Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Don’t believe things at first. Be skeptical, but maintain your health.

I haven’t blogged on this topic before, and that is sort of surprise.  I used to have a job where I told people that being a healthy skeptic was one of the better things you could be. In that job, people told me what was happening. I needed to be skeptical in that I needed for people to demonstrate to me that what they said was true.

For example,

• demonstrate that everyone was at work
• demonstrate that the goods had arrived
• demonstrate that the software worked
• demonstrate that the hardware worked

I trusted the people personally. It was, however, my job to represent the taxpayers on projects. Verifying was important.

Another part of this was to be healthy. It is easy to  become distrustful of people. That isn’t good for me and wouldn’t be good for the people around me. How would you feel if the people around you didn’t trust you? If they constantly questioned your word?

Be healthy. Tell people, “I trust you, but as part of my job I have to see proof of what you say. Please show me.”

I expect to blog about other aspects of this topic in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.