Whoever said “pain is inevitable, suffering is not” has never had sciatica.
Sciatica, or what I call Back Lightning, is caused by the pinching of the sciatic nerve in your spine. But rather than stopping there, the Back Lightning sends its current from your lower back, through your hip, and down into a part of your knee you didn’t know you had. For the last two months I have tried everything — ice, heat, stretching, medicine, medicine that is legal in my state but not yours — to treat my Back Lightning. Nothing has worked.
So I’ve done the only logical thing left to do, I’m ignoring the pain and powering through.
Of course my wife has alerted me that this is not the only logical thing to do. There are doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors, and other professional service providers that may be able to help me. I honestly hadn’t considered that. When we are in pain, asking for help from qualified experts is so often our choice of last resort. But there are times when it should be the first.
This episode of physical pain, and my automatic response, has had me reflecting on what I and others do in response to the inevitable OUCHes of life.
What do you do when you are in pain?
Do you hide it?
Deny it?
Treat the symptoms?
Self-diagnosis it?
Seek professional help?
As you can sense by now (if you’ve read any of our work before), we aren’t merely talking about physical pain. We feel (and inflict) pain in a variety of ways through our leadership and in our organizations. There is pain in the functional “joints” of our organization (just ask Sales and Marketing). There is pain when there is misalignment between a person’s contributions and their requirements of their role. (What did you talk about in your last performance review?) There is pain when a leader positions their personal gain over stakeholder value (Yeah, that boss). And perhaps nothing will make your organization scream ouch more loudly than when there is a gap between the needs of your customer and what the business is providing them. As the saying goes, organizational pain is inevitable.
Organizational Ouches can occur between colleagues, within or across teams, and deep within our own souls. They may vary by the size or growth of our company. But what is true is that all leaders, teams, and organizations will have an ouch — it’s an inevitable part of growing as a company and leader. And similarly to our growth from child to adult, we cannot entirely avoid pain and injury. And nor should we. Leaders who pretend as if the pain does not exist or who work tirelessly to keep their organization away from the pain associated with growth, do their organization a disservice. As we now understand, coddling children, physically or psychologically, does further damage to them. Children need to experience these ouches — physical hurts, disappointments, frustrations, fears — in order to believe in what they are capable of as well as to develop resilience. The same is true for you and your organization.
So if the ouch is inevitable, it is our response to the pain that ensures that we minimize the suffering for us and those we lead. If we can become more aware of how we make others say ouch and how we respond to the ouches in our lives, we will indeed be able to limit the suffering we inflict and incur.
Do we have the vulnerability to admit when we make a poor strategic decision that is causing pain to our organization? Do we accept the symptoms of slow execution without blaming but spending time diagnosing the root causes? When we are in over our heads handling team conflict, do we have the humility to invite a professional in to help? When we are angry or disappointed in our colleagues, our boss, or our direct reports, do we find the right voice to express that pain, or “make them pay” with our simmering silence or snarky insults? Fr. Richard Rohr, renowned theologian and philosopher, says, “If we do not transform our pain, we will inevitably transmit it…to those closest to us.” Your ouches can be some of your organization’s (and life’s) greatest teachers. To be sure, those lessons don’t always feel pleasant. Lessons that invite pain are not like fine wine — they don’t get better with age. They grow more toxic, risk more destruction, and damage careers and opportunities.
Where is your “ouch” today? What ouches are you causing? And who around you cares enough to tell you? Are there ouches in your organization you have the power to relieve for others? And what would happen if you did?
This NQ18 is to help you react to your organizational pains, so that we can thoughtfully respond to pain in a way that leads to greater resilience and health.
But as far as I know, none of this will do anything to heal Back Lightning. I may need a doctor for that.