Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

by Henry Cloud

Getting to the next level always requires ending something, leaving it behind, and moving on. Growth itself demands that we move on. Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.

It’s been said that some things die and some things need to be killed.

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“Have you ever had an infected tooth pulled?” I asked. “Sure.” “Did you have a nice ride home?” I asked. (Laughing) “No, it was awful.” “Well, that was negative, . . . or was it?” I asked. “If you define negative as feeling crummy, I agree it was. But if you define negative as ‘harmful,’ I would not call it negative but positive. It was not harmful at all for the dentist to inflict that pain. In fact, it was a very positive event, right? A healing event?” I asked. “Yes, sure it was,” she said. “There is a big difference between hurt and harm,” I said. “We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow. It can be the source of huge growth. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.”

Make the endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, instead of seeing it as a problem. Then and only then can you align yourself well with endings when they come. It has to do with your brain and how it works.

As Anne Mulcahy, Xerox’s chairman and former CEO, recently remarked, “One of the most important types of decision making is deciding what you are not going to do, what you need to eliminate in order to make room for strategic investments. This could mean shutting down a program. It could mean outsourcing part of the business. These are often the hardest decisions to make, and the ones that don’t get nearly enough focus”

The best performers know how to fail well. They see it, accept it, and move on. They do not keep beating the dead horse, or worse, riding the one with the broken leg. They can call it quits, wave the white flag, and go forward.

the most common maps that keep necessary endings from happening: having an abnormally high pain threshold, covering for others, believing that ending it means “I failed,” misunderstood loyalty, and codependent mapping.

Psychology researchers Charles Carver and Mark Scheier make the distinction between “giving up effort” and “giving up commitment.” They point out how important it is to realize that giving up on some particular commitment doesn’t necessarily mean you have to give up on effort. Instead, that effort can be redirected to another goal worthy of your resources. But some people have maps in their heads that say, “Any giving up is bad.” This belief keeps them from endings that should happen.

The map that makes people feel responsible for other people is one of the most ending-delaying maps there is. It usually comes from having been parented in a way that makes the child feel guilty for choices that did not make parents or other members of the family happy. As adults, such people need to learn a new map that says, “I am not doing this ‘to you.’ I am doing it ‘for me.’ ” There is a big difference.

There is a difference between helping someone who is disabled, incapable, or otherwise infirm versus helping someone who is resisting growing up and taking care of what every adult (or child, for that matter) has to be responsible for: herself or himself. When you find yourself in any way paying for someone else’s responsibilities, not only are you stuck with a delayed ending, but you are probably harming that person.

In other cases, people’s development has not provided them with the skills to do endings well. They have never been shown how to have a difficult conversation or to communicate in a way that might even fix a problem so an ending would not have to occur.

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Peter Drucker used to say that the great leaders make “life and death decisions,” which, as he pointed out, were usually about people. Those are the decisions that cause big directional changes in businesses, where the life or death of the vision depends on someone stepping up and acting. If you have a sense of powerlessness in your situation or a map that doesn’t let you act, you won’t make life-or-death decisions. Instead, you will tend to accept the slow death of morale, initiative, and sometimes even the business itself. And on the personal side of life, you will miss out on all things vital.

If you are looking for the formula that can get you motivated and fearless, here it is: you must finally see reality for what it is—in other words, that what is not working is not going to magically begin working. If something isn’t working, you must admit that what you are doing to get it to work is hopeless.

Finkelstein goes on to explain how facing those realities is a key ingredient to executing what Drucker referred to as “abandonment” of what was in the way of tomorrow. What a great way to describe a necessary ending.

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Wishing Versus Hoping It is imperative that you give up hope if your hope is not hope at all but just an empty wish. But how do we know the difference between wishing and hoping? When most people talk about tomorrow and wanting something in their lives to be different or to get better, they use the word hope. Dictionary definitions of hope contain two elements. The first is a “desire or expectation” for something in the future to occur. “I hope this thing turns around.” The second is usually “grounds for believing” that something in the future will occur. “She sees some hope because of next year’s product line.” The real problem is when we have one without the other: a desire without any grounds. That is hope based not on reality but on our desires, our wishes.

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In the absence of real, objective reasons to think that more time is going to help, it is probably time for some type of necessary ending.

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Recommitment does not make a person who is unsuited for a particular position suited for it all of a sudden. Promises by someone who has a history of letting you down in a relationship mean nothing certain in terms of the future.

the key diagnostic of the wise person: When truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments.

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When you give them feedback, they embrace it positively. They say things like, “Thank you for telling me that. It helps me to know I come across that way. I didn’t know that.” Or “I really took what you said to heart, and here is what I did.” Or “Thanks for caring enough to bring this to my attention. I needed to hear this.” There is some sort of appreciation for the feedback, as they see it as something of value, even if it is hard to hear. You might hear them offer a response like, “Well, this was tough to hear, but it is good. It will help me even if it hurts.”

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Traits of Foolish Persons • When given feedback, they are defensive and immediately come back at you with a reason why it is not their fault. • When a mistake is pointed out, they externalize the mistake and blame someone else. • Unlike the wise person, with whom talking through issues strengthens your relationship, with the foolish person, attempts to talk about problems create conflict, alienation, or a breach in the relationship.

all his coach did was tell him that he had to take their photos and put them inside the cellophane wrapper of his cigarette package. That way, every time he took out a cigarette, he had to look at the photos of his little boys first, and picture them fatherless when he dies a premature death. That is a lot different and a more powerful approach than simply nagging someone with “You should quit smoking.”