I’ve reviewed The Gift of Pain already, but wanted to highlight just one of the many insights Dr. Paul Brand shares in this fascinating book on human pain.
“Silencing pain without considering its message is like disconnecting a ringing fire alarm to avoid receiving bad news.” pg. 188
There’s a lot of tracks I could go down with this, but in addition to biological implications I can’t help but think that leaders have something to learn from this insight taken from how people respond or don’t respond to physical pain.Pain, outside of the physical, in many contexts expresses itself through anxiety. There’s a lot of approaches leaders taken when anxiety manifests in their leadership sphere. Here’s what I’ve observed over time:
- Some are so detached they don’t even notice it and continue to go about their business with no intentional leadership action.
- Some respond to the anxiety by trying to care-take and make everyone feel better. In essence they believe the best way to lead is to help everyone feel better by taking away the pain symptoms – the anxiety.
- Some try to exercise control over the situation by trying to get people to conform to various policies, strategies, or initiatives for the sake of focus.
- Some recognize significant community anxiety as a symptom of something bigger and try to learn and identify what their community “bodies” are teaching them just like physical pain is trying to teach us something about our own bodies.
That last option is a lot harder, takes more security in a leader, takes more intentionality and patience, and probably takes a little more skill too. But that last option is the option that both serves others and provides an opportunity to get a more clear picture of what truly is going on in your context which should interest anyone who wants to lead in light of reality.
When we ignore community pain in the form of anxiety (or when we misdiagnose it or confuse the symptoms of anxiety with its cause) we forfeit opportunities to serve and lead others to a redemptive future. Our culture finds many ways to avoid pain and comfort ourselves rather then enter into reality. We’re fools if we think that this dynamic doesn’t play out in leadership as well.
What do you think is critical for leaders as it relates to their role and response to manifestations of pain in the community?
