Practices Of A Healthy Leader

Richard Dunn
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In The Practices of a Healthy Leader, Dr. Rick Dunn and Brad Raby explore the hidden causes of leadership exhaustion and burnout. Using practical examples and personal stories, they unpack the difference between stewardship and control, showing how anxiety often reveals where leaders are trying to prove their worth. This show offers a simple reflective practice to help leaders notice where they became reactive, name the fear underneath it, return to the truth they've forgotten, and take a small step of trust. The conversation invites leaders into a healthier, freer way of leading—one rooted in surrender, identity, and the steady practice of spiritual and emotional health.

  1. Episode 1

    Episode 01- The Invisible Engine of Your Leadership

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions: Leadership is rarely exhausting because of the work itself. More often, it's exhausting because of what we're asking our work to do for us. When our identity becomes attached to outcomes, every success becomes validation and every setback becomes a threat. In this episode, Brad and Rick introduce the foundational shift that will shape the entire series: learning to lead from our identity in Christ instead of for our identity. Healthy leadership begins by noticing the invisible engine driving our reactions, naming the fears beneath them, and returning to the Father's declaration that we are already His beloved sons and daughters.   TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 01- The Invisible Engine of Your Leadership

  2. Episode 2

    Episode 02- When Criticism Feels Like a Verdict

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions!  Criticism is an unavoidable part of leadership, but it doesn't have to define us. In this episode, Brad and Rick explore why certain criticism feels disproportionately painful— not because we're weak leaders, but because it often attaches itself to deeper questions of identity. Healthy leaders don't ignore criticism, nor do they absorb it as a verdict on their worth. Instead, they learn to discern it as information, separating what is true and useful from what isn't theirs to carry. The goal isn't becoming immune to criticism; it's becoming secure enough in God's love that criticism becomes an invitation to grow rather than a threat to survive.   TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 02- When Criticism Feels Like a Verdict

  3. Episode 3

    Episode 03- The Curious Case of the People-Pleasing Leader

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions!  Every leader wants to be liked, respected, and trusted. The problem begins when wanting approval becomes needing it. In this episode, Brad and Rick explore how people-pleasing can quietly turn leadership from stewardship into emotional management. What often looks like kindness, empathy, or patience may actually be an attempt to avoid the discomfort of disappointing someone. Healthy leaders learn to distinguish between someone feeling hurt and actually harming someone, allowing them to remain caring without assuming responsibility for everyone else's emotions. Our worth and security are received from God; our leadership is something we offer. When that order gets reversed, we give away our ability to lead. TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 03- The Curious Case of the People-Pleasing Leader

  4. Episode 4

    Episode 04- The Over-Functioning Leader

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions! Good leaders want to help. They see needs, take responsibility, and step into gaps. But that instinct can quietly become over-functioning when leaders begin carrying ownership for people and outcomes that were never theirs to carry. I In this episode, Brad and Rick explore the "Messiah Complex" that develops when being needed becomes connected to our sense of value. Over-functioning doesn't just exhaust leaders; it can also prevent the people around them from growing because the leader keeps doing work that belongs to someone else. Healthy leadership isn't about doing less or becoming less responsible. It's about becoming right-sized: faithfully carrying what God has entrusted to us while surrendering the people, outcomes, and responsibilities that belong to God or to others. TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 04- The Over-Functioning Leader

  5. Episode 5

    Episode 05- When Things Are NOT Up and to the Right

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions! Metrics matter. They can tell us something important about the health of what we lead. But healthy leaders learn to distinguish between using metrics and being used by them. When growth, attendance, revenue, engagement, or other measurable outcomes become more than information, they begin to shape our sense of identity. A strong month makes us feel competent. A disappointing result makes us question ourselves. Before long, we are reacting to the scoreboard instead of faithfully stewarding what has been entrusted to us. In this episode, Brad and Rick explore what Annie Duke calls "resulting": judging the quality of a decision solely by its outcome. Leadership is far more complex than that. We make faithful decisions amid circumstances and variables we cannot control. The invitation is not to stop measuring, but to recover the freedom to be faithful. TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 05- When Things Are NOT Up and to the Right

  6. Episode 6

    Episode 06- Authenticity vs. Image Management

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions! Leadership requires trust, and trust requires truth. But telling the truth is not the same thing as telling everyone everything. Image management begins when leaders feel the need to control how others perceive them. We cannot admit that we do not know. We hide mistakes. We minimize bad news. We pretend to be more confident than we really are. But there is an opposite danger as well: turning "authenticity" into indiscriminate disclosure and expecting the people we lead to carry emotional weight that does not belong to them. Healthy leadership rejects both extremes. Leadership is stewardship, which means telling the truth in the right way, to the right people, at the right time. The goal is wholeness: becoming the same person inside and outside the room. TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 06- Authenticity vs. Image Management

  7. Episode 7

    Episode 07- The Courage to Make Hard Decisions

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions! Some of the hardest seasons in leadership are not created by the difficult decisions we make. They are created by the difficult decisions we continually avoid. Sometimes leaders genuinely do not know what to do. But sometimes we know exactly what needs to be done and simply do not want to face what it might cost. We fear disappointing people, damaging a relationship, being misunderstood, or discovering that we were wrong. The problem is not that leaders experience fear. That is human. The drift happens when stewardship quietly becomes self-protection. Courage is not confidence that everything will work out. It is the willingness to faithfully steward what has been entrusted to us without requiring certainty about the outcome. Healthy leaders seek God, wisdom, counsel, and good information. Then, when clarity comes, they lead. TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 07- The Courage to Make Hard Decisions

  8. Episode 8

    Episode 08- Leading from Your Poiēma

    Download the episode guide for pratical next steps and reflection questions! Throughout this season, Brad and Rick have examined several leadership struggles that appear different on the surface: criticism, people-pleasing, over-functioning, performance metrics, image management, and avoiding hard decisions. Underneath them is a common question: Where will I find the security I need to lead? When leadership becomes a way of answering that question, we begin leading for identity. Results, approval, competence, influence, or usefulness become ways of proving that we are okay. Ephesians 2 offers a different order. Before there are good works to accomplish, there is grace to receive. We are God's poiēma, his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. The good works matter, but they flow from something already established. We do not construct ourselves through leadership. We steward what God has already made and entrusted. Rick's own leadership journey illustrates that this isn't a leadership technique to master. It is a redemptive journey of discovering again and again that God does not merely want what we can produce. He wants us. TAKE YOUR NEXT STEP IN HEALTHY LEADERSHIP: Leading God's people is hard. Learning to lead yourself is where transformation begins. At White Horse Leadership, you'll find unique tools to help you reframe your mindset, redeem your story, and reimagine your leadership. whitehorseli.org/resources

    Episode 08- Leading from Your Poiēma
See All Season 1 (8)

About

In The Practices of a Healthy Leader, Dr. Rick Dunn and Brad Raby explore the hidden causes of leadership exhaustion and burnout. Using practical examples and personal stories, they unpack the difference between stewardship and control, showing how anxiety often reveals where leaders are trying to prove their worth. This show offers a simple reflective practice to help leaders notice where they became reactive, name the fear underneath it, return to the truth they've forgotten, and take a small step of trust. The conversation invites leaders into a healthier, freer way of leading—one rooted in surrender, identity, and the steady practice of spiritual and emotional health.

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