The Coffee Pot Was Innocent
What a dripping coffee pot taught me about leading with curiosity, not assumption.
By Derrick Tennant
I have a little one-room office in Nashville. It’s not much, but I love it. When I’m there, I write, work, think—and drink entirely too much coffee.
So naturally, I bought a coffee maker.
I thought I bought a pretty good one, too. It makes the little Keurig-style cups or a whole pot. I started with the individual cups until I realized I kept making another one. And another one.
Eventually I stopped pretending.
I like pot.
There was only one problem.
The stupid coffee pot dripped.
Every. Single. Time.
I would pour coffee into my cup, and some of it would run down the side of the pot and onto the top of the little refrigerator underneath it.
It drove me crazy.
Come on.
You make coffee pots.
You had ONE JOB.
How hard can it possibly be to engineer a pot that successfully transports coffee from the coffee maker into the coffee cup?
I’m not an engineer, but even I understand the basic assignment:
Coffee goes in cup.
Apparently, somebody at this company missed that meeting.
It happened so often that I finally put a towel on top of the refrigerator because I was tired of cleaning up after their incompetent engineering department.
And every morning, the same thing:
Pour.
Drip.
Anger.
Wipe.
Judge.
I had developed quite a case against these people.
Bad design. Bad engineering. Maybe I should have bought the expensive coffee maker. I’m not sure who signed off on this thing, but clearly somebody wasn’t very good at their job.
I had evidence.
Every morning there was another puddle.
Exhibit A.
The prosecution rests.
There was just one problem with my airtight case.
I had never actually investigated it.
Then one morning I wasn’t in a hurry. I casually poured myself some coffee.
No drip.
Wait.
What?
I poured a little more.
Still nothing.
This was troubling because I had already established who the bad guy was in this story.
So for the first time, instead of getting angry at the coffee pot, I got curious about it.
What changed?
I poured again and actually paid attention.
And there it was.
When I poured slowly, the coffee came neatly through the spout and into my cup.
But when I tried to fill the cup in approximately four-tenths of a second, I tipped the pot too far. Coffee came through the spout, but it also came around the sides of it.
Then it ran down the pot and onto the refrigerator.
The engineers weren’t idiots.
I was pouring coffee like an idiot.
And here’s what really got me:
The coffee pot hadn’t changed.
Same pot.
Same spout.
Same engineers.
The only thing that changed was the way I approached it.
I slowed down.
I paid attention.
I got curious.
For months, I had been furious because I had already decided I understood what was wrong. Every new drip wasn’t information to me. It was simply more evidence supporting the conclusion I had already reached.
And I’ve realized I can do the exact same thing with people.
Something happens that hurts me, frustrates me, or doesn’t make sense to me, and instead of asking what happened, I start explaining it.
I know why you did that.
I know what you meant.
I know what you’re thinking.
I know why you didn’t call.
I know why you reacted that way.
And then I turn into a lawyer.
I collect evidence.
I remember previous exhibits.
I prepare my closing argument.
And instead of trying to understand the person in front of me, I’m trying to prove that my interpretation of that person is correct.
I can win the argument in my own head before the other person even knows we’re having one.
I’m trying to change that.
I’m trying to become a guy who leads with curiosity, not assumption.
I don’t always get it right.
I still catch myself assigning motives to people.
I still connect dots that may not be mine to connect.
I still sometimes enter a disagreement trying to prove that I’m right instead of trying to understand what’s true.
But I’m getting better.
I’m learning to slow down.
To give people the benefit of the doubt.
To stop telling people what they’re thinking and start asking them what they’re feeling.
To stop telling them why they did something and give them the dignity of explaining it themselves.
I’m learning to replace a verdict with a question.
Help me understand.
What did you mean by that?
Is it possible I’m reading this wrong?
What am I missing?
Giving someone the benefit of the doubt doesn’t mean deciding they’re right.
It means admitting I might not know enough yet to decide they’re wrong.
And curiosity doesn’t mean ignoring what I saw, what I heard, or how something affected me.
Sometimes I’ll slow down, ask the questions, listen carefully—and discover that my first impression was exactly right.
That’s okay.
The goal isn’t to always discover that I’m wrong.
The goal is to stop assuming I already know.
Because assumption reaches a verdict before understanding gets a chance to testify.
Curiosity leaves room.
Room for another explanation.
Room for another perspective.
Room for me to be wrong.
Room for both of us to learn something.
And sometimes I need to slow down long enough to see things from the perspective of the coffee pot.
Which may be the dumbest sentence I’ve ever written.
But apparently that stupid coffee pot taught me something.
For months, I thought it needed to work differently.
It didn’t.
I needed to approach it differently.
I’m trying to remember that with people.
Slow down.
Ask.
Listen.
Give the benefit of the doubt.
Lead with curiosity, not assumption.
And remember, sometimes…
The problem isn’t the drip.
I am.
