Receiving Feedback and Working with Defensiveness

What you'll learn

Receiving feedback can be uncomfortable, especially when a message challenges our judgement, comes from a difficult relationship or affects how we see ourselves. This self-paced course helps research managers, team leaders and others who lead or support colleagues recognise defensive reactions and respond constructively.

Learners explore three feedback triggers -Truth, Relationship and Identity- and identify their own early physical, mental and behavioural signals of defensiveness. The Pause-Clarify-Explore-Decide framework offers a practical way to slow down, ask for specific examples, explore the context and decide what to do next. The course also addresses poorly delivered feedback and ways to respond when another person becomes defensive.

A PDF presentation, five short video segments and case studies connect these ideas with workplace conversations. Learners practise separating a message’s substance from its delivery, clarifying broad judgements and developing concrete next steps. A Stop/Start/Preserve reflection helps them identify communication habits to change or retain and prepare a personal improvement plan.

Who it´s for

Research managers

Course objectives

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Identify personal feedback triggers and early physical, mental or behavioural signs of defensiveness.
• Apply the Pause-Clarify-Explore-Decide framework to a difficult feedback scenario.
• Distinguish the substance of feedback from its delivery and formulate questions that clarify specific examples.
• Draft a response to another person’s defensiveness that acknowledges their perspective and returns the discussion to specific work expectations.
• Develop a Stop/Start/Preserve improvement plan with concrete next steps for their own communication.

Completion & certification

Open acce​urse with no certification.

Lecturer

Dagmar Kaloudová

Institution

Enroll