When’s a good time to quit?

In 200: 2: 1 tenacity was given a big round of applause.

But it’s worth revisiting because something I discovered (the hard way) is that tenacity isn’t always a good thing.

It’s good when applied to YOU.

Digging deep to find the necessary energy to get up one more time and take action that has to be taken (else nothing is going to change), that’s good.

But there’s a time it’s most definitely bad.

Refusing to quit when a team member is just not taking action.

That’s a bad time to be tenacious.

Because that person will bleed you dry.

They’ll suck all the joie de vivre, the skip in your step, the twinkle in your eye, right out of you.

I was tenacious with inactive team for a time.

I think, mainly, that was because I’d stopped prospecting (I was burned out) and so I was sitting on needy team members, hoping they’d hatch.

We’d talk (one more time) about their particular problems… and how impossible they were to overcome.

I’d talk them round from their doubts, again.

We’d sit through business presentations for the Nth time with no guests.

It was such a great place to hide.

I was busy.

I was needed.

At times I actually felt tenacious because I wouldn’t quit on them.

But I missed something.

I wasn’t hiding deep in a friendly forest next to a bubbling brook.

I was hiding, neck-deep, in a stagnant, grasping swamp.

No one was having a good time.

It took me YEARS to realise this:

I can’t meaningfully change anyone else’s behaviour with my tenacious powers of persuasion.

People can only change themselves. By taking action. For their own reasons.

Yes, people can achieve amazing things in business.

But they have to do it under their own steam.

Your guidance might help, but it won’t be their fuel.

Like Jim Rohn says: 

‘You can help 1000 but you can’t carry 3 on your back’.

See you on the road,

Helen