Why Self-Care Is the Secret to Great Leadership | Episode 248

September 1, 2025·29 min·2 clips

Karen Gordon reframes self-care as the way leaders preserve energy to serve other people.

1. Linch With A Leader Episode 248 examines self-care, employee engagement, and leadership culture.\n2. Mike Lynch hosts Karen Gordon, whose book The Three Chairs and work with companies inform the discussion.\n3. The episode asks how leaders can care for themselves while bringing out the best in their teams.\n4. Gordon says self-care can feel selfish to women leaders and health professionals who want to help others.\n5. Gordon argues that leaders have less to give when they do not take care of themselves.\n6. Gordon points to Jesus withdrawing to pray as an example of rest amid other people’s needs.\n7. Gordon says The Three Chairs was developed nearly 25 years ago and remains useful during economic and political uncertainty.\n8. Lynch connects employee engagement with building a culture rather than merely hiring people under a company logo.\n9. Gordon says leaders must bring other people to the table to expand a vision beyond what one person can accomplish.\n10. Gordon describes leaders’ energy and emotions as contagious within teams.\n11. Gordon recommends writing down purpose goals instead of trying to define purpose abstractly.\n12. Gordon says couples, businesses, individuals, and children can use the Six P exercise.\n13. Gordon’s family began reading the Bible during COVID and had reached Second Corinthians with six weeks remaining.\n14. Gordon and her husband review their Six P goals every January and hold quarterly meetings for accountability.\n15. Gordon’s sons place their goals on the refrigerator and highlight completed goals.\n16. Gordon says professional growth supports a growth mindset, agility, retention, and engagement.\n17. Gordon says one company’s management team generated the Six P framework from about one hundred sticky-note contributions.\n18. Gordon describes play as stress reduction and compares productive work with a wave that must return for self-care.\n19. Leaders seeking practical culture and self-care routines.\n20. Listeners uninterested in leadership, faith, or workplace practices.

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