Last week, I began a series of blogs on what I’m calling “More Emotionally Healthy Leadership (MEHL).” As I indicated last week, these blogs are heavily influenced by Peter Scazzero’s “Emotionally Healthy Leadership” and his writings on emotionally healthy discipleship.[1] The underlying thesis is that many Christians, including Christian leaders, are not able to fulfill their calling as disciples due to emotional immaturity and blockages from the past.

Christian disciples and leaders cannot change unless they recognize the signs they need to address specific emotional issues. Most of us face the problem of some of these issues lying beneath the surface of our consciousness. Cao uses the iceberg model to illustrate that 90% of who we are lies beneath the surface of our consciousness. Addressing that 90% when it interferes with our service to Christ takes work. Therefore, before self-transformation can occur, self-examination and self-understanding must be undertaken.

Because humans are embodied creatures, we can’t address our spiritual lives without considering our physical, emotional, social, and spiritual lives. To achieve a well-balanced, harmonious personality, we have to balance all of our humanity. In particular, disciples of Christ, including Christian leaders, must bring their emotional lives under the rule of Christ.

Characteristics of Emotional Unhealth

In his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Scazzero lists ten characteristics of emotionally unhealthy spirituality:

1. Using God to run from God,
2. 2 Ignoring emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear, d
3. Dying to the wrong things,
4. Denying the impact of our past on the present,
5. Dividing our lives into secular and sacred compartments,
6. Doing for God, instead of being with God,
7. Spiritualizing away conflict,
8. Covering up brokenness, weakness, and failure,
9. Attempting to live without limits, and
10. Judging other people’s spiritual journey.

In his book, Emotionally Healthy Leadership, Scazerro reduces this list to four characteristics of an emotionally unhealthy leader. These are:

1. Low self-awareness,
2. Prioritizing ministry over marriage and singleness,
3. Doing too much for God, and
4. Failure to practice a Sabbath rhythm.

For readers of this blog who are not Christians or who are engaged in secular professions, I would rephrase the list as follows:

1. Lack of emphasis on emotional intelligence,
2. Prioritizing work over family and community life,
3. Constant over-performance and failure to live within limits, and
4. Failing to develop a harmonious way of life.

The good news for all leaders is that these problems can be successfully addressed. Even those of us with low self-awareness and limited emotional intelligence can develop better habits. If our priorities are misaligned, we can change them. If we are consistently overextending our human limits, we can slow down. If our lives are out of balance and we neglect our physical, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual needs, we cannot achieve balance by consciously adjusting our lifestyle.

Habits of Unhealthy Leaders

Unhealthy leaders have common habits:

1. Viewing success in terms of size and physical rewards,
2. Building a self-image around what we do as opposed to who we are

(doing versus being),

3. Superficial spiritual and emotional health is fine (putting on a mask),

One caution is that all leaders, however self-aware, from time to time narrowly view success, get our self-image by what we achieve as opposed to who we are, and hide our real self from others. Self-awareness is the capacity to recognize what is happening inside of us and react in a healthy way. The journey of Emotionally Healthy Leadership is a journey into balance. It’s a journey to achieve inner harmony that coordinates with our outside leadership. The need for this is just as great in business, the professions, academia, nonprofits, the military, and other kinds of leadership as it is in the church. Some language modification might be necessary to make the principles applicable, but the principles remain the same.

Restoring Balance

However, we cannot become emotionally healthy leaders in our active lives until we have developed an Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. For those who may be secular, we cannot have a healthy, active life unless our interior life is also healthy. I can think of many leaders whose leadership failed due to their self-promotion, fears, anxiety, lack of emotional maturity, misuse of their bodies, moral failure, and underdeveloped mental lives, making them so unbalanced that failure becomes likely.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). See also, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship: Moving from Shallow Christianity to Deep Transformation(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021). Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Updated Ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The Emotionally Healthy website is https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/. The materials needed to guide individuals through emotionally healthy discipleship training are available on the website and most Christian and secular online book retailers. The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Relationship Courses are offered as the “Emotionally Healthy Disciples Course,” which includes books, study guides, teaching videos, devotional guides, and teaching aids.