Ew What’s In The Jello?

I was going through some boxes recently and came across a few of my mom’s old cookbooks. They had that brownish yellow tint to the paper, with recipes that feel… questionable.

One in particular stopped me. A full spread on jello salads. Not the fruit kind. The ones with olives, ham, hard boiled eggs, shrimp… all suspended in lime green gelatin.

*Picture provided from Collectors Weekly Magazine.

*Picture provided from Reddit.

I stared at it for a while, in equal parts awe and horror, trying to understand how this was ever considered a good idea. Or a “salad,” for that matter.

These recipes pre-date my childhood, but they were still around when I was growing up. They were normal, even "fancy," for parties and potlucks, and they took me right back to that era.

I’m very much Gen X. I had the kind of childhood where you left the house in the morning and came back when it got dark. I lived all the classics: drinking from the hose, making up our own games, figuring things out as we went. We had a lot of freedom, a lot of independence, and a fair amount of adventure, whether our parents knew about it or not.

At the time, it just felt like life.

Looking back, I can see how much that shaped me. Those early experiences quietly installed values that still show up in how I lead and how I work with teams today. Autonomy. Trust. Space to figure things out. The adult version of freedom and independence I grew up with.

And, if I’m honest, there were times my kids probably would have benefited from more structure than I naturally default to. There were also times I was pushing them to “go outside, go roam,” because that’s what I loved, but it wasn’t always what they wanted or needed.

That’s the thing about values. They’re strengths, but they have edges.

I notice how much teams are shaped, often quietly, by the values of the leader. What a leader prioritizes, tolerates, rewards, and avoids sets the tone.

A leader who values independent thinking will build a different team than one who values alignment or cohesion. Neither is right or wrong, but they create different environments. A leader who values exploration will tolerate more ambiguity than one who values certainty. None of these need to be either/or, but they often create a push and pull that leads to subtle tension.

Most of the time, these values aren’t consciously chosen. Whether you name them or not, your values are already shaping your team.

Which makes me wonder how many things we’re doing today that feel completely normal, even effective, that we’ll look back on later, the way we now look at ham and cheese suspended in Jello.

Or more importantly: where do your personal values show up in how you lead today, and where might they be creating an impact you didn’t intend?