The People You Can’t Figure Out (Consistency)
In one of my workshops, I have participants play a game that begins with friends and colleagues making a few simple decisions and ends with those same people questioning one another’s motives.
The rules are simple. Nobody cheats. Nobody breaks them. Yet somehow, before the game is over, a room full of intelligent adults has turned into a collection of amateur detectives, each convinced the others are up to something.
What’s interesting is how differently the teams approach the game, and how the one that causes the most trouble doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.
The first team believes the right thing to do is cooperate. The second believes the smart thing to do is compete.
Character and Competence. The subjects of my last two essays.
And despite their differences, both are surprisingly easy to play against. Once you understand what matters to them, you can usually anticipate their next move.
The trouble comes from a third team.
They play fairly in one round, strategically in the next, then return to fairness just as everyone adjusts. They can explain every decision, and each explanation makes sense.
It doesn’t help.
Unlike the other two teams, nobody can anticipate their next move. Just when everyone thinks they’ve figured out how this team plays, it changes its approach.
Cooperation breaks down, strategies collapse, and soon everyone is spending more time worrying about what the others might do than deciding what to do themselves.
Of course, I’ve watched people play versions of this game outside the workshop, too. So have you.
I’ve known people who could write the most beautiful things about friendship, affection, and how much someone meant to them, but couldn’t seem to find an afternoon to spend together.
I’ve known people who were wonderfully attentive when someone’s life was falling apart, then surprisingly difficult to locate once things improved.
I’ve known others whose moods changed so frequently that everyone around them became an amateur meteorologist, checking the forecast before deciding whether to approach.
And you may still remember the disappointment, the anger, even the resentment those relationships caused.
Because the hardest part isn’t being let down. It’s not knowing when it’s coming.
Organizations have the same problem.
Employees learn that the answer to a question depends less on what they ask than on which day they ask it. Policies are enforced strictly for one person and silently waived for the next. Companies proudly proclaim they’re customer-centric, until putting the customer first becomes too expensive.
What’s missing in the game, in those relationships, and in these organizations is Consistency, the third signal our brains evaluate when deciding whether someone can be trusted.
We often confuse consistency with doing something well over and over again. But that's excellence.
Consistency is something more fundamental. It’s predictability. Knowing what to expect from someone because they’ve given you reason to expect it, whether through something they’ve promised or simply what they’ve done before.
The human brain was built around predictability.
It’s constantly anticipating what will happen next so it can prepare us for it. When expectations are met, there’s little more to do. When they’re not, the brain has to work harder, searching for clues, calculating risks, and preparing for possibilities that may never happen.
And all that extra work comes at a cost. Sometimes, the uncertainty itself is more stressful than the thing we’re worried might happen.
Researchers at University College London found that people were more stressed when they had a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock than when they knew for certain one was coming.
Think about that. The possibility of something unpleasant was more stressful than its certainty.
The brain can prepare for almost anything. What exhausts it is having to prepare for everything.
That’s what makes inconsistency so dangerous. It can destroy trust without anyone doing anything particularly terrible.
A reply takes longer than usual. A promised check-in doesn’t happen. A commitment becomes more of a guideline than a promise.
To the person responsible, these are minor exceptions, each with a reasonable explanation. To the people depending on them, they’re evidence that what happened yesterday may not happen tomorrow.
And most people won’t complain. They’ll simply begin making other arrangements.
So look at the evidence.
Notice the expectations you set, especially the ones you never said out loud. Watch what your team does, not what it says it does. Read your emails, proposals, and website the way a client would, and ask what each one promises—explicitly and implicitly. Then check whether you deliver it every time, not most of the time.
Finally, watch how people treat you. When they follow up on things you've already agreed to, or ask whether plans are still on, they aren't being thorough. They're managing the uncertainty of depending on you. It's a tell.
Maybe the most revealing question isn’t whether the people in your life can count on you.
It’s how much work they have to do to count on you.
Because if someone has to keep figuring you out, eventually they may decide it’s easier not to.
