“He had learned to put up with a lot of misery and was almost numb to it.”

A thought by Henry Cloud, from his book, Necessary Endings (p. 61).

HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

And is this a problem?

Henry says, “‘So what is my problem?’ asked Dennis, a CEO in tech. ‘Do I just have an abnormally high threshold for pain? Do I just by nature put up with too much?’

“‘Glad you asked,’ I said. “The answer is yes, and the bad news is that your board of directors and your P&L don’t. So, we have got to get to work on it so you begin to feel the heartburn as deeply as they do.’

Henry goes on, “Dennis was exactly right. He had learned to put up with a lot of misery and was almost numb to it. He knew there were problems, and he was working on them, but if he had not gotten so used to putting up with people’s problems, he would have acted much sooner. He had some internal software that said to him, just like what some parents say to kids when they hurt themselves: ‘Oh, stop whining. That doesn’t hurt.’ Gradually a child gets to the point where he can’t really weigh his own feelings anymore and instead learns that even when he is hurting, well, ‘it doesn’t hurt.’

“Dennis was like that. He had had formative experiences in his life in which he had to put up with a lot of pain at the hands of others. As a result, he learned to become responsible for their problems and to negate his own emotional responses to them. He had been systematically talked out of his gut feelings, his perceptions, and his ability to weigh them.

“Having become so accustomed to a high level of pain in his upbringing, his brain now registered it as normal, and he was numb to the poor performance of others and how much he was stomaching for them. He just tolerated difficult situations long past when they should have been dealt with. My main work with him was twofold: first, to get him in touch with and aware of how much he tolerated negative things, and second, to get him to be more instantly aware of how he really felt about the poor performers who stood between him and the goals. I had him sit and tune in to himself after meetings, reviews, updates, and conversations with the team. Gradually, he began to notice. Finally, one day in one of our sessions, he came out with it.

“‘I am getting more and more bugged with Peter,’ he said. ‘I am sick of how long this project is taking him. I have been asking him for over a year to get us where we need to be on this, and he still is at about step two.’

“‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked. ‘I think I am going to go create some of that urgency you talk about,’ he said.”

Henry then said, “And he did. But not until he saw how his software had been written to negate, minimize, put up with, and carry a lot of pain, all the while telling him it was ‘not that bad’ or he ‘could buckle up and keep going.’ Soon after, he made some significant changes in the company, not only replacing some people, but also putting an end to the option of nonperformance… His misery ended.”

I never saw this as a problem in leadership but I now see it is.  You see it too, don't you?

Yes, yes!