Leaders unable to end

"Leaders are people, and people have issues that get in the way of the best-made ideas, 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 skills needed to initiate, follow 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 well.

"Think of the now ubiquitous "failure of launch" syndrome of those twenty- or thirty- somethings still living with their parents.  They cannot end childhood and fully enter adulthood.  But the bigger issue is often the parents' inability to end the patter and stop the toxic dependency by pushing the grown "kid" out of the nest.  They refuse to end their "helping" role, which is not a 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 have jobs that are keeping them stuck and unfulfilled.  In sum, we are not prepared or equipped to take the next step, the one we really 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 well 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 illness, 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.

 "We we fail to end things well, we are destined to repeat the mistakes that keep us from moving on.  We chose 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 well and how to metabolize the experience allows 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."  Dr. Henry Cloud in Necessary Endings.

The inability to end a necessary stop of a toxic relationship, of business plan no longer profitable, or any other unhealthy situation is detrimental to our businesses and our lives.  Staying stuck may feel secure to some extent but it is a hindrance to our lives. 

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928