I am a thinker, problem solver, a lateral thinker. If you are trying to solve a problem, I am one of the people you want on your team. If you are a person who always looks at the positives and doesn’t consider the negatives, you may not like what I have to say.

A few years ago when I was in the workforce I had a manager who accepted people as being honest and trustworthy. As well, our Director was similar in nature. However, one of my co-workers was not honest nor trustworthy and took advantage. I was an outsider. To say the least, it was a rather frustrating environment, but we got alone.

We worked on many projects together and it seemed that I was the one always pointing out the conflicts, problems or pitfalls. I guess I got a reputation as adversarial and pessimistic.

Now, I don’t consider myself as a pessimist and am certainly not adversarial. I am very willing to listen and consider all parts of the question or problem. Isn’t that how you achieve success?

When the time came for our Director to move into a new position and advance her career I wrote her a letter and wished her much success, commending her on her leadership and contributions to our department. She was shocked. She had created in her mind the thought that I was not impressed with her leadership and was happy to see her move on.

We had a heart-to-heart talk. She had perceived my intentions as negative throughout all of the projects we had worked on, believing that I was hoping for them to fail. When I explained my thought processes to her — I look at and express the negatives because you do not — she understood me and I her. We parted friends.

I started to write this post for RDP Monday – Impetuous but seem to have gone off on a tangent. But it does rather show how Impetuous I am not.