One of the privileges of my work is having conversations with people who are asking expansive questions about the future of humanity. Recently, I spoke with Luis Miguel Gallardo, former Managing Director of Global Brand & Marketing at Deloitte and Founder & President of the World Happiness Foundation.
While our conversation covered many topics, from happiness and consciousness to systems change, one idea lingered with me long afterward: Can we truly understand human thriving without also understanding human suffering?
WHY STUDY SUFFERING WHEN OUR GOAL IS TO CULTIVATE THRIVING?
The answer, I believe, offers an important lesson for all of us.
We’ve become remarkably good at measuring many of the conditions associated with thriving. Organizations monitor employee engagement, wellbeing, retention, productivity, innovation, and customer experience. Nations compare levels of happiness. Researchers continue to deepen our understanding of purpose, meaning, relationships, and psychological health. At Wisdom Works Group, we’ve identified a growing number of tools designed to measure human thriving across organizations, communities, and nations.
These measures are valuable. They help us understand what contributes to a life well lived, and they transform how we define organizational and societal progress. Yet they also raise another question: What are we failing to see?
Luis observed that while we’ve invested considerable effort in understanding the drivers of happiness, we have devoted far less attention to understanding the barriers that prevent people and communities from flourishing. In response, the World Happiness Foundation has developed a Global Pain and Trauma Map to illuminate those unseen conditions that contribute to human suffering. Its purpose is not to dwell on suffering, but to better understand it so that we can reduce it.
As leaders, consider how we might translate this idea into the organizational world. What if every organization had its own pain and suffering map? Not simply a dashboard of financial indicators or engagement scores, but a deeper grasp of where people are struggling beneath the surface. Where has chronic uncertainty diminished hope? Where has relentless urgency displaced thoughtful reflection? Where are people carrying burdens that remain largely hidden to those around them?
These questions matter because the invisible conditions within an organization—and within ourselves—shape our capacity to thrive, our effectiveness, and, ultimately, the results we can accomplish.
THRIVING ISN’T THE ABSENCE OF ADVERSITY
At Wisdom Works, we’ve long defined thriving as being internally well-resourced to meet life’s complexities with effectiveness, growth, and a high quality of life. That definition has never implied the absence of adversity. Rather, it recognizes that thriving and suffering coexist. The question is whether individuals, teams, and organizations are cultivating the internal capacity to engage life’s inevitable challenges with resilience, wisdom, and humanity.
Too often, leaders inherit cultures that reward solving immediate problems while overlooking the conditions that continually recreate them. We become highly skilled at responding to symptoms without fully understanding the systems producing them. A team may appear highly productive while quietly carrying chronic exhaustion. An organization may celebrate innovation while fear of failure discourages people from speaking honestly. What we measure on the surface doesn’t always reveal the conditions beneath it.
One part of my conversation with Luis particularly rang true with me. He spoke about how much of human behavior emerges from patterns that exist beneath conscious awareness. Whether we describe those patterns as beliefs, assumptions, habits, or unresolved experiences, they quietly shape how we interpret the world and respond to it. Organizations develop similar patterns. Teams develop them. Leadership cultures develop them. Some foster trust, curiosity, innovation, and wellbeing. Others quietly reinforce fear, burnout, blame, and disconnection.
Perhaps one of the most important responsibilities of today’s leaders is learning to recognize those patterns before they become crises. That kind of seeing requires more than better analytics. It requires curiosity, presence, and the willingness to ask questions whose answers may not fit neatly onto a dashboard.
The invitation, then, is not to become preoccupied with suffering. It is to become more curious about it. Rather than asking only how we can improve performance, we can also ask what conditions are making high performance increasingly difficult to sustain. Sustainable performance doesn’t emerge in isolation. It grows from the emotional, relational, and cultural conditions people experience every day. When those conditions deteriorate, performance eventually follows. Rather than focusing exclusively on outcomes, we can become equally interested in the human experiences that produce those outcomes.
When we develop the capacity to see both thriving and suffering more clearly, we gain new opportunities to cultivate healthier people, healthier organizations, and ultimately a healthier world.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION?
As you reflect on your own leadership, I invite you to consider a few questions…
If your organization had a pain and suffering map, what might it reveal?
What forms of struggle are visible, and which remain hidden?
Where do you already see the seeds of thriving that deserve greater attention and investment?
The future of leadership may depend less on our ability to solve every problem than on our willingness to see the human experience more fully.
About Luis Gallardo
Luis Gallardo is a social innovator and entrepreneur with the higher purpose of elevating the vibration of the planet by developing ideas, connecting thought leaders, activists and communities and increasing awareness on the science of happiness, holistic education and smart innovation. He is Founder & President of the World Happiness Foundation and World Happiness Fest, author of Happytalism and The Exponentials of Happiness, and Director of the Gross Global Happiness program at the United Nations University for Peace. Learn more about Luis Gallardo here.
Want to receive the latest research, practices and insights on thriving directly to your inbox? Subscribe here.
I cofounded Wisdom Works in 1999 with the belief that thriving and wisdom are the foundation of effective leadership and a better world. If you’re exploring how these principles could transform your team or organization, I welcome the conversation. Contact us here.
Wisdom Works’ Be Well Lead Well® newsletter features conversations, strategies, and resources to empower a global movement of change leaders committed to a world where everyone thrives. I’m grateful to Luis Gallardo for the generosity of his wisdom in this month’s conversation. Wisdom Works’ AI agent, Sage, supported the refinement of this newsletter.
