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

by Henry Cloud

So before you begin the conversation, get in touch with both sides, your concern for the other person and for the truth. Remind yourself that you care about the person and truly want the best for him.

If something is not right for one party, it is not right for the other one, either. If it is not best for a team to keep someone on, it is really not the best place for that person, either. It is a mismatch. The truth is painful but best in the end.

It is crucial that your tone be one that displays care and respect for the person. Because of the way the brain works, the other person’s emotional reactions will be greatly affected by the tone of your voice in your communication.

Closely akin to tone is your perceived emotional presence. The other person will unconsciously feel supported and “held” through a difficult ending if he senses that you are really “there” with him. Empathize with him and validate how it must feel for him.

Let the other person know that you care about her and your relationship.

So, at the end of the conversation, get agreement on what has happened and what is to follow, if any further steps are required. “What have you heard me say?” is a good clarifying way to do this.

If he comes back with a distortion, you can clarify at that point. “No, I am not saying that you are bad in some way. I am just saying that I need to make this change for the reasons I have said. I hope you can hear it that way and not as an attack on you. Are you clear on that?”

Leave the conversation with hope and encouragement as well.

If you are dealing with a difficult person who gets defensive or argumentative, do not let that get you off message. The best formula I know for this is a combination of empathy and returning to the issue: “I understand that this is frustrating to you and that it is hard to hear. But I want you to understand what I am saying here, and need to make myself perfectly clear. This really is an issue, and it is not going away, and I need you to hear that.”

But the only person you can control in the conversation is yourself, so stay on message. Whether or not she gets it is not in your control. But remaining empathetic and clear is in your control. She cannot take that away from you unless you let her. So don’t let that happen. Hold on to your power, the power of self-control.

You will find the same thing. The clearer and kinder you are in your communication of endings and bad news to people, the better the people you will find yourself surrounded by in life and work. You attract what you are. So do this for them but also for you. You’ll be glad you did.

If it is over, make sure that at the end of the conversation, it is over. Don’t leave an open door or window if you don’t want one. Close it now, so you will not have to do it again.

If you have emotional and other energy invested in something, when you pull that out, and let go, you are going to feel it. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so if you make a move to end something you are invested in, there will be an impact. And if you do not deal with those feelings, you are going to have to do some funny things to get around them. So why does that matter? Pure and simple: energy and investment. Whatever you are going to build in your life or your business, it is going to come through investment of energy by you and your people in the new fill-in-the-blank. And the only energy you can invest is available energy. To make it available, you have to withdraw it from something else. The technical word for that in psychology is to decathect. Cathexis is the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, an object, or an idea. So decathexis is the process of taking it back. The only way to do that is to grieve for what has been invested in before so you can move forward.

The grieving process is a mental and emotional letting go. What that means is to face the reality that it is over, whatever it is, and to feel the feelings involved in facing that reality.

The danger when people do not face their grief is twofold. First, to keep from facing it, they sometimes continue to beat a dead horse, hanging on to false hope or staying angry at what is past. They get stuck in protesting reality. Second, denying the grief often leads people to do strange things on the rebound, which are really attempts to keep from feeling the grief involved in letting go. It is a defense mechanism.

Whatever it takes to get the needed closure, do it.

The pain, the bitterness, the feelings of failure, the loss and grief, and the resentment all need to be eliminated and left behind. But left behind consciously, as opposed to just denied and forgotten. How? Different people eliminate crummy feelings in different ways, but in general you need to talk them out, cry if you have to, feel your feelings, express them, forgive, and let it all go. Leave it behind after you have given it adequate attention. Decathect. If you do that, then you will be ready for whatever is next, having learned and benefited from what you have gone through, positive or negative, and you will show up in your next deal or relationship fully ready, even readier than you would have been had you not gone through it. No matter what happened, you are the better for it.

What situation are you ending, or going to end, about which you should do some “metabolizing” work? • What project, strategy, loss, or other initiative should you and your team spend some “metabolizing” time on?

The lesson: if you are doing something that is using you or your resources in a way that is depleting you or damaging you, you can’t keep it going. The reason? You are not just getting tired; you or your resource is getting depleted. You or your resource is being cannibalized. In short: you will run out. That adds so much to the discussion.

• Are you in a state right now in your relationships that is not sustainable? Is there some relationship that is depleting or damaging you? Is there a context in which you feel compromised or forced to adapt to another person’s needs and demands out of fear? Are you in a situation where someone has power over you and is slowly diminishing you?

Every time something ended, that ending led to the next thing that was what I needed and was looking for,” he said.

First, you have to do the very, very best you can do at each step along the way. Wherever you find yourself, be the best you can be and make the best out of whatever that is. Make it work the best that it can work, doing whatever is in your power. “Second, when it is time to have the courage to take the next step, you have to do that and not be afraid. I am not talking about being risky or making stupid moves. But I am talking about not being afraid to take bold steps when it is obviously time. That takes courage and faith, but you have to do that when it is time. “Then, third, return to the first thing I said. Pour yourself into where you find yourself and make it all that it can be. And if it was a wrong step, that won’t matter, because you would have performed well, learned some things in the process, and people will notice your performance and will value it. That is why you won’t have to worry about tomorrow, because you will have done so well yourself, even if it is a bad deal or outcome. People will know from watching you. And you will be ready for what is next.