I have many shortcomings, I know. Although I consider “reliability” to be something I need to work on, I don’t see “trust” as exactly the same thing as reliability, although they are clearly related or interconnected to each other.
“Trust,” to me, means keeping specific (explicit) promises as well as fulfilling people’s ethical expectations, e.g. to respect things like boundaries, privacy, etc. Reliability is more about fulfilling implicit promises that go above and beyond general ethics, especially on an ongoing basis. I have mostly tended to view myself as trustworthy but not always reliable – perhaps partly because I’m not very good at figuring out other people’s expectations of me (implicit promises), but also because reliability seems more open ended and I’m not as good with open-ended commitments as I am with narrow commitments. If I say, “I will do X tomorrow,” X gets done. If I say, “I will do X every day from now on,” X may get done for a while but over time I will fail.
…trustworthy in the short term, I guess, if not always reliable.
Today I had two people convey to me that they basically didn’t trust me. Whether this arose in conjunction with issues of reliability or not, I can’t really figure out. Neither used those words (“trust” or “reliability”) – in both cases, the communication was fraught by the language barrier that arises so often for me. I think I understood their meaning, however – neither was a case where there was a lot of room for misunderstanding.
So people don’t trust me? Coworkers? Students?
This makes me miserable.
Needless to say, it was a crummy day. There have been times when I have let people down. I think I’m pretty good a admitting those mistakes. I’ll own up to them and apologize and hope that I can be forgiven. I really don’t feel, from what I understand at this point, that either of these cases, today, were examples where I “earned the lack of trust” (so to speak) that was communicated to me. These things today, they feel undeserved.
So I come online and start ranting about it, but I do so in unfulfilling, vague generalities because, god forbid, I further erode any possibility of trust.
Grump.
What I’m listening to right now.
Phantogram, “When I’m Small.”
