Dear Reader,
I came across this interesting blog story by Brian Gilham. You may want to
read his other short articles as well.
Be Kind
One Friday afternoon, early in my career, I was wrapping
up some new features for the back-end of a client’s Rails app. Simple stuff.
Confident in my work, I deployed the changes, closed my laptop, and drove out
of town for a weekend of camping with friends. I had just arrived when my
phone rang. It was my project lead, Kevin.
“The client’s site is down. What happened?”
Oh shit. F**k. I had no idea. I was three hours away with
no laptop.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.
Have a good weekend.”
Like that was going to happen. I’d let the team down. I’d
ruined someone else’s weekend. I beat myself up for days. Come Monday; I
walked into the office certain I was about to be fired. The project lead
walked over.
“Hey, Brian. How was your trip?”
He was smiling. There wasn’t even a hint of frustration or
annoyance. “It was okay,” I said, waiting for the bad news. “Sorry about
Friday. I completely blew it.”
“It’s okay,” he replied. “We’ve all done it.” He paused
for a moment. “But what did you learn?”
I talked about the need for proper QA. About thoroughly
testing my changes. About taking the time to make sure the job gets done
right. After a few minutes, he held up his hand.
“Great. It sounds like you get it. I know that you can
do better.”
And that was the end of it. Kevin never brought it up
again.
Kevin gave me the space to screw up, as long as I learned
from it. He jumped in, with his years of experience, and helped me out when I
needed it most. And still believed I was a competent developer, despite my
mistake. He saw my potential.
Now that I’m the one leading projects and mentoring junior
developers, I often think back to that day. And I remind myself to be kind and
see the potential in people. Give them a break.
Just like Kevin did for
me.
May this story inspire you to see and nurture potential in
your people.
Warm regards,
Rohan