The Healthy Leader: How to Increase Self-Awareness & Decrease Harm
Nobody sets out to be a harmful leader.
Most leaders who have caused harm — in churches, organizations, families — weren't ill-intentioned. In fact, quite the opposite. They had good intentions. And they had gifts and vision. They worked hard, cared deeply, and genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. But somewhere underneath all of that, there was a layer they'd never looked at. And eventually, that layer started to run the show.
Self-awareness doesn't get the attention it deserves in conversations about leadership. We gravitate towards vision, communication, team-building, resilience. But the question "do you actually know what's driving you right now?" — that one is easy to skip over. And that's problematic.
Because in our experience working with leaders across a variety of contexts, the thing that distinguishes a leader who finishes well and a leader who eventually fractures almost always comes down to this:
One of them did the inner work, and one of them didn't.
What Self-Awareness Actually Means
Self-awareness often gets reduced to personality tests. You take the Enneagram, you find out you're a 3, you make a joke about being overly concerned with image, and then nothing changes.
That's not self-awareness.
True self-awareness is the ongoing capacity to notice what's happening inside you — your reactions, your motivations, your patterns — and to bring honest appraisal to what you find. It means knowing not just what you do, but why you do it. Not just how you react, but what the reaction is actually about.
That's a harder and slower process than any assessment can capture. And it requires something immensely difficult: the willingness to slow down and sit with uncomfortable answers.
The Shadow Side
Carl Jung used the term "shadow" to describe the parts of ourselves we haven't integrated — the fears, wounds, impulses, and unmet needs we've learned to hide or deny. The shadow side operates without our awareness, which means it operates without our control or consent.
Every leader has a shadow side. The question becomes, are you leading it or is it leading you?
For some leaders, the shadow looks like a desperate need for approval that disguises itself as pastoral care. They're endlessly available, endlessly accommodating, endlessly avoiding conflict — not because they're so loving, but because disapproval feels unbearable. The people around them often experience this as warmth. But over time, it produces a leader who can't give honest feedback, can't hold people accountable, and can't make hard calls without feeling gripped by anxiety.
I (John) once led a team where this need for approval prevented me from properly holding another team member accountable for some really unhealthy behaviors, and as a result, team morale suffered, conflict escalated, and my stress-levels were through the roof. In the moment, I thought I was being a good leader by "caring" for this person and "meeting their needs." With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see how that was just a cover-up for my shadow side attempting to protect the validation I felt from this person.
For others, the shadow looks like a need to be right that shows up as strong leadership. They project certainty, they move fast, they make decisions. People follow them because they seem to know where they're going. But the projected certainty is really just a defensive mechanism. Under stress, it becomes control. When challenged, it becomes defensiveness or anger. Gradually, people around these leaders start to go silent, because it's clear that honesty isn't actually welcome.
Neither of these leaders started out intending to lead this way. Like all of us do, they developed strategies for surviving their earliest relational environments, brought those strategies into adulthood, and never stopped to examine whether they were still working.
Self-awareness is the critical process of examining them.
Why Motivation Matters
Here's something that gets missed in most leadership development: two people can exhibit the exact same behavior for completely different reasons. And those reasons matter.
Let's look at people-pleasing again. Two leaders who struggle with people-pleasing may look similar from the outside — both accommodating, both reluctant to give hard feedback, both slow to hold people accountable. But one of them avoids conflict because they genuinely value harmony and confrontation feels distressing. The other avoids it because their sense of worth is dependent on what people think of them, and disagreement feels like a rejection of who they are.
The first person can often grow with coaching and practice. The second person likely needs something deeper:they need to do work on the core beliefs that drive the behavior. Until those beliefs shift, the behavior won't.
This is why the Enneagram, if used well, can be more useful than a lot of leadership frameworks. It doesn't just describe what you do. It gets underneath to *why* you do it. And "why" is where real growth lives.
The same principle applies to perfectionism, overworking, the need to be liked, the need to be needed, the compulsive drive to produce results. The behavior can look like virtue. The motivation beneath it might be fear, ego, emptiness, or something else.
The Practices That Actually Build Self-Awareness
The good news is that self-awareness is a practice that can be developed. It's also one that requires the support of other people— because, by definition, you can't fully see your blind spots on your own.
Regular reflection practices. Journaling, the Examen, or any structured practice of reviewing your inner life at the end (or start) of a day creates a habit of noticing. What made me reactive today? Where did I feel defensive or triggered? What did I avoid? Asking God for insight into these questions will, over time, enable you to recognize patterns that were invisible to you.
Trusted relationships where you can actually be honest. Self-awareness requires feedback. Not just general encouragement or biblical cliches, but specific, honest observations from people who know you well and have permission to tell you the truth. This is increasingly rare, and it has to be cultivated deliberately. Is there someone in your current orbit that has the potential to become this kind of friend?
Slowing down under pressure. Stress has a way of drawing out the shadow side, and stress causes most leaders to accelerate, when slowing down is needed. One of the most practical self-awareness disciplines is learning to pause before responding when something triggers a strong reaction. That pause creates a small window of choice that didn't exist before. Mindfulness practices and breathing exercises can do wonders to help leaders ease off the gas pedal.
Therapy with a skilled clinician. This is a direct and concrete pathway, and in our humble opinion, a worthwhile investment of time, money, and energy. A good therapist helps you track patterns over time, connect present reactions to past experiences, and develop language for what's happening internally that you may never have had before. But most of all, a therapist can create a safe container for your processing and open up the space for your self-awareness to increase. For leaders in ministry, working with someone who can hold both the clinical and spiritual dimensions of your experience is especially valuable.
Meeting with a spiritual director. A skilled spiritual director serves as a "host," opening up space for you to interact with, listen, and pray to God. This kind of relationship powerfully nurtures deeper processing and self-awareness. If you're not sure how to find a spiritual director, talk to a pastor or reach out to our friends over at Mosaic Formation (https://www.mosaicformation.org).
About a year ago, I (Amanda) made an unexpected, but much-needed change to my mornings that has had a positive impact on my energy, stress, and overall presence.
For years, my husband and I started each day around 5:30 a.m. and moved nonstop until late evening. As life became more complex, I found myself constantly depleted—low on energy, overwhelmed, and less able to be present for my family—something needed to change.
One morning, completely unplanned, I hit pause. I sat on the sofa with my coffee, free of distractions, and noticed the birds' songs outside my window. Instead of rushing into chaos (my day), I stayed there—praying, reflecting, and paying attention to the moment. When my mind wandered, I gently sought out the sound of birds and found myself brought back to the present.
At first, slowing down felt unproductive, lazy, even. Yet, for forty minutes, I resisted the urge to jump up and attack my day. With consistency, that quiet time became grounding, healing, and insightful.
Since then, I’ve seen clear results: my energy has improved, and my stress levels have decreased. I’m more present with my family and more thoughtful about where I direct my attention. While I still have days when I slip into old habits, I’ve learned that building 30 minutes of mindfulness into the start of my mornings sets the tone for everything that follows.
Why the Church Needs This Conversation
There's a particular challenge in ministry contexts that makes self-awareness harder to develop: the expectation that leaders should have their stuff together.
Churches communicate this in subtle ways. The pastor who openly struggles becomes a liability. The leader who admits uncertainty loses credibility. The staff member who needs support begins to be viewed as "needy." And so leaders learn — early and quickly — to manage their image rather than their interior life.
And so it begins. The split in who a leader is on the outside and who they are on the inside begins to grow, like a crack in a window that spreads, until the integrity of the glass is so compromised that all it takes is one final blow for everything to shatter.
This is obviously problematic on many fronts, especially when a moral failure is involved. But the more subtle and insidious effect is that the people in the pews have been watching, they have been absorbing a model of what it looks like to follow Jesus. When leaders suppress the realities of their inner life, they teach their congregations to do the same.
What would it look like to model something different? To be a leader who talks openly about going to therapy? Who admits they don't have it figured out? Who demonstrates what it looks like to sit with uncertainty and stay curious rather than rushing to resolution?
That kind of leadership is harder. It requires something real from you. But it also produces something real in the people you lead.
A Final Word
Dallas Willard said the main thing God gets out of your life is not what you accomplish — it's the person you become.
Self-awareness is the soil that character grows in. You can't become who you're called to become while remaining blind to what's driving you. The internal work isn't a detour from the real work of leadership. We believe it's the most important work there is.
And if you've been leading for a while without doing it — it's not too late. But it probably is time.
*If you're a leader looking for support in doing this kind of inner work, the team at Watershed Initiative would be honored to come alongside you. We partner with churches and ministry leaders to provide clinically trained, faith-integrated care. Schedule here.
**Related episode: “What Makes a Healthy Leader? 3 Essential Traits to Prevent Burnout, Moral Failure, and a Giant Ego” (Link here)
By The Work Within | Watershed Initiative
With contributions from Amanda Robottom, LPC-Associate & John Lin, Director of Partnerships