A junior developer on my team shipped code that crashed our production environment early Monday morning. Yikes! Everyone was furious. He was devastated, convinced his career was over. The next week, I assigned him the critical refactoring project everyone else wanted. People thought I was crazy. But I told him, 'You learned more from that mistake than anyone else here knows. I trust you with this.' Three years later, he's our best engineer. I didn't know I was offering a 'corrective emotional experience'. I just saw someone drowning in shame who needed to be trusted back into competence. I was in that same position so many times before.
This was, "wow" - 'You learned more from that mistake than anyone else here knows. I trust you with this.' I can only imagine how he received that in the moment and as he proceeded to work on the critical project. You generated an organizational payoff in return, which makes the story even better.
"Corrective emotional experience" was something I learned too from the working on the article.
Your depth of compassion for someone that you recognized was "drowning in shame" is a depth of humanity that not every person exhibits. Yet you did.
I loved this... "who needed to be trusted back into competence." Powerful. The impact that must have on someone. So many of us would benefit from receiving or extending it.
This exploration of trust as a neccessity for nervous system regulation is brilliant. The distinction between guilt as 'I did something bad' versus shame as 'I am bad' feels especially relevent to cancel culture dynamics right now. Back when I was managing a small team, someone made a big mistake and I watched them spiral - turns out just creating space for them to still contribute (rather than freezing them out) made all the diference in their recovery.
That was helpful to read: "... rather than freezing them out, made all the difference in their recovery." That takes immense strength of belief to do sometimes and not everyone can do it, yet you did.
You knew their character well, I suspect. That you provided them a path to recover says a lot and I'm sure you gained additional respect from them.
I loved this one, Michael.
A junior developer on my team shipped code that crashed our production environment early Monday morning. Yikes! Everyone was furious. He was devastated, convinced his career was over. The next week, I assigned him the critical refactoring project everyone else wanted. People thought I was crazy. But I told him, 'You learned more from that mistake than anyone else here knows. I trust you with this.' Three years later, he's our best engineer. I didn't know I was offering a 'corrective emotional experience'. I just saw someone drowning in shame who needed to be trusted back into competence. I was in that same position so many times before.
This was, "wow" - 'You learned more from that mistake than anyone else here knows. I trust you with this.' I can only imagine how he received that in the moment and as he proceeded to work on the critical project. You generated an organizational payoff in return, which makes the story even better.
"Corrective emotional experience" was something I learned too from the working on the article.
Your depth of compassion for someone that you recognized was "drowning in shame" is a depth of humanity that not every person exhibits. Yet you did.
I loved this... "who needed to be trusted back into competence." Powerful. The impact that must have on someone. So many of us would benefit from receiving or extending it.
Happy Friday Michael
Shame narrows people. Trust widens them.
True story.
Have the best weekend.
This exploration of trust as a neccessity for nervous system regulation is brilliant. The distinction between guilt as 'I did something bad' versus shame as 'I am bad' feels especially relevent to cancel culture dynamics right now. Back when I was managing a small team, someone made a big mistake and I watched them spiral - turns out just creating space for them to still contribute (rather than freezing them out) made all the diference in their recovery.
That was helpful to read: "... rather than freezing them out, made all the difference in their recovery." That takes immense strength of belief to do sometimes and not everyone can do it, yet you did.
You knew their character well, I suspect. That you provided them a path to recover says a lot and I'm sure you gained additional respect from them.