What it is
Somebody has to be the floor. Not the floor you walk on, the floor like a wage floor: the number nobody is allowed to go under. When something rolls downhill at you, you take it, and you don’t hand it to the person below you. It stops there, on you.
How it shows up for me
It’s a personal practice, not a policy. A bad meeting, a rude customer, a stressful call: I try not to turn around and give that same treatment to whoever is next in line, at work or at home.
I don’t always manage it. Some days the kids get the tone that was meant for my inbox.