You're Not a Machine: Why Healthy Leaders Build Sustainable Impact
Reading time: 10–12 minutes
Quick Summary
Health isn't about eating better—it's about living integrated and aligned to your values and needs.
Disintegrated leaders say one thing and do another, eroding trust and momentum.
Aspirational values are who you want to be; actual values are who you really are.
You have needs across heart, soul, mind, and body—ignoring them always has consequences.
Recovery isn't optional for high-impact leaders—it's what sustains you.
When you increase your health, you increase trust, speed, and momentum while decreasing decision fatigue.
The essence of maturity is tension. If you cannot hold tension, you will not become a mature leader.
I've learned this truth over and over again in my coaching practice: it's easy to become a high-impact leader and ignore all aspects of your health—personal, organizational, relational, mental. Just go all-in on results. Burn the candle at both ends. Sacrifice everything for the mission.
It's also easy to become a really healthy leader and under-exert—to not go after it, to leave impact on the table, and to underlive your life.
What we're talking about in this series on The Five Spheres of an H2 Leader is holding the tension and doing both. Being healthy and high-impact. Not one or the other.
Last week, we kicked off with the first sphere—influence. How you have way more power than you think, and whether you're beating people down or raising them up.
This week, we're diving into the second sphere: health.
And I'm not talking about eating more salads or hitting the gym three times a week—though those things matter. I'm talking about something far more foundational: living integrated and aligned to your values and needs.
Because here's the reality I see every single day in my coaching practice: leaders who don't take care of themselves cannot sustain impact. And when leaders neglect their health, there are always consequences—always.
What Does It Mean to Be a Healthy Leader?
Here's my definition: A healthy leader is one who lives integrated and aligned to their values and needs.
Four big words—let me break them down.
Integrated means what you say matches what you do. Aligned means nothing is wearing down in the background—no misalignment causing pain elsewhere in your life or leadership.
I think it's easier to see the opposite of integration: disintegration.
A disintegrated leader is a leader who is saying one thing and doing another.
Recently, I saw the sad news of another leader who made some pretty egregious mistakes in their life—long-term patterns that are unhealthy, that are wrong, and that absolutely hurt other people around them. We hear about these stories a lot. They're in our news feeds. And I believe it's sad each time.
That is a disintegrated leader.
Now, are we perfect? No. But are we moving in the direction of integration? That's the question.
I feel a high weight personally to live a life where I model the things I talk about. And that comes into conflict with my desires every single day.
Sometimes what I really want to do is knock off 10 or 15 more emails, keep working in the weeds, and get that dopamine hit of productivity. That would feel good. I would feel better tomorrow, right?
But then I have the opportunity—not just to rest—but actually to live out some of the commitments I have. Like being an emotionally and relationally available father. Like picking up my kids. Like practicing Sabbath—which isn't only a gift to me, but it's a gift to my clients, to those I produce content with, and to my team.
If I'm asking my team, or I'm saying on a podcast, or I'm saying to my clients that rest is valuable—and I'm not practicing it myself—first of all, I lose out. And secondly, I lose trust and credibility from that disintegration.
"A disintegrated leader is a leader who is saying one thing and doing another."
Is what we say the same as what we do? And when we don't hit the mark, are we quick to say, "Not hitting it right now"? That honesty—that vulnerability—is really, really important.
When Your Life Is Misaligned
Think about a car. When your car has good alignment, you don't think about it. When your car has bad alignment, you hear something—woof, woof, woof—and a wheel is off. The tread gets worn on one side. Then maybe a bearing or a ball joint breaks down.
The same is true of our bodies. When my hip gets out of place just a little bit, I start to feel it in my knee. When my shoulder is out of alignment, I feel it when I'm doing bench press or pull-ups.
Whenever there's an issue in one area, it works its way out in another. You feel the pain somewhere else.
If you're overworking at work and you're mentally loaded up, you will likely feel it at home. If you're not pushing toward and risking some of the goals and challenges you have, you may feel it in your leisure time—trying to do something really exciting because you're bored and under-living your life at work.
"If you are overworking at work and you are mentally loaded up, you will likely feel it at home."
If you're feeling a pain, perhaps there's misalignment. Perhaps that pain is there to warn you that something is off—and you don't just need to take another ibuprofen.
Aspirational vs. Actual Values
Let me talk about values. What actually is a value?
I want you to think about a value as an anchor. Values anchor us deeply, especially in tumultuous waters.
You don't really need an anchor when it's a perfectly calm day on the sea. But as things come up in your leadership—the economy changes, your biggest client pulls out, you get pushback online, accusations come your way, the leads aren't coming anymore, you feel creatively flat, people don't love your leadership structure anymore—when the seas start to shake, that's when you really need an anchor. Values anchor us.
Now, when I go into an organization as a consultant, I'm looking for two things: aspirational values and actual values.
Aspirational values are the things on your website. The things you share when you talk about mission, vision, values. They're who you want to be someday. But if you're a new organization, it's who you want to be someday. They're aspirational.
Eventually—maybe two years in—you have to look back and say: Are these aspirational values actual values? Where do we actually live these out?
There's a difference between things that deeply matter to us and things that we actually do.
I'll use a very simple analogy. For years, I said, "Yeah, I believe in recycling." Why? Because at Starbucks, I'd throw this one into the recycling bin and this one into the landfill bin. But the reality was, I wasn't recycling myself.
As a family, we realized there is so much trash and recycling that comes out of our household. Turns out in Colorado, you actually have to pay for recycling—which felt kind of crazy. But then the question became: Do we actually believe in recycling or not?
I either need to stop saying I believe in recycling and just throw it all in the brown bin, or actually purchase a green bin and pay every single month to be able to recycle.
Of course, we made the recycling decision. But the question is in your leadership: What are some things that you've been talking about but you actually haven't been living out?
Easy to talk. Hard to live those things out.
"There's a difference between things that deeply matter to us and things that we actually do."
One of our values at H2 Leadership is generosity. That's sort of an easy, big word to throw out. It's a really hard thing to live out. We've had times before where we've made big financial decisions to be generous—and nobody knows about those. Maybe one person gets to find out. We've had people write us cards years later that say, "Thank you. You believed in me and you were generous to me."
If you name that as a value, you better be willing and ready to live that out in real practices.
At H2, we talk about working hard and resting hard. That's something we believe in. But I actually received a sabbatical last year. And Jonathan, my co-host here, will receive a sabbatical later this year because we've been doing this for quite a while now.
We can say we believe in this practice of sabbatical, but at some point we need to create a sabbatical policy. We need to build it in and actually have it on paper. Living integrated and aligned to your values—that's number one.
Understanding Your Needs: Heart, Soul, Mind, Body
Now let's talk about needs.
A healthy leader understands their needs.
A great grid for this is my mentor, Jesus of Nazareth, who talks about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This call back to wholeness—it's been there for a long time. This is thousands of years old, going back to the Jewish culture and the Shema.
Heart, soul, mind, and body. Those are a lot of the areas we cover specifically during coaching.
If your body is worn down, your mind is not going to be very sharp. Are you putting in the practices to work out your body on a regular basis? You've got some needs—strain needs of exercise and walking, whatever your form of exercise looks like. For me, getting in the gym is a need to harness all that adrenaline, all that dopamine, all that cortisol. Really helpful.
What about sleep? How much sleep do you need? What about diet? What does your diet look like? What about caffeine? Are you over-caffeinated?
Are you overtaxed in your mind? Is your schedule so full that you have decision fatigue? Are you over-leading on your team so much that you're constantly exhausted and now creatively flat?
What is your connection to other people? Are you dreaming still? Are you thinking about new, fresh ideas?
The thing that yearns for the eternal—do you still pray and connect with God? Do you still dream and zoom out and think about your family 10 and 15 years from now? Are you so myopic and sucked in to this moment that you've lost that connection? Do you know that you're being held by God? That you're loved by a Creator? How's that soul of yours being nourished?
"Leader, you have needs. You have limitations. You are not a bot. You are not a machine."
That's really important to realize: You have needs. You have limitations. You are not a machine. You come with these very fragile needs.
Each day in coaching, I hear either from a leader or from a team or a leader who's wounded or damaged them—whenever we don't take care of our needs, friends, there are always consequences. Always. We are holistic beings.
The Need for Recovery and Space
High-octane leaders need really, really good fuel and really, really good inputs and need really, really good recovery.
To the level you are pushing out, leader, you have a need to have that level of recovery.
When I go in and consult and speak somewhere, I can be in the zone for 13 hours—especially if I'm traveling, speaking with a team. I will tell you that night, as I drive home, I will be tired. I need to make space the next day so I don't go straight into the whirlwind of coaching. Space for recovery.
Tom Brady and LeBron are famous for being world-class athletes, but they're also famous for taking care of their bodies. They've spent millions of dollars on recovery—and that's why they've been able to play the game at a high level beyond their competition.
I'm not here to debate whether it's MJ or LeBron. I am here to say that you cannot deny that LeBron has taken care of himself for a long time in a very stressful game to stay at the top of this game. Tom Brady, the same.
How are you, leader, taking care of your own recovery?
"High-octane leaders need really, really good fuel and really, really good inputs and need really, really good recovery."
One of the needs I see most leaders not taking care of is space. You need space to think.
Recently—actually last year—I moved from the idea that a think day would be good for me to actually doing it. I take a day, about seven hours, and zoom out on three to five big challenges we're facing at H2 Leadership and Sabbatical Coaching Group.
How do these fit together? If we don't deal with these, they're actually going to be an issue. What innovation or problem-solving could we have around these? Who on our team is already prepared to help us with these? What partnerships can we build?
I'll tell you, these have been gold. I want to encourage you to do that.
That's one of those needs that leaders have—more space—that they tend to think is a desire. Kind of like sleep. "Someday I'll sleep when I'm dead."
Well, if you don't sleep, you'll live like you're dead right now. And you may even die early.
If we do not take care of our needs, there are always consequences—and you'll likely feel the pain in another area of life.
The Challenges and Benefits of Living Healthy
Let me cover the challenges first.
Not everybody around you wants you to get healthy.
Maybe you've elevated beyond the scope or the level of that community you've been around—what they want to accomplish or their desire. Maybe the homies you used to hang out with are not the homies that can get you to where you want to go. That's a painful fact.
A lot of times, you getting healthy makes other people feel vulnerable and exposed and insecure. I just want to warn you about that.
But there are plenty of benefits.
When that character and competency line up—when you're living integrated and aligned—people trust you. And what happens there? It increases the speed and often the momentum of an organization or a team. Because they say, "That's the kind of person who practices what they preach."
And guess what? Those behaviors are contagious. Whatever behaviors you want to see in your kids, in your team, in your friends—go ahead and start. Leaders go first.
When you're living and leading healthy, sometimes things just happen more naturally. When the roots of a tree are healthy, what's going to happen? Fruit that the tree is designed to grow is actually just going to grow without striving.
When you find those healthy rhythms, healthy habits, healthy team structure, regular schedule, regular Sabbath routine—things just kind of happen naturally. You get that momentum, and decision fatigue goes down. You don't have to make the decision every time.
I do the exact same thing every time I go to the gym. I find my rhythm for about six months and then I change it up. But it always involves my gym bag, the towel, these simplest things. Sometimes we overcomplicate it.
And here's what's really important: If I let down myself, then when I have to do something hard, I can't tell myself "I'm the kind of person that takes on hard things. I'm the kind of person that does stuff when nobody else wants to do it. I'm the kind of person that enters into conflict before it's actually damaged a relationship or before it's damaged our team."
Where Are You Disintegrated?
Friend, where are you disintegrated? Where what you say and the life you're living don't match up?
At the beginning of the year is an amazing time to call yourself out. Let's say, "You know what? I need to grow in this area."
Let me leave you with two questions:
What values in your life and leadership are aspirational but not actual? In other words, what values and things you say matter to you—but you're just not matching those with actions?
What personal needs do you have that you're not meeting? Heart, soul, mind, body. Where are you running on empty?
Lead Well in 2026
We are going to continue to go directly at the heart of your leadership—not just the mind of your leadership where you're going to learn more. We're actually asking you to be vulnerable, to ask yourself hard questions.
These spheres are not the easiest thing in leadership, but I'm telling you, they matter deeply because they are below the surface.
Next week, we're going to take on another sphere of the Five Spheres of an H2 Leader: Self-Awareness. How well do you know your design, and are you working with it or against it?
If 2026 is the year you want to lead with clarity instead of chaos, this series is your foundation.
Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to the complete episode on the H2 Leadership Podcast below or anywhere you get your podcasts.
And for coaching, consulting, and resources to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, click here.
Leadership is complex, but it doesn't have to be lonely.
Let's get after it.