Your objective, of course, is to change her behavior through counseling. However, you need to realize that your first choice goal is her least likely option. Most likely, Susan will act defensively. She may leave the counseling session and may even leave the organization. While your goal is to change the person's undesirable behavior, her goal is to preserve or even enhance her self-concept.

Understanding how people can react to negative feedback can help you better prepare for such counseling sessions and help guide them to choose the best option: working together to change their behavior.

How Defense Mechanisms Help Preserve Our Self-Concept

When you evaluate the behaviors of your individual contributors, you need to be aware that you may be observing an individual's defense mechanism rather than getting at the real problem.

Defense mechanisms are learned behaviors that usually operate at the unconscious level to help preserve or enhance the opinions we have about ourselves. Although defense mechanisms involve a certain amount of denial and distortion of reality, they are only harmful if we carry them to such an extreme that we don't assume responsibility for our behaviors.

Defense mechanisms help us maintain our self-concept as we move through the daily stresses of our personal and organizational life. However, if we persist in using our defense mechanisms even after we receive feedback from supervisors or peers, this can be unhealthy; it prevents us from learning from our experiences and growing as balanced personalities.  There are six defense mechanisms.  They are: rationalization, repression, displacement, denial of reality, attrition, and projection.

Rationalization

This is probably the most common defense mechanism. Everyday we hear examples of rationalization like this: "I might as well come to work late, everyone else does." Or "I wasn't really late on my deadline, since my boss wouldn't have read my report that day."

Rationalization helps us invent excuses for something we don't really want to do, or it can help us hide disappointment when we do not achieve a goal we set for ourselves.

Repression

This defense mechanism helps us suppress experiences and thoughts that are painful, dangerous, or fearful. Repression keeps us from thinking about an undesirable experience by blocking that experience out of our consciousness. This defense mechanism consumes a lot of energy and hinders healthy personal growth.

Displacement

This defense mechanism shifts blame or anger from the person it was originally intended for to a less powerful person. For example, let's say your boss calls you into his office and disciplines you for something you had little control over. Since it's near merit-increase time, you don't want to alienate him. So you internalize your hurt feelings rather than speak out. That evening as you arrive home, your spouse greets you at the front door with good news about how wonderful the garden is growing. Without thinking, you scream that you don't care about the darn garden and just want to eat dinner. Your spouse now has hurt feelings but internalizes them. Later, your oldest son comes home from playing at the neighbor's house, and your spouse scolds him for playing rather than cleaning up his bedroom. Your son goes to his bedroom and kicks the dog for lying on his waterbed. The poor animal is confused. If the dog understood individual human behavior, it would go and bite the boss!

Denial of Reality

When we refuse to discuss unpleasant topics or deal with difficult situations, we may be denying reality. For example, we may refuse to discuss death and dying. Poor students may deny their inability to master a school subject by claiming students who received high scores on an examination were just lucky. This denial of reality mechanism can also keep help desk people from realistically evaluating their situations and learning from their past mistakes.

Attrition

This defense mechanism permits people to leave the situation—either mentally or physically. If they can, they may simple walk away from threatening feedback from peers or supervisors. If they cannot physically leave the situation, then they mentally tune out the source of the threat.

Projection

This defense mechanism permits people to transfer their mistakes, shortcomings, and failures to others. For example, a help desk person who is not resolving the number of problems in the time required may claim the standard is unfair. The real problem may be that person is unable to meet the standard.

To read more about employee feedback, see HDI's focus book How to Give Meaningful Feedback to Increase Motivation and Productivity by Dr. Robert A. Zawacki and Laura L. Zawacki. This book is available on the HDI eStore at www.thinkhdiestore.com.