Well, that hurt. Twenty years ago, I was standing in my commander’s office as he told me in muted tones that I had not handled something well.
He was a leader I really looked up to, and knowing I had disappointed him made his delivery even more painful—I almost wished he would just yell.
About an hour earlier, during a tension-filled exercise, I had told his boss, in front of probably 50 others, to keep quiet while the team I managed tried to work out a problem in preparation for an intelligence satellite launch.
