The Hidden Struggles of Leadership

People assume leaders have it all together, but the truth is, carrying the weight of responsibility often leaves us worn out, lonely, and quietly crumbling inside. We can lead a team, a family, or a ministry and still lie awake at night replaying problems we can’t solve. The gap between how strong we look in public and how weak we feel in private doesn’t just wear us down—it isolates us, and that isolation is what truly breaks us.

This is a conversation for anyone tired of pretending. Listen in as Don opens up about the battles leaders face but rarely admit out loud. Hear why isolation is the enemy’s playground, how God works most powerfully in our weakness, how to take the first step toward honesty, and what freedom looks like when you finally lay down the mask.

00:40 The Silent Struggles

06:00 The Strongest Leaders are the Most Broken Ones

10:31 Isolation is the Enemy’s Playground

15:37 Two is Better Than One

19:34 The Best Gift: Be a Friend

00:32 “From the outside, leadership looks good with all the titles, influence, and the respect we get. But behind those closed doors, there are a lot of battles that no one sees: stress, pressure, loneliness, and lots of temptation.” —Don Wood

06:21 “The strongest leaders are often the ones who are the most broken at times.” —Don Wood

09:06 “Here’s the good news: when we’re broken, this is where God can do his best work.” —Don Wood

11:45 “Isolation is the enemy’s playground.” —Don Wood

19:36 “Sometimes, the best gift you can give to someone is a reminder that they’re not alone.” —Don Wood

Don Wood is the founder of Men’s Leadership, God’s Way, where he coaches executives and leaders to achieve clarity, confidence, and peace without sacrificing their health, faith, or family. Drawing from his own journey through adversity—including overcoming addiction, serious health challenges, and personal loss—Don inspires others to lead with conviction and purpose. His faith-based approach emphasizes transformation, resilience, and the power of vulnerability, helping men discover their unique gifts and live out their calling. Don is dedicated to equipping leaders to experience true success by trusting in God’s wisdom and strength.

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***Welcome to Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. I’m your host, Don Wood. This is the place where men learn to lead with faith, clarity and conviction. Together, we’ll explore real stories and biblical principles to help you be a model of integrity in your work, family and everyday life. Let’s get started. 

Don Wood: Well, hey guys. Today, we’re going to talk about something that I think most of us would rather keep quiet, and it’s about the hidden struggles of leadership. From the outside, I think leadership looks good with all the titles, influence, and the respect we get. You’re the one people come to for all the answers. They look up to you, and you set the tone, if you think about it. But behind those closed doors, I think there are a lot of battles that no one sees, things like stress, pressure, certainly loneliness, and lots of temptation. There was a season when I was in a visible leadership role, and everybody thought I had it together. On the surface, I look calm, confident, pretty successful and competent. But when I got home, I felt exhausted a lot of times. I was irritable with people, and it was carrying the weight of all of my responsibilities on my shoulders all by myself. I’d lay in bed at night with my mind racing, trying to solve all the problems at once, and I felt like I couldn’t tell anybody because I thought showing weakness meant I would lose all my credibility. 

Maybe you have felt the same at times. You look the part in public, but you feel like you’re falling apart in private. And if so, just want to let you know that this episode is for you. So we face hidden struggles every day. Stress never turns off. Even when we get home at night, it’s still there, isn’t it? We have this pressure to perform at work. And yet, when we get home, we’re supposed to be fully present. And then there’s the silent temptations when no one is watching. We can get on the internet, and we can look at certain sites and maybe view pornography or gambling, or maybe watch shows that have too much violence just to kind of get lost out of a sense of the reality of what we’re facing every day. And I live in that cycle. I go in and out all the time. Sometimes, I have great periods where I stay away from all that stuff. But then I find that when I’m really under a lot of stress, I’ll turn to that stuff. My health collapses because I refuse to admit the toll that all of the work is placing on my shoulders. I get tired, and I brush things off. But yet I’ll say, you know what? I’ll just push through this because I’m fine. But I’m not. I’ll wear a mask in public and have this unbelievable weight on my shoulders in private. 

King David knew that feeling. In Psalm 6:6, he said, “I’m worn out from all my groaning. All night long, I flooded my bed with weeping and drenched my couch with tears”. So here’s David. He’s a warrior. He’s a king. He killed Goliath with just a slingshot and a rock. He’s the leader of Israel. And yet, he’s worn out, and he’s broken behind closed doors. So I’m thinking that if David felt it, why do we think we won’t? I don’t want to be real with you. Years ago, I battled alcoholism and drug abuse in silence. On the outside, I was looking pretty good, but I was unraveling. I felt ashamed, so I kept it hidden. And the longer I stayed silent, the worse it got for me. It was just looming. It was haunting me all the time. 

In James 5:16, it says, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed”. You know what I learned? Healing didn’t begin for me until I brought it into the light. There was another season in my life where my body broke down. I had 11 surgeries. And about a year and a half, it started out with kidney stones. And then during the kidney stone surgeries, they found that my blood pressure was off the chart. Yes, so they took a closer look. And before I knew it, I was on the table having triple bypass open heart surgery. Then the stones returned and fluids backed up in my kidneys. And I went into what is known as septic shock where sepsis is a bacteria that races through your body, and it attacks your organs. And 40% of people that have it don’t walk out of the hospital ever again, because they die. And every time I thought I would make it through one bout with something, it seemed like another one would come along. And I thought, when am I going to get off this merry go round? 

I got to be honest with you, there were nights where I wondered if I would open my eyes up the next morning. Leadership, influence, respect, none of that mattered when I was laying in that hospital bed. And here’s the thing, God had me where he wanted me, one on one. And that’s when his words became more than just words on a page for me. 2 Corinthians 12:9 became my lifeline. It said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”. And I was certainly weak. And those struggles taught me something I really didn’t want to admit. The strongest leaders are often the ones who are the most broken at times. But here’s the thing that occurred to me, it’s when we’re broken is where God will do his best work for us. 

I was reading this book. It’s called The Pastor’s Justification by Jared Wilson, and the subtitle is applying the work of Christ in your life and ministry. And in the introduction, he talks about the statistics about pastoral ministry. And these are statistics that came from the Fuller Institute and the Barna Research Group. And here are some of the sobering statistics. Check this out. 90% of pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours a week. 80% believe that pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. 80%? 90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the Ministry demands. Another 80% feel they’re unqualified and discouraged. 90% of pastors say the ministry is completely different than what they thought it’d be like before they entered the ministry. Watch this, over half of them feel unable to meet the demands of the job. 

Now there’s three different facts from these statistics where it comprises 70% of all pastors. The first fact is this, they’re unable to meet the demands of the job. They constantly fight depression. They say they have a lower self image than what they first heard. And there’s another one. They say they don’t have someone they consider a close friend. 40% report a serious health conflict with someone in the congregation at least once a month. And watch this one,33% confess having engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in the church. Half of them feel that they’re so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they knew that they could go into another career. But they don’t feel like they’re qualified to do that. 70% feel they’re grossly underpaid. Half of them will not last 5 years in the ministry. And the last one here is the most telling. 90% of them will not end their careers as pastors. And here’s the thing, guys, when I look at these statistics, these are the same exact statistics I see for executives in the business world. 

Here’s the good news, though. When we’re broken, this is where God can do his best work. Scripture is full of leaders who look strong and public, but they wrestled in private. They really did, on Moses, for example. Here is a guy that stood before Pharaoh with authority. But in Numbers chapter 11, he cries to God, I cannot carry all of these people by myself. The burden is too heavy for me. So here’s Moses. He’s supposed to be the great deliverer in Scripture, but he emits breaking points. Another guy is Elijah. After the fire falls on Mount Carmel, he runs into the wilderness and begs God to take his life. Here, he is a mighty prophet, and yet he felt completely undone by fear and exhaustion. Here’s King David. The man after God’s own heart. Raven battled, and yet he fell into sin with the beautiful Bathsheba trying to cover it up in silence until Nathan confronted him. And there’s Peter. He was bold enough to walk on water, yet he denied Jesus three times because of his fear of what other people thought, and what might happen to him if he admitted that he knew Jesus, and that he loved Jesus. Sound familiar? 

And then there’s the Apostle Paul. He plants churches. He preaches across continents. And yet in 2 Corinthians 1:8, he admits we were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. And even Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. He struggled so deeply that his sweat fell like drops of blood. He turned to his father in raw honesty and says, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. So think about this guys, if they struggle, why would you think we’re exempt? 

So here’s the thing, when struggles stay hidden, they’re going to grow in the dark. I’ve seen guys burn out completely because they never admitted their struggles or their exhaustion. Their marriages fall apart because they couldn’t admit the pressure they were under, and they compromised their integrity. They thought they had no one they could confide in. And I want you to remember this. If you forget everything else, I say in this message, please remember this, isolation is the enemy’s playground. Let me say that again, isolation is the enemy’s playground. 

In the book of Proverbs 18:1, it warns us. It says, “Whoever isolates himself, seeks his own desire. He breaks out against all sound judgment”. I lived in that isolation. Alcoholism is a disease of isolation. I thought no one cares about my problems, so I can just figure it out all by myself. I want everybody else to just leave me alone. But the truth is that silence nearly destroyed me. And guys, that’s the cost of hidden struggles. But here’s the good news for me. Anyway, God doesn’t want flawless leaders. He wants ones that surrender to Him, and He invites us to come out of hiding, to lay down our masks, and to lean into his strength. In the book of Psalms 55:22, it says, “Cast your cares on the Lord, and He will sustain you. He will never let the righteous be shaken”. So I think the turning point for me was when I admitted my weakness, first to God, and then to someone I could trust. 

I’ll never forget that I was sitting across from my buddy, and my heart was pounding, and my pride was screaming at me, keep your mouth shut. But I finally confessed what I’d been carrying, and it just blew me away how he didn’t condemn me. And he said, Don, I understand. I know where you’ve been. I’ve been that way too, and let’s pray together about this. And as Jesus always says, wherever two or more gathered in my name, I will be there. So in the presence of God, here are two men that were coming together stronger than ever, because we weren’t looking at our situations. We were looking at Him. And that’s when I realized something that was true freedom for me. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. Jesus understands this. Hebrews 4:15 reminds us that we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses. He’s not surprised by our struggles, and he’s ready to meet us within those struggles. 

So where are you hiding your struggles right now? Is the stress at work, tensions at home, with your marriage or your kids, silent battles with temptation, pornography, gambling? An affair, whether it’s an emotional affair or an actual physical one? A private fear that you’ve been carrying around for a long time that no one knows about? And what would it look like if you stopped carrying this thing all along? 

***Hey guys, you ever feel like you’re leading on the outside but running empty on the inside? Hi, I’m Don Wood, Founder of Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. I work one on one with executives and leaders who are ready to trade burnout, confusion and isolation for clarity, confidence and peace. My coaching is designed to help you to lead with conviction without sacrificing your health, faith or family. So if you’re ready to experience the transformation you’ve been searching for, visit mensleadershipgodsway.com, and let’s start your journey today. 

I remember finding this scripture here one day. It’s Ecclesiastes 4:9,10. It says, “Two are better than one. If either of them fails, one can help the other. But pity the man who falls and who has no one to help him up”. So who helps you up? Who knows your real story? And if you’re listening right now and realizing that you’re carrying a forbidden weight in silence? Guys, it’s time to bring it out into the light. 

Here are some steps you can take this week. The first thing you do is write it down. Just take one hidden struggle, and just write it down on a piece of paper. And I think if you do this, something’s going to happen for you when it’s no longer trapped in your mind. And then once you’ve written it down, when you’re ready, I want you to bring it to God. Pray honestly, tell them the truth, and don’t try to polish it up. And then tell someone you trust. Don’t tell everyone. You only need to tell them one,, and make sure it’s someone who loves Jesus, who won’t judge you. And this is really important, someone who’s going to pray with you. Because for me when I finally shared my struggles with a brother in Christ, I finally could take off the mask I’ve been wearing for years. And I’m not going to sugarcoat this, and I’m not going to say it’s going to be easy because my pride was resisting big time. But when I spoke about it to someone else, the healing began for me. 

Now, here are some prayers that you can bring to Jesus about the different struggles that you might be having. And remember, guys, these are prayers you can take to God where there’s no pretending. It’s like you’re talking to a friend, and you’re not going to get quick answers, but you know what’s going to happen. Jesus says in Scripture, “My sheep, hear my voice”. 

So for example, I’ll give you a couple of questions you can ask Jesus about pressure and stress. First one is, Lord, what burdens am I carrying that you never asked me to carry? Here’s another one. Jesus, how do you want me to lead from rest rather than exhaustion? What do I need to release into your hands today? How about temptation, integrity? How about these prayers. Lord, what guardrails do you want me to put in place to protect my heart? Here’s another one. How do you want me to deal with the temptation I’m facing instead of hiding it? Come out fear with your decisions, guys. You can say, Jesus, what decision am I trying to control instead of surrendering to you? And how do I need to lead with courage instead of fear? Here’s a great question I love you could ask Jesus, what would you say to me if you were sitting in this office chair right now? How about this question? Lord, am I leading for your approval or people’s applause? Jesus, what part of my leadership have I built on an image instead of character? These are prayers that you can take to Jesus alone in the morning, first thing. And you don’t have to carry your struggles in silence anymore, because his strength is going to show up best when you admit your weaknesses in these prayers. 

So if this episode has spoken to you, please, I want you to share it with a guy who might be silently carrying a heavy load right now. And I think personally, sometimes the best gift you can give to someone is a reminder that they’re not alone, that you’re there to listen for them and give them encouragement. I mean, as guys, I think we all need to be encouraged, especially when we feel isolated, misunderstood and alone. And I want you to make sure to join me next time, because what we’re going to do is I’m going to walk you through the 4 Principles that form the foundation of God honoring leadership. Until then, guys, I want you to keep leading God’s way. 

***Hey guys, thanks for spending time with me today on Men’s Leadership, God’s Way. I hope this episode gave you encouragement and practical wisdom you can use right away. And if you would please take a quick moment to rate and review the show on Apple or Spotify, your support helps more men discover how to lead with awareness, courage and confidence. And if you’re ready to take the next step in your leadership journey, you can learn more about my coaching services and resources at mensleadershipgodsway.com. Until next time, demonstrate optimism and possibility wherever you go