Your megaphone…

My client hurt himself on the way down the mountain last weekend. His weak ankle blew up like a balloon on the flight home. He is not blaming anyone but himself for his plight. This is huge because humans do not change until they take responsibility for being the change, thank you Gandhi.

His acute pain in his ankle has changed his mind about his weight. His wife couldn’t, I couldn’t; his physical therapist couldn’t either. He, just like you, tends to listen to his own ideas more than any other. Acute pain is like a megaphone of sorts for your mind – it screams in your ear what others have been seemingly whispering about for months, years, or even decades as in this case. So, when it comes to you and leading your team do NOT be afraid to put them in harms way. Making another do what they can will oftentimes involve acute pain and traumatize part or all of their system. Do it, anyway. Your job, if you are a leader, is to do whatever it takes to get the most out of your team. One of the unintended consequences of such training whether physcial, mental, or spiritual, will be an occassional tumble on the way up or down. There are no easy ways and many hard days on the road to high performance. All of us are gonna struggle. Embrace this.

Your problem, if you’re anything like my client, is you are too worried about being an ass and pushing too hard. So, you ease up and let your team stay on the bunny hill the entire time they are with you. You don’t believe they can take it. You don’t believe they’ll stick with you if you tell them the truth. You don’t believe. You have a failure of nerve. This is an epidemic in America.

My client is hurting and his pain has spoken. He is listening to himself and his little voice is finally worth hearing. He doesn’t know or care that I’m jumping for joy – he’s too busy kicking his own. Good. Go, my leader, and do likewise. Your team, remember, has the same pain threshold as you. Yup, they do. Science is proving this beyond doubt. Pain tolerance, however, is very different from human to human and it is very much a learned skill. Your job is to build your teams tolerance of pain, not in a sadistic pain for pain sakes kinda way either. Your job is to build your teams tolerance of pain in service of their purpose and your shared aim at work. Good.

Go. Grab your megaphone. You’ve got a team to take up the mountain…