Then I shut up and waited for the ax to fall.

But it didn't. There was no "Pull yourself together, man" talk. Instead, he started telling me about his own personal life, about the time that he and his wife had separated and almost gotten divorced. He talked about the challenges of divorce and of reconciliation, of work and home, of planning for a life and then reconstructing it after the plans fall apart. It was most reassuring.

But despite the reassurance, I still waited for the ax to fall.

As the meeting progressed, my boss never brought up the subject of work. He kept the conversation on my life and his. So I turned the conversation to work. Knowing that my attention was elsewhere, I still felt the need to decide what to do about my lack of focus and production.

My boss agreed that we probably should reassess my workload and task assignments. He told me to first worry about my life and to take the time I needed to get things together in that area. He would continue to keep me on the project, but in a less-central role, for now. My critical-path tasks would be reassigned, and new, less-critical ones would be assigned to me. That way, if I was late or my work quality was poor, it wouldn't be as big of an issue.