You give clear feedback.
They push back, shut down, or explain why it’s not their fault.
Now the same mistakes keep happening.
Your managers are frustrated.
Your best people are carrying the load.
And you’re spending your time managing reactions instead of results.
This isn’t about skill.
It’s about how your team interprets feedback.
Most employees don’t hear feedback as “improve this.”
They hear it as “you’re not good enough.”
That triggers defensiveness, and once that happens, improvement stops.
In this episode, Shane Jacob breaks down what’s really happening inside your team and introduces The Worth-Work System:
Judge the Work. Protect the Person.
Separate behavior from identity
Make it safe to improve without feeling attacked
What changes:
Before:
After:
When people stop protecting themselves, they start improving.
If this is happening in your team, this is exactly what Shane trains leaders to fix.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Living Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. We're gonna bring something valuable, and I hope you can take it with you and help it improve your life and the people around you, the people that you lead, the people that you manage, the people that you love.
Focus today on the workplace, why people get defensive at work, and what we can, what we can do. Okay. So defensiveness at work. Okay. Now this is not just at work. Here's the real deal. People get defensive. Okay. I get defensive. I think you get defensive. Come on. Never.
I think people get defensive from time-to-time over things, okay? This really applies to everything, to marriage, to family, to all relationships, not just to work, but today we're gonna focus on the workplace.
Here's the key, this is a big deal. This is costing companies billions of dollars, way more than most companies realize. Now, the truth is, is that at companies and in relationships, it's not AI.
We're not robots, we're human beings. We are imperfect, we are complex, and by God, we are fragile. I'm telling you, human beings are fragile. We don't like to say it, particularly men. We gotta be tough and strong and never have any weakness, dammit, ever. But I'm here to tell you, human beings are fragile.
We are feeling beings, you know? I mean, whether I like to say it or not, we are feeling beings, and that's the way it is. And we are driven, our behavior is driven by our feelings on how we feel.
So let's just take a little look at this defensiveness and see what it is and where it comes from. I'll use an example, for example, a new hire, okay?
When people come on board, they wanna prove themselves. They want to be seen, they want you to think, their coworkers, their managers, their leaders, they want to be seen as capable, productive. They want to be a good team member. They want to be known as a good person. They want to be important.
Okay. It's not just good at the job. They want to prove that they are good. Okay. So that's what's in the mindset of people. And it's not just when they just started their new hire, people are actually think that in the background.
It doesn't take long. Let's go back to my new hire where training begins. Then correction begins, then feedback or, “Hey, I need you to change the way you're doing this. What you're doing isn't working.”
Okay. And as leaders, you know, we try to soften feedback. We try to make it easy to accept. We were, we're trained to, you know, compliment a lot before you tell anybody, change anything, give them nine compliments.
“Hey, you're wonderful. You did this great, and you did this great. And , so happy to have you here. You're a fabulous human being, and you did all these things. Great. Let's focus on what you did now.” Boom!
And it's still, there's a problem. Okay. Even when people try to soften feedbacks, even if they give compliments first, and, because here's what's happening.
People get triggered with defensiveness. It's just the way it is. Okay. And I'm to explain why.
Here's what's actually happening. Our brains, every human being's brain is constantly making meaning. We're trying to decide where we fit in. We're trying to decide about what our brain is always deciding for us. Everything that happens to us, everything in the world, all the circumstances outside of our control, all the human beings that do and say things to us and what we do and say, our brain is making meaning, and it's, and what it's making meaning is, is what does this mean about me? Okay.
And our brain is making value judgments about everything all the time, automatically in the background. And if we're not aware of it, it's just happening subconsciously. Okay.
So your brain is, is making a, this is happening 24/7 without your permission. It's just happening. Everything, but what people say, what people do, and all the circumstances, and what we do, our performance, our results, everything that's happening to us, our brain is making mean something about us. What does that mean about us?
Okay. Now, we all have a default setting, and that is, unless we intervene, and that is that our brain will lead us to believe something about ourselves that is, that leans, that is slanted towards the negative. Okay. Period.
The brain wants to protect, it wants to compare, it wants to judge ourselves, and it goes to the negative. Okay. And your brain automatically on default will look for reasons to say, “Hey, I'm not good enough here. Hey, they don't like me here. Hey, I messed up. I'm not good at this. I'm not capable. I look bad. I'm this kind of a person. I'm that. I'm not good enough. I'm not going to fit in here.” Blah, blah, blah. On and on and on. Okay.
A lot of times it's tied to whatever it's tied to. can, it's tied to whatever it's tied to. It doesn't really matter, but just for understanding sake, all of this meaning that we're making is because of previous input.
For example, if I've had a certain kind of childhood or if I've had childhood patterns or if I've been told this or if I've been in this kind of culture for a long time, my whole life, then I'm going to lean towards a certain belief system, meaning making. My brain is going to make a certain meaning a certain way. Okay?
If I've always had people telling me I can't do something, my brain's going to... The more that we hear thoughts, they become beliefs. So this step, we take patterns that we've heard from kids, and we just repeat them and repeat them and repeat them. That becomes what we believe. Okay.
And as things happen, our brain feeds us thoughts based on our path. And those thoughts usually reinforce old beliefs because it's easier to keep thinking the same thing. And that's where defensiveness comes from.
Defensiveness is not usually conscious thinking, almost never. It just is a reaction.
Couple days ago, I got defensive and I didn't even know what was happening. You know what I did know? And you watch this about yourself. What I did know is I, could know that I didn't feel right. Okay.
I was getting angry. I was getting upset. I didn't even stop and slow down and think about why. I was just angry. Okay?
Defensiveness is not conscious thinking. Okay. This is important because most defensiveness is just not intentional, it's reactive.
And what happens when people get defensive? Now let's just understand why. Why are we getting defensive and what does that mean?
At work, somebody comes up to me and says, “Shane, you're doing a great job here.”
My brain goes, “Good job, Shane. You're a good person. You're doing great. That means you're, you're, you're good. That means your values up. That means you are this, a certain kind of a person. And it's a good kind of person. You're a good kind of person, Shane. You're good. You're a good employee.”
That's my brain feeds me all these thoughts immediately in the background.
Then they say to me, “However, Shane, there's a couple of things we need to change here about what you're doing, because what you're doing isn't working. I need you to change and do it this way.”
And immediately, if left to my own, my brain can begin to have thoughts like, “I didn't do it right. I didn't understand. I'm not good enough. I don't know what they're talking about.”
Then I can start making excuses, start blaming other people, start not taking responsibility or ownership for what I'm doing. I can shut down. Okay. A lot of times people just shut down. They just, like, tune you out. Okay. Get angry, they argue, they justify the point.
“Well, I did it. Well, I was told that, you know, they told me.”
And then you go into all the reasons why I did this thing. That is all defensiveness. Okay. They just stop listening a lot of times. There's so many things.
When people get defensive, they are unavailable for improvement. Okay. They're not going to do nothing until that defensiveness calms down.
And this is what takes so much time. This is why productivity and defensiveness is such a big deal in the workplace. It's everywhere. It's part of being a human being.
And by the way, just let me tell you, that's okay. Because you get defensive, and that's okay. Because you're a human being. You're going to get defensive. I don't know anybody that has no defensiveness ever. That person could be there. But I think what we can do is understand defensiveness. We can become defensive less ourselves, and we can recognize other people's defensiveness, and we can actually preempt it. We can proactively take steps to reduce and eliminate defensiveness in the workplace and in our relationships, and that's what this is about today.
Because what it ends up being is, because people are stuck in defensiveness, they are just not productive, they are not efficient, they're not effective, they have poor communication, they make more mistakes, they keep repeating the issues, and then they start negative cycles in the culture.
You're gonna complain and gossip and start rumors about all this, and it's ugly. Okay. The more, but no collaboration. We're not gonna work together. I'm not gonna cooperate, zero, and share ideas.
You think I have a good idea? Well, I'm not telling you. I had the most innovative idea. I'm not gonna stop making recommendations. I'm gonna stop, you know, bringing everything I have to the table because I am defensive right now.
You don't, they don't, that's not actually said out loud, but that's what's happening. That is the cost that we feel in companies. Okay. You're not going to innovate. I'm not going to take ownership. I'm not going to share the ideas. What I do do is gossip. I have more drama. I have more conflict. Okay. I got people wanting to quit, and I'm thinking about sueing the company, cause I can't believe he said that thing. It did that thing, and what he thinks about me, the way I've been treated here, and this and that and the other.
And I'm going to call the recruiter right now. And just, you know, just to get my name out there and throw it in the hat, just in case, because, you know, I can't take too much of that.
Getting defensive, okay, costs companies. Uh, it's a big, it's a big cost, and, um, 50 to 60% is an estimate. Okay. Of time spent by leaders is just to try to manage people issues. Okay, not doing real work.
My wife told me this when she, my wife's been in educational sales for a long time for her entire career. And she's a, she's in leadership. She's a top leader in a company and has been in the C-suite for a long period of time.
And she told me that when she began, when she first got into management, they told her that you're going to spend at least half your time managing people issues, not doing real work. And she thought, “How could that be?” And it is that way. Okay. I see it, hear it in companies and from her.
I mean, just think about it. Half the time is meant, trying is, is, is used in companies, approximately just trying to keep her to, to, to manage people's emotions is what it comes down to, how they feel.
Okay, which, by the way, as leaders and managers, we have no control over. So just keep that in mind.
We have tremendous influence, but a lot of times we don't know how to make it well.
And just let me tell you, there are tremendous leaders in this, in the world. Lots of them. I don't want to discount any of that. There are amazing leaders that study, and they're good, and they're selfless, and they're doing servant leadership, and they love their team, and it's not all about them, and they're doing the best they can.
I'm just saying here, I'm going to help you understand defensiveness and find a solution that I have created through experience and hard work that is going to, that makes a difference. Okay. That is true cultural culture change and that solves a lot of this, most or all defensiveness. Okay.
Just think about half your time being gone. Okay. You're paying somebody 50, you know, a 100% for getting 50% of the time on task.
It's not because people are bad. You know, we want to look a leaders and say, “They're lazy, they're stupid, they're broken, they're bad employees, they're the new generation, they're lazy, they've never been taught to do anything.”
“If they were back when I was a kid, we didn't do it. My generation is not that way. We, have work ethic. We're not a bunch of lazy, you know what. It's the new generation.”
Okay. It's that people are crazy. You know, I'm sure there's some of all of that, you know, here and there, but really defensiveness is, is none of that.
It's part of being a human being. It's a brain response. It's automatically happening. People don't even really know why. Okay. Unless they have enough awareness, they're that keyed in on themselves. They've developed themselves to a place to know what's actually going on and then what to do about it.
Okay. So a lot of times as leaders, we don't know either, and we're like, “Okay, well, we got to pay him more.”
I've tried all these, by the way. You know why I know? Because I've done it, and I've seen, I've got my ass handed to me. I've failed at it so many times.
Tried to pay more, tried to praise more, tried to be kind, tried to make you feel more important, more compliments, more flexibility, more responsibility. More structure, more give you more control over this and that and the other.
And you know what I got? It didn't work. You know, I found little improvements here or there, but I mean, they were still frustrated, and I was still frustrated, and still have declining performance over time, and unhappy people and leaving, and that, and just like no solution in mind.
It's very, it can be very discouraging. Okay.
The real problem was I was trying to solve the wrong problem. Okay. The problem is not just the behavior. The problem is what people are thinking about themselves.
And automatically, subconsciously, it's happening because that's the way our brain works. It makes meaning, and it leans, if we don't take control of it, towards negative.
So when we hear anything about how we're going to be retrained or a new policy or any feedback or any critique, on anything that we need to change or improve, even if it's teaching a new system, our brain, if we're not careful, will automatically go to, you know, that will make it mean something about ourselves, okay, in a negative way.
“Well, they don't think I'm very good. They must not value me. They must not think I'm coherent enough to make my own decisions. They have to micromanage everything because I'm not good enough.”
Basically, it comes down to some form of I'm not good enough in some way. You know, I'm not deserving. I'm not worthwhile. I'm not valuable enough. I'm a little bit deficient somehow.
Something about my value is, is, my brain has given me a message that what I'm hearing, I'm making meaning that it's making me, it's devaluing me. Okay.
And that's where the defensiveness come from. Then we fight back. That's what defensive is. We get on the defensive, and all the things that go into that are not productive.
They don't help anything that we're trying to accomplish in work. They're not helping the productivity of this, the profitability of this company.
And hey, by the way, over here at paydays every Tuesday, and it's not helping what's in your envelope on Tuesday at all. Because when the company is profitable, everybody wins, including Tuesday afternoons, what's in that envelope.
Once you understand what's happening is the beginning to be able to do something about it.
And that is when finally, after much trial and much, much error, I discovered, I created The Worth Work Principle, okay. Which is basically the core ideas, the separation of the behavior from the individual. Okay.
Judge the work, protect the person. Judge the work, protect the person. Okay?
And so what we do in The Worth Work Principle, this is what I teach companies and this is what I speak about at different meetings, organizations for companies and organizations.
Basically, the way it works is, in the way we do things here in this organization, is we always protect the person. We value everybody 100%. And they know that, they buy into it, and they agree to it. Okay?
Sometimes this, if there's a lot of damage, takes a little time to heal and to believe and to begin the trust growing if the culture is super bad.
But one of the things in The Worth Work Principle basically says, we all agree that we're always going to protect the person. We're going to always respect, and we're not going to talk about anything that has to do with the kind of a person or they're this way or they're that way or they're not this or they're not that way.
Only talk about the doing, the work. Okay.
No one's above and below 100%. Not from the top of the company to the bottom of the company to the frontline people to the, to the top of the leadership.
Everybody is a hundred percent, not 101 and not 99. Okay.
We make no personal judgment here whatsoever. That's just the way we roll. We love everybody the same.
If we're going to make a judgment, it's going to be to elevate that person, never to degrade a human being. That's not the way we roll here, ever.
And by the way, it's a zero tolerance deal. Just saying.
Okay? No name calling, no labeling, no none of that. Okay?
And, what we do judge, because we must, is the behavior, the work, the doing, what we're doing. We have to change and improve the systems and evaluate and evolve how we do things to function better so that we get what we want from why we're coming here, which is to live the way we want to live.
Okay? And that's why we're all here.
By the way, that's the same from the top to the bottom too.
The way that leaders communicate this is important. We go over that in the training, that it's not about you, that we hold people in high regard. We're just talking about the work.
We separate the doing from the person, and that is the key.
What changes is this is the demise of defensiveness and the rise of trust.
That's what happens with The Worth Work Principle. The trust goes up.
As the trust goes up and as individuals come to know and believe, because it's shown to them, that we protect the person and we only judge the work, when they know that, they can relax a little.
They can say, “Okay, if this isn't about me and we're just going to talk about the thing I've been doing, then I'm more open.”
Okay. If I know that no matter what I do, whether it's good or bad, that the way that we do things here is we protect the person, we never devalue the person, and it doesn't even affect the human.
This work over here, this behavior has no effect on my value at this company. Then I have opened the door to be able to make progress and change, and move towards improvement.
Okay. So defensiveness starts to go down, and it doesn't take very long. And the attitude of the trust goes up.
It's amazing to see how people begin to relate and work together. The openness goes up.
You know, everybody, if you asked a hundred people if they had a fixed mindset or an open mindset, they would, nobody would say that they have a closed-off mindset.
But the truth about it is, when you ask people to learn and change and evolve, a lot of people are just like, they won't. They already think they got it.
You know why? Because they're defensive.
Because they're making you telling them that they need or you want them to change mean something about them in a negative way, like they're not good enough for some reason.
So teachability, okay, goes up. Ownership goes up. Responsibility goes up for my own behavior because now it's okay to judge the work because we're not judging me.
Just what I do. That's okay. And that's the way that we roll here.
That's The Worth Work Principle in a nutshell. Okay.
It takes a little bit of training and a little bit of, you know, to implement it, but that's, that's what I do.
The bottom line here is, that defensiveness is normal. We're all going to be defensive at some time for some amount. And that's part of being a human being.
And as leaders, when we recognize what's happening, when we're not getting compliance, when we're not getting a lot of cooperation, when we really don't think everybody's on board with our new, you know, with our new agenda, with our new, that's what I'm looking for, with whatever I'm trying to ask you to do, I don't really feel like you're with me, you know, people are getting defensive.
They get defensive so much, and they're not most of the time even aware of what's happening.
Okay, The Worth Work Principle also increases awareness. Ask people to notice their feelings and notice defensiveness, and to even to ask themselves if they're receiving information that feels bad because you might not recognize what your brain, it happens so fast.
For example, like I mentioned a couple of days ago, I got defensive, and the only thing that I knew, I was angry. Okay.
So I got a couple of choices right now. I can just shut down until I figure out what's going on, or I can keep going until I do something I regret.
I'm not going to tell you which one I did. I don't always get that one right, but I do work at it. Okay.
And then I, I figured out what happened, and if I need to, I try to go back and repair.
But you know, here's the thing, more and more, it's okay to me that I react in certain ways and that I'm imperfect.
And the more that I know that, that I can see that my behavior doesn't affect me. See, this all begins with us individuals. Leaders got to buy into this idea.
You need to come to more and more internalize the idea for yourself that your value is non-negotiable.
You may do some great things and not so great things, but that doesn't affect your value as a human being. Okay?
We separate that value like we've talked about before here.
You know, the thing about this, most time people aren't judging us anyway. You know, they just want to talk about the work, but we make it mean something about ourselves.
Most of the time, a lot of the time, it's not even about us. We just make it mean something about ourselves. Okay.
And like I said, you can apply this principle to your marriage, to your family, and it should begin with your personal, with yourself.
Human beings are good at the core. We're just trying to protect our own value, and our brain is overriding it. And a lot of this stuff is happening subconsciously. We don't even really know it.
The more and more that we can recognize it and understand it and have a strategy to make intentional meaning, you know, and to not make anything mean negative about a human being, just to judge and critique and change the work or the behavior and protect person, the more that we can eliminate this defensiveness and have productivity go up in companies and organizations and families.
Because we all have imperfect behavior, and that doesn't reduce our value.
If you are leading a team, managing people issues, if you're losing time, the defensiveness to all of the ugliness that can happen at work with, you know, conflict and gossip and rumor mill and all of this and that and the other, I help.
I actually go and help implement these systems. I train the leaders and I, we create real culture change. Okay.
It's not some idea that's some philosophy that we hope or some mission statement. This is how we do things here.
And I'm here to tell you, it doesn't take very long. When people know that it's off the table, that you're going to judge their value and they really buy and believe that, the trust just shoots up, and now we can really focus on what we need to do here at this company.
And it becomes less about me. And that's where the real magic happens in this deal.
Okay. If you want to find out more about me and The Worth Work Principle, go to shanejacob.com, check us out there.
This is not natural, normal and natural. Most people live and die and not even understand it, why they were totally completely understand, why they're defensive or what it meant or how to influence people better to be less defensive and more productive, to where they're more self-reliant in the workplace.
Don't rely on somebody managing other people issues. They don't rely on 50% of the time to take care of how they feel because we're taking care of it upfront, and we're prefacing all of our critique and all of our training and everything in that the company we just are always promoting the idea of judge the work, protect the person.
Okay, that is the key. Judge the work, protect the person.
Appreciate you taking your time, my friends, to be here with me.
I just want to say one last thing, and that is this.
Regardless of what you have done, regardless of what you have not done, and regardless of what has been done to you in this lifetime, you are 100%.
Nothing can change that certain fact. Your value is non-negotiable.
Stay with me. See you soon.
Workplace defensiveness is one of the most expensive and overlooked problems in business. When employees take feedback personally, they resist change, avoid accountability, and repeat the same mistakes, leading to lost productivity, poor communication, and increased turnover. Most leaders try to solve this with better communication or more incentives, but the real issue is deeper. The Worth Work System addresses the root cause by separating personal value from performance, allowing teams to accept feedback without feeling attacked. The result is higher trust, stronger accountability, and measurable improvements in team performanc
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