Somehow still working. Why mediocrity holds longer

There is a state many leaders know well. The situation is not good, but also not bad enough to act on. Deadlines slip a little, time budgets overrun, quality lies somewhat below what was agreed. And still nothing happens, because in the background a quiet sentence settles in: somehow still working.

The psychologist Daniel Gilbert delivered a finding on this phenomenon that initially surprises. In his research on emotional recovery, people often recovered from severe burdens faster than from mild ones. A decisive event activates the inner processes by which we frame, interpret and cope with a situation. A mild discomfort stays below this threshold. It does not hurt enough to set coping in motion, and that is exactly why it lasts longer. Gilbert called this pattern the Region-Beta Paradox.

Gilbert's finding stems from research on emotional experience. Transferring it to leadership is an extension that can be well justified, because the same threshold mechanism is at work. Applied to leadership it yields an uncomfortable insight. A clearly bad situation forces action because it crosses a threshold where something must happen. A mediocre situation does not. It is tolerable enough to endure and unsatisfactory enough to wear you down. Paradoxically the worse situation would be the better one, because it forces movement.

Beta zones in daily leadership

Such beta zones can be found in many places in daily leadership. It is the team collaboration that grates and yet never leads to a real conversation. It is your own role, which no longer quite fits and yet is not questioned. It is the relationship with your own management, in which something stays unresolved because it just barely holds. What they share is that they are tolerable enough to remain and at the same time drain energy continuously.

An example from my practice

I worked with the managing director of a company who was dissatisfied with the work attitude of his team. Client appointments were missed, time budgets on projects were overrun without feedback. Objectively that was no small matter. In his experience, however, it was somehow still working. From time to time he would say a sentence in the town hall meeting like: I am dissatisfied, this cannot go on like this.

This sentence is revealing because it feels like action and yet is none. It names the dissatisfaction without triggering a consequence. For the managing director it was a valve that briefly lowered the pressure and thereby pushed the actual threshold further away. The more often he said it, the more familiar the state in which nothing happened became.

Behind this lay a comprehensible pattern. The thought that addressing things directly might sharpen the conflict or drive away staff produced an unpleasant feeling of looming escalation. The behaviour that avoided this feeling was the vague blanket remark to the whole group instead of the clear one-to-one conversation. The consequence was that the behaviour stayed in the team and his own tolerance threshold rose unnoticed.

Culture as the limit of the accepted

Here a well-known leadership maxim applies that describes the situation precisely: Culture is defined by the worst behaviour that a manager is willing to accept. Every tolerated transgression shifts the line at which response still occurs. With that, the mediocrity was to a large extent his own doing, even though it felt to him like a problem of others.

The turning point: a single question

The turning point came through a single question. When he was again describing his frustration to me, I asked him what he had done so far to make things better. His answer was: I have said that I do not want it this way. In the moment he said it, he heard himself. His entire action had consisted of a wish directed at others. I reflected back to him that systems rarely change when we wish change from others, and that movement usually begins where one changes one's own behaviour. That was the point at which it clicked for him. Out of diffuse frustration came a concrete question: What can I do myself.

This question is not the Region-Beta Paradox itself. The paradox explains why he was stuck, because in his experience the situation stayed below the action threshold. The question of responsibility is the lever with which the state could be broken open.

The first step out

What is remarkable is what happened afterwards. The way out of the state was initially more strenuous than remaining. Addressing things directly cost him more than the familiar town hall murmur. We agreed on a training package in which the leaders learned to address disruptive behaviour directly and without escalation, using the principles of Nonviolent Communication. That made the first step manageable. The change is beginning to take effect.

Therein lies the actual core of the paradox. The state does not hold us because the way out is hidden. It holds us because the first step outside feels worse than staying. Whoever understands this can deliberately make the first step smaller, instead of waiting for an external occasion that crosses the threshold for them.

A question for you

For you as a leader there is a question worth sitting with. Where in your area of responsibility is something somehow still working. Which situation do you tolerate because it is not bad enough to act on, while overlooking that it is precisely this tolerability that holds you in place. Sometimes movement begins with a single question to yourself: What have I done so far so that it gets better.

If you want to work on these themes not only in thought but in your own leadership situation, the page Executive coaching for stuck leadership situations describes my work in more detail.

Further reading

• Nonviolent communication: the threefold buffer – the tool that makes the first step out of the beta zone manageable.
• I want vs. one ought to – why the responsibility question creates movement.
• Negative capability: waiting as a virtue – when not acting is itself a choice, and when it becomes avoidance.