A corrective experience is when someone lives through an interaction that contradicts an old, painful expectation. Not just intellectually, but physically. Instead of pressure, judgement, or rejection, the person experiences safety, clarity, and repair. After enough of these moments, something shifts: people take more intellectual risks, ask better questions, recover faster from setbacks, and stop treating every uncertainty as proof that they are failing. What surprised me recently is that I am not the one “delivering” these experiences most of the time anymore. My team is. And honestly, it is one of the best feelings.
We are working in a period of uncertainty: shifting timelines, slow decisions, backup plans for backup plans. For early-career researchers, this can quickly activate old scripts: “If I do not know, I am failing. If I ask for help, I am a burden. If I make a mistake, I will be judged. A corrective experience does not remove uncertainty”. It teaches something more useful: “I can be safe and still not know. I can experiment and still belong”.
When I look closely at my team, I can see the culture they are creating: repeated behaviours that send one consistent message, you are safe here.
1) Owning responsibility without shame
There is something deeply regulating about a teammate saying, plainly, “That one’s on me”. It closes the loop. It does not invite punishment; it invites repair. It tells everyone that responsibility is normal here. Mistakes are not moral failures. We address them and move on.
2) Normalising not knowing
In teams that feel unsafe, people hide confusion. In safe teams, confusion becomes data. When someone says, “I’m not sure I understand this, can we walk through it?” they are modelling a key scientific skill: naming uncertainty clearly enough for it to be addressed. That also gives permission for others to do the same. And that permission is a corrective experience in itself.
3) Experimenting with supervision
Supervision is often described as a one-way pipeline (senior person to junior person). That is not how learning really works. What I see in my team is much better: people try peer supervision, test meeting formats, ask each other for feedback before coming to me, and bring options instead of waiting for instructions.
The role of seniors becomes simpler and stronger: hold the frame, keep standards high, protect the team when needed, and allow autonomy. For many early-career researchers, that is a corrective experience too: independence does not mean abandonment. It means you can try, and support is still there.
4) Repair as a normal part of work
The most mature teams are not the ones without friction. They are the ones that repair quickly. A short message like, “I think I came across as too abrupt, sorry, I didn’t mean it that way” does important work. It protects the relationship, restores safety, and shows that competence and humility can coexist. This is also why it matters when supervisors own their mistakes, not performatively, but as practice: “I gave unclear guidance. I forgot to reply. I pushed for speed when we needed clarity. Let’s reset”. That teaches something students can carry for life: error is not catastrophe. Repair is part of good work.
If I had to summarise what my team is sending each other, quietly and repeatedly, it would be this:
- You are safe.
- You can take responsibility without being shamed.
- You do not need to be perfect to be respected.
- You can experiment.
- You can ask for help.
- We can fix things together.
That is not just “nice”. It is the foundation of high-quality work. When people feel safe, they think better. They share earlier. They take better risks. They learn faster. They spend less energy on self-protection.
I used to think a supportive environment required heroic effort: always available, always reassuring, always “on”. Now I see it differently. A good environment is built through repeatable interactions: clarity, responsibility, experimentation, and repair, especially in uncertain times. And the best sign that it is working is when the team starts doing it for each other.
Feb 2026
