Having coached senior Christian leaders around the world for several years, I have seen a number struggle with the challenge of being a healthy and productive member of their organisation. For some this struggle is short-lived or acute; arguably a natural part of living in a relationship with others within an organisation. For others stress becomes a constant feature that gradually builds to the point where it becomes chronic or toxic, leading to burnout.

In the UK it’s striking that, whilst there are many statistics about the incidence, causes and impact of stress, there is very little published regarding burnout, and even less from a Christian perspective. Some of what is published fails to recognise that leadership should be widely distributed within organisations, only focusing narrowly on what we sometimes call “pinnacle leaders”.

Of course, leadership is not exclusive to a job title, role, or level, whether the person is paid or not and neither is burnout an exclusive experience of pinnacle leaders.

Now, in this time of significant change and rising pressures on leaders, we wanted to recommend the second in a series of free resources that Jubilee Plus have collaborated to produce with the National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work and Professional Practice (NCPQSW) and the Centre for Leadership Impact and Management.

The practicality, quality and scope of this resource is immediately apparent and, using some with clients, we have found that the tool and insights can be very powerful.