When I changed my career path, at the start of 2021, I decided to support that decision with some focused self improvement. I know the conventional ways to do this might include a Doctorate, another Masters, learning a language, stockpiling some micro credentials and so forth but I decided, instead, to hire a personal Pilates coach.
I have to say that this has proven to be one of my better decisions. Although I have always been very physically active, I am, to flexibility, what Pegasus software is to privacy. We don’t get along at all. So Mission Impossible for my wonderful Pilates coach was to see if the tree trunk had any green and bendy parts still inclined to flex. Six months on, there have been surprising outcomes and much learning.
Most importantly, I have come to focus on the concept of good pain – that is, pain which is essential to make progress and which, if channelled carefully and professionally, does no harm. You’ll know what I mean by good pain if you’ve ever been for a massage and showed too much bravado by asking for firm pressure. Once committed to this choice, one’s hubris demands that that you see it through and so the extraordinary pain that expert fingers quickly locate in every nook and cranny of your back, neck, legs, shoulders, jaw, eye sockets and all points north and south has to be borne with teeth-clenching stoicism. You know it’s good for you but it really hurts and even in the deepest moment of trauma you still answer the polite inquiry, “Is the pressure alright for you, Sir?” with a confident thumbs up.
I started making a connection to leadership thinking when I came across a Youtube video called ‘Planks Suck!’ This wasn’t a protest against the logging industry but a challenge from a successful personal trainer against common exercises that either do more harm than good or simply add no value. In case you haven’t come across this particular calisthenic, a traditional plank involves holding yourself in a rigid position parallel to the ground, supported only by elbows and toes. Apparently, what practising a plank does for you is to make you better at doing planks: in other words, it becomes self serving and tokenistic. I appear to be working out and I appear to be making progress because I can hold this position for longer and longer – but it doesn’t involve my body in enough challenge to be really useful and the gains don’t transfer.
Let me leave the world of fitness at this point in case I have aggravated a nest of dedicated plankers who will rise up and swarm after me – my purpose here is to write about good pain. Under the guidance of my professional trainer, I have learned to push my body further and further into shapes that I would have expected to hurt me but actually have made me free.
In organisations, there are many opportunities to push towards good pain and many examples of leadership teams that plank without extending themselves.
Good Pain
The opportunity for good, improving, pain can be found everywhere. For example in properly managed challenging conversations. Those interactions that leaders don’t look forward to, often duck and frequently botch because of the level of difficulty of the exercise. It’s the conversation with the employee who is flamboyantly successful with customers whilst being dismissive of peers and aggressive or indifferent towards managers. It’s the conversation with the team martyr who works 28 hours a day plus weekends and makes sure that everyone knows it without actually adding value to the team goals because they are too busy being busy. It’s the conversation with the long serving underperformer, much loved by everyone but falling below the required standards.
Good pain conversations are honest conversations and principled conversations that derive from the agreed values of the organisation. It’s precious little use for organisations to go through elaborate values-defining exercises if the leadership do not then live by the values that have been agreed. Leaders need to model integrity (which normally features somewhere in value statements). Integrity necessarily involves challenge and should never involve turning a blind eye, no matter how tempting that is. If you do that, as a leader, you model the behaviour for your line reports to copy. If your team sees you taking courageous, values based, decisions, they become empowered to do the same thing.
Good pain is found in properly managed human and financial decisions. Accountable budget holders. Clear and transparent compensation and benefit packages. Compassionate leave policies. Clear maternity and paternity rights. Proper job descriptions. Entitlement to professional learning for all. Fair and developmental performance management systems…strong, clear discussions pull from strong, clear systems.
If it is made very clear what the expectations and the entitlements are, then the good pain is to stretch the organisational muscle to a point where everyone in the team is working towards the agreed standards of both technical execution and behaviour. It isn’t so hard to do but you can’t have compassionate systems that are fuzzy or open to the operation of privilege or patronage. Leaders can’t have it both ways. If you like calling the shots and improvising decision making, you’d better take ‘integrity’ off the values statement.
Bad Pain
Bad pain is unfortunately all too easy to find in many organisations. You make the decision to address an issue but you cut corners and confront an individual without evidence or compassionate care. You need to cut benefits and you can’t front-up the decision so you send the news out on an email – or you get a subordinate to do it for you. You set clear protocols for collaborative meetings but then a decision you don’t like emerges by consensus and you pull rank and overrule it. You set up a secret compensation bonus system to reward people you like. You promise people promotions but when the time comes, you look elsewhere.
Bad pain isn’t just bad management, it’s doing hard things badly or failing to do hard things at all. Life is easy for a leader when the sun is out and the data dashboard looks good. Leaders earn their corn by creating great strategy, strong values and then doing what it takes to deliver the strategy within the values framework. You can’t step outside of that framework when it suits you and you can’t be ‘too important’ to have to play by the rules or you break the bond of trust that holds a values-based organisation together.
Doing the Leadership Plank
The equivalent of doing the plank for leadership teams is to default to old metrics and call it success, progress or the maintenance of high standards. My former industry, education, is a prime example of this. Every summer brings exam results and this summer of messed up assessment has brought some particularly rosy pickings for many. After the debacle of 2020, exam boards (of those announced to date) have erred on the side of good news, fearful of the legions of litigators queuing up on the sidelines to pick over the carcasses of overly punitive scoring. Armed with rosy news, many schools have gone out to media with stories of high scores and pride.
Many of these same school leaders have been vocal about the need to move away from an assessment-based education model. It’s too easy to take a plum score and hold it up as proof of life, we can do better. I saw some schools that offered alternative summaries this year – those students that had succeeded after extended learning support, the percentage of second language learners who had exceeded goals, the numbers of students who had graduated after successfully managing social and emotional difficulties. This is values-based reporting that can drive system change. Is it more painful to publish these numbers than the number going to Harvard? Yes. Is it good pain to help the organisation grow? Of course it is. Only the brave do this.
During lockdown last year, I reached a point where I could plank continuously for 6 minutes. I was really proud of myself. I took screenshots of my timer and shared them. Not bad for an old guy, huh? Then Pilates brought me learning that I should have already nailed down by now. Doing the same thing over and over again without adding challenge doesn’t help you grow, doesn’t make you stronger and doesn’t make you better at anything at all. If you want your organisation to become stronger, find the people who will challenge you and support you towards and through the good pain.
If you’re not moving forwards, then you’re moving backwards. Planks suck.
