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The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at [email protected]. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at [email protected]. 

The Pitfalls of Leadership are descending steps, one connects to the other with predictable effects. 

Some leaders have referred to the descent as a “chain reaction.” 

The descent can be stopped at any time, with an intervention from others who the leader listens and healthily responds to, or a cry out from the leader in descent who is heard and responded to by others. 

The Five Pitfalls:

These pitfalls can destroy careers, friendships, reputations, marriages and families—unless one is freed from them. 

#4 To be an example to others, the true self is isolated

Leaders often put pressure on themselves to: 

This demand for perfection sets up a leader to deny his/her own feelings and needs. 

Denial does not stop needs, but instead arouses toxic shame when the leader has a need. Isolating the heart from being known from the inside-out leaves a leader hungry to get needs met and yet unable to need people to meet the needs. 

An inanimate source of fulfillment can become the “getaway” or “cure” for the leader at this point. Therefore, counterfeit fulfillments for needs take the place of relational fulfillments.

Problems that trap leaders are so widespread and repeated that they are considered normal, but they are not.

The Pitfalls are not normal, but they are so abundantly common that we can easily relate to them, and often get trapped by them. 

We must not confuse what most people consider as common, with what is normal. 

The book Keeping Heart by Dr Chip Dodd is a series of meditative “pearls” on what true normal is.

In the description of Pitfall 3, “People Become Things,” the drive for perfection in the leader begins to emotionally and spiritually drain the leader because he/she is not addressing their need for replenishment.