The Elephant in the Room
There was an elephant in the room, and I was choosing to ignore it. Hoping it would go away. Only it didn’t. Because they never do. They’re elephants, and if ignored long enough, they have a tendency to start breaking stuff. That’s what mine did, and it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of my life.
As with most elephants, mine wasn't a mystery or a secret. I knew exactly what it was. After a few stumbles, I had finally gotten my CertaPro Painters business to the next level. And then my growth stalled. The elephant? Scaling my CertaPro business beyond that point required a skill set that didn't play to my strengths. I had gotten genuinely good at some things — teaching, coaching, developing salespeople.
But building a larger team and creating a cohesive team culture? That was harder for me than it was for others that had made the leap. I knew it was there and yet didn’t want to acknowledge it. I could feel the weight of it year after year, as the gap between the business I had and the one I wanted to build kept growing.
Part of the reason I struggled was something I've since come to understand about myself. I like to see the good in people. That’s mostly an asset, but it can make it harder to make clear-eyed decisions about fit. About who belongs in a role. About whether someone is helping or hurting the culture you're trying to build. When you're predisposed to give people the benefit of the doubt, these things can be hard to recognize.
The other part was the financial stake. In my work with consulting clients since I sold the painting business, I’ve noticed that I can see things in other businesses that were much harder to see in my own business. My financial and emotional investment clouded my judgment in ways that it just doesn't when I'm looking at someone else's situation. I don't think that's a character flaw — I think it's just human nature. But it's useful to understand.
Why didn’t I want to acknowledge the elephant? Well…those reasons are closely related to the reasons I bought the business in the first place and the reasons I was struggling to scale. I bought the business knowing it would challenge me to develop new skills, and I’ve always loved a challenge. What would it say about me if I decided this one was too much? Would that mean I no longer loved challenges? Would it mean that I gave up? What if I was close to turning that next corner and missed out because I gave up too soon?
Eventually the elephant got restless and started knocking over furniture. The COVID pandemic combined with multiple family medical emergencies took a significant toll on my business. By the time I was finally able to sell, the damage was already done. My business had lost a third of its value.
You’ve probably experienced this in some form or another – a conversation you haven't had, a problem everyone's aware of but no one's naming, a pattern that keeps coming back despite repeated attempts to fix it. The elephant in the room has a way of growing restless the longer you leave it there. And the first step to dealing with it is knowing what one looks like.
How do you know there's an elephant? Here are a few signals I've learned to pay attention to:
Side conversations. If the private conversations — in the hallway, over lunch, in the car on the way home — are different from the ones in the room where it matters, something is being avoided.
Energy shifts. When a topic immediately changes the temperature in the room, people go quiet, answers get vague and pauses get longer, there’s probably an elephant. Nobody says anything directly wrong — they just stop being fully present. It's subtle, but once you learn to notice it, you can't un-notice it.
Groundhog Day. When the same problem keeps popping up despite genuine efforts to address it, something else is probably going on — something that hasn't been named yet. The presenting issue likely isn't the real issue. You can keep treating symptoms all day, but if you don't get to what's underneath, the symptoms keep coming back.
The racket. This is a concept from the book The Three Laws of Performance — a persistent complaint that comes with a predictable response (or inaction) and, importantly, a payoff and a hidden cost. Rackets can be hard to see because they usually feel legitimate — and they often are, in part. But when a complaint produces the same patterns over and over, it's time to dig a little deeper.
How do you deal with it? Once you've spotted the elephant, here are some strategies I’ve found helpful for dealing with it.
Acknowledge the elephant to the people in the room. The first obstacle is acknowledging the elephant — out loud, to the people in the room — to break the pattern of avoidance. In a group setting, one good way to do this without putting people on the defensive is to ask a question of curiosity that allows others to acknowledge the elephant without judgment. For example, “I haven’t heard anyone talk about our strategic partner’s role in this current situation. Is there a reason we’re not talking about it?” If the elephant is someone's individual performance, that's a different conversation that should happen privately, not in front of everyone.
Own your contributions. Maybe you invited the elephant into the room. Maybe you privately encouraged it to stay. Or maybe you avoided it like everyone else in the room. Whatever your contributions, it’s important to acknowledge those first to others in the room impacted by the elephant’s presence. That will allow everyone else to feel more comfortable acknowledging the elephant and their own contributions without fear of judgment, which leads us to…
Acknowledge different perspectives without judgment. It can be tempting to place blame as soon as the elephant is identified, and placing blame can lead to continuing to avoid the true underlying issues. Instead, try validating different perspectives about the elephant. What do different people see? What does the data say? Get to a shared understanding, including acknowledging these different perspectives, before talking about solutions.
Put cards on the table. Once you've acknowledged the elephant, resist the urge to jump to a solution before considering the options, especially the uncomfortable ones. Discontinuing a product line. Letting someone go. Changing course on a decision that was made with a lot of conviction. These may feel extreme, but considering an option isn't the same as choosing it. The more cards people are willing to put on the table, the more options they're willing to consider, the better the outcome tends to be.
The elephant in your room — whatever it is — isn't going anywhere. Left alone, it gets louder. Left alone long enough, it starts breaking things.
The good news is that addressing the elephant is almost always less catastrophic than avoiding it. The things people are most afraid of — blowups, defensiveness, hard decisions — are rarely as bad as the damage the elephant causes when left unattended.
