Should I stay or should I go?
This post is about responding to a difficult question. It’s a mental exercise in making good judgement. If we can master this you go up a level in the game of life. The question is:
“Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double”
— The Clash, Should I stay or should I go? (1982)
We’ve all been at a party with those people who just hang around and hang around long after everyone else has left. How do we know when it’s time to go? It’s a crucial dilemma; one worth singing about.
No one wants to be last to leave. By the same token you don’t want to leave just before the best bit. It’s not just at parties either.
If you’ve founded an organisation you may find there’s a significant part of you invested in it. But even then there’s still a time to ask if you should stay or go.
I’ve worked in enough construction organisations where an engineer (let’s say) founded it and had the good fortune to have made a successful business around them. But at some point in the growth of the organisation the set of skills important for running the engineering firm becomes different to the set of skills important for managing its growth. Some engineers might transition well to being a business manager and mastering that whole different skills set.
But managing people isn’t why some engineers start an engineering business. At some point they will get their ‘tap on the shoulder’. It’s time to hang up the boots. It happens to footballers too. Even the greatest will one day receive the merciless tap on the shoulder. Great football coaches and managers seem to all have a story about the legendary footballer that didn’t listen when they received the tap on the shoulder.
There’s a temptation to stay. There’s also a deeper need to stay. All your hard work is invested in this one thing that you’re good at. People pay for what I do. I’ve pinned my name to it. They’re buying me. People trust me. I don’t want to betray them or let them down. I might struggle, but if I stop I’ll wake up and I’ll find I’m no longer important to anyone.
Sometimes you shouldn’t hand things over. Steve Jobs handed over Apple to a marketing CEO and paid the price. Jobs was removed from the board which prompted his resignation (in 1985). As luck would have it he had a second bite of the cherry (in 1997). But a second chance like that isn’t common. If you get a tap on the shoulder sometimes you shouldn’t be so hasty to move on.
What if you hand it over and it falls in a heap? Or worse; what if you hand it over and it’s a resounding success?
I worked for a community organisation about 10years ago. I had started off there as a volunteer, and although I believed in the organisation, I also knew what becoming a staff member involved. So when I received my job offer I already knew what it would feel like when the time came to move on. In fact I knew that when that feeling came there would be nothing else to do but to resign.
I couldn’t put words to it at the time but it was a kind of resentment. A feeling that I was owed something. Now, with the advantage of hindsight and the challenge of writing about it, maybe I can do better than that. Maybe you could say it was like a bank statement. As if the initial credit for having received the job opportunity had been paid back and the organisation was becoming indebted to me. I knew what it felt like from previous burn out experiences. I also knew that this organisation wasn’t going to notice that it had gone into debt with me. I’m not talking about getting paid for the work. This was a different kind of debt. A kind of give and take balance. So it was a feeling I was giving too much of myself and the rewards were no longer adequate.
Before that burnout feeling arrived I had tried giving less of myself. But I only felt like I was letting myself down. I can’t keep that up for long. I had also tried applying for other jobs in the organisation to keep that feeling that I was learning and moving forward. The prospects weren’t on offer. But when that debt feeling came, when I recognised it, I knew what it meant. I wasn’t happy about what it meant. It was an upheaval. It was just something that had to be done.
So I resigned straight away. Luckily I found some other work soon after and I managed to stay afloat. But I knew I was doing the right thing and I didn’t question myself after that. It was an example to myself that I had finally mastered my “should I stay or should I go” skills. Some of the skills at least. They’re not the kind of skills you put on your resume. They’re more important than that.
In that very same job I had to work with some diverse personalities. I had to listen to what people had to say, but more importantly I had to work out what people were really trying to say, when the true intentions couldn’t be spoken. There was a woman who would come every week, and at the end of the day she’d need a long massage to help her do it all over again. She was always a bit difficult to manage but something changed. Suddenly she did something bad enough for me to give her a written warning. The next week she did something else to test me and I realised what she was really trying to say. She was trying to tell me that she had had enough and couldn’t make the final decision for herself. Perhaps she wasn’t even aware that’s what she wanted. When you’re stuck in the same routine for years perhaps you can’t see what you want anymore?
I asked her not to return and never heard from her again. It felt like I was forced to make the decision for her. The decision she didn’t have the guts to make herself. It was an example of what not to do. And, it was a reminder. If you get the tap on the shoulder and the balance can’t be settled, make the decision before others have to make it for you.
It’s never really an easy question to answer. You can’t know what the future holds. There are a few tricks that can help. You can try getting really drunk. I don’t hear good things about that strategy though. Or this: you can making the decision, write the letter of resignation, sleep on it, see how you feel about it in the morning. Sleep always helps.
In writing this post I’ve learned something about mental fitness. Like physical fitness, you benefit from experience. You learn how to avoid injury. You learn how to avoid over training. Often you learn the hard way. It’s unavoidable. But the more you learn the better you can hone your mental fitness.