You never know.

I have been in the Travel industry since the early 80s and I have developed friendships and worked with many of the same colleagues for decades. These people make it worthwhile on a daily basis to come to work in the challenging landscape that travel has become. They are people of integrity who rate their credibility as one of the most important assets they posses. They judge people by their deeds and actions, not on where they work or who they work for and this is the defining benchmark that keeps relationships on a trusted level.

I am proud to know these long term friends and colleagues, who have run the gamut of different jobs, sometimes at opposition companies, all the while able to disassociate themselves from those jobs and remain true to their individual character. In the end you were not tagged by where or who you worked for but how you acted outside that sphere.

Why the rant about relationships? Because sometimes you don’t know people as well as you think and disappointment is not far behind. This disappointment was one I recently encountered as colleagues who obviously had no faith in my integrity or credibility to operate a program designed for the benefit of the Travel Industry with no other agenda asked me to leave.

It seems my moving to a new company agitated these colleagues who I thought knew me but had issues with the company I was moving to. I have to ask myself the same question, do I know everyone as well as I should? Seems you never know what people really think of you until you change work, relationships or even social networks, which bring to bear emotions not based on your thinking, but theirs.

Robin Dunbar, eminent anthropologist and evolutionary who came up with the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships being 150" seemed to have it right. Maybe we know too many people but none of them well enough.

So maybe you shouldn’t be disappointment with what people think of you if you really don’t know them. You can’t layer your thinking about yourself and your self worth onto them and expect them to understand where you are coming from.

If anything you learn to adjust your levels of trust for the outer circle and close ranks so that you always have a safety net from true friends and colleagues prepared to catch you when you fall or are pushed.

Catch me now.