Defensiveness: The Telltale Sign of Lack of Low Learning Agility

Have you worked with highly intelligent people who often become defensive when confronted with new ideas they are unfamiliar with, or when given feedback? If so, they probably score low on learning agility.

How can this be? Wouldn’t the smartest person in the room be the most learning agile? The short answer is no.

Defensive people might say, for example:

• • “Trust me, that wouldn’t work in our industry.”
  • “Of course I know that, but we can’t spend time and money on projects like this unless you can prove it will work.”

As opposed to: 

• • “That’s interesting.  Tell me more.  How would you address X?”
  •  “I’d like to bring some more people into this discussion so that we’re sure we’re including everyone who might have something to add to this discussion?”

Among the many misconceptions about learning agility is the notion that it is synonymous with learning ability. Learning ability is the ability to think and understand our environment. It’s a cognitive function. Learning agility is about moving quickly and flexibly through known and unknown situations. It’s a behavioral trait.

Sure, a person’s overall intelligence or learning ability is important…up to a point. A certain amount of it is certainly necessary, but once you cross a certain threshold, ability and agility become independent concepts, and smarter does not equal more learning agile.

At Burke Assessments, we associate learning agility with a growth mindset, a term derived from Carol Dweck’s work on mindset. She argues that there are two mindsets: fixed and growth. Smart people may think they know everything and get stuck in their own ways, fixed in their own thinking, unable to learn and unlearn.

Someone with a fixed mindset sees feedback as a judgment on whether or not they are measuring up. Feedback to a fixed mindset is threatening. Growth mindsets, on the other hand, see feedback as information that simply helps them know and understand better the areas in which they need to improve. As you can see, these are very different ways of looking at feedback.

Interestingly, the Burke Assessment measures nine dimensions: Flexibility, Speed, Experimentation, Performance Risk Taking, Interpersonal Risk Taking, Collaboration, Feedback Seeking, Information Gathering, and Reflection. 

While feedback can occur within each of these dimensions, five are more difficult to demonstrate without some element of feedback: Experimenting, Taking Performance Risks, Collaborating, and Seeking Feedback. This shows that defensiveness or resistance to feedback can be another barrier to learning agility. 

Everyone has a natural tendency to approach new learning situations in a certain way. The more learning agile a person is, the more of Burke’s nine skills he or she will be able to access. But defensiveness is a major roadblock, and it will repeatedly prevent us from hearing and appreciating the feedback that is so critical to our continuous improvement.

The good news is that developing learning agility is a major defensiveness killer.  Anyone can become more learning agile, no matter where they start. 

If you want to eliminate defensiveness from your organization’s culture, the Burke Learning Agility Assessment provides an innovative framework for doing so. 

Talk to us about incorporating the Burke Learning Agility Assessment into your leadership development program! We can help you.