It was a failure of communication. Even before analyzing why or what happened, a failure of communication is something that arises out of actions of both parties and even the prevailing culture of the team.
Nobody really likes it, but half of the "politicality" of management has to be set in place to allow people to communicate with others who may or may not suffer from a sensitive ego and the company hasn't had time to figure it out yet. On top of that, it's usually a judgement call and may be a poor idea to formalize into your process an escape hatch based on judgement.
So maybe the original mistake was from the manager who presented a sensitive idea without enough seriousness to induce a careful response. Or the op who was too quick to feel comfortable interpreting it as a joke in what turned out to be a serious meeting. Or the culture which enabled the terms of the meeting to be ambiguous to begin with.
Only after that can you get into things like speculation on the maturity of the manager. It's actually quite a high maturity bar to jump over to stomach being laughed at by an expert. Not saying you can't set that as a goal, but merely that you ought to think about what happens when you find yourself dealing with someone who hasn't met that expectation.
Nobody really likes it, but half of the "politicality" of management has to be set in place to allow people to communicate with others who may or may not suffer from a sensitive ego and the company hasn't had time to figure it out yet. On top of that, it's usually a judgement call and may be a poor idea to formalize into your process an escape hatch based on judgement.
So maybe the original mistake was from the manager who presented a sensitive idea without enough seriousness to induce a careful response. Or the op who was too quick to feel comfortable interpreting it as a joke in what turned out to be a serious meeting. Or the culture which enabled the terms of the meeting to be ambiguous to begin with.
Only after that can you get into things like speculation on the maturity of the manager. It's actually quite a high maturity bar to jump over to stomach being laughed at by an expert. Not saying you can't set that as a goal, but merely that you ought to think about what happens when you find yourself dealing with someone who hasn't met that expectation.