Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward
Rate it:
Open Preview
Kindle Notes & Highlights
50%
Flag icon
They show remorse. You get a feeling that they have genuine concern about whatever the issue is and truly want to do better.
50%
Flag icon
In response to feedback, they go into future-oriented problem-solving mode. “I see this. How can I do better in the future?”
50%
Flag icon
They do not allow problems that have been addressed to turn into patterns. They change. They adjust and fix them.
50%
Flag icon
You cannot fix people who will not take feedback, because from their perspective, they do not have a problem. So as far as they are concerned, there is nothing to fix. That is why they do not change.
50%
Flag icon
The bottom line with a wise person is that talking helps. Feedback helps.
51%
Flag icon
The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.
51%
Flag icon
In contrast, the fool adjusts the truth so he has to do nothing different. He is never wrong; someone else is.
51%
Flag icon
The point to understand here is that that is exactly what someone engaged in the foolishness of defending against seeing the truth is trying to accomplish. She is in a stance that is designed not to see the truth or grasp it or in any way adjust to it. Her goal is to avoid ownership of the feedback, which would require her to take responsibility and change. As a result, she constantly produces collateral damage for others, does harm to the cause, and everyone but her feels the effects. So, the frustration all around her grows.
51%
Flag icon
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. • Sometimes, they immediately shift the blame to you, as they “shoot the messenger” and make it somehow your fault.
52%
Flag icon
They often use minimization, trying to in some way convince you that “It’s not that bad” or “This really isn’t the problem that you think it is. It’s not that big a deal.” • They rationalize, giving reasons why their performance was certainly understandable. • Excuses are rampant, and they never take ownership of the issue. • Their emotional response has nothing to do with remorse; instead they get angry at you for being on their case, attacking with such lines as “You never think I do anything right,” or “How could you bring this up after all I have done?” Or they go into the “all bad” ...more
52%
Flag icon
Their emotional stance toward getting corrected is opposite to that of the wise person, who embraces the feedback and shows appreciation for your taking the effort to share it. Instead, their stance is one of anger, disdain, or some other fight-or-flight response. They either move against you or move away from you as a result.
52%
Flag icon
They see themselves as the victim, and they see the people who confront them as persecutors for pointing out the problem. They feel like the morally superior victim and often find someone to rescue them and agree with how bad you are for being “against” them.
52%
Flag icon
Their world is divided into the good guys and the bad guys. The good ones are the ones who agree with them and see them as good, and the bad ones are the ones who don’t think that they are perfect.
52%
Flag icon
The important theme to recognize in all of these traits is a lack of ownership of the issue and a refusal to take responsibility and change behavior to meet the demands of life. Instead, fools want reality to change for them. They always want the outside world to change instead of them.
52%
Flag icon
Whereas talking about a problem to a responsible, wise person helps, talking about a problem with a fool does not help at all. Therefore, further talking about problems is not the answer. So stop talking. At least about the problem.
53%
Flag icon
Stop talking about the problems, and talk about a new problem: the new problem to talk about is that talking doesn’t help.
53%
Flag icon
How can I give you feedback so that you will listen to it and do something about it?”
53%
Flag icon
The way you do that is by no longer having conversations about the problem, but rather by setting limits on the problem instead of trying to solve it through talking about it. While the strategy with a wise person was to talk about problems and resource them with more input and help, the strategy with a foolish person is to stop talking and move to two important interventions: limits and consequences. First of all, set limits on yourself in terms of what you will allow yourself to be exposed to in terms of the fool’s collateral damage:
53%
Flag icon
Consequences are often the next essential step. Whereas feedback has not helped and limits will protect you from the collateral damage of someone who avoids ownership, consequences are the last step that may cause the person to hit bottom and “see the light.” Consequences are for their sake, perhaps to get them to turn things around:
53%
Flag icon
The strategy for foolish people is simple: Quit talking about the problem and clearly communicate that because talking is not helping, you are going to take steps to protect what is important to you, the mission, or other people. Give limits that stop the collateral damage of their refusal to change, and where appropriate, give consequences that will cause them to feel the pain of their choice to not listen. The necessary ending that you have to initiate with people caught in their own foolishness is to end the pattern. You cannot control them or get them to change. What you can do is create ...more
54%
Flag icon
The key here is to see that holding out hope for someone who is resistant to feedback is not grounded in a lot of reality. It is hard enough to fix some problems when someone owns them. But if they are in denial about them, then they are not even working on them, and there is not much reason to have hope until they do. This is why it is so important for you to recognize foolish behavior. Once you see it, you know that an ending is nigh—if not an ending with the person, then at least an end to allowing their unchanging pattern to affect you or things you care about. Otherwise, you cannot have ...more
54%
Flag icon
Whenever someone is not taking responsibility, there are always consequences. The question is, Who is suffering the consequences?
54%
Flag icon
So as long as you are not creating a necessary ending to this pattern, there is no force driving change, because the person has no consequences. With these kinds of people, the only time they get it is when it begins to cost them. That is the only time they feel any need to listen and change. It is exactly why a necessary ending is often the right thing to do.
54%
Flag icon
I think what we have to talk about is how to transfer the need for him to perform from your shoulders onto his, as he is the only person who can do anything about it.” Consequences are the way to do that.
56%
Flag icon
When you are dealing with a recurring pattern, there is less hope that just a conversation or a little correction is going to help. Patterns, many times (though not all), are tendencies that people have less conscious control over, and the process of change is more difficult.
56%
Flag icon
people do better when operating from their strengths than from their weaknesses,
57%
Flag icon
It is more true that people resist change that they feel no real need to make.
57%
Flag icon
So getting your brain to move to create an ending, and getting the people around you to do the same, is going to take both: the fear of the negative and the draw of the positive.
59%
Flag icon
what put me over the edge was seeing that the future was going to be just like today.
59%
Flag icon
Quitting gets uncomfortable, and most people avoid that discomfort—unless they are staring into the faces of their children at that moment. Then it brings the ability to create the ending.
63%
Flag icon
Set a deadline for someone to hear what your expectations and demands are and for her to respond, and let her know that if the date passes without action, you will create an ending. Set a deadline for a person’s performance to improve, and tell him that if it does not, he is gone.
63%
Flag icon
Endings happen when we create the structure that drives them. Structure consists of time, plans, critical paths, milestones, deadlines, meetings, allocation and release of resources according to milestones, consequences for not meeting milestones, and other elements.
63%
Flag icon
How bad do you want to change? Bad enough to create a structured plan to get it done? If so, your chances of ending whatever you need to end just went up.
63%
Flag icon
John Kotter in A Sense of Urgency.
63%
Flag icon
“behave with true urgency themselves every single day. They do not just say the right words daily, but more importantly, they make their deeds consistent with their words. They do so as visibly as possible, to as many people as possible, all in ways designed to reduce contentment with the status quo and the anxiety or anger that comes so easily with failures.”
Celina
Consistency
64%
Flag icon
Question: What structure—time, plans, and other factors—do you need to create in order to make sure your endings happen?
65%
Flag icon
Question: What issue are you shielding yourself from so that you are not close enough to the pain that you need to motivate you to change?
66%
Flag icon
The problem was clear: they had two incompatible wishes.
67%
Flag icon
Part of maturity is getting to the place where we can let go of one wish in order to have another. The immature mind “wants it all.” But the truth is that the most valuable things come with a cost. To win, we have to give up some things for others.
67%
Flag icon
Which one am I willing to give up to have the other one?
68%
Flag icon
What particular outcome are you unwilling to sacrifice to realize your vision of the future?
71%
Flag icon
As you get closer to the decision, do you find yourself focusing on the positives and already anticipate missing those aspects? • Do you forget or lose sight of all of the negatives? • Do you minimize the negatives?
72%
Flag icon
Whether in business or personal life, when you do something difficult but worthy, it confronts people with their own lives. It activates all of their fears, and they quickly try to tell you the same things that they tell themselves. “It will never work.
75%
Flag icon
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.
75%
Flag icon
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.
75%
Flag icon
When we establish a standard, we have drawn a line in the sand for people to deal with. Whether or not they will 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.
75%
Flag icon
I just said that it is a good idea to know how much of your life or resources you want to spend on something before you lose them all.
77%
Flag icon
Before you have the conversation, make sure you are clear in your head what you want the result of the conversation to be.
77%
Flag icon
Make a pact with yourself, “I promise I will not end the conversation until I have clarity on what I went there to say and do.”
77%
Flag icon
Your sense of concern for the person must be integrated with the truth of what you need to say.