The Delicate Balance Between Pleasure And Pain – The Art Of Skilful Leadership
- Feb 14, 2022
- 5 min read
Written by: Nicole Schmitz, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Great leadership requires an understanding of the emotional states of pleasure and pain.
One of the greatest challenges leaders face is how to gain more influence over their team to motivate them towards achieving long-term goals and collective success. This can get even more complicated when you throw in other variables such as virtual teams, international teams, or teams with clashing personalities, cultures, or values. So as a leader in a variety of contexts, how can you maintain team collaboration, productivity, and morale, and motivate them to take consistent, directed action towards success?
It requires a delicate balance between pleasure and pain.
On the one hand, you need to create enough pain and friction for them to be motivated to make a move. On the other hand, you need to inspire them with your long-term vision to ensure they follow through. As a leader, it's your responsibility to make sure your team is both motivated and directed towards their goals. It would be insufficient to rely on one or the other because neither works alone.
Therefore, the art of skillful leadership lies in the ability to be able to evoke an emotional experience – through the friction between pleasure and pain – in order to inspire consistent action towards the collective goal. Read on for further explanation.
Pain As A Helpful Emotion
Whilst even reading the word 'pain' can cause some people to feel discomfort, it's important to understand that pain can act as an incredibly helpful and insightful emotion.
Pain has the ability to push us towards our goals and motivate action. Whilst the emotional experience of pain is to signify something is 'wrong', the practical purpose of pain is to point us towards the parts of ourselves or our situation that might need adjustment.
In this way, pain acts as a compass that points towards what needs attention most urgently for positive change.
Therefore, pain can be framed as an opportunity for growth.
It could be missed professional development opportunities or a missed opportunity to work with someone new, or perhaps a missed opportunity to take their career to the next level. The picture of pain must be clearly painted in order to help them see what they are missing out on if they don't take action.
If there were no resistance or friction between the pleasure and pain associated with these opportunities within this process, then motivation would be low and there wouldn't be that incentive to act.
This isn't about causing your team distress, it's about grabbing their attention as to what they may need to improve in order to better themselves or their career.
Because ultimately, it's easy for people to become complacent when they're not facing any challenges or friction around their work. Remember that the "motivation" part comes from feeling like there is an obstacle in front of you that needs conquering. The more friction you can create, the more attention your grab, and the more motivated and driven people will be.
Long Term Vision For The Follow Through
Leadership is about creating a collective vision for the future which inspires people to act independently towards achieving it as a whole.
If you want your team members to take consistent and sustained action, not only must you create that friction between pain and pleasure, but you must also ensure you get them on board with the long term vision; what the objectives are, the ultimate end goal, and what they stand to gain from it all in the long run.
This is critical to sustaining their motivation towards achieving these goals. Because if they don't have a clear direction to follow, they will never be able to fully commit to overcoming the pain and struggle.
This commitment can be gained by highlighting the connection between the collective vision, and their personal pain/pleasure motivations listed above.
By helping them to visualize the long-term benefits of their work, you are linking pleasure with sustained action, and therefore they will be more likely to take action when you need them the most.
Leadership Clout
One of the greatest challenges leaders face is how to gain more influence over their team. Leadership clout requires you to be able to motivate people through pain and pleasure, but also inspire them with your vision for the future.
Part of this challenge is the fact every team member will be different; what evokes pleasure and pain emotions in one, might not in another. Therefore, leadership depends on nurturing your relationships and understanding how your team ticks in order to find that delicate balance.
Even as you develop your leadership influence, it's important to understand that the action of others is never 100% in your hands. Leadership is not about making people do things; instead, leadership exists for creating an environment where team members are empowered enough to act independently towards achieving collective goals.
This environment consists of the delicate balance between these two forces – pleasure and pain, in order to motivate action toward a collective goal.
Conclusion
In the end, it all boils down to a delicate balance between pleasure and pain. The more someone is motivated by one or both of these things, the easier it will be for you to motivate them in your capacity as a leader.
Do you often feel like your team is lacking motivation? If so, it could be because they are not experiencing enough friction between these pleasure and pain emotional states.
On one hand, when a team member feels too comfortable in a position, they are unlikely to budge. Conversely, when a team member doesn't clearly see the path forward and what they stand to gain, you will get a similar result.
Skillful leadership is about striking this delicate, which takes a lot of patience, empathy, and skill in order to navigate this delicate balance between individual and collective needs.
If you're searching for some concrete, personalized tips on how you can be a more effective leader through motivating your team, book in for a free confidential chat.
Nicole Schmitz is a certified leadership coach, trained psychologist, and lawyer. She is the Founder of The Leadership X-Factor, which enables senior corporate executives and entrepreneurs to speak up, be seen, and get ahead in their careers and lives.
Nicole Schmitz, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Nicole is a certified leadership coach, and soft skills and communication expert, with a double Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Law.
Nicole's journey towards confident communication began early in life, where she went from being as quiet as a mouse to speaking on a global stage of 100k + people. She then took this experience to the boardroom to influence top CEO's in Australia and the world.
Following the success that came from overcoming her own fears, Nicole made it her life's mission to help as many corporate professionals and entrepreneurs as possible, to become empowered communicators who speak up, be seen, and get ahead in their careers and lives.
Her focus lies within enabling the 'career essential' soft skills required to develop high influence, high impact leaders within any industry.
Nicole has coached clients across 10 countries to help them unlock their inner strengths, overcome their fears and anxieties, and excel in their careers through results such as quadrupling their income and landing their next promotion.
Nicole is credentialed as a certified professional coach (CTA), and a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
