Defensiveness is the enemy of learning and change. How many times have you tried to give someone important information about their performance, presentation, appearance, behavior only to have them respond defensively and even get angry and attack you? How did their response make you feel? Did you find yourself avoiding them or hesitant to tell them other things?
Turn that around. How many times has someone tried to tell you something and you responded defensively? When you become defensive, your information reception center is turned off or very diminished. As a result, you do not receive the information and cannot use it to make adjustments to your behavior. At the same time, your defensiveness often turns the other person off so they will not give you important information in the future. This seriously limits your ability to grow and change and ultimately creates a feedback isolation bubble around you. No one will take the risk of telling you something for fear of your defensiveness.
You don't think this pertains to you? In my 37 years of working with people, I can count on one hand the number of people that seemed to have their defensiveness under control. Chances are, you are not one of them and neither am I.
A key secret to personal growth is to train yourself to control or eliminate defensive responses to observations and information others give you. Second, give a heartfelt "thank you" to the person telling you, and a promise to consider their information, BUT do not promise to change at that moment. (They just gave you a gift that they otherwise could have withheld or worse, told someone else behind your back.)
Third, evaluate the information later, quietly and thoughtfully to determine what you can and cannot use. Make no promises to change, just a promise to consider.
This simple technique will do more than all the self help books on the planet to improve your personal relationships and work performance. As you get better at it, you will find that people trust you and listen to you more. They will come to respect you because you don't strike back in defense when given negative information. This will lead to more information coming your way. Remember, information is power. If people withhold it because you are defensive, you become less powerful.
Remember this quote: "Defensive people do not change, because defensive people cannot listen." Darrel Ray, Teaming Up, (McGraw-Hill) 1995 Secular Therapist Project