The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 360 - Lower Back Pain

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: As I stand here before you, I'm feeling nimble. I'm feeling fresh. I'm like moving from side to side.

Jen: You're literally dancing.

Pete: I've got to tell you, this is so random, but my lower back is feeling the best it has felt in about three years. And I feel like there's a lesson in here that is well beyond me and my medical quirk.

Jen: Okay...lower back pain. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: And at three-hundred-and-fifty-odd episodes in, they're really clutching at straws: lower back pain. There's a metaphor here, I promise. So, context. For about three years, I have had lower back stiffness, pain, awareness, discomfort, and some version of that, depending on what day it is, depending on what activities I've done, depending on how much I've slept and what mood I'm in. Over those three years, I have not done nothing. I have self-diagnosed.

Jen: Oh, okay. I know where this is going.

Pete: I've self-diagnosed at various stages, that, "Oh, it must be because I'm tall," or, "It must be because my deadlift technique is wrong," or, "It must be because I'm swimming or rowing too much. Maybe I shouldn't be running in this particular way." I have done yoga, and spoken to yoga instructors. I have done strength training, and spoken to numerous strength coaches. I have been to physiotherapists, massage therapists, myotherapists. I have, what I thought, thrown the kitchen sink at this chronic injury. And for whatever reason, all of a sudden, about a month ago, it dawned on me. "You know who I haven't spoken to? A doctor."

Jen: [laughing] I'm sorry. I don't mean to laugh.

Pete: No, it's laughable. It is laughable, because it took three years. This is where I knew it went too far. Right? About two months ago, I was in the airport security line. (This is a true story.) I bent over to pick up a plastic tub. Now, for those that have been through security in airport, you know those plastic tubs weigh nothing, essentially.

Jen: Right.

Pete: I bent over to pick up this tub. I collapsed to the ground.

Jen: Oh my gosh.

Pete: My back had a spasm. And my legs gave way. Right? I'm in my suit. I'm going to Sydney for a day of work. I'm scrambling around the ground. People are like, "Oh my god, are you okay? Did you just pass out?" And I'm like, "I'm fine. I think my back just gave way." And so, I went through security, tail between my legs, and I thought, "Hmm, maybe I should speak to a doctor about this."

Jen: "Time for a doctor." Wow, Pete, that's crazy. I'm sorry you went through that.

Pete: Crazy. I mean, I'm sure I'm not unique in this. What I've since discovered is, back pain is way more common than we all realize. Anyway, the point is not me and my spasm. The point is I finally went to a doctor. And in going to the doctor, he went through a very thorough series of diagnostic questions and activities. I ended up getting an MRI. And having got the MRI, the radiologist came in afterwards and was like, "It looks like you've been a bricklayer for sixty years. Your back must be so sore." Which, by the way, I felt so seen. And I was like, "It is really sore." I almost broke down and cried. Anyway, I got the diagnosis based on my MRI. The doctor referred me to an amazing specialist, who I'm now working with, and have put in a plan to fix my back with. I'm on these anti-inflammatories for a short period of time, which has made my back feel like dramatically better. All of this happened within about a week of me seeing the doctor. I went from, "I had a spasm at the airport," to like, "Oh, I literally have no back discomfort right now."

Jen: Wow.

Pete: Wild. But ridiculous and laughable, like you chuckled at. All of this to say, I feel like there's a metaphor here. I feel like not just with my lower back, but there is a world where we are doing things the same way we've always done them, self-diagnosing or self-treating certain ailments, be them physical or otherwise, that we could benefit from going back to first principles and going, "Have I got a clear diagnosis, so that I know what I'm actually treating?"

Jen: Whoa. I felt that question deeply just now.

Pete: Oh, good. Good, good, good, good, good, good. So, I'm sure you have some context that you could think of this as relevant. I have a bunch of context I've been feeling, like thinking about this when I think about leaders, and the work that I do with them, and how they may come to me and say something like, "I need some help having a difficult conversation with an employee." And I think about the fact that they're thinking about the conversation and the outcome of that, and I kind of wonder, "Huh, have we diagnosed what's the challenge here? Have we gotten clear in what is it about this conversation or the thing that's led to this conversation that is actually the nub of the issue that we need to talk about?"

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: "And are we just fumbling around in the dark like Pete and his lower back, thinking we know what we're trying to fix? When in actual fact, we haven't gone and got the MRI and found out that we've got the back of a sixty-year-old bricklayer?"

Jen: Pete, my mind is going in a thousand different directions. All of them are basically leading back to your question of: Have we diagnosed the actual problem? So, I'll just randomly pick one of the thousand examples that just came to my mind. I have a lot of clients right now who are rebuilding their websites or building websites for the first time. And they will send it to me for feedback, saying like, "Something is not right here. I've spent hours and hours and hours looking at this. This doesn't feel right." And I'll ask a couple questions, for example, "Have you built yourself a brand book? Do you know what the vibe, the feel, the aesthetic, the color palette, the font choices actually are?" "Oh, no." "Okay. So, we haven't actually made design decisions."

Pete: Right.

Jen: "So, the design looks a mess." Or, "Have you thought about bringing a web designer on to solve this?" "Oh, right. I don't know anything about web design."

Pete: Right.

Jen: "Which is why this website looks like it was made by a two-year-old." So, that's like one example. I'm also working with a lot of clients right now on career strategy. And many of them, I really feel for them when they are feeling this way, are like, "I just don't think my reps, whether it's an agent or a manager, are on board with where I want to go. And I'm questioning the relationship. And do I need to overhaul all of my marketing materials?" And I'll say like, "Well, what did they say about where you want to go?" "Oh, we haven't had that conversation." It's like, "Okay, well, maybe the root of the problem is a lack of clarity about not what the strategy is, but like, where's the strategy supposed to take you? Where are you actually going? Then, we can figure out whether we're on the same page." Anyway, I could go on and on and on and on.

Pete: Right.

Jen: I could see this happening in family dynamics. I could see this happening in friendships. I could see this happening in the workplace. I could see this happening with, yes, physical ailments, mindset issues. Like, we're so quick to throw so many solutions at a problem, when we don't even know what the problem actually is.

Pete: Yeah, exactly. That's funny. I was having a conversation with a leader yesterday, and they were lamenting the fact that their team wasn't big enough and that they needed more resources, i.e. more people. I hear this a lot, that there's too much work and not enough people to do the work. And that often, we throw more resources or energy into hiring more resources, resources meaning people. And I think that this applies there too. It's like, but what's the problem you're actually trying to solve?

Jen: Right.

Pete: Is it that we're not prioritizing the actual work? In which case, it might not be that we need more people. But we go straight to, "We need more people. We need more resources. We need more money. We need more solutions," without actually pausing to go, "Have we diagnosed the actual problem? What is the problem we're trying to solve here?"

Jen: Yep. Yeah, I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who owns a company, about an issue they were having in their marketing department, and that they were concerned that the person who was heading up the marketing team was not fulfilling their job obligations. And so, I asked my friend, "Well, what are the objectives of the marketing campaigns right now?" And my friend couldn't answer that question.

Pete: Right, right. So, how do you expect the other person to?

Jen: Right. Now, that's not to say anyone is off the hook. But there is clearly a conversation that needs to happen about, "What are we actually trying to do with this campaign?"

Pete: "Here's what success looks like. I can define that for you, as a leader. And now, I need you to deliver on that."

Jen: Right.

Pete: But if we can't define it, then how could we possibly expect others to define it for us? Yeah.

Jen: Exactly.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Well, and Pete...I'm sure I've shared some version of this before. But I have found myself almost intentionally throwing things at a problem, because deep down, I understand what the problem is and it's simpler to solve. But if I just keep throwing solutions at a problem I wish it was, I wouldn't have to deal with the fact that I can simply solve this problem.

Pete: Ooh, that feels deep.

Jen: I think this is part of (I mean, this could become a whole other episode) why I get things just to the point of completion, and then, I back off of it. It's like, "Oh, well, now let me come up with a million problems I can throw things at, when they're not actually problems." And if I just actually went back to first principle on this, it would cross the finish line.

Pete: Ooh, yep. I feel that.

Jen: Ooh, taking myself to therapy here.

Pete: It's a hiding spot. It's such a hiding spot of like, I mean, in the context of the, to go back to the metaphorical back injury or literal back injury, it's like there's some sort of strange comfort or ownership that I took in going, "Oh, I know what I need to do. I need to do more hip mobility. So, I'm going to spend twenty minutes every day doing the most mundane hip mobility exercises for a month. Then, I'm going to get frustrated at the fact that that didn't change the lower back pain that I had, although my hips are now quite mobile." And like, there's some weird twisted part of me where I got some sort of self-satisfaction out of trying to solve the problem myself, or creating a new problem that wasn't actually the problem, without admitting to myself what the actual problem was or getting someone to help me diagnose what the actual problem was.

Jen: Right.

Pete: The other reminder this gives to me is the benefit of finding and leveraging the right people to help you solve problems. Now, not to say I hadn't tried to find other people. Because believe me, I had. I've talked to so many different people about this. Physiotherapists, myotherapists, massage therapists, like I mentioned, yoga instructors, family members, friends. But what I ultimately found was most helpful was talking to the right person with the right level of expertise in the diagnosis, the people I'm now talking to about the treatment, about, "What is the physiotherapy and mobility plan that you want to put into action, now that you're super clear on what the actual diagnosis is?" By no fault of the physiotherapist, they thought, "Oh yeah, we need to solve this particular problem," because that's what they thought the problem was, because I didn't give them a diagnosis, because I hadn't got a diagnosis of what the actual problem was. So it's like, there's a lesson here for me in: Are you talking to the right people? Are you using the right coach, expert, doctor, friend, therapist, mentor to help you diagnose that problem? So I think about this, of like, who is on your team and what role are they playing? I think I mentioned this probably way back in a very early episode. I literally have a spreadsheet (I still have this) of people that are friends, mentors, people that I pay, some people that I don't, that are just friends and play the role of like key coach, which I would put you in that category of. And I just, next to their name, I write, "What do I see them as being able to help me with? What is their role?" And so, I was thinking about what you just said, around like, I'm running this leadership development program for these eight senior leaders at a big organization in Australia. And one of the ways I very deliberately have structured this program is, I do a coaching session with them once a month. And four times during the year, I want them to do a mentor session with the CEO. And the CEO and I caught up, and he was like, "What do you see is the distinction here? Like, what help could I give?" And I was like, "Well, actually, you're in the C-suite. A lot of these people want to be in the C-suite. I've never been in your C-suite. So, your role is to help them understand, almost like from a teaching and mentoring perspective, what it actually requires for them to be in the C-suite, the skills, the specifics that you are looking for. I'm going to coach them based on what I know about leadership and executive development, but I don't know specifically what you want in your team, as a CEO. So, I need you to play the role of mentor and teacher, to help them fill any literal gaps that you think they might have." So again, there are like different roles that we can play, depending on what problem we're trying to solve and where we're coming at it from.

Jen: This reminds me of an exercise I do sometimes with clients. And I use Audra McDonald, who is a six-time Tony Award winner and the greatest actor of her generation, maybe of all time. And I say, "How many people does it take to make one Audra McDonald? Because she is coming at you with all this skill, and all of this talent, and all of this presence, and all of this charisma. And she has a team." Now, I'm making assumptions here, so some of this might be off. But Audra has a voice teacher, a vocal coach, a stylist, a driver, an agent, a lawyer, a PR person, a manager, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So using your imagination, you would concoct this list of, "How many people does it take to make Audra McDonald?" And then, you go through and you ask yourself, "Which of these things am I qualified to do for myself? If like what you're aspiring to or someone who's inspiring you, what of these things am I able to do for myself?" Well, I, Jen Waldman, have a driver's license. Therefore, I don't need a driver. I can drive myself. But I, Jen Waldman, really do not have any sense of style. (And I say this with love for myself.) If I was aspiring to be Audra McDonald or like Audra McDonald or inspired by Audra McDonald, I need a friend to come to my house and put outfits together, because that is not a skill that I have. I don't necessarily need to hire a stylist, but someone with a specialty in that area will be so much better at that than I can be. So anyway, that's another possible way to look at the roles people play.

Pete: Yeah, agreed. But again, it's like back to this question of: Have I diagnosed the actual problem?

Jen: Right, yes. Because if you're having vocal trouble, a stylist isn't going to help you.

Pete: I mean, you say that as a joke, but it's kind of what I did with my lower back.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.