Leaders can reduce their defensiveness when listening to complaints by trying to put themselves in the other person's shoes, Leaders have an advantage if they can empathize with how they and their policies are seen by others, they can better change their behaviors and policies if they know how others perceive them. Leaders need to avoid the temptation to ex- plain how the other person is wrong and should instead just try to under- stand how he or she perceives things. A useful warning sign that a leader may be behaving defensively(or perhaps closedmindedly) is if he enters a conversation by saying, "Yes, but...