At the tail end of my grade school days, I had a teacher who didn’t seem all that great to me at the time. I was a highly anxious kid, constantly worrying about whether I’d be ready for the rigors of middle school. In my mind, preparation meant homework, and since she never assigned any, I was sure she was setting the entire class up to fail.
She was lively, imaginative, and made class enjoyable, but my 12‑year‑old brain decided she was too soft for the job of preparing “tweenagers” for the future. Maybe Kindergarteners, but definitely not those of us perched on the edge of lockers, six classes’ worth of work, and the precarious balance of competing assignment due dates.
What I couldn’t see then was that she was about to hand me a lesson that would stick with me well beyond my elementary school days. In fact, it’s one I still lean on in work and in life, though I doubt she realized at the time how much it would shape the way I think or how much it impacts everything I do, both personally and professionally.
The task was simple enough on the surface and was one that many of us have done in some form:
Imagine making a new friend who just landed from another planet. They’ve never seen Earth, never been human, and it’s your job to explain how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
At the time, I thought it was ridiculous. I mean, I’d made PLENTY of PB&Js in my young life. Yet another easy assignment to waste precious time I should be spending preparing for my future. Ugh.
I pulled out my notebook, rolled my eyes, and begrudgingly got to work.
My recipe went something like this:
- Get peanut butter, jelly, and bread.
- Spread the peanut butter on the bread.
- Then do the same thing but with the jelly on the other piece.
- Put the pieces of bread together.
- Eat.
Once we were finished, she pulled out a few plastic bags of groceries, containing peanut butter, jelly, several loaves of bread, and various pieces of silverware with napkins. She dropped the stack of sandwich recipes she’d collected from us beside the ingredients on her desk and, interpreting every line of the instructions with “alien-level literalness”, began to assemble a sandwich that looked less like food and more like a diplomatic incident.
Over and over, she followed the steps – mostly non-edible abstract art – but no real sandwich yet. My recipe rose to the top of the pile about halfway through this perfect streak of failed attempts.
“Ha!” I thought to myself, “Mine is foolproof. There’s no way she can’t finally make a successful sandwich with my instructions.”
She began to read. Moment of truth.
“Get peanut butter.” My teacher took the jar of peanut butter out of the grocery bag and set it front and center. So far, so good.
“Spread the peanut butter on the bread.” She looked at the jar, somewhat confused…and then proceeded to rub the still unopened jar of peanut butter against a loaf of bread still nestled inside a grocery bag. My mouth DROPPED.
“Then do the same thing but with the jelly on the other piece.” Looking at everything in front of her, perplexed, she muttered to herself, “…other piece of what? Am I supposed to get the jelly out of the bag first? I’m so confused…”
Oh. No!!!
“Put the pieces of bread together.” She furrowed her eyebrows, whispering loud enough for the class to hear, “…piece of bread? Like two of these?” as she took two full and unopened loaves of bread, one in each hand. She shrugged and smooshed the two loaves together, still in their bread bags! Sans peanut butter or jelly between them!
“Eat.” But, there wasn’t a sandwich to eat. There wasn’t even an open loaf of bread or a jar of peanut butter or jelly open to sample! I had been defeated like everyone else.
We were all stunned and exasperated. Everyone’s instructions felt so obvious to us,these know-it-all middle-schoolers, yet the sandwiches didn’t exist! Step after step, this teacher showed us what happens when you assume someone understands what you mean without explicitly spelling out the steps. By the end of the exercise, maybe two sandwiches had been haphazardly crafted from the recipes of a class of 25 cocky students.
That day was pivotal in shaping the way I think. I realized (after feeling incredulous, of course) how many important steps I’d left out of the recipe. Things like opening the jars, taking two slices out of the bread bags, using a knife to spread the contents, facing the two slices together with peanut butter and jelly on the inside. None of it was written down because I (incorrectly) assumed everyone knew those steps automatically because “why wouldn’t you know them?”
And you know what? Maybe every human in my tiny little world did know. But not my imaginary alien friend.
And now as an adult, parent, and professional, I see that lesson everywhere.
Telling my child to “do the dishes” is simply not enough. My version of “done” is not their version of “done.” Unless I’ve explained what I expect, modeled the steps, and checked to make sure they understand, I shouldn’t be surprised when the outcome doesn’t match my expectations.
The same lesson applies professionally. Saying “do the monthly accounting” leaves far too much open to interpretation and misunderstanding. I’ve learned that clarity (even to the point of what feels like over-explaining) is the only way to make sure expectations are aligned across the board.
If I desire specific outcomes, then it becomes my responsibility to communicate precisely what that finished product looks like to me.
It’s the literal job of a leader of other humans and manager of client deliverables to over-communicate and check in regularly with those in our charge, make zero assumptions about what they should know (and instead err on the side that they don’t actually know), and provide consistent feedback to course correct if there are any misalignments between expectations and reality along the way.
In the end, middle school wasn’t as complex as I had imagined, and the lack of rigor didn’t hold me back in any meaningful ways.
But that lesson in building a PB&J sandwich? That one ended up being priceless.