Book review: "Leadership Pain"

I used to read mostly fiction, being a person who likes hearing and telling stories. No more. It seems like in the past 15 years since I went into administration, my tastes have shifted more and more towards inspiration and self-help.

Leadership Pain by Sam Chand is both self-help and inspiration, if you're going by genres typically used in bookstores. I doubt it will be of much interest to the readership of my blog, but I have to say that this is one of the most practical, rings-true books I've ever read for leaders. 

Chand's basic message is that if you're a leader worth your salt, your job is going to cause you pain. People don't like change. People are not perfect. And when you lead wholly for the sake of the organization's mission, you're going to run up against both of those situations, along with your own painful imperfections. Take that pain, Chand says, and use it for the product that you and God can bring out of it: your own growth and deepening of character. I was already along the path of this realization after leaving my last leadership job, but Chand articulated it more specifically than I had worked through, thus far.

Here are a few quotations from the book to give you a sense of it:

Leadership that doesn’t produce pain is either in a short season of unusual blessing or it isn’t really making a difference. 

We need to make friends with our pain. In a recent op-ed article for the New York Times, columnist David Brooks offered a surprisingly biblical view of the power of pain. He observed that Americans are obsessed with the pursuit of happiness, but they often feel empty, alone, and without meaning. He noted, “People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering. . . . Happiness wants you to think about maximizing your benefits. Difficulty and suffering send you on a different course.” Brooks shares this insight: “The right response to this sort of pain is not pleasure. It’s holiness . . . placing the hard experiences in a moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred.”  

…most people lack at least one and perhaps both of two essential elements: insight and courage. Instead, they tend to become either blame sponges or blame throwers to affix blame quickly and get the conflict over as soon as possible. 

In times of conflict, some people readily accept the responsibility for a problem even if they didn’t do anything (or much) to cause it or prolong it. In their insecurity, they can’t stand living with tension. Their answer is to claim that they’re the ones at fault. They’re sponges, absorbing the blame. On the other side—the blame throwers—are more than happy to come to the same conclusion. They impulsively defend themselves at all costs and point to any target, especially those who willingly and foolishly accept all blame.”  

Pain isn’t an intrusion into the lives of spiritual leaders; it’s an essential element in shaping the leader’s life.” 

If you're looking for a gift for a Christian leader--that is the worldview from which this book is written--I'd highly recommend Leadership Pain. My experience tells me that you'll get a heartfelt "thank you" once they've started it, and yet more thanks once they've finished it.