My boss called me in after a significant misstep. He asked one question: “Not one of your best performances?”
I didn’t need to answer. He knew I knew.
That question (which wasn’t really a question) did something the explicit never could. It said: You’re intelligent. You have agency. You know exactly what happened here. We don’t need this conversation.
If he’d catalogued what went wrong and walked me through what I should have done differently, he would have said something else entirely: You lack the judgment to assess your own work. You need me to explain it to you.
The implicit respected my intelligence. The explicit would have insulted it.
This matters especially with perfectionists. They already know. Making it explicit forces them to experience their failure twice.
The implicit can be mercy. The explicit can be cruelty, even when delivered with kindness.
Of course, the implicit can also abandon. The same restraint that respects can also withhold what someone needs to hear.
My boss could have walked me through what went wrong. He could have been thorough.
He asked one question instead.
I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve never forgotten what it said about what he thought of me.
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photo by Tobias Keller