bcg blog

Threshold Moments

There’s a stillness about the end of something significant. It’s not an emptiness or a relief, but something a little more personal. It’s the feeling of standing at the edge of what was and what’s next, with just enough space between them to look around.
There are hundreds of examples to point to, but Lou Holtz’s departure from Notre Dame is the one that stands out to me.
When Holtz resigned from Notre Dame in 1996, he was leaving one of the most storied programs in college football history. It was a program he had personally rebuilt from mediocrity into a national champion. When he arrived in South Bend in 1986 the team had been just 5-6 the year before. Eleven years later he left with a 100-30-2 record, a national title, and the pride of returning the program to national prominence like it was supposed to be.
What's easy to miss about this moment is what it called of Holtz personally. It required him to stop long enough to see the moment clearly. To look back at the discipline, the decisions, the relationships, and the standard he had held. To recognize that all of it had led him to exactly where he was standing. Not by luck. Not by circumstance. By Process.
Threshold moments ask just that of us. They ask us to pause long enough to be grateful for how we got there - the process we have chosen.

Why Should We Care?
Most of us blow right past threshold moments. That’s the way of the world. We finish the season and immediately start planning the next one. We hit a milestone and immediately recalibrate toward a bigger one. We close a chapter of life with one foot already in the next one. Society’s culture calls it drive and rewards that kind of momentum. And, sometimes, rightly so. But just as often push onward is merely avoidance masked as ambition.
The threshold moments like the end of a season, a graduation, a resignation, a promotion, or a wedding are invitations. They are asking us to stop and take inventory. Less of the outcome, and more of the process. The choices we made when no one was watching. The relationships we built before we needed them. The standards we held when it was inconvenient. Those things didn't just show up at the threshold. They were built along the way, day after day, long before we arrived at that moment.
The uncertain excitement about what comes next is real. But so is the foundation underneath it. A threshold moment is where those two things meet. The leaders who pause long enough to feel both are the ones who step into the next chapter with something solid beneath their feet. They aren't starting over. They're building on.
For leaders, this doesn’t just apply to our personal lives. Our people are standing at thresholds too and most of them don't know what to do with it, so they press on. They feel the weight of it and the pull of it but race past because nobody slowed them down long enough to honor it. That's part of our job. To help them stop, look back, and recognize that the process they've lived is exactly what they're going to draw from next. 
How or why would they repeat it if they aren’t aware and appreciative of it?

REAL TALK - Action Steps
Threshold moments don't slow down on their own. They require intentional leadership of yourself and for those you lead. Here's how to start the slow down.

• Press Pause 
  
  • The threshold won't wait for you, so you have to build the pause before you need it. When your team hits a significant finish line don't let the moment evaporate under the weight of what's next. The debrief isn't just about performance. It's about honoring the process that produced it.
    

• Trust It
  
  • The uncertain feeling at a threshold is normal. What's next is unknown and it's supposed to be. But the foundation you're standing on is not unknown. It's the process that got you right where you are. The next chapter doesn't require a new version of you. It requires the truest version of the one you've been becoming. Trust that.
    

• Name It
  
  • Most people don't have language for what a threshold feels like. They feel it but they can't place it. One of the most underrated things a leader can do is name it for them. Name it, then embrace it. That's leadership. 
    

Your process always leads somewhere. A threshold moment is simply the place where you finally get to see it.
Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!

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