#🌱 #🟡 # Do leaders have to suffer? ![[calendar-plus.svg]] <small>Dec 14, 2022</small> | ![[calendar-clock.svg]] <small>Mar 03, 2023</small> 🏷️ [[Leadership MOC]] I love the idea Carey (n.d.) presents that [[transforming leadership]] is all about the integrity of relationships as both the means and the end. It seems a critically important point to understand that transforming leadership, as Burns has defined it, isn't a tool to be used as part of some organizational strategy. But rather a process through which the leader is the tool for nurturing relationships that lead to individual and group development (Carey, n.d.). While I completely embrace the idea of the leader being the tool or instrument that helps others develop, I struggle with Gandhi's reflection that the only way to embrace relationship as the "means which is the end in the making" that leads to non-violence is through suffering. I understand and can accept that it is "always more moral to suffer than to impose suffering" (Carey, n.d., p. 13), but does that mean that a transforming leader must always suffer? It's one thing to be prepared to do so in the situation that demands it. But is Gandhi suggesting that suffering is the only way to practice seeking the truth and being a transformational leader? One of my classmates helped me see suffering in a different light. It might not always manifest in the brutal and physically painful forms we've witnessed in exemplars like Gandhi, Malcolm X or Archbishop Romero. But a certain degree of suffering is present any time we undergo [[transformation]]. [[change]] stretches us, often to a point of discomfort or pain. It presents us with challenges and even a sense of loss. Even if the change is positive, we still experience loss and therefore grief, or suffering. Another classmate reminded me of the words of [[Parker Palmer]]: > [! quote] In *The Courage to Teach* p. 88 > There is a name for the endurance we must practice until a larger love arrives: it is called Suffering. We will not be able to teach in the power of paradox until we are willing to suffer the tension of opposites, until we understand that such suffering is neither to be avoided nor merely to be survived but must be actively embraced for the way it expands our own hearts. Without this acceptance, the pain of suffering will always lead us to resolve the tension prematurely, because we have no reason to stand the gaff. Palmer was speaking of teachers working with students, but it is just as applicable to leaders working with their team members. A leader has to be willing to "bear the suffering that opens into those levels...[to]...hold the gateway to inquiry open, inviting students [or team members] into a territory in which we all can learn" (p. 88). Not every leader has to sacrifice their life or their physical well-being for their team, organization, or cause. But to be effective, they must be willing to suffer the discomfort and challenge that comes with trying to affect meaningful change and transformation. --- ## Sources [[Practice of Leadership - Carey]] [[The Courage to Teach - Palmer 2017]]