I was chatting with a good friend of mine this evening, and I asked her, "Why do women always read into the things men say." She wrote, "I wonder why guys say things that make women read into things. Lol."
It's interesting about perception and reality, isn't it? This isn't really what I wanted to discuss, but it's along the same lines, when it comes to business:
1) We measure people by their actions and not their words. Are they "performing" or are they just talking. There is a huge difference. Do we cut people some slack on this? Sometimes...however, everyone needs to draw the line when we are doing the work and the other party is either slacking, dragging, or just not following through.
2) We also measure people by their honesty. We should almost always have faith in people, regardless of how many times we've been taken or had, or misled, or lied to by others. If we don't, and pre-judge first, it could impede your relationship in the future if that particular person who you're suspecting of something is indeed real, honest and someone with integrity.
As long as human beings roam the earth, there will be some that simply want to take advantage of others. The key to protecting yourself against people like that is to keep your eyes open and your ears in tune. Watch, learn, and listen to what is happening, and if you feel that something is going wrong, your gut is almost always right.
I had a recent occurrence where I trusted someone and they sent an email to a colleague that I introduced to them without copying me on the email. My colleague informed me of this "lapse in judgement". I asked the "someone" whether they "had contacted" my colleague? They said they did and sent me a copy of the email in question and did not apologize for not copying me. Then about two weeks later it happened yet again, this time with another person I introduced to the same "someone". How did I find out? The other person courtesy copied me in his response. When I read the email, I noticed there were in fact two communications spread four days apart which I wasn't aware of. You know what I did? I confronted the "someone" and their answer to me was that the server they had went down and that was the reason I wasn't copied.
Of course, this makes absolutely no sense since the email obviously reached my colleague twice and never reached me until my colleague courtesy copied me.
End result...........good bye "someone".
The moral of the story is that integrity and trust is earned. People in business should be evaluated by 1) performance and 2) honesty & integrity but not necessarily in that order. If they lack one or both of those, you are most likely better off moving on and not dealing with them again.
Until next time, be well and take care.
