Most leadership advice centers around business. Podcasts and books are filled with frameworks and strategies to run better meetings, build stronger org charts, and write better mission statements.

Those are important challenges and a lot of the work I do is built around helping CEOs and teams wrestle through them.

But the more I sit with leaders, the more I’m convinced that the biggest challenges—the issues really keeping them up at night—aren’t just business.

They’re personal.

You’re not just a leader. You’re a person. And your health as a person significantly affects the  health of your leadership and the company you run.

If you want to be a healthy leader who runs a healthy company, I suggest you reflect on the seven areas below in which leaders struggle.

Let Me First Give You Permission to Be Human

But before getting into the issues themselves, I think it’s worth stopping to give yourself permission.

Whether it’s a pressure to look like you have it all together, a tendency to compartmentalize, or even just the demands of overwhelming busyness, most leaders feel uncomfortable when the conversation switches to more personal matters. It’s easier to talk about a stalled hire than to talk about what’s actually stalled in you.

“My job is to run a company, not navel-gaze.” 

“These are private matters. They don’t belong at work.”

True, your job is to lead. But your job cannot be divorced from the more personal side of leadership. As a leader, you set the tone for the whole organization. An unhealthy person at the top builds an unhealthy company. All of these issues are at work with you, whether you name them or push them down until they come out sideways.

So if you don’t like doing it for your own sake, do it for your company. Take a moment to consider these… 

1. Loss of identity

Many leaders have become so identified with what they do that they’ve forgotten who they are apart from the business.

They wrestle with questions like:

• Who am I if I’m no longer the CEO?
• What would I do if I sold the company?”
• Do people value me, or do they value what I provide?

It makes sense. A Harvard study showed CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours a week. It’s hard not to lose the rest of you when so much of your time is devoted to one high-stakes role. But it’s even harder to bring your best to what you do, when you’ve forgotten who you are.

2. Loneliness

How many times have you heard, “It’s lonely at the top”? It’s not just a cliché. More than half of executives experience loneliness. They often wonder:

• “Who can I tell that I’m scared?”
• “Who will tell me the truth?”
• “Who loves me without needing something from me?”

You can be surrounded by people all day and still have trouble answering those questions.

3. Family 

Most CEOs don’t intentionally neglect their families. Instead, they wake up one day realizing that the company has consumed the emotional energy that belonged at home. 

Common themes include:

• A spouse who feels like a roommate.
• Kids at home where there is no relational connection.
• Adult children who have become emotionally distant.
• Watching grandchildren growing up via digital photos. 

Few regrets are as painful as success at work accompanied by distance at home.

4. Decision Fatigue and Constant Mental Load

Leaders carry an extraordinary cognitive burden. Even when they’re “off,” they’re thinking about:

• payroll
• cash flow
• customers
• lawsuits
• key hires
• struggling employees
• succession
• competitors

Many haven’t experienced genuine mental quiet in years. Their bodies may be on vacation, but their minds rarely are.

5. Lack of Purpose

Many leaders eventually discover that achievement has diminishing returns. They’ve reached goals they once thought would satisfy them. Yet a new and nagging question surfaces: 

“What am I building all of this for?”  

This often marks the beginning of a deeper search for meaning, contribution, legacy, and calling. This is where LifePlan can help.

6. Fear of Letting Go

Many owners know they shouldn’t continue carrying everything. But they fear relinquishing control. They wrestle with questions like:

• “Will the company survive without me?”
• “Can I trust my team?”
• “What if I become irrelevant?”

Ironically, the very skills that built the business can become obstacles to its next season of growth.

7. Carrying Everyone Else’s Burdens

Good leaders often absorb far more than their job description. They carry things like…

• employees facing illness
• struggling marriages
• financial pressures
• layoffs
• customer disappointments
• family expectations

Many become the emotional shock absorbers for their organizations. The challenge isn’t simply stress—it’s the cumulative weight of continually carrying other people’s concerns while feeling they have nowhere to set down their own.

The Underlying Thread 

These challenges all point to something deeper than burnout. They point to fragmentation.  Many successful leaders have spent decades building an extraordinary business while unintentionally neglecting other parts of life:

• their soul
• their closest relationships
• their health
• their identity
• their sense of calling

That’s why, in my experience, the leaders who experience the most meaningful renewal aren’t simply the ones who take a vacation. They’re the ones who create space to step back, examine their lives as intentionally as they examine their businesses, and ask deeper questions:

• Who am I becoming?
• What kind of husband, wife, father, mother, or friend am I?
• What is this season of life asking of me?
• What would success look like if it included every area of my life, not just my company?

Those questions rarely produce immediate answers. But they often become the beginning of a healthier, more integrated way of leading.