The explanation that changes nothing

One of the leaders I’ve been coaching has been struggling to partner with a colleague at work.

He runs a corporate function that is supposed to support her business division’s P&L, but she continues to keep him at a distance.

He wants to help. He keeps thinking of ways he can add value or make her team’s job easier. But she just doesn’t want to engage. And week after week, I can hear his frustration growing.

Now, whenever we discuss it, his repeated explanation downplays his obvious annoyance:

“It’s okay. I’m working on it. I mean, relationships take time.”

This is a reasonable thing to say. Yes, relationships do take time. And my client doesn’t want to force the partnership or blame her for the lack of one. He believes that if he remains patient, and creatively chips away at it, she may eventually invite him into her trusted circle.

But after hearing “I’m working on it” for several weeks, I became curious about what that actually meant.

What was he doing now that he hadn’t been doing before? What would indicate to him that the relationship was improving? Because clearly, months had passed and his peer’s evasiveness continued. How long was he prepared to wait for something to change?

He didn’t have clear answers. And I got the sense that his persistent explanation of the problem started to become his plan for addressing it.

When understanding feels like action

As a coach, I’m not in the business of forcing my clients to do anything.

If they say they’re going to try something and don’t, I’m not scolding them for not doing their homework.

Instead, we explore what’s underneath the decision, and see what we can learn from their actions or inaction in relation to their overarching goals. But it’s fair to say, I’ve experienced a good amount of leaders who haven’t followed through on something they initially wanted to do.

And without question, their understanding of the challenge at hand is complete and thorough. These are all very smart and accomplished leaders, after all. They’ve analyzed the situations at hand, and they can explain it with perfect clarity and conviction.

But often they, like all of us, make the mistake of assuming that once we understand why something is happening, we are closer to changing it. And yet in many cases, we find that our explanations are the very things that limit progress.

Notice that I’m choosing to call them “explanations” not “excuses.” While they may sound like the same at times, I’ve observed that most intentions are based on a real desire to grow, not wallow in complaints or complacency.

So when a client knows they want something to change but start to say things like:

“My boss is under a lot of pressure.”

“The organization isn’t ready.”

“My team needs more time.”

“This isn’t the right moment.”

“We’re still building trust.”

It’s true that each of these statements may be accurate. But they can also become such well-formed and frequently-repeated explanations that they create a certain kind of justification for the way things are. And that then leads to a false sense of resolution.

This is because being able to explain the way things are can feel like you did something about it even though you didn’t. And then you can file the problem away to another day, rather than asking the hard question of what you need to do about it now.

It’s as if understanding why you are stuck can become one of the ways you remain stuck!

The explanation may be true, and still no longer useful

Explanations to ourselves and others about something that needs to change are exactly what initiates progress because they surface the problem with staying the same.

But when you keep returning to the same explanation and it produces no new response, it stops serving its purpose as a catalyst. Instead it becomes a protective, safe place to wait things out.

How many times have you told yourself you’ll take a break from a demanding set of activities at work or in life once a certain period ends, only to be right back in the same situation once the next period of busyness starts?

Or maybe you’ve remained in an arrangement with others that no longer suits you and you know exactly why you should reset boundaries but keep putting off having the tough conversation.

In all these cases, the explanations for why things should change are all true so there’s no questioning them. So then why aren’t we following through after the understanding takes place?

The answer is to start putting these explanations to work.

Give the explanation a job

In my client’s case, “relationships take time” had allowed time itself to become the strategy.

But a more useful question would have been, “If the relationship still takes time, what needs to happen during that time?”

Rather than continuing to demonstrate his helpfulness and hoping his colleague would eventually become receptive, he could address the working relationship directly.

He could name the gap between how their functions were intended to partner and how they were currently operating.

He could also ask which support she genuinely valued, what she wanted his team to stop doing and what a workable partnership would look like over the next month.

In other words, he didn’t need to force trust, but he also didn’t need to leave all of it up to chance as the days and weeks passed. He needed to stop depending on explanations to himself that an absence of trust and the belief that time creates trust were reasons to remain passive.

Now, if those conversations produced no movement, that would also give him new information.

Then he could then decide whether to adjust his expectations or establish clearer boundaries, or perhaps involve a more senior leader to resolve operating issues between their functions.

This is the test for what makes an explanation useful or limiting: is it keeping you where you are (even if with more knowledge and insight) or is it helping you decide what comes next? In this way, you can keep the explanations but just add a future tense verb to it.

“My peer is evasive, so I will…..”

“The organization isn’t ready, so I’m going to try….”

My boss is under enormous pressure, but I can still do…..”

Put your explanations to work by moving from reporting on the challenge to creatively experimenting around it.

It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? And yet that’s how beautifully self-deceptive explanations are. Because there’s always something else to grab your attention, or another task to deliver, and there will always be next week or next month.

But instead of sitting in the explanation and waiting for time to pass before trying something, imagine the opposite: how great would it be if when that time passed we had already experimented with a new approach from which to operate, even if it’s not the right one?

After all, if next week is coming anyway, why not get ahead of it by giving this explanation a job to do right now?

The threshold question

What explanation in your life has become a substitute for a new or decisive action that, if attempted, might bring you more of what you really want?

Until next week,

Nihar

Nihar Chhaya coaches senior leaders on navigating the transitions that come with business, leadership and personal success. 

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