Episode 211: Saying Yes to Too Much? How Leaders Burn Out & Lose Direction | Business & Leadership

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Today Counts Show Episode 211

Preview

Winston: I got to a bad place because what I hadn’t realized was that what was fueling my leadership and my work at that time was performance. I was trying to prove myself, not feeling worthy or not feeling capable, and was not doing the inner work that it took to catch those things before.

Jim: You have to start with the good, bad, and ugly, but not everything’s been great. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me sometimes wonder how I can be a better leader.

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make the Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content. All right, let’s get to the podcast.

Introduction: Leading When You’re Not Okay

What do you do when you’re responsible for others, but you’re not okay yourself? You can lead publicly, but you’re still struggling privately.

Today on the Today Count Show, we are looking at what it means to lead through hard seasons. I’m your co-host, Winston Harris, joined by the man, the myth, the legend, Jim Piper. Jim, how are we doing today?

Jim: We are doing very well. Excited about this podcast. This is a real one. They’re all real, but this one is real. This one’s really, really real.

The Hidden Weight of Leadership

Winston: This one can hit home for sure. We just want to look at what potentially could be for some the facade of leadership, this concept that you have to always have it all together, that leaders don’t have bad days. For the most part, there is this pedestal that we put leaders on. But there’s real stuff that goes on behind the scenes for leaders. Some statistics here frame what we’re going to talk about: the reality and the weight of leadership.

It says 24% of executives report that their stress shows up as anxiety or depression. 55% of CEOs say they experienced mental health issues in the past year, whether that’s depression, burnout, or anxiety. This is an interesting one: one in four to one in two leaders are currently dealing with real mental health struggles.

So this idea that leaders struggle, leaders have bad days, leaders have this responsibility to be strong enough to lead others—but what does it look like when you have a bad day, a bad month, a bad year, a bad season? How do we walk through this?

Forbes magazine says 70 to 75% of executives have considered quitting for better well-being. Maybe there’s a leader out there listening today who’s in that space, and hopefully what we share here today will be beneficial, will equip you, will strengthen you so that you can stay in the race, stay in the fight, and do what it is that you’ve been positioned to do in leading, serving, and helping other people.

But Jim, you have countless years of leadership experience. Can you maybe help us frame this idea of leading through a bad day, bad season, or hard moment?

Framing the Reality of Hard Seasons

Jim: Sure. I wish my answer would be, “I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about,” but that would be a lie. I’d start out with trying to inject some positive concepts because I think that when I began the journey of leadership, I didn’t even know I was on a journey of leadership. I was just doing what I was doing. One of the concepts is that so many things that are driving us are in our subconscious.

Healthy Leaders Benefit Everyone

A lot of leadership, as we say, starts with ourselves. Let’s put it in a positive statement before we start dealing with some of the symptoms and how to reverse those symptoms toward health. These are some really positive statements that are encouraging: if we have a healthy leader, everybody benefits. If I’m healthy, everyone around me is going to benefit. If you’re healthy, everyone around you is going to benefit. That seems like a really great positive motive to consider. The other side of it is that most–

And I don’t have stats but just what you have shared I think justifies what I’m about to say. Every leader that that I have the opportunity to serve and to come alongside, I just have to say it. They work harder on their job than they do on themselves.

When Expectations Push Leaders to Redline

Hard seasons, difficult times for me, the most disappointing and difficult things had to do with expectations—expectations that I was either feeling or that were actually being projected upon me, wearing me down to a point where I was redlining. When I’m redlining, it doesn’t take much for my behavior and emotions to cross that proverbial line of losing oneself.

Winston: Can you talk us through redlining?

Jim: When I think of redlining, I think of that heart monitor. You can see that up and down. We know that flatlining is not a good thing, but we also know that when you’re looking at that monitor and you see that indicator shooting up really high–

Winston: Spiking.

Jim: Spiking, thank you. That’s a great word. If it spikes over a certain line, you’ve crossed that line. You lose it emotionally. You start trying to treat yourself in unhealthy ways. Redlining is living constantly in adrenaline, constantly in what we sometimes call quadrant one, where everything is important and urgent. You can’t see up from down. You’re just running around. Everybody wants more from you. You’re not taking care of yourself. You become an adrenaline junkie.

Redlining: Performance, Insecurity, and Role Confusion

Personal Breaking Point: When Performance Takes Over

Winston: I remember my first year in ministry happened to be my first year of marriage. I did not really understand what that would mean until the end of that year when my wife and I were on an anniversary trip. She saw me answer an email for work, and that was the last straw for her. She said, “What are we doing here?”

We got to a really bad place. I got to a bad place because what I hadn’t realized was that what was fueling my leadership and my work at that time was performance, trying to prove myself. There was all this untangling of identity, not feeling worthy or capable. I was not doing the inner work that it took to catch those things before I got to the point where there was conflict in my marriage, internal conflict in my mental health, and constant pressure that was not coming from anybody else but my perception of what others thought about me.

I remember another time when my wife and I were sitting at Cracker Barrel. At that time early on in our marriage, Crackle Barrel was like Ruth Chris. It was like, man, this is it. This is awesome. I’m sitting there and a tear just comes out of my eye. Rolls out. I’m not crying visibly, other than this tear forcing itself out of my face. My wife is looking at me like, “What’s happening?” Because I don’t cry.  I’m not a super emotional person. I’m pretty even keel.

She’s looking at me like, “What’s going on? Are you okay?” I’m like, “I don’t know. There’s a lot of things happening internally. I don’t really know what to do with that.” I just felt this weight.

The Internal Weight Leaders Carry

Jim: In the leadership world, you feel like you’re not allowed to feel that kind of stuff or to be human.

Winston: Seemingly, you think you can’t slow down because you’re not going to be productive enough. It takes time and effort to go inward and unpack those things. I can look back early in my leadership journey and see how I didn’t realize I was working a lot on my work but not enough on myself, or even giving myself permission to work on myself.

Losing Yourself: The Basketball Analogy

Jim: Can I ask you a question? When you played basketball or maybe you never did, were you ever in a game where you lost yourself, forced a shot, either because you were frustrated with other players on your team not moving the ball around or maybe you have missed some and you’re trying to prove to yourself and others? Or whatever reason. Talk about that. Did that ever happen to you?

Winston: Yeah, I can remember times where I would play the game very uncharacteristically. I can think of external factors and even internal off-the-court factors that played into those moments. Whether it was not playing within the system or we had an understood play that we were running, or we had a way that we would play, and I’m either going to force a shot or I’m going to try to score a bunch of points for some reason. I’m going to—

Where this surprisingly happened for me is because I would kind of flip a switch playing basketball on the court versus off the court. Off the court, very unassuming. Very chill. On the court, just a savage. I’ll fight you. But most of the time, controlled aggression, if you will.

Jim: Difference between being competitive versus forcing something.

Redlining: Playing from Unresolved Emotions

Winston: And so there would be times where I would lose my cool uncharacteristically, where I’m almost looking for fights, where I’m almost trying to inflict harm on people in certain ways. And so it was things that were happening, whether it was me feeling slighted by a coach or feeling slighted by teammates and/or opponents. But also, there would be times where there was stuff going on off the court, and I’m coming into the game and I haven’t addressed those things, those emotions, those situations, and now I’m playing from that.

Role Confusion: From Player to Leader

Jim: Yeah, that’s the red lining. That’s what I’m talking about, Winston. It’s like you either lose your sense of purpose, or you lose your approach to how your things. I was at a retreat this last weekend with some leaders, and one of the things that we talked about, maybe this will help with your question, is that when we’re a team member, we’re always a leader in some capacity, but when we’re at a place in our life where we’re more of a team member than we are a team leader, we receive a lot of love and affirmations and accolades through personal performance.

When you become a leader of people, where people are under your care and under your direction, it’s a completely different world.

The Trap of Staying the Shooter

But where a lot of leaders get themselves into trouble, where they go through difficult seasons, is that they never leave behind that teammate idea. They never leave behind that shooting guard mindset. Because that’s what they’re familiar with. That’s where they get affirmation. So just keep shooting.

But to be a leader of the team, you actually have to remove yourself from the team, and you have to look at the team like a father. You have to look at the team like a grandfather. You have to look at the team as a coach; You have to look at the team as a mentor; You have to look at the team as a physician. And you really can’t be one of the boys.

So one of the things that I see happening is that role confusion, which doesn’t hurt immediately, but if you look at the history of sports, I don’t know of any football coach who also played on the field. I don’t know of any basketball coach that played. Maybe there was, but I know that there’s been baseball managers who’ve also played, and it never worked. It never worked. They’re just different things.

So one of the things that does get us eventually into the kind of seasons you’re talking about is simply this: I could ask you this too. Have you ever been on the court where you knew you yourself were trying to do too much?

Winston: Yeah.

Doing Too Much: A Root Cause of Burnout

Jim: Well, that’s what gets leaders in these bad places. Not the only reason, but one reason is we try to do too much.

Internal Dialogue and Finding Your Compass

Wrestling with Internal Pressure vs. Purposeful Tension

Winston: What do you think, from your experience, has been a significant internal dialogue of the leader that is struggling mentally, struggling emotionally, having a hard season, but trying to continue to be competent, trying to keep up a good front for everybody, but that internal dialogue just keeps coming back—these intrusive thoughts, this weight that’s not necessarily related to the role itself? It’s something different, because in my experience even, there’s a difference between being anxious and adopting anxiety.

There’s a difference between, okay, I got this project and this deadline, and man, I really want to do well, and it matters to me. So there’s this nervous energy, if you will. There’s this weight that you feel about executing it because you care. But then there’s something totally different about this constant, perpetual knowing feeling, this emotion that’s taking life out of you.

Confusion vs. Living in Confusion

Jim: In my experience, there’s a difference between living in confusion and being confused. Being confused could be simply that you’re looking at a problem and you see three possible solutions and you’re not sure what to do. That still tells me that you have detached yourself from the problem and you’re examining the problem. That seems pretty healthy. But over time, when we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t dissect ourselves out of the problem. We’re all mixed up in the problem.

When Insecurity Takes the Driver’s Seat

So, to be vulnerable, I think when I was younger, some of that internal dialogue was, “Do they like me? Don’t they like me? Am I a good leader? What am I supposed to be doing? Maybe I should go over and give them a present. Maybe I should pat him on the back more. Or maybe I should spend more time with them. Maybe I should ask him how I’m…” It’s when your insecurities have taken the driver’s seat.

Losing Your Way Without a Compass

So I think that when you have lost yourself in the sense of care—actually, this is hard to explain, so I just have to say it, and then maybe I can make some sense out of it after I say it. When you care too much about what people think of you, you probably have lost your way. Of course, you’re supposed to care what people think about you, but when it captures you and paralyzes you, and the reason why we need to work on our missions and our purpose is really clear, is because they provide for us a compass. And a compass helps us go in the right direction versus a path that is in our proximity.

Walking by Proximity vs. Direction

So when we’re confused, we simply take the path that’s right in front of us, and then five miles later we go, “How did I get on this path?” Because we weren’t walking by a compass. We were walking by only what we could visually see. So when I have a clear purpose for my life, or for this job, or for what I’m doing, that provides a compass for me.

So when an opportunity comes in my proximity, I can look at the compass and see whether that lines up or not. That’s what I mean by there’s a difference between not being sure which of these three paths I should take—because that happens to everybody. Forty percent might work, thirty percent might work, thirty percent might work—what do I do? And then, of course, when you listen to too many voices.

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The Cost of Neglecting Yourself

Jim: Going back to the statement that we often work harder on our job than we do on ourselves, what that means is when we get up in the morning, we just skip right to work. And the only thing we did for ourselves is take a quick shower and brush our teeth. So you’re starving yourself. You are setting yourself up for failure. This is not a spanking on this podcast. It is something that we do when the pressure is on.

And then what we do is we rationalize, “Well, it’s just this week.” Ten next thing you know, your spouse begins to say, “If I can just get through this week,” and that’s the next thing they hear. And, “Oh, we just got to get through this season.” The more I hear that in organizations and from individuals, I get fearful.

The “Just This Season” Trap

I had one man contact me about this last retreat and said, “It’s just a really busy time. It’s been crazy, absolutely upside down. I should probably take this one off.” I texted him, I said, “Well, you’re a big boy. You’re a leader. You can do what you want, but those are the times where you do need to come to the retreat, because you’ll never get off this roller coaster.”

Winston: You mentioned the word insecurity, which I feel like I don’t hear enough of in leadership contexts. Why do you think the majority of leaders are leading from insecurity?

Fear and Insecurity at the Core

Jim: That’s a great question, and I have an answer right at the top of my tongue, because I think in a lot of my life I have had a fear of failing. It probably comes more from a personal place of when did I ever connect the dots that a fear of failing is brother to insecurity. Why couldn’t I learn to play the game or do the work with joy in my heart and have a learning in it? Why did I not have confidence in that? That’s part of it.

But I think the other part of it is that, like I said earlier, we get up in the morning, we go to work, and we’re not getting up early enough to take care of ourselves.

Is your question why you don’t hear more of it, or why we are insecure?

Winston: Why do you think most leaders are insecure?

The GBU Framework: Confession for Healing

Naming the Good, Bad, and Ugly

Jim: I think because we don’t give ourselves permission to embrace what really is. When I get into trusting relationships with leaders, I have a term called GBU—good, bad, and ugly. I believe that we don’t talk about insecurity because we won’t embrace it.

Meaning that what I try to explain is, why don’t we sit in this hot tub, and this hot tub is bubbling and jets are going, and let’s just think through our lives right now. What’s good? And let’s just confess it. What’s bad? And let’s confess it. And then what’s potentially ugly, because there’s probably bad and there’s probably ugly.

Why am I saying that? That will bring to the surface insecurities that now can be named. And when you can name your insecurity, when you can confess your insecurity, you actually gather support around you. Knowingly or unknowingly, people rally around that.

And then when you can translate it, you’ve heard me say this before—when you can name a season that you’re going through—you can’t just say, “We’re going through a hard season.” That doesn’t say anything. You have to give it a name. “I’m going through a season of insecurity.” You could actually say insecurity. And I might say, “Well, what do you mean by insecurity?” “Right now, I feel lost.”

And what I would do is I would just keep asking questions until that person can come up with a word that really describes that season, that nails it. Because when you can describe the season with a word that is clear, you reduce the size of things.

Leading with Honest Communication

And then watch this, Winston. I think that the best communicators—that is their introduction. If you’re looking at your staff and you’re giving a talk about where we’re heading this quarter, where we’re heading this year, you have to start with the good, bad, and ugly.

You can say, “Hey, there’s a lot of good things that are going on.” And you can say, “Bobby over here ran his 5K. Good job. Let’s give him a hand. We made our numbers this week. I finally got that tooth replaced.” You go from fun to real good stuff.

“Winston had a second daughter. That’s really fun.” But not everything’s been great. And I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me sometimes wonder, how can I be a better leader? This happened and that happened. I take responsibility for that.

Because even the Bible talks about what happens in the book of James. It tells us that if we want to be healed, we have to confess. And it’s a pretty pointed text. In fact, it’s a text that is a bit controversial because it’s kind of black and white. It says if you want to be healed, you’ve got to confess your sins to one another.

So I think there’s something spiritual in that that the best leaders are not doing. So they’re hiding. And when you hide, you get sick.

Creating a Safe Space Through Vulnerability

And then ugly. If you can’t talk about the bad, then you’re definitely not going to be able to talk about the ugly. And the ugly is when everyone sits up and listens.

After you say that, after you go through all that, the cat’s out of the bag. And guess what? We have a human gathering here. And all of a sudden, people feel more secure, believe it or not, sitting in that hot tub of good, bad, and ugly because we’re in it together.

This isn’t about vision, but then the next step is, in light of all these things, what I think we can do together is this. Silence is always good after that comment. And then provide a little bit of direction. I think we can move in that direction if we practice these three things.

But part of it, going back to the very beginning of your question, is when the carnal side of us—the flesh side of us, if we’re adding a theology to out talk, the fallenness of us, the brokenness of us—God can use for amazing things if we hand it to Him. But if we hold on to it, we just get sicker.

Leading Through Brokenness

And the reason why I think that’s hard is because in every good leader, whether you’re going to say it out loud or not, you believe you’re here to fix things, to make things new. And so when you’re struggling, it seems like you’re a contradiction. But I think we lead in brokenness.

Those are my thoughts. I wish I understood that when I was in my twenties, Winston. I wish I understood that. Did I have zeal? Was I zealous? Yeah. If I did confess, I probably confessed it to the wrong person or persons, and my timing was probably horrible, because it was probably more like a fit of rage than it did a broken place from wisdom or whatever.

The Humility to Admit You’re Not Okay

Winston: One of the things that I hear is that there is a level of humility required to even allow yourself to get to the framework that you just unpacked. You can’t walk out the good, bad, and ugly without a level of, “I am flawed,” acknowledging your point. It has to be internal first.

Internally, I’m not okay, and giving yourself permission to not be okay, versus this idea that I can’t be not okay, I don’t have time to not be okay. I have to always be on. I have to always be ready. Or I have to always be performing. I have to always be competent and consistent and outwardly never showing any kind of weakness.

Seeking the Right Kind of Help

And are we saying to be over-disclosing? No. But there is, to your point, a time and place where, if I need help, where do I get the help? Do I seek out counseling? Do I seek out spiritual leadership? Or do I do the required exercises?

We kind of touched on basketball and my experience in college, and I often think about this idea that the best of any professional athlete, the best players don’t just have a head coach—they have specialty coaches. Kobe and Michael Jordan and these guys, the best of all time, they had shooting coaches and conditioning coaches.

So if these guys needed a specific coach for a specific thing, who are we to not need coaching? Whatever coaching looks like. Just like we go get checkups at the doctor physically, what does that look like emotionally, spiritually, mentally? And obviously, that’s the majority of what you do. How often do you see the neglect of coaching?

The Need for a Personal Board of Directors

Jim: I can’t tell you how many leaders tell me they don’t read, and I don’t understand it. I don’t know that we’ve talked about a wall of gratitude in our podcast yet, but a guy by the name of Peter Drucker is on my wall of gratitude. I’ve never met Peter Drucker—he’s deceased now—but the books that he wrote had tremendous impact on my mental health.

Scripture obviously has, but to hear it from a contemporary and to hear it in such profound ways—I think I was different than the other kids that I grew up with. In some ways, they were smarter than me because they were more open to coaching. They seemed to seek out mentors. I didn’t. I was fiercely independent until the banking days.

Then I began to realize, and some of it was forced on me by the bank, that I had to join certain service clubs and these kinds of things. And I found some really good men there, gracious men that were helpful.

I’m speaking to your point about who can you talk to about this. One thing I would say is that’s the question. Because if you want to work toward mental health as a leader, you need to have a personal board of directors in your life that can handle your poison.

Choosing the Right People to Confide In

If you have some people that worship you, you can’t share anything with them because they’re too fragile. If they’re worshiping you, that’s one problem right there. And you may not even realize who worships you.

But if you’re a leader and you’re making a dent in this world, you’ve got people that are worshiping you. And so they might send you flowers and love songs and all of that. You might have this knee-jerk desire that when you need to unload or get some affirmation, you don’t go there.

Winston: That can end really badly for a lot of leaders, and we know that.

Jim: Because they can’t handle it. It’s like that one movie where he was on the stand and said, “You can’t handle the truth.” You remember what I’m talking about?

Winston: Oh yeah, it was Jack Nicholson.

Jim: A Few Good Men or something like that.

Winston: Yeah.

Jim: I mean, everybody remembers that iconic moment.

Winston: “You can’t handle the truth.”

Jim: “You can’t handle the truth.”

The Slow Drift of Neglect

So that’s a big deal. But I don’t know if people can see it or feel it in our conversation today, but I think in our conversations there’s tons of empathy there. We’re not preaching at you. We’re not condemning you in any way. We are saying, “Yep, we get it.”

And it’s weird. It can happen. It’s been happening to you for a while, but then one day you wake up and it’s happened to you. So it creeps up on you.

So that’s why if you think you can skip your journaling today, your reading today, your audiobook today, your appointment with your coach that you’re going to cancel because you’re just too busy—yeah, that’s how it starts.

Four Anchors for Sustainable Leadership

Winston: You mentioned in the good, bad, and ugly framework this need to confess to experience healing, and I think ultimately that’s the desire. That’s the goal. At some point, a leader is going to encounter a hard season, a bad day, a bad moment, and there’s a level of healing that’s going to need to take place to move forward.

You’re not going to outwork that situation. You’re not going to stuff it down. It’s not just going to improve on its own.

Adjusting Pace Without Abandoning Assignment

And we’ve kind of touched on these spaces, but reiterating maybe four anchors of somebody who’s having to lead through—you just can’t stop leading either. You just can’t remove yourself from the seat, if you will. Adjusting your pace, first of all. You’re not necessarily adjusting your assignment, but you’re adjusting the pace. Stepping down is not necessarily the move usually.

Jim: Weaker people will want you to step down, but you have to stand up to weaker people. There’s the pressure again of leadership. You’re never off. But I like what you’re saying.

Winston: It’s not stepping down, but slowing down. Slowing down, because how else can we start to take that internal inventory and unpack the insecurities, unpack the thought patterns, unpack where this pressure is coming from, where this anxiousness is coming from, where this internal discomfort is coming from?

Letting the Right People In

So adjusting our pace, not our assignment. Then letting people in—understanding the right voices, trusted voices, not the crowd, not the people following you on Instagram, not the people celebrating you and the yes people. Are there people willing to tell you the hard thing?

Jim: And the people who get on your bus really fast are the ones you have to be most careful with.

Winston: What do you mean by that?

Jim: People who say yes too quickly are the ones that, generally speaking, are not going to hang around. That’s just experience. They’ve already revealed they don’t have enough miles on their chassis to know that eventually every journey gets rough. If they joined you at mile 60 and mile 67 is a bump, they’re off.

Winston: So be aware of early adopters.

Jim: Yes, beware of early adopters.

Being Honest About Capacity

Winston: And then being honest about capacity. I think this is a huge practical piece here. Maybe this is for those who are in the midst of this cycle of “It’s just another week, I just got to get through another week,” or “I got to get through this season.”

Unlocking that cycle with the realization of what is your capacity for this season, this moment. How often are leaders built by a bunch of yeses, but not the right yeses?

Jim: So they’re not really building anything, because you’re going to have times where you need the nos and the yeses to find harmony and push out the right melody.

I learned that one the hard way, because one of my ventures was just too good to be true. It was seven years of perfection. And when year eight came, we didn’t know how to deal with it. We never really had that tenacity.

The Wisdom of No and Not Now

Winston: I think sometimes people misconstrue a no for never, but sometimes a no is a “not now.” If we can frame that, especially as leaders who are pretty hungry to achieve and move things forward, the ball down the field, a no can seem like a shot to productivity or purpose which we’ll get to here in a second. But understanding that a yes can be postponed—maybe this isn’t the project for this season, but in the next three or five years.

For myself, being married with no kids is different than being married with kids, and then there’s a season of having no kids, empty nester season. There are different yeses in each of those seasons that are appropriate for one’s internal health and mental health. So making sure that we use wisdom, especially in a hard season when we’ve identified we’re not doing well—what’s the right yes and what are the necessary nos? Usually, I need more nos than yeses in that season.

Staying Anchored to Purpose

And then staying connected to purpose. Lastly, even when passion feels low, can we fight for clarity? Why am I doing what I’m doing? What is the reason that I get up in the morning? What is the reason I show up to do this job? Is it the affirmation? The accolades? The status? The power? Or is there something deeper than that? Because those things can’t sustain me.

The reason why I might be in a hard season is because that’s all I’ve been living off of. Have I done the work to drill down on what is my why?

Discovering Your Why Over Time

In your experience, how maybe long? I don’t know if that’s even the right question. But how long does it take somebody to wrestle down the type of why?

Jim: To figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing? That’s a really tough question. I think the good news is that sometimes our why is tucked down really deep inside of us. God doesn’t treat our life like it’s a class with a test at the end if you get something below a 60, you fail.

I think when you’re younger, you have a lot of passion, and your why is maybe seeking purpose. You’re just doing everything with vigor and passion. You might look like a chicken with your head cut off, but you’re okay. You’re trying to do that.

As you get older, I heard a man say something at this retreat. I wasn’t even working on playbooks or anything, but he says, “I think I’m coming closer to understanding my purpose, which is providing value.” I thought that was a really great start for him to think through that. But he’s at an age now where I’m going, at your age, you probably should be finding your north—not just for you, but for everybody who’s following you.

From Player to Leader

That might be the difference between going from player to leader. I think a player can be confused, and that’s why he has a coach. But if you’re the coach, you better know your purpose, because people are following your purpose. They’re borrowing your purpose until they can find their own.

Winston: Really good. If you’re listening and you’re in a hard season, just know you’re not alone. This season doesn’t get the final say over your leadership. Hopefully anything that we’ve talked about here is encouraging. We’ll leave you with this: Today counts, even on the hard days—especially the hard days.

Outro

Winston: Thanks for spending part of your day with us on the Today Count Show. If today’s conversation encouraged you, challenged you, or helped you grow, share it with someone in your circle, because we’re better when we grow together.

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And remember, real change doesn’t happen someday—it happens today.

Until next time, keep showing up, keep building, keep making today count.
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