85. You Teach What You Tolerate

Concept

Having dinner one evening with a colleague and his wife, she said, in the midst of the conversation, “You teach what you tolerate.” I was struck by that insight and its truthfulness. When we allow a behavior to continue, we are, in essence, teaching that behavior. Tolerance is reward.

This is true, I believe, for children, students, employees, and executives. When we, whoever we are, permit others to continue doing something, it is likely to persist. The year 2017 was when sexual harassment came to fore in American society.³⁷ It became front page news how much our society had tolerated over the decades in terms of sexual harassment— almost totally men on women.

The issue of tolerance-as-teaching relates to the “E” in VABEs, expectations. If our expectations are too lax or too strict, in fact, whatever they are, others will sense those boundaries and either live within them or push on them. Our responses to that pushing further defines how much we tolerate and how much we don’t. Leaders set those boundaries either intentionally or unintentionally by virtue of the authority they possess.

Clearly those boundaries go a long way to defining who a leader is and what he or she stands for.

Sometimes people who set loose boundaries think they are being kind or compassionate. Then when things get out of hand, they clamp down and lay down the law. This kind of oscillation confuses children and employees. See the chapter on trust and the importance of consistency. Better, I think, to have consistent expectations and set them appropriately for the child’s or employee’s capabilities.

At the other end of the scale are people who set expectations so high that people live in constant fear of judgment and being found inadequate. This strictness can create a kind of creative paralysis born of the fear of rejection. If you don’t tolerate any mistakes, people will pull back until they are sure that everything they do is conservative enough to avoid censure.

What is your stance, your tolerance level, for lying? How about, stealing? Cheating? Skimming? Not meeting goals? Tardiness? Lack of preparation? Flirting? Touching? False advertising? Manufacturing defects? Racial slurs? Drunkenness? Drug use?

What, then, of the impact of repression? If an authoritor refuses to tolerate variation, will the person so constrained break out later on when in a more tolerant environment—like college or independent living? Or immigration to another country? Or departure from a strict religious culture?

Example

Business people have a lot of meetings. In business school, we also organize students into classes and learning teams so they have a lot of meetings. Business is a social science—it requires meeting with and influencing other people. What is the reaction of your team when people come unprepared for a meeting? Do you say anything? Or do you avoid a potentially unpleasant conversation?

Shrinkage is the term often used to describe pilfering at work. We plan for a certain amount of shrinkage. That is, we plan for theft. When it gets to a certain point, our tolerance level, we begin to act. Do we assume our employees are thieves? Corruption is tolerated in many regions—not just countries—of the globe. Leaders there assume that everyone will be skimming.

I was told by a tour guide in India once that only 13 percent of Indians pay income tax because they know that if they pay it, most of it, if any, will not reach the government. Another estimate reported by the India Times is only 1.5 percent!³⁸ The country of India took in about US$92 billion in 2007–8 where the individual tax tiers are 0 percent, 5 percent, 20 percent, and 30 percent.³⁹ There are likely many reasons why the Indian government might tolerate such a low tax participation. Here in America, we tolerate intense party feuds that seem to undermine the good of the country.

Laws against drinking and fornication are very strong in Saudi Arabia.⁴⁰ Not only countries, but individual families are also intolerant of inter-ethnic marriages.^41,42

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