Don’t get defensive

The fastest way to signal “don’t promote me”

👋 Hi, it's Greg and Taylor. Welcome to our newsletter on everything you wish your CEO told you about how to get ahead.

Many years ago, my wife Cindy co-founded a company with some highly credentialed Stanford MBAs. We invited the leadership team and investors to our house to make a fancy dinner together with a chef – a team-building activity to celebrate the launch of the company.

One of the Stanford MBAs was in charge of the pesto, and the recipe called for two cloves of garlic. When we came to eat the food, the pesto was so garlicky that it was inedible.

I asked him: “Hey, is there any chance you put in two bulbs of garlic instead of two cloves?”

“No,” he said. “No way, I followed the directions exactly.”

He refused to admit it. He would not take the feedback. In other words, he got defensive – and that turned out to be the kind of executive he was. Two years later, when we pushed him out, we reflected, “We should have known he was defensive … from the second he refused to admit his mistake with the garlic.” Listen – he was 30 at the time, and he went on to have a great career. But this trait turned up in his work in his early years, and it will do the same for you.

Defensiveness is my LEAST favorite quality in rising executives. I very rarely promote people who show much defensiveness – and when I do, I usually can’t contain my frustration.

Defensiveness creates work for other people. It makes it harder to collaborate and adds friction to feedback sessions and reviews. As a rising executive, you NEED to master the art of accepting criticism – or risk being passed over for promotions by those who can.

Here’s how to do it.

Greg

The reactions that signal a junior mindset

Here are the common defensive response patterns that mark you as not ready:

Justification: “But I did try that”

Blame shifting: “That's not my fault”

Insecurity: “We put a lot of work into this”

Deflection: “I don't think you understand the situation”

Rebuttal: “Yeah, but it did work in these ways…”

Shutdown: Silence, visible frustration, or withdrawal

These reactions are instinctive, but they're promotion killers. They signal to your boss that you can't handle the harder conversations that come with senior roles.

How to reframe unwelcome feedback

The natural reaction to getting critical feedback is to think: “They’re wrong – it’s not my fault.”

Instead, try to think: This person is showing me a blind spot.

A blind spot doesn’t mean “you’re bad at your job,” or even that your work quality is bad. It could be:

• You’ve got the “here and now” covered, but to grow the business, you need to think 18 months ahead

• You’re doing great work, but you’re not communicating well and people are not aligned because of it

• You’re missing another team’s priorities – aka, how the product roadmap is affecting marketing timelines

Seeing feedback as a blind spot helps process feedback that:

• You don’t agree with

• Is based on a limited information

• Is delivered in a non-ideal way

• Doesn’t acknowledge your hard work

The 3-second intervention

It’s easy to think of feedback as a blind spot in theory – less easy when your boss is giving you critical feedback you think is stupid.

The key is learning to recognize your defensive triggers BEFORE your mouth starts moving. You have about 3 seconds to intervene before your biological defensive response takes over.

Physical signals to watch for:

• Heat rising in your face or chest

• Tension in your jaw, shoulders, or hands

• Faster breathing or fidgeting

Mental signals:

• The word “but” forming in your mind

• Story construction – mentally building your rebuttal

• Blame scanning – thinking of other people or factors to point to

When you catch these signals, use this emergency toolkit:

The physical reset: Breathe out slowly, relax your jaw, lean forward slightly – even smile

The mental circuit breaker: Tell yourself, “They’re pointing out a blind spot, and I owe it to my work and career to listen”

How to respond

The key in responding is to ask questions, rather than give a counter-argument or explanation. Here are the steps:

1. Pause. Then pause again. Let me repeat: PAUSE.

2. Make sure you understand what is being said. (“To make sure I’m understanding you correctly, are you saying …?”)

3. Understand "the gap” – the difference between their expectations and your performance

4. Tell them you appreciate the feedback. Even if it stings.

Now you have a choice: continue the conversation, or buy yourself time. If the feedback can be taken at face value, make it simple: Agree, say you’ll act on it, conversation over.

If the feedback is more nuanced and complex, you need to have a conversation. If you have time left in the meeting and you’re in a good mental space (ready to hear more feedback), you can have it now. But more likely, you’ll need to buy yourself time.

Say something like: “I want to think about this properly. Can we continue this conversation tomorrow morning?” I admit this is harder on Zoom, but still possible – so ask for time if you need it.

How to recover if you get defensive

If you couldn’t resist, and got defensive or pushed back on the feedback, it's not too late (hopefully). Unlike an email that you can’t unsend, you can regroup and ask for another conversation with your boss or colleague.

Take the time to reflect, and decide what part of the feedback was valid and that you valued. Talk it through with your boss or peer within 48 hours (not longer).

And if you really think the feedback was off – or could have been delivered more effectively – that might be the moment to also offer some feedback in return. But only after you have cooled off.

My advice

Listen, I know this is hard. After 42 years of marriage and at least six marriage therapists, I could get a degree in being defensive – although even my wife did come to my defense when one therapist accused me of being a shallow narcissist. But that’s another post.

It’s all about the pause. Buy time for your brain and body to slow down and process the feedback.

Getting defensive will be even less tolerable in the age of AI. When I work with AI, I give it brutally direct feedback (never too rude – I am Canadian, after all).

AI loves it. It never gets defensive; it just acknowledges the shortcoming and immediately starts to fix its work.

The job of a rising executive is to make life easier for the people around them (especially those above them). Defensiveness does the opposite. It creates work for the person giving the feedback – they have to repeat themselves, try a different approach, and generally expend more effort to get you to handle the input. Too. Much. Hassle.

So take a beat, reframe the feedback, and buy yourself time to process and respond. And remember, most of the time, the feedback is probably somewhat accurate and points to a legitimate blind spot.

Have a great week,
Greg

P.S. I’m presenting my new keynote, Losing Our Minds: How to Use AI to Get Smarter (not Dumber), on July 11. It’s free — see you there.