> This isn’t the only choice, but it’s presented as though it is. Communication goes both ways, the people on the team can also choose to not get defensive.
There's an important distinction. You can't control whether your teammates tend to get defensive, or how much it takes to make them defensive. However, you can control how you deliver your message to optimize for getting what you need, which requires steering around their defensiveness long enough for them to understand your point. (Try telling someone to stop being defensive... that's never worked for me. However, anecdotally, conflict resolution and mediation focused around mutual understanding of communication style, working style, and project related needs has worked most of the time.)
Communication goes both ways, but effective communicators understand that they have personal agency in the matter and that exercising it is good for getting what they want.
As a manager I've told direct reports something like this about working with people on other teams who were being difficult. It's not strictly their fault that the counterparty got defensive, but they're a lot more effective (and more likely to be promoted) if they can work through it without me intervening, because that means I can trust them to work autonomously on projects with lots of stakeholders.
There's an important distinction. You can't control whether your teammates tend to get defensive, or how much it takes to make them defensive. However, you can control how you deliver your message to optimize for getting what you need, which requires steering around their defensiveness long enough for them to understand your point. (Try telling someone to stop being defensive... that's never worked for me. However, anecdotally, conflict resolution and mediation focused around mutual understanding of communication style, working style, and project related needs has worked most of the time.)
Communication goes both ways, but effective communicators understand that they have personal agency in the matter and that exercising it is good for getting what they want.
As a manager I've told direct reports something like this about working with people on other teams who were being difficult. It's not strictly their fault that the counterparty got defensive, but they're a lot more effective (and more likely to be promoted) if they can work through it without me intervening, because that means I can trust them to work autonomously on projects with lots of stakeholders.