[georgemcbay]

They'd also have to be the type of folks who can take disagreement or having their mistakes pointed out without taking it personally.

Perhaps I'm just turning into an old "get off my lawn, damn kids" curmudgeon but anecdotally I've noticed a bit of a cultural shift over my lifetime of people being increasingly unable to have mistakes pointed out to them without them going on the defensive and making it into some sort of personal attack that was never intended.

[ChuckMcM]

I think anyone can get defensive. Some folks have that way about them, I have worked with people in previous jobs who could just start talking and it would get folks agitated.

That happens to me sometimes too, it annoys me that my emotions react before my brain can sometimes, but I try very hard to avoid that.

And of course we can only control our own reactions, not that of others, so we can model a good way to deal with disagreement, but if we piss someone off by disagreeing with them we have to work within those constraints. If there are people everyone is tip-toeing around then that is a problem your organization should fix.

The passive aggressive stuff, the agreement at the meeting and later dissenting in private with others, the unwillingness to even engage in a discussion. That stuff is poison and you really need to fix it if you can. Not always possible to fix, but always a source of problems.

[bpmilne]

"That stuff is poison and you really need to fix it if you can"

I was told once that it is a cancer and all you can do is cut it out. It was one of the better pieces of advice I've ever gotten from another founder.

[rfrey]

Is it possible that the sample you're observing is changing? As people accumulate experience and begin to regard themselves as competent, then expert in a field, they have a greater stake in defending that status.

It's my observation that in the aggregate smart young people are more amenable to criticism than smart older people: i.e. there is a bias toward defensiveness that, if not actively defended against, becomes increasingly evident as people age. Maybe you're noticing the behaviour of older people now.