Defensiveness Causes Big Problems in Relationships

 Jim Tamm, a judge from California, has researched the problems caused by defensiveness.  In this Ted Talk - Cultivating Collaboration: Don't be so Defensive! -  he offers his insight on how to lower your personal defensiveness and thus increase your ability collaborate with every group that you are a part of.  

Here are some questions to help you garner main points from the material and make a few personal applications:

1. How do red zone chickens become stars?
2. Describe a Red Zone environment
3. What is the difference between internally competitive and externally competitive?
4. What happens when we become defensive?
5. In which of your relationships do you find yourself being very defensive?
6. What increases when you decrease your defensiveness?
7. How did you feel after the speaker’s actions at 8:08 in the video?
8. What are we defending ourselves from when we get defensive?
9. What are the areas of our 3 big fears? **Which of those 3 is causes the biggest defensive reaction in you?
10. What are the 5 steps the speaker gives to become less defensive?
11. Why is it important to acknowledge your defensiveness?
12. What is a good way for you to slow down your physiology?
13. What negative self-talk do you use?
14. What action step can you make that is directly related to your own signs of defensiveness?
15. Below are listed common signs of defensiveness from the video:  Which of these do you use?

• Withdrawal into deadly silence
• Playing poor me
• All or nothing thinking
• Wanting to be right
• Blaming or shaming others
• Sudden drop in IQ/confusion
• High charge of energy in the body
• Catastrophizing everything
• Wanting the last word
• Obsessive thinking
• Flooding with information to prove a point