The Space Where Change Dies
He knew exactly what he was supposed to do. Let his COO make the decision.
He had spent years saying he wanted a stronger leadership team. People who could think without him, decide without him, lead without waiting for his approval.
So this time he stepped back, and his COO made the call. It wasn't the decision he would have made.
And for the next twenty minutes, he fought the urge to take it back.
Those twenty minutes are where most conversations about change stop being useful.
We spend enormous amounts of time helping people understand what they should do differently.
Delegate more. Set the boundary. Stop rescuing. Have the conversation.
Say no. Let go.
Often, they already know. The problem isn't knowing what to do. The problem is what happens after they do it.
Most change gets described as a movement from one thing to another. Stop controlling, start delegating. Stop pleasing everyone, set boundaries. Stop rescuing, let people struggle. Stop carrying everything, trust others.
We can name what needs to be released, and we can describe who we want to become. But there's a space between those two that we rarely talk about.
TOLERATE.
Because the moment you release an old behaviour, something uncomfortable usually shows up.
The founder delegates and has to tolerate someone doing it differently.
The parent stops rescuing and has to tolerate watching their child struggle.
The people pleaser sets the boundary and has to tolerate someone's disappointment.
The leader stops stepping into everything and has to tolerate not being needed.
That discomfort isn't incidental to the change.
It is the change.
This is what makes old behaviours so persistent. They worked. Control reduced uncertainty. Rescuing reduced helplessness. People-pleasing reduced the risk of disappointment. Overworking eased the feeling that we weren't doing enough. Being indispensable reassured us that we mattered.
Eventually those behaviours can become expensive. But that doesn't mean they stopped doing their original job. So when we remove the behaviour, we don't immediately remove the feeling it was protecting us from. We expose it.
And right there, the old pattern makes an offer. I can make this go away. Take the decision back, fix it yourself, say yes, step in, check again, stay late, rescue them.
And the remarkable thing is that it works. The discomfort disappears.
Which is why the old pattern can be so difficult to leave. It isn't merely a bad habit. Sometimes it's an emotional painkiller.
Go back to the founder. We tell him he needs to delegate, but delegation isn't the hardest part. He can hand someone a decision in thirty seconds.
The real test comes when that person takes longer than he would. Makes a mistake he could have prevented. Uses a different approach. Maybe even spends $50,000 learning something he could have explained in five minutes.
Now we find out what he's actually capable of tolerating. Inefficiency, uncertainty, imperfection, loss of control. Maybe even something deeper.
For twenty years, being needed may have been part of how he knew he was valuable. So what looks like a delegation problem may actually require him to become capable of feeling unnecessary without making himself necessary again.
That's different work. And if you've felt any of this, you already know it was never about the org chart.
When I use the word tolerate, I don't mean accepting a bad situation or suppressing what you feel. I mean something much more deliberate. The ability to experience the discomfort created by a choice without immediately retreating from the choice.
Can I tolerate someone being disappointed without fixing their disappointment?
Can I tolerate uncertainty without grabbing control?
Can I watch someone struggle without rescuing?
Can I be misunderstood without overexplaining?
Can I leave space in my calendar without filling it?
Can I not be needed without finding a way to become necessary?
TOLERATE isn't a feeling to survive. It's a capability to build. And for many successful people, it's a capability success never required them to develop.
Success may have rewarded the opposite. Step in, take responsibility, solve it, carry more, make it happen. Those behaviours helped build the life. Now they may be preventing the next one.
This has changed one of the questions I ask. When someone tells me about a behaviour they know they need to change, I'm interested in why they do it. But I'm becoming even more interested in something else.
What feeling does this behaviour save you from having to feel?
Control may save you from uncertainty. Rescuing from helplessness. People-pleasing from disappointment. Overworking from inadequacy. Being indispensable from questioning your value.
That's often where the real work is.
Because once you know what the old pattern has been protecting you from, you know what will arrive when you stop using it.
And now you can prepare for the actual moment of change. Not sitting in a room talking about it. In the room where it's happening. When someone makes the wrong decision, when somebody is disappointed, when the phone rings, when you could step in. When every part of the old you knows exactly how to make the discomfort disappear.
And you don't.
Some of what got us here still belongs. Some of it has to be released. And some of what follows has to be tolerated long enough for a different response to become possible. Not because the discomfort disappeared, but because our capacity grew.
The space between who you've been and who you're becoming isn't empty. Something is waiting there.
So perhaps the most useful question isn't what you need to change. You may already know. The harder question is this.
What feeling has the old behaviour been saving me from having to feel?
Because whatever the answer is, that's probably what you'll have to learn to tolerate when you stop.
And very often, that's the space where change dies.
Anthony DiMarco works with founders and leaders on the business and the person running it at the same time. Because the company only ever runs as well as the leader.