What first comes to mind when you think of an emotionally unhealthy leader? Or perhaps a better question might be: Who first comes to mind? Is it a boss, fellow staff member or coworker? Perhaps it’s you.

How would you describe this person? Consider a few examples of unhealthy leadership personalities you may recognize.

• Sara is an overwhelmed youth leader who needs help, but she always finds a reason to avoid enlisting a team of adult volunteers who could come alongside her and expand the ministry. It’s not because she lacks leadership gifts but because she is defensive and easily offended when others disagree with her. 
• Jake is the volunteer director of the small group ministry at his church. While most people love him, Jake is conflict averse. He secretly hopes issues will somehow resolve themselves without involving him. They don’t.
• John values excellence. That is good. The problem is that this crosses into perfectionism that makes no allowances for mistakes.
• Susan is zealous for God’s truth and right doctrine. Unfortunately, her zeal prevents her from loving those who disagree with her.
• Mark wants the church to reach its potential and reach the community for Christ. However, he is so preoccupied that he is not listening to others and has created an unsustainable pace for those serving with him.

The list of examples could go on and on, but I think you get the point. When we devote ourselves to reaching the world for Christ while ignoring our own emotional and spiritual health, our leadership is shortsighted at best. At worst, we are negligent, needlessly hurting others and undermining God’s desire to expand His kingdom through us.

Defining the Emotionally
Unhealthy Leader

The emotionally unhealthy leader is someone who operates in a continuous state of emotional and spiritual deficit, lacking emotional maturity and a “being with God” sufficient to sustain a “doing for God.”

When we talk about emotionally unhealthy Christian leaders, we are referring to the emotional and spiritual deficits that impact every aspect of their lives. Leaders suffering from emotional deficits often exhibit a pervasive lack of awareness. Those with spiritual deficits may engage in too much activity. They are too busy to receive from God. In their more honest moments, they admit that their cup with God is empty or, at best, half full — hardly overflowing with the divine joy and love they proclaim to others.

The emotionally unhealthy leader is someone who operates in a continuous state of emotional and spiritual deficit, lacking emotional maturity and a “being with God” sufficient to sustain a “doing for God.”

The spiritual formation gaps in emotionally unhealthy leaders impact virtually every area of their lives and leadership. The damage is especially evident in four characteristics.

1. They have low self-awareness. Emotionally unhealthy leaders tend to be unaware of what is going on inside them. They ignore emotion-related messages their body may send — fatigue, stress-induced illness, weight gain, ulcers, headaches or depression. They avoid reflecting on their fear, sadness or anger and fail to consider how God might be trying to communicate with them through these difficult emotions.

Moreover, they struggle to articulate the reasons for their emotional triggers (i.e., overreactions in the present rooted in difficult experiences from the past) and they remain unaware of how issues from their family of origin impact who they are today. This lack of emotional awareness also extends to their personal and professional relationships. In fact, they are often blind to the emotional impact they have on others, especially in their leadership role.

2. They prioritize ministry over marriage or singleness. Whether married or single, most emotionally unhealthy leaders would nevertheless affirm the importance of a healthy intimacy in relationships and lifestyle, but few, if any, have a vision for their marriage or singleness as the greatest gift they offer to the church and the world.

Instead, they view their marriage or singleness as an essential and stable foundation for something more important — building an effective ministry, which is their first priority. As a result, they invest the best of their time and energy in becoming better equipped as a leader, while investing little in cultivating a great marriage or single life that reveals Jesus’ love to the world.

3. They do more activity for God than their relationship with God can sustain. Emotionally unhealthy leaders are chronically overextended. Although they routinely have too much to do in too little time, they persist in saying a kneejerk “yes” to new opportunities before prayerfully and carefully discerning God’s will. The notion of a slowed-down spirituality — or slowed-down leadership — in which their doing for Jesus flows out of their being with Jesus, is a foreign concept.

If they think of it at all, they view time spent in solitude and silence as a luxury or something best suited for a different kind of leader, not something essential for effective leadership. The first priority is leading the organization, team or ministry as a means of impacting the world for Christ. If you were to ask them to list their top three priorities for how they spend their time as leaders, cultivating a deep, transformative relationship with Jesus probably wouldn’t make the list. As a result, fragmentation and depletion characterize their lives and leadership.

4. They lack a work-Sabbath rhythm. Emotionally unhealthy leaders do not practice a Sabbath — a weekly, 24-hour period in which they cease working to rest, delight in God’s gifts and enjoy life with Him. They might view Sabbath observance as irrelevant, optional or even a burdensome legalism that belongs to an ancient past. Or they might make no distinction between the biblical practice of Sabbath and a day off, using Sabbath time for the unpaid work of life, such as paying bills, grocery shopping and running errands. If they practice Sabbath at all, they do so inconsistently, believing they first need to   finish all their work or work hard enough to earn the right to rest.

Did you recognize yourself in any of the descriptions? Perhaps you’re thinking, Yes, these characteristics resonate with me.

Or maybe you’re still somewhat skeptical, thinking, That’s just the nature of leadership — I know people who are unhealthy in the ways you just described, but they are still effective leaders.

While it’s true that none of the characteristics seem especially dramatic, these leaders, and the ministries they serve, eventually pay a heavy price for such chronically unhealthy behaviors.

The Inner Life of an Emotionally Healthy Leader

The journey to becoming an emotionally healthy leader can be summarized in 10 words: What you do matters; who you are matters much more.

Leading a church, an organization or a ministry that transforms the world requires more than the latest leadership strategies and techniques. Lasting change in churches and organizations requires men and women committed to leading from a deep and transformed inner life. We lead more out of who we are than out of what we do, strategic or otherwise. When we fail to recognize that who we are on the inside informs every aspect of our leadership, we hurt those we lead and ourselves.

What you do matters; who you are matters much more.

While many issues are important to developing and transforming the inner life of a leader, four stand out to me as foundational — both in my own life and in two decades of mentoring other leaders. To lead from a deep and transformed inner life, these actions are key.

1. Face your “shadow.”
2. Lead out of your marriage/singleness.
3. Slow down for loving union with God.
4. Practice Sabbath delight.

Building a ministry, a church or a nonprofit is a lot like building a skyscraper. First, you dig down for the foundation, and then you build up. The foundation in this case is your inner life. The care with which you lay this foundation determines the quality and durability of the building — or the team or organization you lead.

The island of Manhattan consists almost entirely of bare granite, a very hard and strong type of rock. To carry the weight of a 75- or 100-story skyscraper, builders use foundation anchors called “piles.” They hammer these concrete or steel columns into the ground until they penetrate solid rock.

For especially tall buildings, crews may drive piles 25 stories below ground. This helps distribute the heavy weight of the skyscraper through each of the piles. Together, they support the structure’s enormous weight. If workers drill and drive in the foundation piles poorly, cracks eventually appear in the structure. Entire buildings may lean. The only solution is tearing down or lifting the building to completely reset the piles — a costly and time-consuming process.

In 1996, God used brokenness in my life to teach me that emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. At that point, I began to hammer some new piles into my spiritual foundation. But I soon discovered that unless I allowed God to drill these structural supports deeply into the granite of my soul, the above-surface levels of my life and leadership remained vulnerable. What I needed was a deep foundation (inner life) that could effectively   support my leadership (outer life).

My leadership style didn’t emerge in a vacuum. I learned about things like planning and decision-making or culture and team building by watching and serving with other leaders. As a result, I learned to conduct certain leadership tasks in a “standard” way. However, without the solid foundation of a deep inner life, even the best leadership practices were only marginally effective for me.

I also discovered that it is possible to build a church, an organization or a team by relying only on human gifts, talents and experience. We can serve Christ in our own energy and wisdom. We can expand a ministry or a business without thinking much of Jesus or relying on Him in the process. We can boldly preach truths we don’t live. We can lead without living in a loving union with Jesus.

You know you’re not experiencing the loving union Jesus wants you to have with Him when too many of the following traits overshadow your life.

• You can’t shake the pressure you feel from having too much to do in too little time.
• You are always rushing.
• You routinely fire off quick opinions and judgments.
• You are fearful about the future.
• You are overly concerned with what others think.
• You are defensive and easily offended.
• You are constantly preoccupied and distracted.
• You consistently ignore the stress, anxiety and tightness of your body.
• You feel unenthusiastic or threatened by the success of others.
• You regularly spend more time talking than listening.

In my early years as a Christian, I noticed God using prominent Christian leaders whose relationships with Jesus were either nonexistent or seriously underdeveloped. It was a sad discovery that left me confused and disoriented. Yet, after decades in ministry, I am no longer so confused. Why? Because I have experienced to some degree what it’s like to be one of those leaders. I have prepared and preached sermons without thinking about or spending time with Jesus. I know the experience of doing good things that help a lot of people while being too busy to commune with Jesus.

I now realize that there is nothing more important, more loving and more strategic for reaching the world for Christ than tending to our inner life with Him. After all, we cannot truly grow our ministries and churches larger and faster than the depth our foundation can sustain.

Take the Long View

Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and a team of thinkers developed a brilliant taxonomy that describes how people learn in different domains. Adapted and revised many times over the last 60 years, it remains a standard in many educational systems around  the world.

Bloom distinguishes five levels of knowing, or “getting,” a value. For example, a person values caring for the poor, or they don’t value caring for the poor. It takes a long time — and many small, incremental steps — to gain a new value. In fact, it requires moving through five distinct levels.

The healthiest leaders are the best followers — those who bring their words, time, energy and priorities into alignment with Jesus’ example.

Let me illustrate this with my own journey of coming to value slowing down my life to spend more time with Jesus.

1. Awareness. “Slowing down is an interesting idea.”

I first thought about this in a serious way in 1994 as I experienced pain in both my personal life and in my leadership.

2. Ponder. “Help me understand more about slowing down.”

When I started the emotionally healthy journey in 1996, I read books, listened to messages on slowing down and preached about it in sermons.

3. Value. “I really believe it is important for everybody to slow down.”

I dabbled in a few new behaviors, such as Sabbath, solitude and one-day retreats with God, but my actions and behaviors didn’t fundamentally change for many years.

4. Prioritize. “I am shifting my entire life around as I slow down to be with Jesus.”

When I took my second sabbatical in 2003, I reprioritized my time, energy and schedule to integrate this new value for a four-month period. It helped me kick-start a new way of leading and living out this value. It was life changing.

5. Own. “All my decisions and actions arise from this new value.”

Moving from prioritizing to owning took another six to eight years. I had a lot of work to do to integrate this value with the demands and challenges of pastoring New Life. While I still fail at times, slowing down to be with Jesus now informs all that I do. My entire body feels it when I, or others around me, violate this value.

You’ll notice that the chart above highlights the large gap between levels three and four — value and prioritize. Why? Because that is the point that requires a radical, often difficult, shift. Many leaders love the ideas and principles of emotionally healthy spirituality. However, moving from valuing to prioritizing is a formidable challenge. I understand why.

So let me encourage you. The changes you seek won’t happen overnight, but they will happen. Entrust your life to God’s care, and ask Him to lead you into the next step in your process. Thousands of leaders around the world are on the journey with you and have already experienced powerful transformation in both their personal lives and their leadership.

Paul told the church at Corinth, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

People are watching your life to see how you live out your faith. The healthiest leaders are the best followers — those who bring their words, time, energy and priorities into alignment with Jesus’ example. When you make Christ the center of your focus, unhealthy patterns will begin to fall away, and others will “see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

By staying with it, taking one step at a time, neither you nor those you lead will ever be the same.

This article originally appeared in the December 2015/January 2016 issue of Influence magazine.