Last week on The Friendship Bench, we engaged in a conversation about trust, teed up by Mac Bogert. In a breakout room I shared with Anne Nevel, Victor Acquista, and Chris Berryman, Chris made a comment about accepting others as they are that made me wonder about the difference(s) between acceptance and acceptability. It was the first time I’d ever wondered about that. And people say I’m slow. 🙄
Philosophically speaking, acceptance refers to the act of receiving things that have been offered — ideas, words, actions gifts — with approval, agreement, or satisfaction. On the other hand, acceptability refers to whether ideas, words, actions, or gifts are discerned as being sufficient to be received positively — to serve a purpose, to meet a standard, to provide utility, to please aesthetically, granting the fact that purposes and standards may be subjective and subject to variables like time, context, perspectives, and preferences.
As it turned out, the day before the Bench, I’d seen a meme on LinkedIn that said this:
Do not make the mistake of being so understanding and forgiving that you overlook the fact that you are being disrespected.
There’s your acceptability. And in addition to trust, that meme called to mind the notions of authenticity and agency.
Here’s Where it Gets Sticky
It seems that in more and more conversations these days, authenticity is popularly defined as the quality of being genuine or true to one’s own personality, spirit, character, and beliefs — honest, transparent, acting in accordance with our beliefs, and aligned with our values.
Agency refers to the ability — the confidence, the self-faith, the belief in one’s own worth and power — to initiate and direct actions toward achieving defined goals, to make choices, and to influence one’s life and environment. It involves exercising self-determination over one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It requires being comfortable with uncertainty and one’s ability to respond to uncertainty positively and productively.
I’ve said on more than one occasion that if I’d spoken or behaved authentically, in specific personal or professional settings — if I’d exercised my agency to speak or act honestly and transparently in accordance with my beliefs and in alignment with my values — my authentic ass would have been shown the authentic door. That’s why I became a Master of Contextual Authenticity. (Hat tip to Victor Acquista.)
What’s the Connection?
Speaking philosophically again, authenticity is often seen as a foundational element of trust. Agency, too, is closely linked to trust because it involves the ability to make autonomous decisions. Ay, there’s the rub.
According to humanlyconsulting.com:
Authenticity is often talked about as a solo pursuit, being in touch with yourself and able to express yourself fully. But our confidence and ability to be our authentic self can be strongly tied to the environment we are in and the people who are around us.
That’s known as the Agency Dilemma, connoting the need to balance freedom to choose with the need to act in accordance with core values. As just one example, here’s how all that ties to trust:
If my boss is a nincompoop, I can act in accordance with my authentic self, informed by my core values, and tell him he’s a nincompoop. Or I can use my agency to make the autonomous decision to keep my yap shut, keep my job, and continue to pay my bills. At that point, I have to trust he’s enough of a nincompoop that he can’t discern I’m exercising my agency at the expense of my authenticity and my core values. And my boss has to trust I’m acting authentically.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive. (Sir Walter Scott)
Establishing trust and determining who we can trust can be a tangled web, indeed.
Be careful out there.
