"shame them in a positive way" Oh my. That's some HR type viciousness right here. (⌒▽⌒)

(Won’t fully repeat my other post.) Shame is such a big word. ‘Give people the chance to _teach_’ would be my reply. Which you probably would see as even more vicious, but it’s 100% sincere.

As a junior I made the front page of national news. I answered a question with a very big number on a Friday afternoon. Hit headlines on Saturday. Our prime minister had to defend my mistake in public. (He never admitted any mistake. With just enough spin nothing sticks.)

The head of the organization literally cursed and spat at me. In that same meeting from the no. 2 down they stood up for me. It’s still a great story about how to treat mistakes 20+ yrs on. Admit mistakes. What did __we__ (not: he) do wrong? (Hint: from medior to board everyone had an afternoon off and we had never discussed stakeholder management. I was in no position to say no to a ministerial request.)

Maybe you just were never carefully told about something you did wrong in a way that everyone feels like they learned from it. The top reply to my comment put it better than I could, I think there was an overcorrection. I believe in fixing the process first, but there are situations where shame is the right solution. The current en-vogue thing of pretending all is good but penciling in that person for the next layoffs is I think worse than a bit of shame if that fixes the problem and avoids more drastic actions later on. Silicon Valley is very PC but then lays off without remorse so its funny to see this combo of "we care about never hurting your feelings all the way to the point where we fire you without a care in the world".