You post something in a channel. Within a minute somebody replies, in front of forty people, that it is wrong. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are half right. Either way there is a hot feeling in your chest and a cursor blinking in a reply box, and what you type in the next two minutes will matter more than the original mistake did.
Begin by separating two things that arrived together. There is the content, which is either correct or it is not. And there is the delivery, which was public, and which may have been careless or may be completely normal in a team that talks like that. Those two need different responses, and mixing them is what turns a small moment into a story other people retell.
Handle the content in the thread, briefly. If they are right, say so and be finished. Good catch, you are right, fixing it now. Three seconds, no self flagellation, no long account of how it happened. People reading along interpret a short correction as competence. They interpret four paragraphs of context as defensiveness, whatever the paragraphs are actually saying.
If they are partly right, agree with the correct part first and then add the rest. Yes on the timeout, and the retry is deliberate because of the vendor limit. If they are simply wrong, still lead with the calm. That is not what I am seeing, here is the log line, happy to walk through it with you.
Do not handle the delivery in the thread. The audience cannot help you there, and every extra message makes the moment bigger. If it genuinely bothered you, or if this is the fourth time, take it to them one to one, and be specific and unheated about it. Being corrected in the channel before you have asked me reads harsher than I think you intend.
Two things to hold on to. Most people are aiming at the error rather than at you, and in a text box those look identical. And somebody junior is watching, learning how a person handles being corrected rather than whether you happened to be right.
Being wrong in public is routine and survivable. Being brittle in public is the part people remember.
– Asael Shinder
