I try to stay pretty calm and collected about people in general. I hope that I'm fairly tolerant and use empathy often to understand some else's perspective.
The dark side of this for me is that when I lose patience with something or someone I just seem to be done. I have a hard time mustering up anything but irritation once that weird switch flips. Luckily it doesn't happen often.
I've talked before about how answering how are you with I'm busy is one of these things that rubs me the wrong way. I've found another phrase that I have even less patience with: "that's not my job".
If ultimately we're working in service of our colleagues, teams and organizations anything can end up being our job whether it is specifically stated in a job description or not. One of my favourite lines from Seth Godin's Manifesto for Small Teams is the following:
If what you're working on right now doesn't matter to the mission, help someone else with their work.
For me, that's not my job flies in the face of this statement. It takes us out of the work that is ours as an overall organization and puts us into individual silos. We're no longer greater than the sum of our parts. I love the direction that organizational design is headed in as it becomes leaner and flatter. The nimbleness it provides us to maximize all of our time in our greatest service to the mission at any given time.
Being a Force for Good 