Disconfirmation or Defensive

In one of my classes, we did a group exercise where everyone gave an introduction speech to their group. Afterwards, the group took turns providing feedback about what the person should avoid doing and what to improve on. I immediately knew this was going to be hard because when you speak, everyone is pretty much focusing on what you are doing wrong. When people gave feedback, I almost wanted to jump in and volunteered what I sucked at doing. I listened to people, but kept going, “Yeah I know”, “I was nervous”, “It’s hard not to…”, etc. My way of being defensive was giving excuses as to why I was doing a certain thing or admitting that I knew I did that. I think Gibb’s evaluation versus description could be applied to this. Basically, everyone took this exercise as a way to be critical, instead of constructive. Group members used evaluative terms instead of descriptive terms, so it felt more like a personal attack than a constructive exercise. At the end of the exercise, it was kind of awkward for everyone because we had basically finished pointing out each other’s presenting flaws. If the feedback was more empathetic or problem oriented instead of personally fixated, I think we would have engaged in more conversation after the exercise.