Leading with all of Me?
I am not my pain, but it does impact on who I am. I feel that having managed these symptoms of my impairment I have become a stronger leader and artist than perhaps I would have without it. (Rachel Bagshaw)
Rachel Bagshaw is a Sync Member and part of our Sync Intensive programme.
Here she talks about the experience of pain and how it relates to leading and leadership style.
Sync Intensives is a programme running in 2010 over 8 months from April - November 2010
As part of this, some of the 15 people on the programme will explore leadership as part of their work and lives and write articles and case studies for the website. Over to Rachel.
Unlike myself
Great leaders find the right style for the right moment. (Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones)
Pain is so much a part of who I am, yet I know that I feel unlike myself – somehow removed from myself - when I am most in pain.
To explain it further, it's like a feeling of looking at myself from outside my body: feeling apart from something that is having a very real affect on my body.
This got me thinking about my relationship with pain, when I am most and least myself and what I reveal and show of that pain as part of my working practice and leadership style.
Regarding the pain of others
The pain experience can be both negative and positive. (www.painexhibit.com)
As a theatre maker, I started wondering about making work which looked at how I view myself through pain.
I spoke to other disabled artists and we found that there are very few art works that explore the ‘medical’, or indeed emotional, impact of pain on a person.
As people, we are not very good at being around or watching pain, yet pain affects so many of us, whether body pain or painful feelings. Some people think that if we talk about it or make work about it, we're being too inward looking or 'brave'. Strong yes, but not brave!
Pain in movement
There can be no disability without impairment. (Dr Tom Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs)
In the quote from Tom Shakespeare above, he asks us to consider impairment. Ongoing pain is an impairment if it stops you being able to lead your life in the usual way.
Even if I had no access barriers as a wheelchair user and all the pavements, planes and buildings were accessible to me, I would still be in pain. That's not going to change.
Leadership learning always says to us that we need to be authentic or 'real' and that means expressing what is really going on and for me, that's expressing all of me.
Leadership & revealing our individuality
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. (Kenji Miyazawa)
As disabled leaders within the arts we often hide those aspects of our impairments that may weaken us in other people's eyes.
Instead we just talk about our access and this doesn't leave room to talk about being tired or feeling pain. We are working despite pain, fatigue, or physical difficulty and that's ok, so why do we not talk about it? Surely we have to if we want to achieve great things?
I have found several of Sync Articles really useful, encouraging me to be individual and express myself with light and shade and use my experience and my pain for the journey as fuel.
Through the looking glass
Through our pain we will make them see... (Mahatma Gandhi)
Johari’s Window gives us a great starting point for discussing the ways others view us and what information to reveal.
Revealing anything which could be seen as a weakness feels dangerous and exposing.
Within our working lives,sharing lot smore about ourselves can show us how we can work better together.
If you can't make a very early meeting at breakfast time, it doesn't make you less passionate about the work. You can be strong working a 4 hour day. It doesn't have to be 12 hours 24/7.
Leading as an attitude
I’ve often wondered, can I really be a Leader if I haven’t got that physical energy and sometimes I’m doing less hours than other senior staff. (Suzanne Bull, CEO, Attitude is Everything)
Sync member, Suzanne Bull speaks clearly about leading being about so much more than the hours we work.
It is how we talk about this that shapes us.
So let's talk about our pain or feeling tired and about how best we work and at what time of the day. This takes practice, to talk about it and not apologise or make people feel sorry for us .
Working part time or starting later in the morning or asking for more time to finish things is ok. Our leading doesn’t change because of these changes. Then just let your great leadership do the talking.
I feel that I am managing the symptoms of my impairment and I have become a stronger leader and artist than perhaps I would have been without doing this.
This is my model of how I lead and work. I hope that others may find their own individual way to talk about what works for them and that together we can support the view that this won't make us tragic, but stronger.
