Defensiveness Kills Progress
What We’re Reading
This week, we’re reading “Great Leaders Know Which Emotions Their Feedback Will Trigger,” by Bin Zhao, Fernando Olivera, and Amy C. Edmondson, published in Harvard Business Review on July 13, 2026.
The authors have studied how people learn from mistakes for more than ten years. Their big takeaway: How people feel about feedback matters more than the feedback itself.
When someone receives feedback, they don’t just process the information. They also interpret what that feedback says about them. If they stay focused on the work, they can look at what went wrong and learn from it. But if the feedback triggers emotions like shame or fear, they may become defensive, shut down, or disengage.
Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about the feedback itself: Is it clear? Is it accurate? Did I explain the problem well enough? We spend less time considering the emotional response the conversation might create.
But that raised another question for us: How responsible can you really be for someone else’s emotional response?
Our Take
We think there’s an important distinction here.
You are not responsible for managing another adult’s emotions. Even the most emotionally intelligent person in the world can give thoughtful, well-intentioned feedback and still get a defensive response.
You are responsible for understanding the environment you’re walking into and considering how your approach might contribute to what happens next.
That means knowing the person you’re talking to when you can, reading the room, understanding the organizational environment, and recognizing how the broader system may shape how your message lands.
And if someone does get defensive, that doesn’t necessarily mean you failed.
Instead, it gives you more information.
That’s where curiosity becomes incredibly useful. You might ask: What did I do that could have contributed to that response? Is there something I could have done differently?
But then there’s another question we don’t ask nearly enough: What is the system’s part of the mess?
Maybe this person has received similar feedback badly in the past. Maybe mistakes are punished in your organization. Maybe there’s very little trust between employees and management. Maybe feedback has historically been used as a weapon instead of an opportunity to learn.
The reaction you’re seeing may be about you. It may be about them. It may be about the environment. Most likely, there are pieces of all three.
That’s why understanding the system matters.
Takeaways
Before you give feedback, consider the situation you’re walking into. Think about the person, the environment, the history, and how your message is likely to land.
If you get a defensive response, resist the temptation to immediately defend yourself. Get curious instead. You can acknowledge what you’re seeing and ask what contributed to the reaction.
And when a conversation goes badly, look at all three parts of the mess: What was your part? What was the other person’s part? And what was the system’s part?
The goal isn’t to take responsibility for someone else’s emotions. It’s to develop enough awareness to understand what is happening around you and enough skill to respond productively when the conversation doesn’t go the way you expected.
If this sounds familiar, it’s exactly the kind of situation we’ll be digging into during our live training, Fixing the Problem Without Becoming the Problem, on September 29. We’ll talk about understanding the problem, the people and political landscape around it, and the skills you need to navigate these conversations more effectively.
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