Leading from Overflow
Note: This post is part of my late 2026 Leadership from Within Rhythm series:
Relational Rhythms
Six Spiritual Practices for Sustainable Leadership
Every leader faces a moment in the middle of the night when they realize they're running on fumes.
For me, it happened during a deployment. After a late call with my family, I sat alone, knowing I had a sermon to deliver in a few hours but unable to quiet my mind. Throughout the day, I met with people, listened to their pain, and met needs where I could. I was running on empty. Separated from every support system, I was effective but hollow.
Sound familiar?
Here's what nobody tells you about leadership: the higher you climb, the more you need grounding practices. The busier your calendar becomes, the more essential it is to create space for stillness.
I learned this the hard way. Below, I share the practices that pulled me back from burnout and transformed my leadership.
The Crisis of Sustainable Leadership
Chronic senior leader stress degrades leadership quality over time. In 2025, The Superhuman Team reported “that 56% of leaders hit burnout in 2024 while 43% of companies lost half their leadership teams. Meanwhile, 74% of healthcare executives report extreme stress and 73% of C-level leaders work without enough rest.”
Other studies that reflect similar data are here and here.
The problem isn't lack of competence—it's that we're leading from empty wells.
One mantra I heard repeatedly while serving as an active-duty Navy Chaplain was that we needed to minister from overflow. From this statement, I learned leaders need to withdraw and seek personal replenishment so we can reengage effectively.
For some, this idea of withdrawal may run counter to our go-fast, help as many people as we can mindset. We reason, if I take a season of downtime, who will fill the void?
Meaningful change rarely comes from one intense effort (one season of withdrawal); it grows through ordinary commitments made over time.
Why Spiritual Disciplines Are Your Competitive Advantage
According to the Journal of Management, leaders who maintain contemplative practices show better stress management and improved strategic thinking. Research shows executives who engage in spiritual disciplines report higher job satisfaction and work-life integration. Their teams report higher trust and psychological safety.
Spiritual disciplines—what Dallas Willard called "activities of mind and body purposefully undertaken, to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order"—fundamentally change how we show up as leaders. They help us:
Make better decisions under pressure
Maintain emotional resilience during crises
Lead with greater presence and authenticity
Avoid burnout by aligning with how we were designed to function
Think about anyone who's become good at something they care about—the guitarist who practices scales daily, the parent who reads to their kids every night, the cook who perfects their grandmother's recipe through repetition. They choose consistent practice because meaningful results require ordinary, daily commitment. The same pursuit of spiritual disciplines will lead us toward our purpose as leaders.
Three Personal Practices: Your Daily Foundation
Three contemplative practices have helped me engage my heart and create space for God to speak into my life. Consider emphasizing these practices over the next 30 days.
These three practices require only 20 minutes. Feel free to adjust the times, shorter or longer, to fit your current season of life.
Practice 1: Solitude and Silence (5 minutes)
Solitude is purposeful abstinence from interaction and distractions. Silence is removing interruptions and noise—freeing yourself from words or music.
Before your day begins, find a quiet spot, sit comfortably, release the concerns on your mind, and set a five-minute timer. Ask God to help you listen. When the timer ends, journal what you noticed. Don’t force a profound insight; practice showing up and being still.
Practice 2: Spiritual Reading (10 minutes)
Spiritual Reading (Lectio Divina) is rediscovering the Bible as a place of intimacy. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Just as we do not analyze the words of someone we love, we should receive the Word of Scripture and ponder it in our hearts.”
This practice follows four simple steps:
Read: Listen for the word or phrase that comes alive
Reflect: How does this touch my life?
Respond: What is my response to God’s Word?
Resolve: How can I live out this Word?
Start with a short passage. Read slowly, paying attention to what catches your attention. Ask God what he wants to say to you through this text today.
Remember: this is for you. Not for the next person you'll counsel. This is God speaking personally to you about your leadership.
Practice 3: Contemplative Prayer (5 minutes)
Contemplative prayer is about listening, not speaking. We adopt a posture of receiving. As Ruth Barton reminds us, we come to God with "empty hands and empty hearts, having no agenda."
After your time of silence and Scripture, remain in that quiet space. Settle into quietness with God and say, "Here I am. I am with you." Meditate on the word or phrase that emerged during your reading. When distracted, gently refocus. Listen attentively, then reflect on what you sensed God saying.
In the quiet, God speaks to the deeper places in our hearts—the fears we don't acknowledge, the wounds we haven't healed, the false beliefs that drive our decisions. He whispers. And we can only hear whispers when we're still.
Three Group Practices: Leadership in Community
Personal practices are essential, but leadership doesn't happen in isolation. Here are three group practices that create cultures of sustainable leadership.
Practice 1: Mentoring
Mentoring is a relationship where one person empowers another by sharing their life, experiences, and God-given resources.
Choose one teammate to mentor, and seek a mentor for an area where you need to grow. Schedule regular fellowship—team-building, family events, or an annual off-site—because trust grows through shared life, not work alone. Then choose a recurring service project that lets your team practice its values together.
Practice 2: Fellowship
Fellowship builds strong relationships within a team and fosters belonging. This includes time together inside and outside the office, with conversations centered on our lives and relationships—not just work.
I've led teams that were highly productive but relationally shallow. When the crisis hit, they struggled. I've also led teams that invested in fellowship—when challenges came, they faced them together with resilience.
If it's not on the calendar, it won't happen. Schedule quarterly team-building events. Plan family events during work hours. Take your team off-site annually for vision casting. These are investments in the relational bonds that sustain high-performing teams.
Practice 3: Service
Service is offering our time, treasure, influence, and talent for the care of others.
During deployments, I've taken teams to serve at schools and retirement communities. These projects helped personnel see beyond themselves and learn the value of giving to those with greater needs.
Shared service reminds us to walk the talk. It builds team cohesion in ways office activities never can.
Reflect together on the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. Then decide what you can do locally to address tangible needs. Make service a regular rhythm, not an occasional event.
Making It Work in Real Life
"But I'm already overwhelmed. How do I add this to my schedule?"
You're not adding to your schedule. You're restructuring it around what matters most.
Start with the 20-Minute Morning Routine
5 minutes: Solitude and silence
10 minutes: Spiritual reading
5 minutes: Contemplative prayer
Set your alarm twenty minutes earlier. Protect this time as you would your most important meeting because it is—with God, with yourself, with what really matters.
Create Workplace Rituals
Create small workplace rituals: begin the day with a few quiet minutes, offer your work to God, and use the space between meetings to reset. During administrative work, set a timer to remind yourself to pause
Build Gradually
Don't try to implement all six practices at once. Start with the morning routine. Once that becomes a habit (give it 30 days), add one group practice. Sustainable change happens incrementally.
The Transformation You Can Expect
I won't promise these practices will magically solve all your challenges. But here's what I've observed over twenty-five years:
Over time, these practices can strengthen emotional resilience, improve decisions under pressure, and help leaders remain present without drawing only from their own depleted resources. You don’t need to practice perfectly. Start with twenty minutes tomorrow morning.
Your 30-Day Challenge
Here's my challenge: Commit to the 20-minute morning routine for the next 30 days.
Here's what to do:
Personal
Set your alarm 20 minutes earlier starting tomorrow
Find a quiet spot in your home
Bring your Bible and a journal
Follow the three personal practices
Professional
Find someone on your team to mentor
Find opportunities for team fellowship
Do acts of team service.
Notice what changes in your day, your decisions, your leadership
The marathon runner who crosses the finish line isn't the one with the most natural talent. It's the one who showed up for training, day after day. The same is true for leadership. The leaders who finish well are those who have embraced daily disciplines, personally and professionally.
You don't need to be perfect at these practices. You need to start. Twenty minutes tomorrow morning and a commitment to team exercises that increase your relational capacity in your organization.
Will you take the challenge?
I’d love to support you on this journey.
I offer Christ-centered spiritual direction to help you listen for God's personal communication and grow in intimacy with Jesus. Together, we'll explore prayer and contemplative practices that bring peace, healing, and direction—all grounded in biblical truth.
As Gordon Smith writes,
Spiritual direction rests on a critical and fundamental assumption: God is good and fundamentally benevolent toward all that he has made. Thus spiritual direction is a ministry that fosters the capacity to live in awareness of the goodness of God: “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations” (Ps 100:5).
I’d love to discern with you if spiritual direction might be an important part of your exploration of a deeper spiritual walk.
You can read more about spiritual direction and schedule a discernment call on my website.
To assist you on your spiritual journey, I created a Spiritual Rhythm Action Guide. You can get your copy on this page.
Note: I receive a small commission from books purchased via the links in this post.
