The problem with this approach is that there's a difference between public criticism and public shaming, and most people (myself included) have an imperfect gra

The problem with this approach is that there's a difference between public criticism and public shaming, and most people (myself included) have an imperfect grasp of that difference. There's a time and a place for both, but the workplace is usually neither the time nor place for a shame session. This is not only a problem for team leaders, though they see it through a different lens than others. For a team leader, the problem lies in figuring out how to publicly criticize a team member without obliterating team morale, which can over time do even more damage than the original problem. If the article's examples are any indication, its own author is not very good at this either: the meeting comes across grossly inappropriate if not outright sadistic in its treatment of Ted. But that's a leadership-specific thing. If we're going to say that public criticism is part of good leadership, then we can say people who aren't good at it are not good leaders. There is, however, a flip side: it counts on team members to be able to split some very fine hairs, to take criticism without allowing it to affect morale. Almost no one can really do this well, yet this management style requires all team members to be able to do so. It's the team-full-of-rockstars mentality all over again, except that this time they need to be rockstars at something that doesn't actually have anything to do with the task at hand.