Calibration
Under, just right, over.
| Situation | Under | Just Right | Over |
|---|---|---|---|
| A date you gave slips | Lets the day pass and hopes no one notices. The other person finds out when they chase the work. | Flags the slip as soon as it is real, says what still holds, and offers a new date they can keep. Owns the miss in one pass, then gets back to the work. | Sends a long apology and keeps asking if people are still disappointed. The delivery waits while the relationship gets managed. |
| Credit after a shared win | Tells the story as if the call was mostly theirs. Teammates hear their names late or not at all. | Names who did the hard parts in the review, and still owns the outcome if something breaks later. | Deflects every compliment so thoroughly that no one can tell who decided what. Reviewers leave unsure who is accountable. |
| Asked something you do not know | Answers with confidence anyway. The gap shows up later in the work. | Says what they know, what they do not, and when they will come back with the rest. People can plan around the hole. | Prefaces every answer with how little they know. The meeting stalls because no one will take a position. |
| A gap in a peer's draft | Stays quiet to keep things easy. The issue ships with their name next to the review. | Takes the concern to the person first, with the specific evidence, and stays open if they have context the reviewer lacked. | Copies the wider thread to show they caught it. The peer spends the week defending the draft instead of fixing it. |
| Bad news for a stakeholder | Softens the update until the risk is hard to read. The stakeholder learns the truth from the outcome. | States the miss, the impact, and the next step in the same note. Does not pad it, and does not dump it without a path. | Leads every update with everything that might go wrong. People stop trusting the signal because alarm is the default. |
| You were wrong in a review | Lets the written comment stand. People keep building on a view they already know is off. | Corrects themselves in the same review thread, briefly, and updates the decision. Pays the awkward minute so the record is clean. | Replays the miss in later meetings. The team spends more time on the apology than on the new call. |
| A newer teammate flags a risk | Waves it off because the person is new. The risk sits unexamined. | Hears them out, checks the claim, and credits the flag if it holds. Pushes back with reasons if it does not, so they still bring the next one. | Treats every new concern as equally urgent. Senior judgment drops out and the queue fills with noise. |
| Comparing the team's work | Talks as if this team is already the standard. No one looks at stronger work nearby. | Puts this week's work next to a stronger example, without shaming the people who built it. Uses the gap to pick one thing to raise this week. | Holds the team against a distant, famous group so often that people stop believing the comparison. Energy goes into feeling behind, not into the next fix. |