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I think "assholes" might be people who personally care AND practice direct challenges, but do so in a way that shame and blame individuals. Calling out mistakes
by kordless 11y ago
I think "assholes" might be people who personally care AND practice direct challenges, but do so in a way that shame and blame individuals. Calling out mistakes is fine, as long as you don't assign biased blame to the person making the mistake. Startups are already difficult endeavors without the added pressures of being directly on the hook for a mistake. Teams should accept the suffering from an individual's mistakes with the assumption mistakes will be made by team members. If a given team member makes too many mistakes, then perhaps a review is necessary, but otherwise, it's a team mistake which can be learned from and used to improve the team and product.
- kimscott 11y agoI think that the key is to make it safe to make mistakes...this also makes it safe to point them out... This may be sematics, but in my experience, the bona fide assholes don't point out mistakes because they care about helping the person who made the mistake to improve. And so when an asshole sees they've made a person suffer, they don't care, and don't take the time to reassure the person that they have confidence in their abilities. When a person is being radically candid and they see the person is suffering, they take the time to show they care and to reassure that person they have confidence in their abilities--but it a way that makes it clear the mistake was a mistake, or that their work isn't good enough...
- ajb 11y agoSure, bona fide assholes do that. Maybe what GP is getting at, though, is that there are people out there who, despite genuinely caring for other people, thing that the right way to react to mistakes is shaming and blaming. Whether because they don't know a better way, think that other ways are ineffective, or because of a quasi-religious feeling that it's right to act that way.