The Best Mistake

While working with a few team members on developing interview questions, we stumbled on the ever so popular question: "What is your best mistake?" Although it's a bit cliche, I love this question as it elicits a great opportunity for storytelling. It's a window into the mind of a learner and how they taste failure.

A colleague across from me wondered, "Hmm... I wonder how I would answer that question?"

Whenever I've heard this question, I always think to answer it with a story of me in the kitchen. I know, non-job related, but to me, this demonstrates how a mistake launched me to create something with acquired knowledge. A mistake became an opportunity to do something amazing.

Many years ago during a dinner of Spanish spiced chicken legs (Bobby Flay inspired!) that I was making for my parents, I added one wrong ingredient during the preparation. All the while that the chicken roasted in the oven, I had no clue that I stumbled along the way. Now that I remember, I did think the air in the room smelled particularly sweeter, but I figured it was just the spices coagulating in new-smell harmony. It wasn't until we sat down together, hungry, and ready to devour the meat that we realized what had happened. My dad's face said it all. He suspiciously lifted the chicken leg to smell it, took a bite, grimaced, and realized he should have listened to his nose. I always ask for feedback on how the food I make tastes - and I really, really want to hear honest feedback. Somewhere between my dad telling me something didn't taste right, and me rummaging through the spices on the counter I used, my mistake shot right out. The recipe called for cumin, and in my haste, I grabbed a spice that began with "C".

Cinnamon!

Making this mistake started in the "sloppy" corner and moved to a quick Aha-moment!

At this time, I was really into watching the Food Network. As the feeling of the floor slipping away from under me approached, my light bulb moment came. I remembered seeing a recent Down Home With The Neeley's episode in which the (then) husband and wife duo made Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Scrolling through what was most-likely Yahoo search (this was pre-Google popularity days), I searched for the makings of jerk chicken seasoning, and found a list that included cinnamon. My bewildered parents knew to get out of my way as I placed the cooked chicken legs back onto the baking dish, sprinkled the additional spices to meld with the cinnamon, and stuck it on low for 20 minutes as a pot of white rice cooked. My pre-teaching brain was already thinking in my favorite frame of "How might we..." without even knowing it!

From Sloppy, to aha, to stretch - mistakes show growth in the experience of how we learn in the face of failure... and in the face of a fully stocked pantry!