with this and we start to respond defensively.
4) Neutrality:
Sometimes we think about neutrality that it is not bad to be neutral in a position as it is not completely right or wrong it is just neutral. What Gayb meant by neutrality is maybe what puts it in the category of “lack of consider”. As neutrality in Gayb’s world is “I do not care what you think, you have an idea I completely ignore it and do not give her enough attention and my time and my response is that you have to be silent in such problems. We’re thinking about what our reaction should be if we have someone who’s dealing with us like that? We try to scratch figuratively and in most cases we will try to attack that person because you attack me and to me my opinion does not matter or I do not know enough about this situation, or by neutrality you just ignore me and you did not pay attention to what I was saying. For example I said something in class and you just ignored it. This will tend to an instinctive defensive reaction.
5) Superiority:
Superiority can mean I know more than you, I am the boss and you have to do what I say because I am better and smarter than you. As we said it is very easy to think that reaction would be to someone who operates superiority we get defensive and we try to attack them because we feel that we are being attacked.
6) Certainty:
Certainty is I know I’m right because I know I’m always right, we’ve been doing this for 25 years, that’s what we’re going to do, or we’re going to do it because I said we’re going to do it, any of these things that you convey the communication perspective that you are absolutely right and all the other answers must be absolutely wrong.
When someone treats us with certainty our reaction is to prove them wrong. They are wrong because we felt an attack. Although they may not say it directly, but the idea that he is always right means I’m wrong. Which makes me feel attacked and ignites my instinctive reaction, not yes, you’re right and always right, it tends to provoke a defensive reaction.
The communication perspective that you are absolutely right and therefore the other answer must be completely wrong.
We do not focus on those behaviors because sometimes we evaluate people, sometimes we have to control situations, or treat each other impartially because we do not have enough time to listen to them or because we are in charge or because we are superior position. We still need to remember that if we want to send a message that sounds as evaluation, control, strategy, neutrality, superiority, or certainty, that the natural reaction we are going to get to that will be either physically leave and shut down or attacking. They can be completely physically attacked and can choose to remain silent. They can be looking to us but are not listening to us. Or we fight back usually verbally, we fight back with words because we feel that we have to, because we feel that we are being attacked.
The good news is that Gibbs has also identified six other behaviors that counter each of those defensive climate behaviors:
Instead of evaluation or judging you or telling me that I’m inconsiderate or rude, we can’t intangibly see what inconsiderate means as those are describing behaviors of what rude or inconsiderate actually looks like.
Supportive and Defensive Climate Behaviors:
1) Description —– vs. Evaluation:
to be not evaluated, but to describe: the description means to say in my mind what is rude means before I say it with my mouth, wait a little and tell myself what it means to be rude? What does he or she do or said was rude? When we describe the answer to ourselves thinking about what I heard you say or what I saw doing from you. And that’s the language we use to deal with problems if we talk about a problem we’re facing or a situation, and usually some evaluation if we’re solving a problem. Easier to deal with a problem if I am describing behaviors that I have observe. “If we decide that you are rude because you laughed before I was ready or you did not show up for class on time, here I am evaluating what is rude”. What would be better for me when we talk about it, for example: I’m concerned because you did not show up for class more than once, or I’m bothered by yesterday example when you laughed when I was not ready for that. This is should be the language when we are describing.
Will I use this description to move away from defensive climate reactions? The sad reality is no. Because we can’t control other people “even if we want to” what we can control is just controlling our behaviors. And if we talk about what we’ve seen or heard about there’s less likely to hear from other people to stay in self-defense because they’re less likely to hear that they’re instinctively feeling threatened, they’re going to act on that feeling, and that’s what we’ve been trying to avoid, we’ve been trying to create a supportive climate, a climate where I feel welcome and encouraged to talk, I feel like if I talked, I wouldn’t be attacked from someone in return, and that’s what we want to do in description.
2) Problem Orientation —– vs. Control:
We talked that control is i control you with my thumb and you have to do whatever I say whatever happens, because whatever the reason I will tell you what to do and of course the reaction to that instinct is self-defense as we said.
If I control you and tell you to do this on a specific day, I have to ask myself “Why?” why is it triggering that need for me, and this is what we should be reacting.
What we need to do is to the problem orientation, I think the easiest way to think about the direction of the problem is that we can separate the problem from the person we are talking to.
If you do something for me you have to stop doing, what we have to do is put the problem in front of us figuratively and imagine it in front of us, take the problem apart from the individuals.
“You need to show up in class on time” this description but also control and lead to a direct instinctive defense instead of “you need to show up on time” we say “the office should be opened by 8AM, and because you are the person who comes late, that’s critical” so that is the problem is the office has not been opened on time for the past 3 days, or that the problem is that the trash is not getting out on time for the weekly trash collection, or that the clothes are still on the ground instead of being in their place. So we think about what the problem is by using the separation between the problem and the person itself, trying to talk about the problem as if it were something in front of us, this will help us to create and maintain a supportive climate.
Is that guaranteed? The sad reality is no, but if you think about it from your own perspective when you see someone in control of you, don’t take it in a way that you need to defend yourself instinctively because you feel that you are under threat. If we have someone in front of us to ask about a problem that needs to be solved, we’ll be less likely to feel attacked, and that’s what we have to do.
3) Spontaneity —- vs. Strategy:
As we have said, manipulating do not encourage a supportive climate for understanding, but if they think about being open and spontaneous this will reduce the likelihood of a sense of defense in the other. I’m open and honest with you, I’m not trying to manipulate you or hide issues —-.”
4) Empathy vs. Neutrality:
We also said that neutrality conveys the feeling that I don’t care about you or what you say and we will do what I say and opinions make no difference to me. Empathy is that I really try to see things from your own perspective, I do care about you and your opinions, I may not agree with your opinions but I am communicating to you that I care to hear your opinions and understand your point of view and value your perspective. i can say that the point of view is not effective for this problem but at first I want to hear many different opinions with points of view I want to hear your point of view, I want to take care of your perspective on this view, if people suspect that there are other important and effective opinions said by a co-worker that matters a lot and will lead to creating and maintaining a supportive climate between people a place where I feel that I can share my opinions and people will care to hear them.
5) Equality —- vs. Superiority
As we said superiority is i am smarter and better and more beautiful than anyone else. I know more about her than my colleagues in it, for example, but I also want to realize very well that they also know things That I do not know and that they are better than me, and that’s what we mean by equality.
If you keep this perspective, we are all equal unless there is something that needs someone who has experience in this matter, and there are situations where I need to hear you and act based on what You said. If we treat some with equality, we will have a much greater opportunity to create and maintain supportive climate in which we feel more comfortable in solving problems and dealing with issues.
6) Provisionalism — vs. Certainty:
As we said certainty is there is no place for opinions only my opinion is the right temporary behavior is to open the door a little bit for discussion because I am likely to be wrong.
Provosionalism is to leave the door a little to open up the space to accept opinions and it is possible to be true and help us more. It’s easy to do that if we want to. It’s easy to say “I know” instead of “I think this is the right thing to do.” Or “I think the last Friday we used that method and it worked and we both agreed on this” we have to recognize and accept that we might forget some memories and we are not always tend to be right.
What we have to think about is that we want to use behaviors if we are the one sending messages because we send messages to be sure that we are focusing on description, open and honest to the opinions of others, treat all people equally and open the door to change and accept different ways. The sender of the messages must maintain those behaviors.
Yes, it’s not easy, but that’s what sets us apart from the way wild animals think. Wild animals don’t think but act based on their instinctive feelings. People also have a instinctive feeling, but we are critical in thinking about what we’re going to choose how to behave. I’m going to choose to act not personally in self-defense, and I can. I can suck it up and say I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. I can force myself when I’m receiving messages that I control my feelings and try to get the person in front of me to get to a place that understands us supporting the behaviors that we mentioned as a receiver, I don’t want to fall into this trap that I act in self-defense without thinking, I can be aware of my feelings and instincts but I want to act in a way that helps to maintain an supportive climate and this is more difficult if we receive messages from someone who attacks us we have to think about how we have to think. Unfortunately, personal communication is not guaranteed, but what we have to do is to improve communication in relationships: by maintaining a supportive, not defensive, climate. Both, the sender and sender of communication messages using behaviors that contribute to a supportive climate.
prepared by Dr. Fatin Mirza