Necessary Endings (24 page)

Self-absorbed Resisters

Sometimes people put up resistance because your decision is going to affect them in some way and they do not want that change. It is like the situation where the CEO comes in and says, “We have an incredible opportunity to acquire XYZ Co.! It is going to triple our size and speed up our path to realizing our vision! This is the day we have been waiting for.” Then, someone raises her hand and asks, “If we move, does it mean that I wil lose my window?”

As ridiculous as that example is, it il ustrates something that happens every day. Many times there are endings that are going to affect someone, and that person does not have the kind of character to put his self-interest aside and see what is good for the company or the mission. Passively or actively, this person is on a sabotage mission and is not looking out for you.

This type of person can appear friendly, offering “advice” to “help” you, but he is real y a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He wil warn you of al of the downsides, al that can go wrong, what you wil lose, and so on. Certainly there are times when we need that kind of advice, but this is not one of them. The situation I am referring to is one where this is not advice, but an attempt to keep you from going forward.

Threatened Resisters

Other times, the resistance comes from someone who is threatened personal y by what you are doing. For example, when an addict begins to get sober, addict friends wil try to get him to come back and party again because they see the person making the kind of change that they know they need but are afraid to make. So they try to do away with the threat to change that is standing right in front of them by luring him back to being like them.

Whether in business or personal life, when you do something difficult but worthy, it confronts people with their own lives. It activates al of their fears, and they quickly try to tel you the same things that they tel themselves. “It wil never work. I know a lot of people who tried to do that, and they were sorry in the end.” The truth is that they are stuck, you are getting unstuck, and you cause them to look in the mirror and face themselves.

Unconsciously, they realize,
If she can do it
,
I could do it too. But to think about doing that scares me. I think I will talk her out of it
,
and then we will
both be comfortable again.

So watch for these resisters. Listen to them, weigh their reasons, ask them why they feel that way. Ask them also how they feel about the reality of what happens if you
don’t
make the necessary change, and see what they say when you “play the movie” for them and ask them, “Do you real y want that to happen to me?” See if they can look you in the eye and wish that upon you. Thank them for their opinions, then tel them, “I understand why you feel that way. But I have come to a different conclusion. I need to do this for me [or us, or the company].”

The NoNos

I love John Kotter’s classification of the kind of person he cal s the NoNo. He contrasts them with skeptics. Skeptics oppose change because they have real questions and problems with the change, but they are open to being convinced. NoNos, he says, are “highly skil ed urgency kil ers. If they cannot undermine attempts at diminishing a contentment with the status quo, they create anxiety or anger and the flurry of useless activity associated with a false sense of urgency” [John Kotter,
A Sense of Urgency
]. In other words, they are entrenched against change and are not open to having their minds changed under any circumstances.

There are many motivators for NoNos. As a psychologist, I can tel you that I have seen them in many instances, and in my opinion, they can be pretty inflexible. They often are not open to what we cal “assimilation and accommodation,” a process by which normal people take in new data, accommodate ourselves to it, and change our minds. Not so with NoNos. Instead of taking in new data, they have al sorts of reasons for rejecting it, devaluing it, and undermining any accommodation that anyone would be close to making with it. So I agree with Kotter’s good advice:
don’t engage
them.

When you engage a NoNo or anyone else who is not listening (see the previous chapter on dealing with fools), you are de facto losing. They are trying to stal you, and they are not going to change, so to spend any time trying to convince them is to al ow them to use their strategy of derailing. If you are talking to them, they are winning.

What Kotter suggests is to not ignore them but deal with them. His three strategies are to distract them, push them out of the organization, or expose them to the power of the group. In my experience, those are good suggestions, but in addition, the big idea I want you to get from them is that working with NoNos is not going to help. They are not interested in changing, in information, or in anything related to reality. You have to deal with them if they are in the way.

If you are in an organization or even an extended family or social circle, NoNos wil by definition be against the change that you are trying to make. Understand that, and deal with it as the obstacle it truly is.

Stuff Happens When You Change

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you make a move down a new path, obstacles wil come as a result. Getting things done is hard, or more people would be doing it. So accept the fact that endings are difficult and hard to implement. You wil be going through new waters, and there wil be waves. Big bumpy ones. It takes courage and perseverance to keep going.

In an upcoming section, we wil examine some ingredients that wil help you sustain the change. But for now, just know that when you hit obstacles, they might just be a good sign that you have done the right thing. It means that you are real y making an ending and are merely encountering the tasks of the new season. But now that you have normalized a worldview of seasons, you are ready for that, and it won’t surprise you.

No More Mr. Bad Guy: The Magic of Self-Selection

M
y friend was struggling over what to do with her boyfriend of over a year. She was very attached to him, and “loved him deeply,” as she said over and over in our conversations. “Then why the struggle?” I asked.

“He is not the kind of man I want to start a family with. I love him and love to be with him. He has the purest heart I have ever seen, and I love that about him. He is the smartest person I have ever known, and I love that about him. But he has no drive in life. He just gets by on his smarts and has no real initiative or plans for the future. He is a lot like a col ege student, not thinking much past the weekend,” she said. “I need someone who wil take charge and who wil be a strong husband and father. I don’t need a little boy that I ‘mother’ al the time.”

“Give me some examples.”

“Wel , he is so talented that he gets freelance work and makes enough to live working about half-time. So the rest of the time, he sleeps in, plays computer games, and isn’t productive. He is so smart that he can get away with it, but I want to see someone who attacks life and has some drive,”

she said.

“Plus, he lets me be too in charge. He doesn’t make plans or take care of things like a real adult would. I don’t want to be the one worrying about the future al the time. I want someone to partner with me so I feel secure.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“That’s where I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do. I love him and do not want to break up with him, but I can’t see myself marrying him until he changes. We talk about it, and then there is a little movement, but if I am not always nagging him, it does not change for long. Plus, I don’t like it that he stil gets high at his age. He should have outgrown that.”

“Sounds like you feel like you have a tough decision to make. Why don’t you let him make the decision?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Wel , you are kind of stuck because you think you have to decide on whether or not he is the right one or not. I don’t think that is your decision to make.
I think it is his.
”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Your decision is to decide what kind of person you want to be married to. And it sounds like you know. Someone who takes initiative, is responsible, wil step up and take charge of planning and worry about the future. Someone who values goals and uses his time wel to build the kind of life you want together. Someone who is not using drugs. Basic adult kind of stuff.

“And his decision is whether or not he wants to be that person. That is a decision that only he can make, not you. So tel him that. Tel him what you want, and then tel him he gets to decide if he wants to be that person and be with you or not. That is up to him, as he is the only one who can control that outcome,” I said.

“Keep going,” she said. “I think I am getting it.”

“OK,” I said. “Just say something like this: Taylor, I have been thinking about my future and what I want long-term, the kind of man I want to be with for life and to start a family with. Here is what he wil look like: He wil be loving, smart, fun, and someone I connect wel with, and he’l have my same values. Also, he wil be responsible, wil think about the future, wil be going somewhere, and wil be a good provider. He wil take care of the basic things, like being financial y responsible, and normal things that adults do. That is what I am looking for and that is the kind of person I wil be with.

“Right now, that is not you. I love you, and I want that person to be you, but right now, it is not. So I can’t see a future together as things are now.

But I am going to give you a choice: you get to decide whether or not you want to be that person. If you do, and you become that kind of person and prove it to me long enough that I real y can believe it, I would love to be with you. But it is up to you whether or not that is who you want to be and whether or not you want to be with me. It is your decision.”

I could see in her expression that her mood had lifted. As we talked, she said that part of it was the clarity of just saying what she wanted. But another part was the relief of not being the “bad guy” by rejecting someone she loved or feeling that she was judging him. She did not want to judge him, as he was truly a good guy, and she loved and respected so much about him. She was tired of being in the position of feeling like the nagging judge. This approach relieved her of that responsibility, as it put him in charge.

He would be the one to decide whether or not he wanted to be with her. She set the standards for what being with her meant, and he could decide whether or not it was a match. It was his decision, and he could self-select. Good for her as she did not have to judge anymore. Instead, her standards would be the judge. Good for him, as she was no longer going to nag but instead would let him decide whether or not he wanted to be with her in the ways that she required. No bad guy anywhere. Everyone was free again.

Self-Selection

I find that in getting to a necessary ending, many people stal out for the same reason my friend was stuck. They do not want to be in the position of being the bad guy, rejecting someone or saying that person is not “good enough” in some way. It makes them feel bad and is a horrible dynamic in a relationship. Self-selection is the better way.

What it does is set a standard for what you want, regardless of what particular individual you are dealing with. Then the person gets to choose whether or not she wants to meet that standard. She self-selects. It’s not much different from what happens in col ege admissions: Administrators at a good col ege are not being mean or judgmental when they set a minimum grade level for admission, but the requirement does make their standards clear. It defines the institution, leaving students to ask themselves if they want to go to that col ege, knowing that it means meeting that standard. They self-select.

Similarly, if you have an employee who is not performing, you might feel the same sense of being stuck that my friend did. You like the person and don’t want to be the bad guy, firing him. So let him self-select.

“Terry, I want to talk to you about this position. The kind of person that I want to be in that chair is going to look like this: puts time and energy into building a team, is ahead of the curve in future quarters’ planning and business generation, achieves a yearly growth rate in sales of
x
percent.

Right now, you are not that person. I want you to be that person, and I hope you choose to become that person. But that is up to you. I want you to think about it and let me know if you want to do that and what your plan is to show me that you have become that person. I hope you do.”

This is a total y different kind of ending. It has two outcomes—one guaranteed, the other unknown and hopeful. The guaranteed ending is that you have put an end to whatever it was that you needed to prune from your life or business. In my friend’s example, she put an end to being with someone who was not going to fit the bil as the kind of husband she wanted. In the employee example, it put an end to the performance problem.

So the ending is created by the standard. That is guaranteed.

What makes the ending unknown and hopeful is whether or not the particular person is going to step up to the standards set. When we establish a standard, we have drawn a line in the sand for people to deal with. Whether or not they wil is up to them. It is unknown and hopeful because sometimes they do. Other times, they don’t. Either way, the pruning has happened, and you did not reject anyone.

Self-Selection for Your Own Attachments

Another person you sometimes have difficulty saying no to might be yourself. In business and life, we have to be our own bad guy at times and say,

“No, you can’t have that” or “Do that.” But we get attached to certain strategies, hopes, projects, businesses, or whatever. And we go back and forth, using al of the resistance strategy that I introduced in the earlier chapters. “Should I or should I not shut this down? Should I give it more time?