SuperLeaders: RESpond
In This Episode
When defensiveness shows up, conversations shut down. Learn the SuperLeader skill that will help you connect instead.
Want to dig a little deeper? Check out the research our guest referenced in the episode:
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien, narrating: Hello, and welcome to The LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host and LifeLabs' leadership trainer, Vanessa Tanicien. In each episode, my Labmates and I distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills – the smallest changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time.
Vanessa Tanicien: Hello, LeaderLab listeners. If you are here today, it's because you are interested in SuperLeaders, and what SuperLeaders do differently, specifically decreasing anxiety and creating psychological safety for themselves and for those who are around them. Basically, you definitely want to be one. And in order to help me usher in another SuperLeader trait, we have Robleh Kirce back in the lab. Robleh is our Head of Research, as well as a particularly interesting individual, because I just found out that he was the lead singer of a boy band called Too Fresh. Welcome back to the lab, Robleh.
Robleh Kirce: Hey. Thanks, Vanessa. And I just want to say I couldn't have made it without my backup singers, so shout out to those guys.
Vanessa Tanicien: I love how you're not even going to name drop them. They're just the backup dudes. All good. All good.
Robleh Kirce: Hey, we got limited time.
Vanessa Tanicien: You're the star.
Robleh Kirce: Limited time.
Vanessa Tanicien: So Robleh, we are talking SuperLeaders, those folks that are super motivating, super influential, and honestly make work a better place to be. So I'm curious, what are we really diving into today?
Robleh Kirce: Well, today, we're diving into how to respond in conversation with folks, and I'm going to put that in contrast with defensiveness. And we all know what defensiveness sounds like, looks like, even sometimes smells like. It's really what we're trying to avoid in most of our conversations. Instead of being defensive, we want to respond.
Vanessa Tanicien: Got you. So before we get into this responsive conversation, can you walk me through your thinking around defensiveness and how it can get in the way of folks being SuperLeaders?
Robleh Kirce: Sure, sure. Well, first, let me just start with a quick definition. Defensiveness is that attempt to resist an attack. And we can do that in a couple different ways. We can kind of withdraw. You've also got where you're going to defend your position. And then occasionally, we'll go on the attack. The problem with defensiveness is often we don't even realize we're doing it. It very likely will trigger the exact same thing in our communication partner. So they start getting defensive, and that's how we end up going to battle rather than accomplishing a solution together.
Vanessa Tanicien: Can you give a couple of examples of what a defensive response might sound like?
Robleh Kirce: What do you mean, Vanessa? I feel like I've been pretty clear today.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay, point taken. So defensiveness is this need to deflect, attack, or give excuses, right, for what we have chosen to do in the past?
Robleh Kirce: We get this emotional response that is very attuned to the physical response we would have if someone was coming to physically attack us. It's, in short, a fear response.
Vanessa Tanicien: So this reminds me of that conversation we just had on SuperLearning in our wrap-up, where the ego just gets in the way. So right now, let's zoom back into being able to respond. How does that help us deal with this ego issue?
Robleh Kirce: Well, there are a couple different ways to deal with ego, or this defensiveness. Joshua Hart lays out a really good literature review on a couple different strategies you can use. They're very tricky to develop. It's about attachment styles, which you pick up when you're quite young, self-esteem, which can take a bit to boost as well, and our world views. So things like religion, for example, philosophy, meaning in life. Now, I could sit and try to talk to you for 10 minutes about how to build those three things.
Vanessa Tanicien: Only 10 minutes?
Robleh Kirce: It would be pretty tricky.
Vanessa Tanicien: Wow, you are confident.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah. That's high self-esteem. Instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to share with you the behaviors that folks that already have high levels of secure attachments, self-esteem, the behaviors that they use in conversations that makes them distinct to folks that get defensive.
Robleh Kirce: So let's move it on and talk about what it looks like to respond in the conversation. So RES, RESpond, stands for three things, recognize, explore, and seek responsibility. So first, we'll start with recognizing, and that has to do with that self-awareness piece, "Hey, I have a defensive reaction right now." So it's starting with how it feels in your body. And where do you feel that? If you start to get that tension or you get triggered in the conversation, where do you recognize it?
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. I start to feel a little bit of heat in my face. This reminds me of what we were talking about with Massella a few episodes back on affect labeling. So first, recognizing the response, and I remember from that episode that it's actually self-soothing. It calms you almost immediately.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah. You got it. So you could put a label to it, if you'd like, which is something that can help calm you down. But simply just recognizing that you are having that reaction is really what we're seeking for here. And yeah, exactly right. Usually, it's heat on the face, heat on the neck, heat on the hands. Once you recognize it, the second step here is explore. Now, explore in more depth the other person's perspective. Here, we're trying to understand them. Now, putting this into a behavior, it's just asking a question that'll allow us to better understand.
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. And I think what's super cool about that is that we often talk about empathy, but there are two kinds. There's social empathy, which is, Okay, I feel how you're feeling," but cognitive empathy is the way that we can actually understand how a person might be thinking, which is the next level up. And it makes us better communicators when we can develop that cognitive empathy.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah. Anyone that's worked with me before has heard me say that influence is almost always preceded by the other party feeling understood.
Robleh Kirce: That third step is seeking responsibility. Now, this is the tough part. We use defensiveness as a way of distancing ourselves from some past behavior, or someone's current perception of us. And in seeking responsibility, instead of stepping back, we're stepping forward and acknowledging, "What did I do that contributed to this reality?" And this is an authentic look at myself to actually embracing what the person has to say and makes for a much more productive conversation.
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. That idea to validate that person's experience, but also taking the time to understand one's own contributions to the equation. It takes two to tango.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah.
Vanessa Tanicien: It's a famous statement for a reason, right?
Robleh Kirce: Yeah, absolutely. And let's make it a nice dance. It doesn't have to be a battle.
Vanessa Tanicien: So Robleh, I desperately want to learn how to respond.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. Give me an example of a time where you feel you've been defensive in the past.
Vanessa Tanicien: This comes to mind very easily. I have a colleague who told me that I'm a bad participant, that I don't know when to sit back and let others lead.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah, in the moment, let's go through the RESpond, RESpond process. Now, first is recognizing that you felt some kind of way. What happened in the moment that queued you into, "Okay, I'm a little triggered right now"?
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah, I just felt that moment of tightness in my body.
Robleh Kirce: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And that's all we need to recognize the moment. You feel tight. We've recognized this is a place where we could be defensive, and instead, we're going to respond. That's recognized. Then we want to explore and explore their perspective, kind of try it on for a moment. So what's a question you could have asked that would've helped you better understand him?
Vanessa Tanicien: Can you give me some recent examples where that happened?
Robleh Kirce: Yeah, sure. "What's an example of something I did that made me a bad participant?" That's going to give us better understanding. And then I might ask, "What else made you feel that way?" Or, "What is it about how I did that, that made you feel that way?" We're really just trying to de blur and understand his perspective. Then we want to move on to taking responsibility. What do you think he was paying attention to that you could take some responsibility for? What did you do that made him feel that way?
Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. I think what is important is that everybody should have co-ownership of the space and the experience, and I could have possibly been taking up a little bit more space than I needed to. So even saying that now makes me understand that even a bit more.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah, sure. And now, you understand it a bit more, and think about how he will feel you've taken responsibility for it. That's going to calm him down. It calms you down in the process, and it makes you somebody that anyone can say anything to. I don't know that there's such a thing as true superpowers, but that's pretty close to it.
Vanessa Tanicien: So SuperLeaders know how to respond. How do you imagine this showing up? And where are the most important places for our SuperLeaders to be using this skill?
Robleh Kirce: Where can't you use it, Vanessa? You can use it in feedback conversations. You can use it in performance review season, and even inside a meeting. Often when we share ideas, we hear questions back, or we hear statements back, and that triggers defensiveness. You can use it, my guess, in almost every meeting you have, and with your significant others too.
Vanessa Tanicien: I mean, we don't call them life's most useful skills for nothing, right? And that brings us to our LeaderLab listener experiment. So Robleh, what should our SuperLeaders be experimenting within their laboratories of life?
Robleh Kirce: Go ask someone for some feedback. When they give you some feedback, RES, respond to what you hear. Start by recognizing how it feels in your body, explore their perspective so you truly understand, and then seek responsibility, find something you can authentically take responsibility for, and then move forward with the rest of the conversation.
Vanessa Tanicien: Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to being a little bit more respondy, let's call it that, in my SuperLeader life. Thanks, Robleh.
Robleh Kirce: Hey, Godspeed.
Vanessa Tanicien: And that's a wrap of another episode of The LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe and share this with at least one other person, so we can all be SuperLeaders. It's pretty awesome. The LeaderLab is executive produced and hosted by me, Vanessa Tanicien. NeEddra James is our senior producer, and Alana Burman is our Director and Editor. If you'd like to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn at LifeLabs Learning, and on Twitter at LifeLabs Learn. To bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you in the lab soon.
