The President Blinked: Joe Biden faced an extraordinary moment and made a difficult call. In his action lies a leadership lesson for all of us.

In a recent podcast interview, the comedian Nate Bargatze explained that given his comedic style, he is always looking for the shortest path to the joke. His premise is that the longer the buildup, the more pressure for the joke to be really funny, “and I never want to put myself in that position.”? That’s?where Joe Biden found himself on Sunday, July 21st?—but it?was?no joke.

Joe Biden?was?stuck.?He was asking himself a slew of hard questions, trying to convince himself of one path versus another.?

How do I know this? Because I have been there—well, maybe not right there. I’ve never been President of the world’s richest and most powerful country. But I know how hard it is to walk away from a leadership role that I loved.?And I’d wager that many of you?do, too. Leaving something that we love is never easy.?

Another great comic writer Norman Lear said:?"When thinking about death, I don't mind the going, it's the leaving that is the problem for me. Going, who knows what's out there? It can't be all bad. But leaving, I can't think of anything good about leaving."

Biden clearly did not want to?leave. And today, the same news outlets that implored him to step down are heralding his act of heroism. It was so hard—and even heartbreaking—to watch Biden struggle with the decision because we were watching someone in the throes of the ultimate?identity?crisis. Who is he if he’s not?The Candidate of The President??That’s a scary question?and getting older makes it more freighted.?

The process?of coming to terms with all of this was no doubt going to take a moment. There was no short path to the joke, so to speak. The pressure to make a call ASAP so that the Dems?could move forward?and?make an honest go of winning in November?didn’t?help.

In my own situation—where the stakes were much lower for sure—I had time to adjust. Business can move at a lightning-fast pace, but transitions can be protracted for many reasons. I had a long transition as a new leader came into my organization, which gave me a chance to consider deeply whether I wanted to stay in a different leadership role or move on to the unknown.

I eventually redefined a different path forward. But I started to realize that so often, as Adam Grant pointed out in the New York Times recently, we stay committed to something that’s fundamentally doomed. Leaders rarely know when to say good-bye and mostly need to be told when it’s over.?

That’s bad for a slew of reasons. And it’s avoidable.

For starters, the best leaders identify a successor early in their tenor. Someone to carry on the torch. The next thing to do is to be honest with yourself about what you want to accomplish and in what time frame. What is the story you want to tell as you are eventually leaving and when might that be? What are you trying to accomplish and what might it lead to next??

It might seem super-weird to be asking yourself questions about the end at the beginning. But it’s the focus we all need to move forward. To keep yourself honest, think about writing these things down. You might even want an unbiased advisor just to remind you of the larger objective. Fact is, it’s too easy to rationalize staying past your expiration date.?

These are hard lessons for everyone. But for those in leadership positions, it’s better for the people that we serve to make these sorts of big transitions as uneventful as possible. Of course, it’s so hard not to think of ourselves first and what this means for “me!” ?Biden?felt like he had unfinished business.?(We all do.) Leaving is never easy. But so much better to control your own narrative rather than feel like (or look like) a victim of circumstance.?

The leaving will be hard?for all leaders who care about their people and their organizations. And it’s especially hard for someone like Biden who has dedicated his life to serving the public.?So let’s have a little sympathy?for him,?and use his example to think about how we might steer through our own inevitable transitions. Maybe this is something that we can all agree upon, even in these most divided times.?

Macht is the President of MassLive, a pro sports and local news outlet. He’s also the former Group Publisher of the Harvard Business Review and former Acting CEO of Harvard Business Publishing.