I want to talk about getting called out / called in for a minute from a personal point of view. Everyone reacts to this differently.

As someone who works in diversity & belonging, I'm learning about different lived experiences and perspectives daily.

I still make mistakes or miss things. If I'm lucky, someone will point it out so I don't do it again. It does not matter how kind the person is in doing this, it still sucks.

First, it hits the ego - there's always a level of embarrassment or shame that bubbles up.

Physically this can result in my face getting hot. I want to defend myself or my intent so badly. I want to react. Then I feel guilt for potentially upsetting or harming someone.

My face getting hot is my tripwire. It's how I know it's time to pause and take a deep breath.

When I do this well, I take a few minutes before responding. However long it takes for my physical sensations to subside and my head to be clearer.

Spoiler: I don't always do this well.

My process is:
- a few deep breaths
- let the physical sensations subside
- get into the other person's shoes: what were they trying to tell me? How might this be impacting them?
- zoom out
- find appreciation of the feedback

The last part is so key. Depending on how public something is there's a good chance people are thinking something about me or what I did and not bothering to tell me. To me that is so much worse than someone bringing it to my attention. We can't do better if we don't know.

Only after all of this do I respond. I had a moment like this today and I wish I had waited even longer.

It is human to react defensively. But that's the much less evolved part of our brain. If you can catch the reaction and pause, the much more evolved part will step in.

Again, rarely do I do this perfectly. It's a practice. But I am better for it and I wanted to share in case it's helpful to anyone.