Lower the Defense Shield

Are you aware that there is a Defense shield around us that is enabled at all times and protects us constantly from Constructive criticism, Peer feedback and any kind of Good advice for our future endeavors?

As you might have figured out by now I am talking about our “Defensive behavior pattern” when it comes to taking feedback from our peers, leads, managers and senior management so that our actions and endeavor are in line with the firm’s vision and policies. It is always an uphill battle to control one’s “Defense Shield” as it pretty much behaves as an evil twin trying to hit any piece of advice or feedback that comes my way out of the park.

Consider a situation, One your peers comes up to you and starts to talk about how you could have handled a Client call in a better manner or how your deliverable had a major bug. More often than not within a few minutes of the initiation of this dialogue we close down our audio channels and mind to receive any part of such feedback and raise our shields fueled by ego, pride, superiority complex and other forms of fuel that stops us from accepting that more often than not each of us could be less than perfect and the feedback coming our way is just what we need to get back in line.

Over the years I have realized that one has to “Lower the defense Shield” as this works contrary to our belief and ends up just pushing us two steps backwards in the task at hand. By not accepting any form of feedback we limit ourselves to our very own cocoon and end up being left behind in the race to professional and personal growth. This does not just apply to workplace environment but applies to our home as well. Any of us can think of countless instances where we have refused a good piece of advice/ feedback coming from our parents, spouse or even our kids.

What does this behavior result in ??

An initial feeling of winning a self-waged war followed by a defeat in our endeavors and finally one’s mind would be clouded by feelings of sadness, anger and self-contempt on the inability to listen and understand what was the correct path all along.

This idea was wonderfully put in words by one of Senior leaders in my workplace.

“Do not let your short term ego come in the way of your long term career”.