In this episode of Leadership Limbo, Josh and John introduce the Peace Index, a simple framework leaders can use to assess their overall health and leadership capacity. Rather than treating health as a personal side project or a physical fitness goal, the conversation reframes well-being as a foundational leadership skill that directly impacts clarity, presence, and sustainability.

The Peace Index invites leaders to pause and take a holistic snapshot of their current reality across five interconnected areas: place, provision, personal health, people, and purpose. Josh explains that leadership breakdowns often begin long before performance slips appear. Mental fog, emotional reactivity, and chronic stress are usually signals that one or more of these areas is out of alignment.

John adds that the value of the tool is not in perfection or scoring well, but in awareness. Leaders are often surprised by what rises to the surface when they slow down long enough to notice their environment, relationships, financial stressors, physical habits, and sense of meaning. The inventory becomes a mirror that helps leaders identify where peace is present and where strain has quietly accumulated.

The conversation also explores how leadership culture often minimizes mental and emotional health, encouraging leaders to push through discomfort rather than address root causes. Josh and John challenge that norm, offering a different approach: start small, respond intentionally, and restore order where you have the most control. Sustainable leadership is not built through constant optimization, but through simple, repeatable practices that create stability over time.

The episode closes by reinforcing a core idea of Leadership Limbo: leaders who tend to their own health lead with greater calm, empathy, and effectiveness. When leaders are grounded and aligned, they create healthier systems, stronger relationships, and teams that thrive rather than burn out.

Leadership health is holistic, not just physical. A leader’s environment, relationships, resources, and sense of purpose shape how they show up just as much as sleep or exercise.

The Peace Index works best as a routine. Its power comes from being revisited regularly, not from a single moment of reflection.

Place matters more than most leaders admit. Physical spaces, digital clutter, and environmental chaos can quietly drain energy and focus.

Provision affects peace. Financial stress or scarcity thinking often spills into decision-making, relationships, and leadership posture.

Personal health is about progress, not perfection. Small, consistent habits matter more than ideal routines that never happen.

People are central to leadership health. Disconnection, unresolved tension, or lack of community reduces capacity and resilience.

Purpose takes the longest to address but has the deepest impact. When meaning feels misaligned, leaders feel it everywhere.

Mental health is a whole-system signal. Feeling mentally “off” is often a cue that one or more life categories needs attention.

Set aside five minutes this week to walk yourself through the Peace Index. Reflect honestly on your place, provision, personal health, people, and purpose. Notice which area feels most strained right now. Choose one small, concrete action that would restore a sense of peace or order in that area. The goal is not to fix everything, but to take one step that increases clarity and capacity.

GiANT Worldwide Peace Index Framework (You can read more in here in a previous blog Josh wrote about this and see the image of the tool itself)

In this episode of Leadership Limbo, Josh and John shift from last week’s conversation about being developed as a leader into a new and equally essential theme: health as a leadership practice. Rather than focusing on personal goals, New Year’s resolutions, or exercise alone, they expand the idea of leadership health into a multidimensional reality. Health includes your physical state, but it also encompasses mental clarity, spiritual grounding, emotional balance, and communal connection.

The hosts explore how leaders often think of health as something to “get to later,” somewhere after the deadlines, decision-making, or team management. But leadership does not pause so you can get healthy. Health is the basis from which leadership decisions, influence, connection, and clarity flow. When you are not healthy, you are more reactive, more stressed, more scattered, and less able to show up with the calm, grounded presence your team needs.

Josh and John walk through why health matters both for the leader and for the team. Health is not only about self-preservation. When you are at your best, you are more attuned to the people you lead, better able to sense their stress, notice their energy, and create conditions where collective performance feels sustainable rather than depleting. A healthy leader models integration rather than martyrdom, and this subtle modeling creates permission and clarity for others to pursue healthy, integrated habits as well.

They also unpack why leaders often neglect health, not intentionally but accidentally. Busyness, pressure, and habit shape our daily operating system, and when life gets chaotic we default to whatever has been baked into our history: overwork, proving ourselves, numbing distractions, and performance behaviors that feel urgent in the moment but quietly erode long-term well-being. The episode explores how industries, expectations, ego, and culture normalize unhealthy rhythms and turn exhaustion into a badge of honor.

The conversation ends with a clear worldview: leadership is relational, and health is relational. When leaders are at their best, they can perceive what their teams need, stay grounded in complexity, and create conditions where people thrive rather than survive. The episode sets up next week’s conversation, which will focus entirely on practical strategies, healthy rhythms, and crowd-sourced examples from listeners.

Health is multidimensional. Leadership requires more than physical stamina. It requires curiosity, spiritual grounding, mental clarity, communal belonging, and the emotional steadiness that makes space for others.

A leader’s health creates a ripple effect. When you are grounded, clear, attuned, and integrated, your team feels safer, more focused, and more confident. When you are depleted or reactive, your team absorbs more than you realize and begins compensating for you, resenting you, or disorganizing around you.

Most leaders neglect health accidentally. When pressure mounts, we revert to old habits: over-functioning, proving, staying late, numbing, hustling for worth, taking on too much, or confusing urgency for leadership. These patterns feel productive in the moment but undermine presence, clarity, and relational trust.

Healthy leadership is integrative, not comparative. It is not about being healthier than everyone else or earning a wellness score. It is about aligning your personal practices, relationships, and rhythms so that leadership feels sustainable rather than sacrificial.

Work-life balance is often the wrong frame. Integration—connecting your identity, well-being, work, purpose, and relationships—is a healthier lens than trying to keep them separate or competing.

Reflect on one question this week: What is the single biggest barrier to becoming the healthiest version of yourself as a leader? Share it with the show so Josh and John can surface real examples from listeners and address them directly in next week’s episode.

You are also invited to share one strategy you currently use that genuinely supports your health and positively affects your team. These practices will be highlighted in the next conversation, creating a community-driven library of ideas.

Brené Brown — Dare to Lead (particularly the framework on armored vs. daring leadership)

In this episode of Leadership Limbo, Josh and John turn the conversation inward. After several weeks focused on how to develop others, they explore the other side of the equation—how to be developed. Whether you’re a middle manager, senior leader, or individual contributor, your willingness to be coached, challenged, and stretched is the foundation of your growth.

The hosts unpack what it looks like to approach development with openness rather than defensiveness, curiosity rather than cynicism. They revisit the pursuer–distancer dynamic from previous episodes, this time flipping the lens: instead of chasing reluctant team members, how can you stop distancing yourself from the people trying to help you grow?

The conversation dives into the role of ego, exploring how skepticism (“they don’t understand my work”) and excuses (“my boss doesn’t develop me”) often mask insecurity or fear. Josh and John walk through ways to reframe these stories, run small mindset experiments, and re-engage in genuine learning.

They also emphasize humble curiosity—not asking questions to prove a point, but asking to discover something new. Alongside this mindset, they talk about the importance of advocating for what you need and building a collaborative relationship with your manager.

The episode closes with a seasonal reminder about gratitude—both expressing and receiving it—as one of the most powerful yet underused tools for sustaining healthy development relationships.

1. Being developed is a choice. You can’t control your manager’s skill level, but you can control your posture and curiosity.
2. Watch for cynicism and defensiveness. Phrases like “they don’t get it” or “this won’t work for me” usually reveal ego, not truth.
3. Run the reframe experiment. Instead of “my boss doesn’t care,” try “my boss might care in ways I don’t yet see.” Look for small evidence of their effort.
4. Development is a two-way relationship. Managers can’t read your mind—advocate for what you need, clarify what helps, and initiate feedback loops.
5. Model what you expect from others. You can’t give what you don’t possess. Showing up as a learner sets the tone for your team.
6. Gratitude multiplies development. Leaders who express genuine appreciation build trust, retention, and resilience in their teams.

Reflect on your posture toward being developed.

• Are you open, curious, and receptive—or defensive, cynical, and closed?
• Identify one relationship where you might be distancing yourself from feedback or growth.
• This week, take one small step to re-engage:
  • Ask a question instead of making an assumption.
  • Invite feedback rather than waiting for it.
  • Express gratitude to someone who has invested in your growth.
• Lean toward curiosity and connection—it’s where learning begins.

• How to Know a Person — David Brooks The Coaching Habit — Michael Bungay Stanier
• Humble Inquiry — Edgar H. Schein
• The Voice-Driven Leader — Jeremie Kubicek & Steve Cockram
• The 100X Leader — Jeremie Kubicek & Steve Cockram
• Conscious Leadership: The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership — Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, & Kaley Warner Klemp