When Expertise Starts Sounding Negotiable

It is not necessarily marked by doubt. Good experts doubt. It is not marked by explanation either. Expertise that cannot explain itself is hardly improved by silence. And it is certainly not marked by admitting uncertainty. "Sometimes I don't know yet" is the most authoritative sentence available.

The change is quieter.

You make the judgement. Then explain it. Then explain why you made it. Then explain that you considered the other person. Then soften something that was not uncertain because something else is the consequence.

Will they understand? Will they still trust you? Will they think you care? Will they call the decision unfair? Will you eventually discover that they were right?

Nothing has necessarily happened to the expertise. Something has happened to the distance between knowing and standing behind what you know.

The difficult version of authority

Authority has acquired some crude definitions. Hierarchy. Certainty. Control. Force of personality. The ability to make other people comply.

Its cleanest form is considerably harder. It requires the congruence to stand behind a judgement while taking the other person's interest seriously enough that their outcome is not incidental to you.

I have taken your interest seriously. I have not confused your interest with your preference.

Preference tells me what you want. It may tell me what you value, what you fear losing, and what you know about your own circumstances that I do not. It deserves to be heard. But preference and interest are not synonyms.

Sometimes they point in exactly the same direction. Authority is easy there. The interesting part begins when they do not.

We have a tempting shorthand available: you gave me what I wanted; therefore, you listened. You refused it; therefore, you did not.

Research on procedural justice makes that equation considerably less secure. People care about the fairness of the process by which authority reaches decisions: opportunities for voice, neutrality, trustworthy motives, dignity and respect matter to acceptance even when an outcome is unfavourable (Tyler, Social Justice: Outcome and Procedure; Tyler, Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law).

Respect, then, cannot simply mean preference satisfied.

But authority has its own convenient equation: I acted in your interest; therefore, I acted with integrity.

No.

Good intention is not integrity. Congruence is not correctness. Expertise is not moral infallibility. A person can sincerely believe they are acting in another person's interest while being spectacularly wrong.

Tony Simons's work on behavioural integrity gives us a useful restraint: integrity in organisational life is read through perceived alignment between words and deeds, including promise keeping and the fit between espoused and enacted values (Simons, Behavioral Integrity). It is not merely a private declaration of good character.

Clean authority therefore needs enough solidity to make the judgement and enough permeability to discover that the judgement needs changing.

Uncertainty enters.

Most of this becomes easier after the outcome is known. If the decision works, the judgement becomes retrospectively elegant. If it fails, everyone suddenly understands the flaw.

But authority is usually exercised earlier, while consequence is still open.

That is the hardest place to remain congruent because uncertainty is not empty. It contains a feared consequence.

Someone may leave. Someone may stop approving of you. The client may go elsewhere. The employee may resent the decision. The relationship may change. The judgement may fail.

And because the consequence is unfinished, nobody yet possesses the evidence that will eventually settle the argument.

Dependence on an authority and the favourability of outcomes both influence how legitimacy is perceived; procedural fairness matters alongside them, not outside them (van der Toorn, Tyler & Jost, More than fair). Research on authority relations also shows that the effect of having a voice changes with how dependent people are on the authority for their outcomes (van Prooijen, Procedural justice in authority relations).

So the temptation begins.

Close the uncertainty socially because you cannot close it factually.

Explain again. Reassure. Demonstrate your care. Make your motives visible. Offer another concession. Reduce the friction. Move the boundary slightly. Try to produce acceptance now because the future has refused to produce certainty.

That is where expertise can begin sounding negotiable.

Not because the explanation is weak.

Because the explanation has changed jobs.

It is no longer clarifying the judgement. It is attempting to manage the consequence of holding it.

The distance

There will always be distance between intention and reception.

You may take my interest seriously, and I may still believe you acted against me. I may prefer something intensely, and you may still conclude that it should not determine the decision. You may act with integrity and still be misunderstood. You may believe you acted with integrity and later discover that you were protecting yourself.

Clean authority can tolerate this distance. Negotiable authority tries desperately to close it.

It needs recognition. Agreement. Approval. Proof that the other person has understood the care beneath the decision.

So it travels.

And travels.

Until the authority-holder is no longer merely explaining the judgement. They are negotiating the right to have made it.

Clean authority can hear preference without becoming governed by preference. It can consider another person's interest without claiming ownership of it. It can make a judgement without manufacturing certainty. It can remain open to correction without turning every challenge into renegotiation.

And, hardest of all, it can leave the consequence unfinished.

Authority is not congruence after the outcome proves you right.

It is what remains congruent while the consequence is still open.

Research underneath

Clickable sources supporting the factual floor of the article.

• Behavioral Integrity — Tony Simons, Organization Science (2002).
• Social Justice: Outcome and Procedure — Tom R. Tyler, International Journal of Psychology.
• Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law — Tom R. Tyler, Crime and Justice (2003).
• More than fair: Outcome dependence, system justification, and the perceived legitimacy of authority figures — van der Toorn, Tyler & Jost, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2011).
• Procedural justice in authority relations: the strength of outcome dependence influences people's reactions to voice — van Prooijen, European Journal of Social Psychology (2007).