I forget how this line goes....something like, "Grace is the better part of valor." and yes sometimes, grace is the better part of valor. The thing about grace is that well, very few of us have an ounce of it (me included). Ok, let me explain. Here's a true story that was told to me by my uncle once. So, my uncle is an engineering consultant. Think software consultant and his job is to help implement a product when clients fail to implement the product properly. So at one particular client, the client had hired on one guy who was fresh out of college to do this software implementation in two weeks. Suffice it to say...it ended in disaster and the client had to hire my uncle as well as two other software consultants who were experienced in implementing this software suite to fix it. So after three 12-hour days, the three software consultants (my uncle included) managed to finish the software implementation and fix the bugs that had plagued it. Afterwords, the VP of Operations of the client took the three consultants, the kid they hired to implement the software suite, and some other client employees and higher-ups to lunch. At the lunch, the VP of Operations starts ripping into the poor kid with words like, "Poor performance", "substandard work", "incompetent"... you can imagine how the kid must have felt. The two other consultants tried to defend the kid saying that it wasn't his fault, that there was no way the kid could have predicted or solved some of the problems that were encountered. The VP didn't buy it. My uncle was just sitting there silently eating his lunch so the VP of Operations turns to my uncle and says, "What DO YOU think? You haven't said anything yet. Should we fire (the kid) for incompetence? What do you think?" The whole table is now staring and focusing on my uncle. He turns to the VP, and calmly says, "Know what I think? ...I think this mushroom burger's pretty good." And just like that the whole table cracks up. And just like that, the pressure was off. My uncle then went onto explain that it took 3 Experts, 3 twelve hour days to do the implementation and fix the bugs. That is 108 man hours which translates to 13.5 days of work for 3 experts. The kid was given 2 weeks (80 hours/ 10 days of work) to both implement and learn the software suite. It was obvious, my uncle explained, that the expectations placed on the kid were unreasonable and that the kid was not to blame. A part of Grace - sometimes saying the right thing at the right time to diffuse a high-pressure situation so that reason can prevail. Of course there are other situations where grace calls for a different type of response but one this is for certain, we can all stand to learn a little grace. The good thing is, I have the rest of my life to pick it up (hopefully sooner rather than later).