If You Treat People Like Children, You Can’t Be Surprised When They Act Like Children
“Look, the American public is really strong and tough. The first thing we should do is listen to the scientists. Secondly, we should tell them the truth. The unvarnished truth. The American people have never shied away from being able to deal with the truth. The worst thing you can do is raise false expectations and watch them get dashed. Then they begin to lose confidence in the leadership. So we should just tell the truth as best we know it. As best the scientists know it. We should let them speak.”
— Joe Biden, March 29, 2020
There was a time, back in the early nineties, when I simply didn’t trust the people in the theater company Joe Janes, Jeff Hoover, and I founded. Always a Grand Planner, I tended to go for big wins and hide the details. My feeling was that they couldn’t handle the details and were all so basically selfish that they could only respond positively to the results of the sausage rather than the method in making it.
At one point, I decided it would be a huge deal to get Sam Shepard to come out and do a MasterClass with the actors. I reached out to his ‘people’ and worked out a deal when he was going to be in Chicago for few weeks and would accept $2,000 to spend a few hours with us. They sent a contract. I signed it and sent them $1,000 of my own money. I told the group. They were thrilled.
I didn’t tell them that the contract stipulated that if his plans changed and he decided to come to Chicago some other time, I’d be refunded the dough and the contract would be voided. I didn’t tell them that his plans were tentative. I didn’t trust them to be excited if things were not 100% solid.
When he changed his plans and the deal fell through, instead of the group accepting what I knew to be exactly what I had signed on for, I was accused of fabricating the whole thing. It stung. I showed a few of them the contract (now null) as proof but they still didn’t believe me as their disappointment was genuine. They acted like children, hurling angry tantrums about me, calling me a liar.
As the company continued, since they acted like children, I continued to treat them as such.
Funny how my expectations of them were confirmed time and time again. Funny how it was my distrust of them is what fueled their reaction.
My only defense is that I was young and inexperienced and theater is a highly emotional place to learn. It isn’t much of a defense because I should’ve known better.
What I knew (and know) is that thing I’ve written about before: The Expectation Theory. Simply put, people almost always rise to the level one expects them to based in large part to how they are treated. Treat people like a bunch of toilet paper hoarding morons and, sure enough, they are a bunch of toilet paper hoarding morons.
If you treat the American population as a grift, they will respond by grifting back. If you treat us like we’re stupid and can’t handle the truth of a given situation, you’ll be proven correct. If you show us that our labor is worth little, then our effort will be low — minimum wage equals minimum initiative.
I recall a campaign back in 2000. Senate campaign run by investment banker and Republican Jack Ryan (no, not that Jack Ryan). I didn’t agree with most of his political stances. I had no intention of voting for him. Then it broke that his ex-wife, Star Trek actor Jeri Ryan, accused him of trying to get her to have sex with other men while he watched. Holy Balls, his campaign went up in smoke.
I said at the time that if he had hopped up in front of reporters and simply told the truth — “Have you seen my ex-wife? Of course I wanted her to have sex with other men so I could watch. Who wouldn’t?” — I would’ve voted for him in a heartbeat.
After lifetimes of politicians and media hiding truths from us is it any wonder that we don’t believe anything they say or report?
TRUMP: “We don’t really know what the fuck is going on. I got rid of the team in the White House a few years ago because you all were such assholes about me winning the presidency and comparisons to Obama really piss me off. I fucked up. I’m going to see if we can do better but, keep in mind, I want some fucking credit for it!”
At least that would be honest.
I believe that people can handle truth, unvarnished, unspun. There are some who will lose their shit and panic but we train people how to respond by example.
When I was the Front of House Manager of Millennium Park in Chicago, one of the most important but neglected pieces of essential reading was our Emergency Exit Plan. The simple explanation is that the park is covered by a metal cage and any lightning storms required a mass evacuation because rain is wet but lightning on a metal cage is deadly.
The Sunday night of the Chicago Blues Fest was shrouded in uncertainty. The weather was dark with potential storms but none that were directly headed to the park and concerts. We monitored things. When it became apparent we needed to evacuate and quickly, the organizer (who assured me he knew the standard protocol for this situation) instead got on the microphone and effectively told the audience of 15,000 or so to “Run!”
Then the skies opened up and a torrential rain soaked the area. It was chaos.
Panic is easy and infectious. Calm is harder to manage and must be demonstrated. If you expect panic, you’ll get it. If you expect calm and behave in communication that people will likewise follow suit, you’ll likely get it.
Tone policing has taken a bad rap in the past five years because it has become so closely associated with white people telling black people to quiet down but the practice is not essentially racist in nature. The meme of Batman slapping a hysterical Robin cuts to heart of it nicely.
Police your tone. Quiet down. Speak the truth and expect people to react like adults. You’ll be disappointed in them sometimes and they’ll rush out and scream in the streets over the tiniest of inconveniences (like sheltering in place orders or universal background checks for gun ownership). Most times and over the course of slowly telling the truth and expecting thoughtful responses, our society can reverse the trend of arrested development.
It’s really about trusting people and trust is given, not earned.
