How do our life experiences inform our work and vice versa? Dr. Sunny Hansen’s Integrative Life Planning framework challenges us to see workers (and ourselves) like a collage of differing worldviews, identities, cultural contexts, abilities, knowledge sources, options available, and barriers experienced. Work toward getting a full picture through prompts and an exercise shared here.How do our life experiences inform our work and vice versa? Dr. Sunny Hansen’s Integrative Life Planning framework challenges us to see workers (and ourselves) like a collage of differing worldviews, identities, cultural contexts, abilities, knowledge sources, options available, and barriers experienced. Work toward getting the full picture through prompts and an exercise shared in this article from emilie boggis. [Photo by Andy Vult on Unsplash]

For people in vocational ministry, the line between work and life can be almost invisible. Reminding us that work is only one dimension of a fulfilling life, Sunny Hansen’s Integrative Life Planning framework invites us to intentionally weave values, relationships, and vocational identities together. Integration is about ensuring that our work supports the lives we want to live. 

When the plan is for work roles to align with core values while doing work that needs doing in the world, we can encounter dissonance and barriers. Sunny Hansen reminds us that wholeness is about complementarity, process, and interdependence rather than achievement and completion. Here, Kelly Jordan, PhD, LP,  poses three reflection questions to explore the nature of balance and wholeness. [Photo by Aditya Wardhana on Unsplash]

On the heels of Independence Day in the United States, LeaderWise shares a conversation that LeaderWise consultants John Lee and Okokon Udo recorded a few years ago on the topic of independence and liberation. "If we sacrifice our interdependence and connectedness" Okokon reflects, "we will inevitably sacrifice the whole sense of independence that we talk about or claim so boldly around the world." - Happy In(ter)dependence Day!

[Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash‍]

Today’s article, Ministry is Risky Business, features therapist Mark Sundby, MDiv, PhD, LP, focusing on Resilience, specifically the first of the eleven tasks that Dr. Tom Skovholt, a prominent researcher in the helping professions, identifies as necessary to maintain our wellbeing. Skovholt’s first task is losing “one’s innocence about the need to assertively develop resiliency and self-care skills.”

LeaderWise leadership development consultant Cindy Halvorson encourages us to notice what our minds are up to, what stories we are telling ourselves, what impact it is having on our lives and leadership. How could 1:1 accompaniment help us notice our thoughts?

In this season of celebrations and rites of passage—recitals, graduations, weddings and funerals—today’s article features Sarah Parker, who is both a minister and a therapist. She invites us to use the Life Wheel as a tool for discerning where we might need to set some boundaries for our own well-being.

It can seem that there’s never a good time to take a break from a demanding, service-oriented job when responsibilities are high, the pace is unrelenting, scarcity is rising, and crises are real. However, not taking a break carries benefits—and risks—we don’t often consider. Vacation is good for your body, mind, and soul. Take care of yourself so you can return refreshed and rested to do the work you’ve been called to do in the world.

Easing overwhelming distress often begins with reducing demands and increasing resources. Where possible, we can release nonessential commitments, protect our time and energy, and clarify what is—and is not—ours to carry. Even when circumstances are beyond our control, we can still strengthen our capacity to withstand stress, often in small but meaningful ways. Start with the 5 trauma-informed practices outlined in this article.

What started with the seed of the question, "What would a deep dive in leadership look like for women clergy who possessed the potential to lead large congregations?" sprouted into a gender-divided program focused on adaptive leadership and evolved into a gender-inclusive program fostering confidence in leadership. The Shape of Leadership program graduates have gone on to serve as Bishops, lead ministers of large membership congregations, preaching prize-winners, founders of entrepreneurial alternative ministries, adaptive change-makers in congregations of all sizes, and more.

Reflective Pastoral Supervision (RPS) provides clergy with space to step back and reflect with curiosity on their work to deepen awareness of how they are experiencing and responding to their work. RPS strengthens both insight and integrity over time, and supports ministry leaders in fostering proactivity, healthy boundaries, and meaningful connection. [Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash]

Ministry leaders are as lonely as the national average but experience loneliness differently. Research points to two elements of “mattering” at work: feeling valued and adding value. Colleagues can help one another’s sense of mattering through brief exchanges based on Zach Mercurio’s “NAN” (Notice, Affirm, Need) formula. Each of us can create a culture of mattering to help reduce loneliness and support one another in ministry.

Self-differentiation is about understanding and taking full responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Leading from a place of self-differentiation means following the guidance of your internal values, thoughts, and feelings—as opposed to outside pressure or values—and being fully yourself while staying connected and caring for others. [image by Philip Oroni on Unsplash]

LeaderWise offers four grounded practices to help leaders respond to moments of powerlessness with clarity, integrity, and hope. When power or influence seems to be fading: Test perceptions in order to respond with clarity; invest in relationship-building and consider common goals; turn inward to find personal meaning; and consider what to let go of. In times like these, leaders who utilize accompaniment such as coaching, spiritual direction, or counseling can listen more deeply and rediscover a grounded sense of purpose.

Noticing a loss of power in leadership might prompt leaders to ask, “Am I still relevant?” This might look like a diminished ability to influence outcomes and can signal a decline in effectiveness due to disengagement, slow decision-making, or insecure, autocratic behavior, ultimately eroding follower trust and triggering a collapse in authority. How you react or respond to this situation is key.

Candidates and denominational partners often ask how we work to make our assessments culturally responsive. In considering how to bring an ethical and culturally responsive lens to our work at LeaderWise, we use 3 questions to guide us: How do we honor the fullness and complexity of the cultural experiences of those we serve? How do we work to establish safety and hold vulnerability for those we serve? How do we meet the changing needs of the ministry context?

Society’s helpers ~ clergy, therapists, spiritual directors, teachers, social workers ~ offer the gift of attention and presence in a distracted, multitasking world. Do the helpers fully receive this gift ~ if it’s even offered? Our spiritual direction and pastoral supervision clients often ask me to pray with/for/over them, and doing so is always an honor. Here is a prayer for you, the helpers.

LeaderWise’s Mary Kay DuChene created the Shape of Leadership program following a conversation about leadership challenges and a vision for future leaders. The program helps leaders see their innate gifts, learn new frameworks for leadership, and practice new ways of leading. Years later, hundreds of ministers who have completed the Shape program have gone on to bolder leadership. [Photo by Fotógrafo Samuel Cruz on Unsplash‍]

The question “How are you doing?” often functions less as a genuine inquiry than a social ritual. What if, from time to time, we asked the question intentionally—and truly meant it? What if we trusted that we don’t need the perfect response in order to listen well? In a restless and uncertain world, genuine attention may be one of the most meaningful ways we care for one another. [Photo by Mohit Mehta on Unsplash‍] ‍