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 from their perspective as it relates to their work and lives and write articles and case studies. Over to Rachel.....
Unlike Myself
It’s the interplay between revealing strengths and showing weaknesses, being an individual but conforming, establishing intimacy but keeping your distance that enables great leaders to find the right style for the right moment. (Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, Why Should Anyone be Led by Me)
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 observing myself from outside my physical being: feeling detached from something that is having a very real effect on my body.
My individual experience 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
Art is far more effective at communicating the pain experience than words ever could be. The pain experience goes beyond the actual occurrence of physical pain and encompasses the entirety of one's life. The pain experience can be both negative and positive. (www.painexhibit.com)
As a theatre maker, I started wondering about making work which explored the concept of how I view myself through pain.
Gradually, as I started exploring this and discussing it with other artists, I became aware of the relatively small body of work made by disabled artists which explores the ‘medical’– or indeed 'emotional' - impact of an impairment (or pain) on the person.
As a society, we are not particularly good at being around or watching pain, yet pain affects so many of us, often directly, whether physical, emotional or experienced vicariously.
Work that explores the experience of pain can often be viewed as self-indulgent or ‘brave’. As an artist, I am not interested in creating work which presents disabled people as either of these things; I am, however, interested in exploring my own notion of myself and how my impairment impacts on this.
Pain in Movement
There can be no disability without impairment. (Dr Tom Shakespeare, Disability Rights and Wrongs)
In the disability movement, the social model is often interpreted as gritting your teeth and bearing it. Our move away from an individual model of disability has created an environment where it is sometimes difficult to view individual concerns. Disability is so much a social construct that we ignore the impact of the impairment.
In the quote from Tom Shakespeare above, our focus is drawn back to the individual. In this context, he’s described as a critical realist in exploring the not-so-useful aspects of the social model. Though a perfect implementation of the social model would present me with no access barriers as a wheelchair user, I would still be in pain. This is where leadership theory and the study of great leadership presents a useful counter-argument which tells us that we need to be authentic to be successful leaders and that authenticity is about expressing what is really going on.
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 strive to hide those aspects of our impairments that may weaken us in others’ eyes.
Mike Oliver, a professor of Disability Studies, describes how the medical/individual model might also be known as ‘the personal tragedy theory of disability.’
Not a version of disabled people we wish to be associated with, we have moved away from this to a model of disclosing only that information which relates to our access.
This doesn’t, however, always give scope to reveal when we are tired, or struggling in some way. We want to seem strong; we don’t want to seem that we are triumphing over adversity and achieving against the odds. Yet often this is true for some of us who manage an impairment. We are working despite pain, fatigue, or physical difficulty. We are achieving great things. Do we deny this or hide it in some way for fear of seeming brave?
Sync’s questions around leadership and different models show us alternatives to denying our individuality as disabled people. I have found several of these models of leadership useful and have led me to thinking about reclaiming the individual model for myself and expressing my true individuality in all its light and shade.
Not a new set of thoughts for many, but for me a radical departure from my immersion in a social model school of thought.
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.
As disabled people, we are conscious in particular of presenting a positive public area, one which appears strong and controlled. We often hide the more difficult aspects of our impairments from those in Quadrant Four. Revealing anything which could be seen as a weakness feels dangerous and exposing.
Yet if we sometimes chose to present some of this in our public area then we may experience better results. Gandhi’s whole existence was in the public arena; he experienced pain and illness through his fasting and peaceful protest. By sharing those experiences he had greater impact as a leader. Within our professional contexts, it can be useful to adjust what we deem our acceptable public area of the Window. Sharing our own life experiences with others can positively inform how we work with each other. Commitment may not always be viewed as making that breakfast meeting; strength not always from working that 12 hour day.
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. However, I’ve also been in the unique position of literally having to be the “Leader” because in the past, there literally has been no one else who is disabled for people to come to for advice and guidance. (Suzanne Bull, CEO, Attitude is Everything)
Sync member, Suzanne Bull speaks clearly about leadership as an attitude, an approach, rather than how many hours we work.
It is how we develop this attitude that shapes us, providing us with an opportunity for our own experiences to shift our view of the world and the way we connect with it.
We can control how we communicate our impairments, how we talk about our pain or fatigue and how this affects us, but this may take practice to develop our own style in doing this so it has the desired effect for us.
In Jo Verrent’s Reveal-ations article for Sync she talks about there being ‘no right or wrong way to be in relation to impairment’; about having a clear idea of what information to disclose when. This may not sound revolutionary – after all, we are all used to disclosing our access requirements (or not) - but how often are people honest about the impact of their impairment? Choosing to share valuable information with others (and see this as valuable, rather than admission of weakness) – and ourselves – can vastly enhance our experience of leadership.
If we link this with the theory of Johari’s Window then we are given an extraordinary gift of leading through our actions.
Disclosing the reality of our individual situations in a positive manner gives us permission to lead in a way appropriate to us. For example, do we need to work part time, later starts, or more time to fulfil the work we are intending to do? Our leading doesn’t change, just the way we might do it. This could be hugely empowering; declare only the information which matters and allow the leadership to do the talking.
Bearing Pain
Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain. (Max de Pree, Leadership is an Art)
It is easy to see how some leaders inflict pain by not listening or being responsive to others or the process they’re involved in. Likewise, we can see the benefits of bearing pain: being supportive to ideas and others is a part of leadership. By bearing pain we are able to take responsibility for the development of ourselves, others and the ideas we’re working on. Pain becomes less about being a difficulty or tragedy and much more about something which can be shared with others.
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. I embrace my own individual model; I hope that others may too and that together we can support the view that this does not equal tragedy.
