The Tea Runneth Over

With only 30 minutes until my next meeting, I call the restaurant downstairs to get my Colony Salad, which is a half salad with an avocado split and filled with chicken salad.

Eating at my desk (again)—which is not what I recommend, need or teach—and as I take the last bite I reach for my cup of unsweet tea. Oops! I tip the top of the cup and it’s leaning, spilling a little tea on my desk. I quickly grab the cup to catch it and to my dismay, it explodes. Tea is everywhere. I’m holding what was a perfectly good styrofoam cup that is now in a dozen pieces. Wow, what a mess and my Zoom call starts in seven minutes. Thank goodness for paper towels!

Quickly throwing the last paper towel and my destroyed Styrofoam cup into the trash, it hits me—how often do we overreact to a small spill (a mistake)?

Sometimes our reaction is more destructive than the problem we are trying to correct and we end up with tea all over everything. How do we grow a culture of learn fast learn forward learn together if we are grabbing the cup so quickly and forcefully? How does our team learn from taking risks and making mistakes?

Are you like me—grabbing the cup too forcefully at the first sight of a spill?