We are leading in one of the most anxious moments in recent history. The attention economy, the age of outrage, nonstop news cycles, and the pressure to have an answer for everything — it's a lot. And most leaders are moving from confusion straight to action without ever stopping to get clarity.

In this episode, Alan Briggs shares five necessary skills he believes every leader needs right now. Not hacks. Not productivity tips. These are the deeper practices that keep you grounded, tethered, and leading with conviction instead of anxiety, even when everything around you feels like it's spinning.

This is fresh teaching from Alan. He describes it as something that was crystallizing for him in real time. And if you've been feeling the weight of these anxious times in your leadership, this one is for you.

What You'll Learn:

Key Insight:

When overwhelm is high, the antidote is not certainty — it is clarity. And when you fight for even a small amount of clarity, overwhelm and clarity have an inverse relationship. One goes up, the other comes down.

Reflection Questions:

Resources Mentioned:

Right Side Up Journal — coaching companion tool (available on Amazon)

Want More?

For coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, visit www.h2leadership.com.

What does a rock legend who's been performing for 50+ years have to teach us about leadership?

More than you'd think.

Andy Freed has been to 95 Bruce Springsteen concerts. And somewhere along the way, he realized there's a reason they call him "the Boss"—and it's not just because he can put on a three-hour show at age 75.

It's because Bruce Springsteen understands something most leaders miss: communication is leadership. And the way you communicate—your preparation, your energy, your intentionality—determines whether people follow you or just show up for the paycheck.

Andy is the founder and CEO of Virtual, a company that works with some of the biggest organizations in the world (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Visa, MasterCard) to help them solve multi-company collaboration challenges. And what he's discovered is that even the biggest companies struggle with the same thing: bad meetings, ineffective communication, and leaders who don't realize that every moment is a performance.

In this conversation, Andy breaks down his Think, Feel, Do framework for effective communication, explains why most meetings are "business karaoke," and shares what leaders can learn from the way Bruce Springsteen prepares for a show, energizes an audience, and makes every band member feel like the most important musician on earth.

What You'll Learn:

Key Insight:

Nobody cares about the information you're presenting more than you do. If you come in at 70% energy and expect your team to respond at 95%, you're setting yourself up for failure. Great leaders understand that communication isn't just about what you say—it's about how you prepare, how you show up, and whether you're thinking about what your audience needs to hear (not just what you want to say).

And here's the truth: the concepts in this conversation aren't complicated. The ways to go from good to great on communication are within your grasp. You just have to want it, value it, and be intentional about it. It won't happen by accident.

Reflection Questions:

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Andy

About Andy Freed:

Andy Freed is a leadership expert, CEO, and communication strategist who has spent decades helping leaders and organizations improve how they connect, collaborate, and get things done. As the founder and CEO of Virtual, Andy works with some of the world's largest companies—including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Visa, and MasterCard—to build multi-company consortia that solve complex challenges in areas like interoperability and security.

Before founding Virtual, Andy worked in politics, helping candidates run for president, governor, and senator, where he learned firsthand the power of effective communication under pressure. When he transitioned to the private sector, he brought those insights with him, discovering that even the biggest companies struggle with the same fundamental problems: bad meetings, poor communication, and leaders who don't realize that every moment is a performance.

Andy is also a devoted Bruce Springsteen fan who has attended 95 concerts and counting. In his book Lead Like the Boss: Leadership Lessons from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Andy distills decades of leadership experience and insights from watching the Boss into practical, actionable frameworks that any leader can use to improve their communication, energize their teams, and create more leaders.

You're not behind. You're just running too fast.

Most leaders think the answer to overwhelm is speed—more efficiency, tighter schedules, faster execution. But what if the real problem isn't that you're doing too little? What if it's that you're running at an unsustainable pace that's hurting you, your family, your work, and your team?

In this final episode of our Five Spheres of an H2 Leader series, we're tackling pace, how fast you're running, why you're running that fast, and what it's costing you.

Most leaders execute from anxiety and shame, not focus and clarity. They're running FROM something instead of running TO something. And when you run too fast for too long, everything suffers—your health, your relationships, your creativity, and your team's culture.

Alan breaks down the difference between personal activation (how fast you're running) and communal activation (how fast you're driving your team to run). And he introduces the concept that changes everything: effectiveness over efficiency.

What You'll Learn:

Key Insight:

You have way more influence than you think. The people around you are watching how you run, feeling your anxiety, and absorbing your pace. When you slow down, you give your team permission to breathe. When you focus on effectiveness over efficiency, you create space for creativity, presence, and quality. When you Sabbath weekly, you remind yourself—and your team—that the world runs just fine without you grinding 24/7.

Reflection Questions:

Series Context:

This is the fifth and final episode in our Five Spheres of an H2 Leader series. The five spheres are:

If you haven't listened to the full series, go back and start with Episode 1. These five spheres work together as a tapestry—below-the-surface aspects of leadership that won't show up on scorecards or P&L statements, but deeply affect you, your family, your team, and your organization.

Resources Mentioned:

The Five Spheres Recap:

This series has been about things below the surface—aspects of leadership that don't show up on websites or win columns, but shape everything. The higher you are on the org chart, the more these spheres impact the people around you.

We've covered influence (your power), health (your integration), self-awareness (your emotional impact), design (your unique wiring), and now pace (your speed and sustainability).

These aren't destinations. You don't arrive and get a trophy. You're in direction of becoming a healthy, high-impact leader. And that's the journey we're on together.

Want More?

We believe you are designed by a Designer who invites you to co-design your life with Him. If you don't believe that, you'll just get pulled along by your life—by social media, email, news cycles, and other people's urgency. But we believe it's intelligent, personal, and purposeful. You are invited to collaborate in your own life.

For coaching, consulting, and resources to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, visit h2leadership.com.

You can never be them. They can never be you. So stop trying.

In a culture obsessed with comparison and counterfeits, most leaders spend their entire lives trying to become someone else. They look at other leaders and think, "How do they do that?" They scroll through feeds, compare themselves to the competition, and slowly lose sight of the one thing that makes them irreplaceable: their unique design.

Here's the truth: God put you on this earth with a unique spiritual, practical, relational, and emotional fingerprint. You are uniquely designed for impact. But if you don't understand your design, you'll spend your life getting lived by your circumstances instead of actively living with purpose and agency.

In this episode, we're diving into the fourth sphere of an H2 Leader: Design. This is about how you maximize your talents and abilities—not by copying someone else's playbook, but by discovering and unleashing what you're uniquely wired to do.

What You'll Learn:

Key Insight:

Most leaders don't know their design, so they try to live someone else's. But when you understand your unique design—your strengths, your environments, your spark and your function—you stop wasting energy trying to be someone you're not. You unleash what only you can bring to the world.

Design isn't just about doing what you love. It's about the convergence of what energizes you (form/spark) and what serves others (function/usefulness). When those two come together, you become irreplaceable.

The Form + Function Framework:

Form (Spark): What makes you come alive? What environments fire you up? What work do you wake up wanting to do?

Function (Usefulness): How can you be valuable? What needs do you uniquely meet? Where can you serve?

When form and function overlap—that's your design. That's where you thrive.

Reflection Questions:

Practical Exercise:

Map out your ideal day at work. Then map out your ideal Sabbath day (rest and replenishment). Then map out your absolute worst day—what drains you and feels like a beat down. The patterns you see will reveal your design.

Do an audit at the end of each day for a week: Rate the day 1-10 and ask why. You'll start to see what energizes you versus what drains you.

Resources Mentioned:

Want More?

A major reason people burn out is they don't understand their design—they're living counter to how they're wired. If you want to go deeper on this, check out Alan's book Anti-Burnout and explore coaching at h2leadership.com.

For leaders who know there's more—the "more" isn't out there. It's right here. Once you have clarity on your unique design, you can take courageous next steps to actually live in it.

We're so busy watching everyone else—scrolling feeds, comparing ourselves to other leaders, checking what the competition is doing—that we've become incredibly others-aware and dangerously self-unaware.

Self-awareness isn't a buzzword. It's the difference between walking into a meeting grounded or bringing your frustration, anxiety, and chaos with you—and watching it cascade to everyone around you.

Here's the truth: as goes the leader, so goes the team. Your mood changes rooms. Your anxiety creates anxiety. Your groundedness brings clarity.

In this episode, we're diving into the third sphere of leadership that most people ignore: how your emotions, your wiring, and your weaknesses are impacting the people you lead. Whether you realize it or not.

Since Daniel Goleman published his work on emotional intelligence, self-awareness has been everywhere. It's in every leadership book, every conference, every corporate training. But here's the irony: we're at an all-time high for talking about self-awareness and an all-time low for actually practicing it.

Why? Because we're too busy being others-aware. Always looking at what everyone else is doing. Always comparing. Always feeling behind.

This episode cuts through the noise and gives you three practical aspects of self-awareness that will change how you lead:

What You'll Learn:

Key Insight:

Most leaders think they're burned out because they're doing too much work. The reality? You're doing the wrong type of work for your wiring. If you spent eight hours a day doing spreadsheets when you're wired for ideation, you'd be burned out in weeks. If you're wired for details and you're forced to brainstorm all day, same result.

Self-awareness means knowing your drains and your fills—and designing your role around both.

The Three Aspects of Self-Awareness:

Reflection Questions:

A self-aware leader can serve others well with full awareness of who they are and who they're not. This is identity work. You cannot be all things. You are not good at all things. And you cannot compare off somebody else's paper and expect to lead like them.

Resources Mentioned:

Want to go deeper?

We offer Working Genius training sessions for teams. If you're interested in bringing this framework to your organization, reach out to us at h2leadership.com.

For coaching, consulting, and resources to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, visit h2leadership.com.

Leadership is complex, but it doesn't have to be lonely. Let's get after it.

Most leaders understand the importance of health—but few actually live it out consistently. 

In this episode, we're continuing our series on The Five Spheres of an H2 Leader with a focus on the second sphere: Health. This isn't just about eating better or working out more. It's about living integrated and aligned to your values and needs.

Here's what we unpack:

The Definition of a Healthy Leader

Aspirational vs. Actual Values

Understanding Your Needs: Heart, Soul, Mind, Body

The Cost of Ignoring Health

The Benefits of Getting Healthy

Reflection Questions:

If you're ready to lead healthy and high-impact in 2026, this episode is your wake-up call.

Listen now and take your next right step toward becoming an H2 leader.

For coaching, consulting, and resources to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader, visit www.h2leadership.com.

Leader, welcome back to 2026. We're going straight at it.

Instead of starting the year with goal setting alone, we're going beneath the surface to who you are as a leader. Because here's the reality: you have way more influence than you think — and how you wield that leadership influence shapes everything around you.

This episode kicks off our new series on The Five Spheres of an H2 Leader, starting with Influence. Over the next five episodes, we'll unpack the foundational areas every Healthy + High Impact leader must pay attention to: Influence, Health, Self-Awareness, Design, and Space.

Today, we're tackling the first sphere: how to use your influence to build empowering cultures instead of toxic leadership environments.

The Tale of Two Leaders

One leader I coach lives under the shadow of an insecure boss who constantly needs attention and affirmation. This sharp, competent leader has been slowly diminished over time — beaten down by someone who doesn't comprehend their own influence.

The other leader I coach does the exact opposite. They're constantly asking, "How can I raise my team up? How can I get them to shine?" They form a protective line so their people — especially young leaders — can succeed.

Beat down or lift up. That's the question.

Do the people around you feel diminished by your presence, or empowered by it?

What You'll Learn About Leadership Influence:

Three Steps to Healthy Leadership Influence:

Signs You're Using Influence Poorly:

How to Build an Empowering Culture:

Reflection Questions for Leaders:

Memorable Quote:

"The leader who does not comprehend their influence is bound to wound the people around them."

What's Next in This Series:

Next week, we dive into Sphere 2: Health — why leaders who don't take care of themselves can't sustain impact. If you want to lead with clarity instead of chaos in 2026, this series is your foundation.

Take Your Next Right Step:

Visit h2leadership.com for leadership coaching, team consulting, and resources to help you lead as a Healthy + High Impact leader.

If this episode served you:

Leadership is complex, but it doesn't have to be lonely. Let's get after it.

January is loud.

Everywhere you look, leaders are being told to set bigger goals, move faster, and start strong. But what if the reason you feel stuck, unclear, or overwhelmed right now isn’t a motivation problem or a discipline problem?

What if it’s a season problem?

In this New Year–focused episode, Alan Briggs helps leaders slow down just enough to ask a better question before setting goals for 2026:

What season of leadership am I actually in right now?

Because when goals don’t match seasons, leaders burn out, teams get frustrated, and momentum stalls.

This conversation reframes New Year goal-setting through the lens of leadership awareness, helping you name where you’ve been, where you are, and what kinds of actions actually make sense in this season of life and leadership.

And stay to the end — Jonathan tees up a brand new series launching next week: The Five Spheres of an H2 Leader, designed to help you lead with both health and high impact in 2026.

Why January goal-setting often creates pressure instead of clarity

How to identify the season of leadership you’re currently in

Why the question “What time is it for you?” matters more than resolutions

How leadership seasons show up across work, family, health, and relationships

Why ignoring seasons is one of the fastest paths to burnout

How to pair the right actions with the season you’re actually living in

Don’t rush these. These questions are meant to ground your New Year, not hype it.

What season of leadership are you coming out of?

When did (or will) that season end?

What season are you in right now — or clearly heading into?

What should you say yes to in this season?

What should you say no to in this season?

What feels uncertain, scary, or disorienting about this transition?

These are powerful to work through alone — and even more powerful with a spouse, trusted friend, or leadership team.

Next week, we launch a new series walking through The Five Spheres of an H2 Leader — how to identify them, strengthen them, and lead in a way that’s both sustainable and impactful.

If you’re starting this year wanting clarity instead of chaos, you’re in the right place.

For more leadership resources, coaching, and tools to help you lead with health and high impact, visit www.h2leadership.com.

If this episode helped reframe your New Year:

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Share this episode with a leader who feels pressure to “get it right” this year

Feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or like everyone needs you all the time? You're not actually stuck, you just need a way out. Alan Briggs shares 4 practical pathways to break free and lead with clarity in 2026.

When we started this podcast, it was just a wild idea. 500 episodes later, we're more convinced than ever: leadership doesn't have to cost you everything. You can lead well and live well.

To kick off 2026, Alan tackles something most leaders are feeling but few are naming: leadership claustrophobia—that squeezed, stuck sensation where everyone needs you all the time and there's no way out.

Here's the truth: You feel stuck. But you're not actually stuck.

Alan walks through the four feelings that keep leaders trapped—overwhelmed, myopic, exhausted, and behind—and gives you a clear, practical pathway out of each one. This isn't theory. It's the same framework Alan uses with the leaders he coaches every day.

If you're heading into 2026 saying "everyone needs me all the time," this episode is your reset.

The 4 Leadership Traps + Their Pathways Out:

→ Overwhelmed? You're lacking creativity. The pathway out is space—build gaps into your calendar so your brain can think again.

→ Myopic (stuck in the weeds)? You're lacking perspective. The pathway out is vantage—schedule a Think Day and lift above your leadership.

→ Exhausted? You're lacking freshness. The pathway out is recovery—Sabbath and vacation aren't luxuries, they're necessities.

→ Behind? You're lacking urgency. The pathway out is constraints—small deadlines create the momentum big goals never will.

00:00 — Welcome to 2026 + Celebrating 500 Episodes

Website: www.h2leadership.com

If this episode helped you, take 30 seconds to rate, review, and share the podcast. It's the best way to help other leaders discover H2.

Happy 2026. Let's keep climbing.

The H2 Leadership Podcast is your practical resource for becoming a healthy and high-impact leader. New episodes every Thursday.

Merry Christmas!!!!! This episode is Part 2 of our year-end series. Last week, we walked through the internal shifts our team made this year. Today, we hand that same framework to you — so you can reset, simplify, and refocus your leadership as you prepare for 2026.

This conversation is a practical guide to finishing well, regaining clarity, and building momentum without burning out or carrying unnecessary weight into the new year.

You’ll learn:

Why real momentum begins with subtraction, pruning, and clarity — not doing more

How to create simple decision filters so every choice doesn’t drain your energy

The “dance floor vs. balcony” mindset — working on your leadership, not just inside the grind

Why mature leaders practice necessary endings instead of clinging to what used to work

How clarity leads to freedom, focus, and healthier impact

Use these reflection prompts as you reset for 2026:

What is slowing you down right now?

What is one change that would increase your momentum heading into 2026?

What are you too close to that someone else should carry or share?

When you zoom out, what becomes clear about what must stay, shift, or end?

Give yourself at least an hour (two is better) to look back honestly — and aim your energy intentionally toward the year ahead. The real currency of leadership isn’t time… it’s energy.

If this episode serves you:

Visit h2leadership.com for more tools and resources

Like, rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast

Share this episode with another leader who wants to be both healthy and high impact