Authors: Henry Cloud
Move on down the road, and both of you can be happy.
Can you have hope that is not an empty wish with wise persons? Absolutely. Give them resources, train them, coach them. You wil likely get a return on your investment. They wil take it in and get better, and you wil have avoided an unnecessary ending. If they do al of that and stil are not up to the task, it wil be clear that an ending truly is necessary, for both of you have done al you can.
The bottom line with a wise person is that
talking helps
. Feedback helps. They use it, so keep on talking until there is nothing left to discuss. In chapter 11, I wil be giving some specific communication tips for having these and other kinds of sometimes difficult conversations. But for now, let’s take a look at the next category of person.
The Foolish Person
I witnessed the fol owing conversation as my client was talking to his product manager.
“Kyle, I want to talk to you about the product launch. There were some issues, and I want us to figure out what happened,” Tony, the boss, said.
“OK, let’s do it. I got the numbers, and I know that it didn’t get to where it was supposed to,” Kyle replied.
“Right, what do you think happened?” Tony asked.
“Wel , I think marketing just missed it. They had this whole emphasis for the local saturation, and I don’t think that is where the real interest is,”
Kyle explained.
“I talked to them,” my client said, “and they said that they were limited in the exposure they got because the coverage they wanted from the ads didn’t happen. They said it conflicted with ads the television network had already sold before us.”
“That could have happened, those guys at network are idiots,” Kyle said.
“What do you mean?” Tony asked.
“Wel , they are so unorganized, they always screw it up.”
“When I talked to media, they told me that the date had not been reserved for our ads because your final graphics hadn’t been sent in time, and they said they had asked you for them weeks before and never got a reply—even after several requests,” Tony said.
“I doubt that’s true, but it could be. IT has lost a lot of e-mail lately, and it is possible that I never got it,” he said.
“But that isn’t what concerns me,” said Tony. “This is not about IT or the network or e-mail. The launch is
your
deal. If it works, it is because you made it work, and if the TV network was not cued up to go in time, it seems like you would have been monitoring this to know that we had a problem. Then, even if it
were
IT, you would have known it and been on top of it. As a result, we have real y missed our number, and it is going to affect a lot. I need better than this.”
“But I can’t control the network. I made sure that media had put in the buy, and they should have known that it was not al nailed down. They should have seen this,” he retorted.
“Kyle,” the boss said, “media reports to you in this chain. This is yours.”
“Yeah, but I did my part with them. If the gal eys weren’t there, I had given them the time schedules, and they should have caught it,” he explained.
“Besides, that was the week that you pul ed me over to work on next year’s catalogue. I wasn’t even here to be aware of what they were doing.”
At this point, I interrupted the conversation. I turned to Tony and asked him a very simple question: “Tony, how are you feeling about this?”
Tony sighed and said one word: “Hopeless.”
“I can see why,” I said. “Seems like the problem is never here in the room.”
And that is the problem with the fool. Whereas the chief descriptor of the wise person is that when the light shows up, he looks at it, receives it, joins it, and adjusts his behavior to align with the light, the fool does the opposite:
he rejects the feedback
,
resists it
,
explains it away
,
and does
nothing to adjust to meet its requirements
. In short,
The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.
We saw how the wise person adjusts to the truth. In contrast, the fool adjusts the truth so he has to do nothing different. He is never wrong; someone else is. If you have had the above conversation, which I am sure you have had with the Kyles in your own work or life, you know exactly what Tony was feeling: hopeless. The reason is that Kyle was taking no ownership of the problem. Giving feedback was hopeless. Therefore, as we shal see,
it makes no sense to keep giving it
, but more about that in a moment.
You probably know this experience. It is the gnawing feeling that you get when you have the same conversation with someone about the same issue over and over, and slowly sink into the frustration and despair of hope deferred. You wish that the person would hear what you are saying, as your intent is not to persecute but to solve a problem so that something wil work or that your relationship wil get better. But you get nowhere and mostly feel stuck. You try over and over, and yet nothing ever happens.
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 col ateral damage for others, does harm to the cause, and everyone but her feels the effects. So, the frustration al around her grows.
Just as
wise
does not necessarily mean smart or extremely gifted,
foolish
does not mean dumb or lacking talent. Ironical y, a fool actual y may be
“the smartest person in the room,” or the most gifted or charming. Because of that, fools often keep us confused because of their many wonderful attributes. Our attraction to their talents and gifts keeps us hooked and makes it difficult to give up on them. So we continue to try, thinking that “one more conversation” wil do the trick. But we get more of the same kind of behavior each time we try to solve a problem or give input, coaching, or correction.
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. “Wel , if you had given me more resources, I could have gotten it done. But you cut my budget.” Or “That’s because you told me to make sure that I focused on the other project.” Or “You never told me that you wanted it that way.” The energy shifts, and suddenly you find yourself the object of correction.
• They often use minimization, trying to in some way convince you that “It’s not that bad” or “This real y 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 al I have done?” Or they go into the “al bad” position, saying something like “I guess I can’t do anything right,” which is a cue for you to rescue them and point out how good they real y are.
• They begin their response with “Wel , you . . .” and get you off-topic by pointing out your flaws.
• They have little or no awareness or concern for the pain or frustration that they are causing others or the mission. While their behavior or performance creates a lot of col ateral damage for others, they seem oblivious to it and see others as the problem for thinking that there is an issue.
• 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. I have heard many people say that after they confronted someone with something, the person never talked to them again if they did not have to.
• 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 moral y superior victim and often find someone to rescue them and agree with how bad you are for being “against” them.
• 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.
The important theme to recognize in al 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.
Strategies for Dealing with the Foolish Person
We began with the problem that loving and responsible people have—they assume that everyone is like them and wil respond to feedback. They think that if they just point out a problem to someone, the other person wil respond as they do and take responsibility and change. But, as we have just seen, foolish people are not like them at al . In fact, they are exactly the opposite, desiring to
not change and not listen.
Which brings us to the strategic issue: 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. Remember the definition of
crazy
—continuing to do the same thing expecting different results. If you have had this conversation sixty-three times, do you real y think that number sixty-four is going to do the magic? The not-so-technical word for this is
nagging
.
Nagging or any other kind of repeated attempts to get someone to listen should never have to be done, and if you are having to do it, something is wrong. After repeated attempts to get him to see an issue,
it is time to quit talking about the problem and time to have a different kind of
conversation.
Stop talking about the problems, and talk about a new problem:
the new problem to talk about is that talking doesn’t help.
At this point, it is time to change the conversation from trying to get them to change to talking about the fact that no change is happening and that is the problem.
“Joe, I have talked to you about
a
,
b
, or
c
on several occasions, and I do not want to talk about those anymore. It is not helping. What I want to talk about now is a different problem. The problem that I want to talk about is that trying to talk to you about a problem does not help. So what would you suggest we do about that? How can I give you feedback so that you wil listen to it and do something about it?”
Sometimes this may get a response, and if it does, you are a step farther down the road. But chances are that you wil get more of the same, and at that point, it is time to go to the strategy of creating a necessary ending of this pattern. 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 al , set limits on yourself in terms of what you wil al ow yourself to be exposed to in terms of the fool’s col ateral damage:
• “Susie, at this point, I have tried to get you to see the issue and change it, and that has not helped. So I have to make sure that at least it is not affecting me [or the team, or the company, or the results, or the family] any more. I can’t afford to miss another quarter’s numbers because you are unwil ing to do what I have asked. So I am taking this responsibility away from you. I have to give it to someone who wil do what I need.”
• “Sam, I cannot al ow myself to continue to be hurt or endangered by your drinking. So the next time it happens, I wil leave the event or the house and go somewhere where I am not affected by it.”
• “Keith, your anger is hurtful to me, and I can’t al ow myself to be yel ed at anymore, so the next time it happens, I wil leave.”
• “Roger, this team and the environment we want to have around here are important to me, so I can’t al ow your abusive behavior to ruin it anymore.”
Consequences are often the next essential step. Whereas feedback has not helped and limits wil protect you from the col ateral 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:
• “Mary, we have had several gatherings where you have drunk too much and ruined it for everyone, so I need to tel you that until you can control yourself, we won’t be including you anymore. You are no longer invited.”
• “Bil , we have had several discussions about your performance, and nothing is changing, so I am going to have to remove you from your position.”
• “Roger, we have talked about this a number of times, and I have tried to get some changes from you, but it is not working. I am giving you an unpaid suspension to think about it and see if you would like to continue here and under what circumstances that might happen.”