Necessary Endings (15 page)

Whether dealing with individuals, companies, or specific projects or strategies, if you don’t have new energy, you wil probably get more of what you were already getting. So ask yourself where that new juice is going to come from if you want to have real hope. Another question to ask is What wil be the structure of the energy?

You can’t just shoot “energy” at a problem without thinking through the correct “dosage.” Energy infusion has a structure to it, described by a formula that includes the amount of energy needed plus the time intervals when it is needed. Think of your body. You have to have energy to run it, and that basical y comes from your food. At certain intervals, you must infuse your body with a necessary amount of fuel that is related to your metabolism. Too little too seldom does not move you forward. Too much too often is unusable and turns to fat. The key is getting the right balance of time and amount—the right amount of calories and the right food groups infused at the right intervals. Translating this principle for the change that you are driving, you have to ask, What are the right amounts to give at each dose, and what are the right kinds of intervals for the infusion of energy? You want enough energy to get the change moving and to keep it moving until the next infusion of energy, yet not so much that everyone gets overfed and has to take a nap.

For example, I worked with a particularly high-performing business unit whose leader was renowned for driving hope and sustained movement in his troops. He did it through a daily, fifteen-minute morning meeting to cast vision, give information, share stories of success, and infuse strategy, thus giving a daily dose of energy that kept it al moving. He used these short meetings to make sure everyone was aligned around the goal, to catch problems early, and to give his team a space in which to share lessons and acknowledge progress. This daily infusion of energy kept the team and the process moving. It’s worth noting that the meetings were short, and they didn’t require preparation, so they weren’t distractions from the real work of change; instead, they became moments to mark forward progress and even to celebrate those incremental steps in the right direction.

Looking at another realm entirely, the need to organize the energy is why addicts drying out are asked to go to ninety meetings in ninety days.

The point is to get them going hard and get them going fast with a lot of energy into real hope for change. Similarly, footbal teams have twice-a-day practices to get change going right before the season. In my leadership coaching practice, the structure of time and energy infusion varies, depending on what we are trying to accomplish and whom I am dealing with. The process ranges from face-to-face meetings every quarter with an extended cal once a month, to daylong or half-day meetings once a month, to quarterly off-sites with teams and key players. There is no “right”

formula, other than what keeps things moving with the right kinds of infusion to drive change. In a hospital, some people are on a continuous IV drip, and others take a pil once a day. Some can even be outpatients.

One of the best practitioners of this approach is Bil Hybels, the founding pastor of one of the largest churches in America and also one of the largest faith-based leadership movements in the world, the Leadership Summit, which attracts faculty ranging from former presidents to corporate titans. He does something he cal s the six-by-six. A six-by-six is the framework Hybels uses to identify the six things he must “speak energy into over the next six weeks.” These six items may be projects, initiatives, tasks, people, or whatever he is trying to drive, but he keeps the list right in front of him on a three-by-five card and structures his time and energy around it. “For the next six weeks speak energy into these six most important agendas.” That one little way of structuring energy probably has something to do with why he and his team have accomplished so much over the years.

So the amount and the time vary: weekly meetings, quarterly off-sites, daily reviews, al with different agendas, depending on what you are trying to change. The point is to create a structure that includes the right amount of energy and the right time intervals.
You need enough of a dose of
energy to make it effective
,
and you need the right interval of time so the effects are not lost before the next bit of energy is injected.

If you are applying this to your personal life, the same issue is in play. If you have a therapist, meet frequently enough with enough structure to maintain the energy for change. If you are trying to get in shape, use the buddy system or get a trainer who wil inject energy at the right intervals into your change process. If you are trying to lose weight, a structured program is probably necessary to have hope where you have failed before. There is a reason that groups like Weight Watchers have regular meetings that you attend to keep the outside energy dose coming in. Remember, in your personal life, where you are trying to have hope for change in areas that have never changed before, outside energy infusions at the right, regular intervals with a structure to them is absolutely essential.

Hope That Does Not Disappoint

One of my favorite proverbs in this one: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfil ed is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12,
New
International Version Bible
). There are few sicknesses of the heart like hope deferred. Companies and individuals get sick and stal out when they keep hoping for something that just never happens.

In this chapter, we have examined some diagnostic questions for you to ask yourself, your team, or your organization about when to have hope and when to get to hopelessness. Necessary endings should come when there is real hopelessness, a real reason to think that something is in need of pruning. As we saw earlier, it is one of the best places that you can get to, because it wil fuel change.

But many times people give up and have an “unnecessary ending,” thinking that something is hopeless when it is
not
. What is needed is for their hope to be based on some real reasons to believe: persons with the skil s to deal with the current lack of getting there, introduction of new knowledge about a path to get there, and sufficient energy to bring about change. To find out if something is hopeless or not, these are helpful diagnostics to consider.

But what if you are wondering whether or not to have an ending with a particular
person
? In your business or personal life, how can you know whether to keep going with a particular individual? Above, we outlined the path to change, but how do you know if you even should start on that path or not? How do you know when to keep trying with someone and when to give up and execute a necessary ending? That is the subject of our next chapter.

The Wise, the Foolish, and the Evil: Identifying Which Kinds of People Deserve Your Trust
T
he time when you get to hopelessness can be one of the best moments for your future. To give up hope that something is going to change when it is not going to gets you unstuck immediately and brings energy. It brings life to the sickness of hope deferred.

And as we have seen, the decisions involving
people
can be some of the most difficult. We have talked about getting to the hopeless moment with people, and also how to design a process of change that actual y has hope of being effective.

But how do you know if entering into that process of change with someone is even worth it? How do you know that it is going to help? Haven’t you wondered that sometimes? “Are they ever going to change? Are they ever going to get better? Should I real y keep working with them, thinking they are going to improve? Are my efforts to get them to change going to help anything at al ?”

Or on the personal side of life, how do you know when to invest the effort with someone to work on making things better and when you should tel them that you are done talking about it? With whom do you try, and with whom do you say, “I’m done talking”? That is a question that, if properly answered, can save much time and heartache.

And it is the subject of this chapter: how to diagnose a person to know whether working on the issue is likely to help or not.

If you are a responsible and loving person, then
you might assume that other people are like you—responsible and loving
. They do the right thing, taking responsibility for themselves, for their mistakes, for their work. And they care about other people and how their actions affect those people. That is what you do, right? Right. You have concern about how what you do affects others. So doesn’t it make sense that everyone else would be like you and real y care? Sure, if you lived on Mars.

But this is planet Earth. And if you are going to succeed in life and business, you have to succeed on this planet, not Mars. The truth is that not everyone on planet Earth is like you. Not al take responsibility for themselves or care about how their actions are affecting other people or the mission. Moreover, some are even worse than that. Some people are actual y out to do you harm.

If you do not accept this reality, then you are going to spend a lot of time wasting time, money, energy, love, resources, your heart, and everything else that matters to you on people who wil either squander it or destroy it. That is why this chapter may be the most important one that you read. It is essential to understand that not everyone is going to be open or even desirous of the change that you are trying to bring about.

So how do we know who is trustworthy to continue investing time, energy, and resources in and who is not? How do we know when a necessary ending is required with a person?

We have no crystal bal s, and as a result, any of us can get surprised. I have seen “rock solid, good characters,” or so everyone thought, go south and ruin lives (although usual y there were signs that no one saw). And I have seen absolute train wrecks turn around and become rock stars. So I would not claim that you can know for certain what anyone is going to do in the future. But . . .

Although predictions made from weather satel ite data are not always right, they are right most of the time. They can see what is on the horizon and headed our way, though something stil may change. And here is the good news:
there is a weather satellite for people
,
which will help you be
right more than you are wrong
. And if you learn how to use it, you wil save yourself untold grief, time, energy, money, and more.

The satellite that will give you the most accurate predictions is the ability to diagnose character
. Once you learn the character traits that give real reason to hope that tomorrow can be different, you can know better whom you want to invite into your tomorrow. You can actual y know that there is a real reason to go forward.

Likewise, once you know the traits that give zero reason for hope and in fact should help you get hopeless, you wil know whom
not
to invite to your tomorrow, unless something changes. And as we wil see, whether or not that change occurs probably depends more upon what
you
do than you realize. You have more influence to bring about change than you might think, but the key is knowing what to do with different kinds of people.

In this chapter, you are going to learn a simple way to diagnose character traits that lead to hope, as wel as those that don’t. And you are going to learn what to do with each type. Different types cal for different strategies.

The Three Kinds of People

As a clinician, I hate simplistic, popularized, cheesy systems that people use to put others in boxes. Human behavior is much more complex than that, and when I hear those labels being tossed around, something in me wants to rebel and prove that particular system wrong. So here I go, doing something similar. But I would add that this way of seeing people is backed by a lot of clinical data and research, as wel as by the experience of many, many people. These three categories are described by virtual y every group that has ever studied human behavior. It is depicted in the great literature of the ages, and I bet it wil ring true in your own experience with people as wel . It wil pass the sniff test, I assure you. So here we go.

There are basical y three types of people in the world, or better, three styles of behavior that a person can exhibit in a particular time or context.

There are many ways of describing these three categories, depending on whether you are a psychiatrist, an employer, a spouse, a lover, or a judge. They al use different words, but the same categories clearly emerge in people’s behavior. I like the way that ancient wisdom literature puts it: 1. Wise people

2. Foolish people

3. Evil people

Those are the three categories of behavior that you wil find yourself dealing with in virtual y any situation involving others. Now here is the kicker: these three categories of people or behavior are very different in what motivates them and what sustains them. As a result, the ways to get them to change are very different as wel . Therefore, here is what you have to realize:

You cannot deal with everyone in the same way.

Different people, in different categories, require different strategies. If you try to deal with a foolish person, for example, in the same way that you deal with a wise person, he wil drive you crazy, and you wil lose time, resources, and heart. And if you deal with an evil person at al , you might lose your business or your life. So it is essential that you understand very quickly whom you are dealing with and take the appropriate stances that wil ensure that you create the necessary endings.

If you are bristling at such rigid categories, I understand. I do not mean them that way, either, as in reality they are not absolutely discrete. The reality is that most of us have some of al three in us. We can be wise in one situation or context or issue and not so much in another. But the reality is that when you see these behaviors in the people you are dealing with, you have to act accordingly and not worry about the label. These labels are not meant to be rigid, but helpful ways to identify particular patterns of behavior in people about whom you have to make tough decisions.