I recently got feedback about my son, and while none of it was surprising, my reaction was. He is 13, which means he is doing what 13-year-olds do. He is testing boundaries, figuring out who he is, and sometimes pushing too far. I knew that. But as I sat there listening to someone describe his behavior, I could feel my body respond before my mind had even caught up.

My jaw tightened, my chest constricted, and my thoughts started moving ahead of the conversation. I wanted to explain. I wanted to defend him. I wanted to make sure the person giving the feedback understood the full picture. But looking back on the conversation with radical self-honesty, I did not just want to defend my son. I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to protect what this moment might say about me as a parent, about how I am showing up, and whether I am getting this whole parenting thing right.

This conversation, and what it triggered in me, inspired me to record a podcast and write this article. Not about the feedback itself, but the realization that I didn’t really want to listen to understand. Instead, I wanted to protect and defend.

I like to believe I am open-minded. I have built my leadership identity around curiosity, asking questions, and being willing to change my mind. But in that moment, I was not open; I was protecting who I believe myself to be.

When Openness Has Conditions

On this week’s episode of Reflect Forward, I explored a question that came directly from that experience. Do I actually value different perspectives, or do I only value them when they feel safe? It is an easy question to answer quickly. Of course I value different perspectives, and I would say it without hesitation.

But when I looked at my behavior more honestly, I saw something deeper about myself: my openness has conditions. I am totally comfortable being open when the conversation stays within a range that feels reasonable to me, when I do not feel exposed, and when no one is challenging what I believe about myself. It works when I can stay grounded in who I think I am. But when that shifts, I can, too.

I stop listening to understand and start listening to respond. I begin shaping the conversation instead of receiving it. I look for ways to bring it back to something that feels more aligned with how I see things. Even when I appear composed on the outside, internally I have already decided that I need to protect myself, to defend myself. And that realization is uncomfortable because it forces me to question whether I am actually as open as I think I am.

The Emotional Immune System

The best way I have been able to make sense of this is through what I think of as an emotional immune system. Just like your body scans for physical threats, your mind is constantly scanning for psychological ones. Anything that challenges how you see yourself, your role, or your beliefs can get flagged as danger.

When this system is working well, it protects and adapts. It allows you to take in new information, evaluate it, and grow from it. But when it becomes overactive, it reacts to everything unfamiliar as if it were a threat. It pushes you into a protect-and-defend posture before you have had a chance to think.

That is exactly what was happening to me in that conversation. Nothing about the situation was actually unsafe, but it felt that way because my son’s behavior was being challenged, and so was my identity as a parent. And once identity is involved, the reaction is immediate.

The more I have paid attention to this, the more I see how often it shows up in leadership.

The Leadership Gap No One Names

We tend to believe that if we are intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate, we must also be open-minded. But those are not the same thing. You can be smart and articulate and still completely closed in the moments that matter most. You can hold strong convictions and still lack the capacity to remain open when someone challenges them.

After examining my reaction in this situation, I believe the real difference is capacity. It is your ability to regulate yourself when you feel that spicy internal reaction. It’s your willingness to stay in the discomfort of not knowing, not agreeing, and not immediately resolving what you are hearing.

What I saw in myself is that I was not afraid of being wrong. I was afraid of what being wrong might mean about me. And that is where I closed and found myself moving into protection instead of curiosity.

What It Costs You to Protect Yourself

If I had stayed in that defensive posture about my son, I would have missed something important. I would have filtered the feedback instead of hearing it, protected my perspective instead of opening it, and made the moment about being right instead of being effective.

Don’t get me wrong, it took a minute for me to get there. I had to self-regulate for a few hours before I could move past protect and defend and into curiosity and acceptance. But when I did, I saw myself so much more clearly.

That same pattern shows up in leadership time and time again. When we cannot sit with perspectives that challenge us, we start to narrow our world, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. When we stand strong in our conviction, it feels like clarity, certainty, and even justification. We call it alignment and decisiveness. But a lot of the time, it is just protection dressed up to look like strong leadership.

And over time, our convictions can come with a cost. They limit how we think, who we listen to, and how we lead.

Staying in It

I don’t know if it’s possible to eliminate the desire to protect myself. I am, after all, human. So instead of trying to eradicate that desire, I am practicing noticing those feelings sooner and choosing how I respond.

What does this look like? Slowing down instead of speeding up, asking one more question when I would rather make a point, and allowing myself to sit in those hard moments without forcing them to resolve immediately.

Regarding the conversation about my son…I circled back with the person who shared their experience with me to own where I reacted and listen again, this time without trying to control what it meant. It was uncomfortable and I was still emotional. But it felt necessary…it was necessary. And it led to a better outcome, both with the person and with the relationship I have with myself.

The Question I’m Still Sitting With                                  

This experience left me with a question that continues to circulate in my psyche. Not whether I value different perspectives, because I believe that I do, but whether I am actually open to being changed when those perspectives challenge me.

Because in that moment with my son, I was not trying to be changed. I wanted to prove that I did not need to be. And that’s where my work continues because I want always to say yes, I am willing to be changed when those perspectives challenge me. But it will always be a practice.

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If you want to go deeper into this conversation, you can watch the full episode of Reflect Forward on YouTube. Or check it out on your favorite podcast platform.

If this way of thinking resonates, my book The Ownership Mindset explores what it means to take responsibility for how you show up in your life and leadership. I will also be sharing more about this in my upcoming book on feedback, called Talk with Trust, later this year. You can sign up to join the preorder list here.

And if you are looking to bring this kind of conversation into your organization, you can reach out to book me for a keynote; go to www.kerrysiggins.com