Why Leaders Must Feel Pain

On a plane flying cross-country, a CEO and management consultant tunes into a fellow passenger's sharp-edged interaction with her five-year old daughter, and finds himself unexpectedly in tears. The incident unleashes a series of insights on the importance of acknowledging the pain we encounter in ourselves and the world. "This act of diving deeply into the feelings we avoid, the feelings we don't necessarily even know we have, is, I have come to believe, our only hope of breaking our link in the chain of hurt, suffering, and ineffectiveness. That's a leadership issue. Because every leader is a human being. And when we avoid feeling the suffering we naturally experience as human beings, we perpetuate it and act against our best interests in our relationships with our colleagues and the people we manage, as well as with our families."

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