How to talk to someone who won't take responsibility

^{Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it resonates with you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means knowing ourselves first.}

Happy Wednesday, founders.

In the last article, we looked at why people deflect after making mistakes, and the 11 types of psychological defence mechanisms developed by Anna Freud.

This week is the part I wish I'd read before my own conversation: what does the research say about how to actually respond when someone's defences are already up?

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In 2020, Itzchakov and colleagues designed an experiment to see whether high-quality listening reduces prejudice for speakers.

In a series of experiments, a few hundred participants were asked to reflect on any negative biases, feelings, or thoughts they had towards a particular social group. They were also encouraged to think concretely about what the bias means to them and to write a short description of the bias.

They were then asked to have a conversation with another person about the group they wrote about. Each participant was then paired with two types of listeners:

Researchers then measured four effects:

The results were consistent. Speakers who experienced high-quality listeners lowered their defences, listened better, and were able to delve deeper into their biases (increased self-insight) and, as a result, had greater openness to change their prejudiced attitude and became receptive to alternative opinions. Speakers paired with regular listeners showed no such change (Itzchakov et al., 2020).

How does simply listening well change their perspective?

In a later theoretical review, Weinstein and colleagues (2022) proposed an explanation for why this works. High-quality listening satisfies a basic psychological need for autonomy: the sense that their perspective exists, that it's been received, and your views aren’t being imposed on them.

When that need is met, the person's defensive position that was protecting their sense of agency loosens.

For founders, our instinct in an accountability conversation always tends to lead with correction: "This is what went wrong, and this is what I need."

Research suggests that the more effective resolution requires far more patience: listen first, with intent, empathy, and curiosity; once their defences are lower, introduce the alternative view.

Bradley and Campbell (2016) studied what makes difficult workplace conversations succeed or fail through three studies.

In the first, they interviewed 24 experienced nurse managers about their most difficult conversations. All managers reported that delivering negative feedback to a team member routinely produced denial, defensiveness, or outright resistance. Some conversations had been repeated for years without resolution. One manager described the pattern plainly: the person knows they're in trouble, so they attack, deflect, or accuse the manager of bullying because their sense of professional identity is being questioned.

The researchers noticed a common theme across the interviews: the managers were aiming at three competing goals at once:

Most of the time, managers lean towards the task goal by leading with control, evaluation, and persuasion. The relational goal came second, if it came at all.

Their third study went further and tested this experimentally. 204 participants read a scenario where a supervisor delivered negative performance feedback, and three variables were manipulated:

Face-giving, protecting the other person's sense of worth, was the only variable that consistently predicted better outcomes across the board: higher satisfaction with the conversation, less desire to withdraw, and less desire to retaliate (Bradley & Campbell, 2016).

When face-giving was absent, being both honest and tentative produced the highest level of retaliation among the conditions.

For most leaders, the instinct is to lead with honesty and openness, but without ensuring their sense of professional worth is protected, this seemingly fair approach would only trigger a defensive reaction.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.

Until next week,
Lavena

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