Defensiveness born of ignorance, and in the darnedest places!

When you get your first “real job,” it doesn’t take you long to realize that the learning has only begun.  A degree is a good first step—and a ticket in—but there is no substitute for experience.  Depending on the field, there may be business, or technical, and/or project management skills to build.  In nearly any field, there are new arenas of human relations to navigate and demystify.

Of all project management skills, it took me longer to get good at estimating a large project timeline than any other one thing.  On the human relations side, I would occasionally encounter a perplexing defensiveness I couldn’t explain.  I’d be talking to someone, and the person would suddenly and noticeably become more curt, with less eye contact and perhaps even a touch of impetuousness.

It took me some years to reliably identify it, but I finally did.  The sudden hostility happens when a person either knows s/he should be able to answer something you’ve asked him/her, or should be able to discuss a subject intelligently, but can’t.  The person has prepared insufficiently, or not at all, and s/he believes you’re getting too close to exposing him/her.

I’m seeing a lot of this behavior right now—whenever Barack Obama or John Kerry talks about Syria.

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