Authors: Henry Cloud
W
ith few exceptions, I always try to write about topics that pass three requirements: First, they must be issues that I have worked with extensively in real settings. This ensures that I am not writing about an idea, or a theory but real experiences, methods, and results. I want readers to feel that “this rings true” and is based in the real world where they live and work. I know no other way to have that happen than to do the work first, before I write about it.
Second, I prefer to write about topics that I see people connecting with in many settings as I work and speak. In other words, I may personal y care about something but find that it is not a very big “felt need” for others. So the topics that qualify have to resonate with people where they are, in what they are going through, and for what they need. These topics, to me, have the most heat, because they help people identify and put into words things they are experiencing yet have never quite been able to understand and express. But when they see the issues made clear, something connects with them inside, and moments of insight and movement occur.
Third, the topics have to matter. I want to talk about issues and practices that have substantial leverage and, when implemented, can create quantum change. There are topics that are real and that people connect with but that are not monumental in their effect. Then there are those topics that have enormous impact, and those are the ones that pass the “this matters” test.
Which brings me to “necessary endings.” It is a subject that results in immediate phone cal s or e-mails after I talk about it. People say, “I got it . . .
and I took a step that I now see I have been putting off for some time,” or tel me they took some immediate actions as a result of the talk or the consultation. And the results can transform an individual or a company.
Necessary endings by their very nature are real and relevant and, when implemented, can bring incredible results. When needed endings are done wel , people succeed. When they’re done poorly or not at al , people don’t. Let’s take a look at why and how.
The Universality of Endings
Why endings? Whether we like it or not, endings are a part of life. They are woven into the fabric of life itself, both when it goes wel , and also when it doesn’t. On the good side of life, for us to ever get to a new level, a new tomorrow, or the next step,
something
has to end. Life has seasons, stages, and phases. For there to be anything new, old things always have to end, and we have to let go of them. Infancy gives rise to toddlerhood, and must be forever shunned in order to get to the independence that al ows a child to thrive. Later, childhood itself must be given up for people to become the adults that they were designed to be.
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 al that their talents and abilities should afford them.
In business, endings often are absolute necessities for a turnaround or for growth to occur. Businesses must sometimes let go of old product lines or even entire areas of business whose day has passed. To get to the next level and often even to sustain their companies’ current levels of health, business leaders must shut down yesteryear’s good ideas, strategies, or involvements in order to have the resources and focus to take their organizations to tomorrow. Sometimes it means that employees have to be let go too.
Endings are also an important factor in our personal lives. There are relationships that should go away, practices and phases that must be relinquished, and life stages that should come to an end to open up the space for the next one. A breakup, an ending of some friendships or activities, or an unplugging from some commitments often signals the beginning of a whole new life. It is a necessary step I refer to as pruning, a concept that we wil examine in more depth in chapter 2.
Some endings are not a next natural step but are just as necessary. We wish they weren’t, but they are. They come about not in pursuit of growth to the next level, but because something has gone wrong. It’s been said that some things die and some things need to be kil ed.
Many times a business is stuck in something that is not working, and the leadership step required is to shut it down or pul out of it. It is failing and can’t be fixed. Or there are poor performers who have been al owed to remain too long and need to be fired. On the flip side, some people should quit jobs that are causing them harm.
In the personal realm, we can get stuck in situations or relationships that are hurtful, problematic, or toxic and must be ended. Or sometimes it is not relationships we need to end but behaviors—destructive patterns and practices that hold us back. In many contexts, until we let go of what is not good, we wil never find something that is good. The lesson: good cannot begin until bad ends.
In both normal life and life gone wrong, endings are a necessity. As the Byrds reminded us in their Sixties song “Turn, Turn, Turn,” there is a season to everything. Taken from Ecclesiastes, the message is that there is a season for things to begin and a season for them to end, and that’s how life works. Perhaps you have heard or read this famous passage many times, but take another look and focus your attention on the prevalent role of endings throughout:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time
to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a
time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search
and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a
time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Endings are not only part of life; they are a requirement for living and thriving, professional y and personal y. Being alive requires that we sometimes kil off things in which we were once invested, uproot what we previously nurtured, and tear down what we built for an earlier time.
Refraining, giving up, throwing away, tearing down, hating what we once cherished—al are necessary. Endings are the reason you are not married to your prom date nor stil working in your first job. But without the ability to do endings wel , we flounder, stay stuck, and fail to reach our goals and dreams. Or worse, we remain in painful and sometimes destructive situations. Endings are crucial, but we rarely like them. Hence the problem.
Why We Avoid Endings
Endings are necessary, but the truth is that we often do not do them wel . Although we need them for good results to happen in life and for bad situations to be resolved, the reality is that most of us humans often avoid them or botch them.
• We hang on too long when we should end something now.
• We do not know if an ending is actual y necessary, or if “it” or “he” is fixable.
• We are afraid of the unknown.
• We fear confrontation.
• We are afraid of hurting someone.
• We are afraid of letting go and the sadness associated with an ending.
• We do not possess the skil s to execute the ending.
• We do not even know the right words to use.
• We have had too many and too painful endings in our personal history, so we avoid another one.
• When they are forced upon us, we do not know how to process them, and we sink or flounder.
• We do not learn from them, so we repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Question: As you reflect on these reasons, can you think of any situations where these reasons have interfered with an ending you needed to make?
The aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008 has required significant and largely unanticipated “resets” in major companies, forcing many to initiate painful and significant restructuring. At the same time, the crisis also brought to a head many problems that had long been apparent yet were never acted upon.
There were endings waiting to be had
,
needing to be had
,
yet unexecuted.
Why does that happen?
The American auto industry, for example, was forced to final y discontinue brands that cost more to manufacture than they produced in profits..
Certainly some accountant had done the math, but the necessary endings stil weren’t executed until the crisis or bankruptcy courts forced the issue.
Why?
Many other kinds of businesses stepped up and cut fat out of their bureaucracies, only to realize later that the cuts had been long overdue. The economic crisis gave them the push they needed to do what they should have done much sooner. In the months fol owing the meltdown, many leaders told me things like this: “Some of this crisis was good for us. These are changes we should have made years ago.”
The leadership growth question then became, “Why didn’t you?” Figure that out and you won’t wait next time. Likewise, more than a few leaders also told me that they were grateful the crisis gave them the excuse to remove staff members who stood in the way and kept the company from going where it needed to go. Again the question is, “Why were those people stil there?”
The Real Reason
The answers to the “why” questions typical y have little to do with the business itself. Often, there are no good business reasons for waiting to do something that should be done now. Of course, there are times when potential col ateral damage to other aspects of the business or other strategic issues makes it prudent not to execute an ending, but that is the exception not the rule. The real reason is this:
Something about the leaders’ personal makeup gets in their way.
Leaders are people, and people have issues that get in the way of the best-made ideas, plans, and realities. And when it comes to endings, there is no shortage of issues that keep people stuck.
Somewhere along the line, we have not been equipped with the discernment, courage, and skil s needed to initiate, fol ow through, and complete these necessary endings. We are not prepared to go where we need to go. So we do not clearly see the need to end something, or we maintain false hope, or we just are not able to
do it
. As a result, we stay stuck in what should now be in our past. And these abilities are not only lacking in the world of business. They appear in the personal side of life as wel .
Think of the now ubiquitous “failure to launch” syndrome of those twenty- or thirty-somethings stil living with their parents. They cannot end childhood and ful y enter adulthood. But the bigger issue is often the parents’ inability to end the pattern and stop the toxic dependency by pushing the grown “kid” out of the nest. They refuse to end their “helping” role, which is not in fact helping. Another tragic example is the inability of many women to walk out the door when they are being abused. Fears and vulnerabilities keep them stuck in devastating patterns that ought to end.
Likewise, in the world of work, because of security fears, some cannot leave jobs that are keeping them stuck and unfulfil ed. In sum, we are not prepared or equipped to take the next step, the one we real y need to take.
And it is not only the endings that we must proactively execute that are problematic. There are also the endings that are forced upon us, endings we do not choose but that we cannot work through very wel either. As a result, we remain in pain or stuck, unable to pursue a new phase in life.
These endings include divorce, being fired or laid off, death of a loved one, disintegration of a friendship, chronic il ness, and so on. We do not choose these endings; they are thrust upon us by people we have trusted or sometimes by truly horrible events in life. If we are not prepared or have had too many losses before, these endings can render us broken, depressed, and floundering, sometimes for years.
When we fail to end things wel ,
we are destined to repeat the mistakes that keep us from moving on.
We choose the same kind of dysfunctional person or demoralizing job again. Not learning our lessons and proactively dealing with them, we make the same business or personal mistakes over and over. Learning how to do an ending wel and how to metabolize the experience al ows us to move beyond patterns of behavior that may have tripped us up in the past. We do not have to keep repeating the same patterns.
Necessary Endings
wil address these issues in ways that wil improve your business and personal life. It is my goal to share with you principles and practices that you can put into immediate action to:
• Help you become aware of the absolute necessity for some endings to occur in your business or your life;
• Equip you to diagnose when a business or a relationship has hope of getting better and when it should end;
• Equip you to diagnose what kinds of people deserve your trust and those who don’t;
• Bring
endings
into the common language of your workplace so that pruning and continuous improvement become part of the culture;
• Normalize the idea of endings, so you can expect them instead of being surprised by them, and so you’re able to deal with them as a normal part of what you do;
• Help you to actual y get comfortable with endings;
• Help you understand why you have not been able to negotiate previous endings successful y;
• Show you how to execute endings wel ;
• Create vision and energy for a better future as you become unstuck; and
• Help you to stop repeating the same issues over and over again.
Endings are a part of every aspect of life. When done wel , the seasons of life are negotiated, and the proper endings lead to the end of pain, greater growth, personal and business goals reached, and better lives. Endings bring hope.