Truly trustworthy people husband trust through transparency and accountability. Those who say "You'll just have to trust me/us" are not trustworthy.
Haltom's Tenth Law pertains to private relations and to public personas. When people want to impart some secret and say, "I trust you," note Haltom's 10th: prefer to be incapable of violating some confidence rather than to be confided in.
Those who vouchsafe me private information need not fear that I might blab, but I cannot spill beans I do not possess. I try to stick with the observable and the verifiable so that friends and colleagues may satisfy themselves that what I assert is true. Nice as it is to hear that I am trusted, I find life easier and more serene when I need not be trusted.
If you cite Haltom's 10th, expect multiple benefits. You will stifle hoped-for leaks by telling a leaker that the rumor is not going anywhere. The less one hears about wife-swapping or recreational drug use, the better. When exposure comes, no part of the consequences will follow from your knowing or doing anything.
You will nonetheless acquire previously latent information because people tend to share with one who would just as soon not know. Careful! You may thereby come to appreciate Bob Seeger's "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"] in a new way.
Perhaps the greatest payoff from Haltom's 10th is as a reminder that the more that anyone protests his or her trustworthiness, the less trustworthy she or he is likely to be.
Trustworthiness like other virtues is usually evident. If you must tell those who know you that you possess a virtue, you exemplify the virtue too little. The sexy do not have to cadge compliments; the strong do not advertise their strength; the honest seldom have to protest their integrity.
Moreover, those who cannot be virtuous redouble their efforts to seem virtuous. Masters of virtues are fewer than professors of virtues, just as those who profess ethics are more numerous than those who live ethics [Haltom's Third Law]. The underlying dynamics of being and seeming were covered long ago by Machiavelli and will be covered in the next entry in "Rump Parliament" by your present correspondent.
Hence, when a colleague or superordinate says, "Trust me," the prudent academic distrusts the performance and the performer. Why is reassurance being produced unless there might be good reason not to trust or to distrust? Has anyone but a crook ever assured you that he or she was not a crook? Why tell me you will respect me in the morning unless you suspect that I might believe that you will not?
One requests or demands trust when one knows one is not trusted, will not be trusted, or should not be trusted. The confidence man trades on confidence he entices from you. The politician asks you to put trust in her because she has no better argument.
"Trust me" often serves as a polite form of "Shut up." When an administrator claims that some committee has addressed some matter, that claim is tantamount to refusal to account for the committee. If the committee's decision-making would stand scrutiny, the administrator would be more forthcoming. When committees' processes or outcomes will not bear skepticism, administrators raise trust and civility to suggest that genteel colleagues will not reason why or make reply.
When, for example, an ad hoc committee wanted to assay differences in the tenuring and promotion of males and females at the University, those with access to such information produced it only in its least revealing form and after great delay. When faculty who work with data asked for more revealing data, they were stonewalled with the confidentiality of personnel processes. When these faculty protested that confidentiality could be preserved but good data provided -- for example, by moving averages or other statistics resistent to disaggregation but revealing of gendered disparities -- they were scolded for not trusting those who provided the information. [In one sense, the scolding was merited: if administrators will not find a way to provide reliable, valid information, one already knows what the administrators are striving to conceal.]
Administrators and colleagues might not stifle requests for accountability if they could be certain that faculty and staff would accept accounts. Almost all faculty are unaware of accounts. Made aware of accounts, almost all faculty are indifferent to them. Yet those hoarding latent information fear an outbreak of critical citizenship.
Such fears belie almost all experience in faculty meetings, committees, and the Faculty Senate, yet administrators preempt sensible inquiries with "confidentiality" and "trust" and other shibboleths. Of course, once an administrator proclaims herself or himself worthy of and insistent upon trust, any experienced member of the faculty knows that decisions, the makers of those decisions, and the process by which the decisions were taken cannot survive even the gentlest questioning. "Time to move along." "Nothing to see here."
The majority of the faculty on occasion accommodate insultingly incredible justifications. The routine state of affairs is that almost all faculty are ignorant of and indifferent to decisions, decision-making, and decision-makers. This is the most important rationale behind Haltom's Tenth Law. To be a trusted subject of the University of Puget Clowns, one must be judged to be docile, decorous, and daft [or an "at will" employee, such as staff or untenured faculty].
One who does not have to be trusted or who is not trusted, it follows, receives one of the highest accolades that administrators or power committees can bestow. If such plaudits were medals, the inscription might read "Neither a Dupe nor a Dope!"
Trust me!
Coming Soon -- Haltom's Eleventh Law: Seeming beats being.
No comments:
Post a Comment