Healthy Leaders Don’t Obsess Over Themselves
- Tina Smith
- Apr 6
- 3 min read
𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆. 𝗜𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲.
I have been reflecting on the professional hats I wear: Licensed Therapist, TheraCoach, leader, visionary, builder. I often say these hats are worn at different times, yet over the past year, I have become more intentional about how they all pass through the same lens: healing.
Healing is a process. Working on yourself is a lifelong invitation, not a finish line. What I have come to understand in this season of constant awareness is that this is a good process to be on, especially when you are leading others. Leadership without inner work eventually costs something. Yet healing without perspective can also cost something.
There is a balance to be held.
On one side, we must be willing to do the work so that when obstacles arise, we choose love and humility. We choose to see ourselves the way Jesus sees us. This protects us from false humility and quiet pride, both of which can hide behind spiritual language. On the other side of the pendulum, we must be careful not to become so inwardly focused that we become hypervigilant, scanning ourselves for flaws and attempting to fix everything about who we are.
I remember in graduate school when one of my professors made a comment that stayed with me. She said that if we were to read the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, most people would find more than one diagnosis that could loosely fit something within themselves. If you go looking for everything that could be wrong with you, you will eventually see yourself primarily through a lens of pathology rather than through the gifts, character, and personality God has intentionally formed in you.
This is where discernment matters.
Some of the very gifts God gives are often misunderstood or mislabeled when they are viewed without context or maturity. Sensitivity may be misread as weakness when it is actually attunement. Strong intuition may be labelled as emotionality when it is discernment. Direct communication may be interpreted as being difficult when, in reality, it is rooted in clarity. Depth may be mistaken for intensity when it is wisdom. Leadership itself is often misunderstood before it is respected.
These qualities are not accidents. They are entrusted.
Our objective along the way, not simply as leaders but as children of God, is to seek first the Kingdom and allow refinement to take place so that the fruit of the Spirit is increasingly evident in our lives. That becomes the metric. Not perfection. Not constant self-analysis. Fruit.
If something in your character, personality, or gifting consistently lacks love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control, then it may be worth pausing to ask what is happening beneath the surface. That curiosity is not condemnation. It is an invitation to healing.
So, from both a clinical and a human lens, keep growing. Keep doing your work. But do not let self-examination replace identity. Do not let healing become self-fixing. Healing was never meant to erase who you are. It was meant to restore you to who you were created to be.
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Tina Smith
Author | Mentor | Supervisor | Mediator-in-Training | International Coach | Director | Founder of Selah Treatment Center
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