No More Mr. Bad Guy: The Magic of Self-Selection
My friend was struggling over what to do with her boyfriend of over a year. She was very attached to him, and “loved him deeply,” as she said over and over in our conversations. “Then why the struggle?” I asked.
“He is not the kind of man I want to start a family with. I love him and love to be with him. He has the purest heart I have ever seen, and I love that about him. He is the smartest person I have ever known, and I love that about him. But he has no drive in life. He just gets by on his smarts and has no real initiative or plans for the future. He is a lot like a college student, not thinking much past the weekend,” she said. “I need someone who will take charge and who will be a strong husband and father. I don’t need a little boy that I ‘mother’ all the time.”
“Give me some examples.”
“Well, he is so talented that he gets freelance work and makes enough to live working about half-time. So the rest of the time, he sleeps in, plays computer games, and isn’t productive. He is so smart that he can get away with it, but I want to see someone who attacks life and has some drive,” she said.
“Plus, he lets me be too in charge. He doesn’t make plans or take care of things like a real adult would. I don’t want to be the one worrying about the future all the time. I want someone to partner with me so I feel secure.”
“So what are you going to do?” I asked.
“That’s where I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do. I love him and do not want to break up with him, but I can’t see myself marrying him until he changes. We talk about it, and then there is a little movement, but if I am not always nagging him, it does not change for long. Plus, I don’t like it that he still gets high at his age. He should have outgrown that.”
“Sounds like you feel like you have a tough decision to make. Why don’t you let him make the decision?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you are kind of stuck because you think you have to decide on whether or not he is the right one or not. I don’t think that is your decision to make. I think it is his.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Your decision is to decide what kind of person you want to be married to. And it sounds like you know. Someone who takes initiative, is responsible, will step up and take charge of planning and worry about the future. Someone who values goals and uses his time well to build the kind of life you want together. Someone who is not using drugs. Basic adult kind of stuff.
“And his decision is whether or not he wants to be that person. That is a decision that only he can make, not you. So tell him that. Tell him what you want, and then tell him he gets to decide if he wants to be that person and be with you or not. That is up to him, as he is the only one who can control that outcome,” I said.
“Keep going,” she said. “I think I am getting it.”
“OK,” I said. “Just say something like this: Taylor, I have been thinking about my future and what I want long-term, the kind of man I want to be with for life and to start a family with. Here is what he will look like: He will be loving, smart, fun, and someone I connect well with, and he’ll have my same values. Also, he will be responsible, will think about the future, will be going somewhere, and will be a good provider. He will take care of the basic things, like being financially responsible, and normal things that adults do. That is what I am looking for and that is the kind of person I will be with.
“Right now, that is not you. I love you, and I want that person to be you, but right now, it is not. So I can’t see a future together as things are now. But I am going to give you a choice: you get to decide whether or not you want to be that person. If you do, and you become that kind of person and prove it to me long enough that I really can believe it, I would love to be with you. But it is up to you whether or not that is who you want to be and whether or not you want to be with me. It is your decision.”
I could see in her expression that her mood had lifted. As we talked, she said that part of it was the clarity of just saying what she wanted. But another part was the relief of not being the “bad guy” by rejecting someone she loved or feeling that she was judging him. She did not want to judge him, as he was truly a good guy, and she loved and respected so much about him. She was tired of being in the position of feeling like the nagging judge. This approach relieved her of that responsibility, as it put him in charge.
He would be the one to decide whether or not he wanted to be with her. She set the standards for what being with her meant, and he could decide whether or not it was a match. It was his decision, and he could self-select. Good for her as she did not have to judge anymore. Instead, her standards would be the judge. Good for him, as she was no longer going to nag but instead would let him decide whether or not he wanted to be with her in the ways that she required. No bad guy anywhere. Everyone was free again.
Self-Selection
I find that in getting to a necessary ending, many people stall out for the same reason my friend was stuck. They do not want to be in the position of being the bad guy, rejecting someone or saying that person is not “good enough” in some way. It makes them feel bad and is a horrible dynamic in a relationship. Self-selection is the better way.
What it does is set a standard for what you want, regardless of what particular individual you are dealing with. Then the person gets to choose whether or not she wants to meet that standard. She self-selects. It’s not much different from what happens in college admissions: Administrators at a good college are not being mean or judgmental when they set a minimum grade level for admission, but the requirement does make their standards clear. It defines the institution, leaving students to ask themselves if they want to go to that college, knowing that it means meeting that standard. They self-select.
Similarly, if you have an employee who is not performing, you might feel the same sense of being stuck that my friend did. You like the person and don’t want to be the bad guy, firing him. So let him self-select.
“Terry, I want to talk to you about this position. The kind of person that I want to be in that chair is going to look like this: puts time and energy into building a team, is ahead of the curve in future quarters’ planning and business generation, achieves a yearly growth rate in sales of x percent. Right now, you are not that person. I want you to be that person, and I hope you choose to become that person. But that is up to you. I want you to think about it and let me know if you want to do that and what your plan is to show me that you have become that person. I hope you do.”
This is a totally different kind of ending. It has two outcomes—one guaranteed, the other unknown and hopeful. The guaranteed ending is that you have put an end to whatever it was that you needed to prune from your life or business. In my friend’s example, she put an end to being with someone who was not going to fit the bill as the kind of husband she wanted. In the employee example, it put an end to the performance problem. So the ending is created by the standard. That is guaranteed.
What makes the ending unknown and hopeful is whether or not the particular person is going to step up to the standards set. When we establish a standard, we have drawn a line in the sand for people to deal with. Whether or not they will is up to them. It is unknown and hopeful because sometimes they do. Other times, they don’t. Either way, the pruning has happened, and you did not reject anyone.
Self-Selection for Your Own Attachments
Another person you sometimes have difficulty saying no to might be yourself. In business and life, we have to be our own bad guy at times and say, “No, you can’t have that” or “Do that.” But we get attached to certain strategies, hopes, projects, businesses, or whatever. And we go back and forth, using all of the resistance strategy that I introduced in the earlier chapters. “Should I or should I not shut this down? Should I give it more time? It might . . .” And we stay stuck.
Self-selection for yourself works the same way. Set the standard: “If the business has not turned a profit by the end of this year, I shut it down.” Or “If I have not found the job I want by June 1, I will call it quits and move.” I live in L.A. and know many people who are trying to make it in the entertainment or music industry. Some of them have been trying for a while. When to quit? In my opinion, the smart ones have a date out there somewhere. “If I am not making a living at this by , I will give it up and go back to grad school.”
Some people have a problem with such an approach, saying they might be selling themselves short. But I did not say the time period had to be short. I just said that it is a good idea to know how much of your life or resources you want to spend on something before you lose them all. What matters is that you are in charge, and sometimes having a standard to self-select against takes the decision out of your head and makes it objective, similar to Jack Welch’s “Be number one or two in the market, or fix it, sell it, or shut it down.”