The H2 Leadership Podcast

What if the most powerful response to a divided world isn't another argument, but an invitation to the table?

In a season marked by political division, outrage, and growing disconnection, H2 Leadership host Alan Briggs invites us into a different kind of conversation. Recorded around a backyard fire in Colorado Springs, Alan sits down with friend, school principal, and entrepreneur Derien Latimer to explore how intentional hospitality can bring people together across differences and create lasting change.

What began as a conversation over tacos during the upheaval of 2020 eventually became SoulFULL, a gathering where people from different backgrounds, beliefs, and walks of life share great food, meaningful conversations, and a common desire to see their city flourish.

Through personal stories, unexpected connections, and practical leadership lessons, Darien shares why hospitality is about far more than hosting a dinner. It's about creating spaces where people feel seen, valued, and heard, even when they disagree.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• How Derien's childhood experiences shaped his understanding of genuine hospitality.

• Why bringing people together across cultural, political, and socioeconomic differences matters.

• The two intentional rules behind Soulfull's community dinners that help strangers build meaningful connections.

• How hospitality can transform difficult conversations in the workplace and the way we lead others.

• Why creating space to listen can be more powerful than having the perfect words.

At a time when it's easy to retreat into cynicism or surround ourselves with people who think like us, Alan and Darien offer a different invitation: What would it look like to practice hospitality in the unique way you're wired to do it?

You don't need to be a chef or host an elaborate gathering. You just need to be willing to make room for someone else.

Your challenge: Before the holidays, find one intentional way to welcome someone into your life, your home, your workplace, or your community.

Because sometimes the most meaningful change begins with something as simple as pulling up another chair.

Connect with H2 Leadership

Helping leaders become healthy and high impact.

Explore resources, conversations, and opportunities to grow as a leader at https://h2leadership.com.

If this conversation challenged or encouraged you, share it with someone who could use a reminder that connection is still possible, even in a divided world. And follow the H2 Leadership Podcast for more honest conversations and practical insights on leading well.

We're back from an amazing summer and we have news! The H2 Leadership Podcast is entering a new season.

We’re moving from weekly episodes to one intentional, HIGHLY curated, HIGHLY PRACTICAL, episode each month, featuring conversations with HEALTHY, HIGH-CAPACITY leaders worth learning from and practical ideas you can put to work in your own leadership.

In this first episode of the new format, Alan Briggs sits down with Kadi Cole and Justin Roethlingshoefer for two conversations about the health, capacity, and intentionality required to lead well for the long haul.

Kadi Cole joins Alan after returning from a three-month sabbatical. She shares what it took to come out of years of operating in crisis mode, why her body needed time to catch up with the changes already happening in her life, and what she learned by deliberately putting herself in situations where she wasn’t already competent.

Their conversation then turns toward the church and the leadership challenges Kadi is seeing right now: churches still confronting post-COVID realities, gaps in leadership pipelines and succession, unsustainable staff rhythms, changing systems, and the challenge of leading through an in-between season when the old model may no longer work but the next one hasn’t fully emerged yet.

Kadi also shares about her work developing female church leaders and why many women enter significant leadership roles without having received the same developmental opportunities and repetitions earlier in their careers.

Then Alan sits down with Justin Roethlingshoefer, founder of OWN IT Coaching and author of Holy Health, for a conversation about an area high-capacity leaders can easily neglect: physical health.

Justin shares his own experience with chronic striving and burnout and explores why successful leaders often keep investing in the areas where they already know how to win while allowing their health to move further down the priority list.

Alan and Justin talk about physical health as stewardship, the connection between habits and capacity, performance-based identity, and one practical warning sign leaders should pay attention to: when things that once felt manageable suddenly begin to feel unusually hard.

In this episode

• What Kadi learned from stepping away for three months
• Why high-capacity leaders can struggle when there is nothing to accomplish
• What Kadi is seeing inside churches and leadership teams right now
• Leadership pipeline and succession challenges
• Why old systems may no longer produce the same results
• Leading well during an organizational in-between
• Developing healthier pathways for female church leaders
• Why successful leaders often neglect physical health
• The connection between performance identity and burnout
• Health as stewardship rather than obsession
• How habits affect your capacity to lead
• A warning sign that your current pace may no longer be sustainable
• Why transformation may require getting help instead of simply trying harder

About Kadi Cole

Kadi Cole is a leadership consultant, coach, speaker, and author of Developing Female Leaders. Her work helps churches and organizations strengthen leadership cultures and develop the people entrusted to them. She also hosts The Female Church Leaders Podcast.

About Justin Roethlingshoefer

Justin Roethlingshoefer is a performance and health expert, founder of OWN IT Coaching, and author of Holy Health. His work helps leaders better understand the connection between their health, habits, energy, and capacity to sustainably carry what they have been called to lead.

A new season for the H2 Leadership Podcast

The H2 Leadership Podcast is now monthly.

Each month, Alan will bring you conversations with leaders worth learning from, along with practical coaching insight designed to help you become both healthy and high impact.

You can also subscribe to The H2 Leader, Alan’s monthly email featuring practical coaching insights, tools, and ideas coming directly from the coaching table at H2 Leadership.

Do we practice what we preach or produce?

That's the question behind this conversation.

As Jonathan prepares for sabbatical and the H2 Leadership team enters a different rhythm for the summer, Alan and Jonathan reflect on a challenge facing leaders everywhere. We live in a culture that rewards constant production, celebrates busyness, and always asks for more.

More content. More output. More growth. More momentum.

But what happens when the things we say we value collide with the way we're actually living and leading?

The reality is that not every season is a harvest season. Not every season is for building, launching, or pushing harder. Healthy leaders learn to recognize the difference and have the courage to lead accordingly.

As H2 Leadership takes a short pause for the summer, we're inviting you to ask some honest questions about your own leadership, your own pace, and the things competing for your attention right now.

In This Episode

• Why the way many leaders work is no longer sustainable

• The hidden cost of always producing

• Why healthy leadership requires alignment between values and actions

• How Jonathan is preparing for sabbatical after a season of significant growth and production

• The role trust plays in healthy leadership

• Why recognizing your season matters

• How leaders can create margin without disappearing for months at a time

• The difference between stewardship and endless productivity

• Why the algorithm will always ask for more

• What it looks like to lead from conviction instead of expectation

Key Leadership Insight

Not every season is for producing.

Some seasons are for preparing.

Some are for recovering.

Some are for planting seeds that will not bear fruit until much later.

Healthy leaders know the difference.

Challenge Question

What season are you actually in right now?

Not the season you wish you were in.

Not the season someone else expects from you.

The season you're actually in.

Resources Mentioned

• Anti-Burnout by Alan Briggs

• The Sabbatical Journey Field Guide

• The Sabbatical Journey Podcast

• Sabbatical Coaching Group

Your Next Right Step

Take fifteen minutes this week and ask yourself one question:

Where is the gap between what I say I value and what my calendar says I value?

Start there.

The answer may reveal more than you expect.

We'll be taking a short break from releasing new episodes this summer.

We're grateful for you.

We're cheering you on.

And we'll see you in August.

Time is the most precious resource a leader has, and summer might be the most underused stretch of it. The school calendar opens up. Work expectations soften. The world feels a little more breathable. And then somehow, before you've caught your breath, it's gone.

Alan Briggs walks through four keys that turn summer from a season that happens to you into one you actually shape: space, replenishment, relational time, and growth. If you've ever hit the end of summer and thought "where did that go," this episode is the planning conversation you didn't know you needed.

Who this episode is for

If you're a parent looking at the next stretch ahead and feeling both the gift and the overwhelm of it. If you're a leader who tends to let summer happen instead of leading through it. If you've been running hard and you know you need rest, but you also know "rest" without a plan turns into doom scrolling and chores. If you want this summer to actually mean something when you look back on it. This one is for you.

What you'll take away

• Why summer plans you if you don't plan it, and the simple shift that flips the dynamic
• The four keys for an intentional summer: space, replenishment, relational time, and growth, and why missing any one of them leaves the season feeling hollow
• The great irony of unplanned space: it only happens if you plan for it
• How to figure out what actually replenishes you (and why it probably costs less and requires less travel than you think)
• Why most leaders nail rest and miss growth, and how to fold one of the most overlooked categories back into your summer
• The conversation worth having with your spouse before the calendar fills up, so friend time and family time stop competing
• A set of clarifying questions for each of the four keys that turn "I should plan summer" into an actual plan

Quotes worth sitting with

"Time is precious. We only have so much of it."

"If you don't plan it, it will plan you."

"Accept the great irony of planning unplanned time."

"Most replenishing activities in our lives can happen at home."

"Leaders, we're always growing."

Reflection questions

When will you plan empty space in your life, the kind with nothing scheduled in it on purpose?

What activities actually recharge you, and when will you block them in?

Who do you need to reconnect with before another season passes?

What do you need to learn this summer, and who will you learn it from?

Resources

Download the free Summer Planning Guide, with journal prompts and planning blocks built in: https://summer.stayforthcoaching.com/plan-for-the-summer

For coaching, frameworks, and tools to help you lead well, head to h2leadership.com.

If you've been running hard and you know your next step involves real partnership, coaching might be the right call. Start a conversation at h2leadership.com.

There is a moment in every baseball game where everything stops. Not because something went wrong. Because the game was designed that way.

The 7th inning stretch is not a timeout. It is not a sign of weakness. It is built into the structure of the game because whoever designed baseball understood something most leaders forget: you cannot finish strong if you never pause to reset.

Jonathan and Alan bring back one of the most talked-about episodes from the H2 Leadership archives because heading into summer 2026, most leaders need this conversation more than ever. If you are six months in and running on fumes, this is your inning.

They get into what it actually looks like to use summer with intention, not just survive it. Reflection, realignment, solitude, celebrating small wins. This is not a productivity conversation. It is a rhythm conversation.

In This Episode:

• Why the 7th inning stretch is one of the smartest leadership metaphors hiding in plain sight
• How to pause with purpose and reconnect with your why before the fall sprint hits
• What reflection and realignment actually look like for a leader in the summer months
• Alan's and Jonathan's personal slowdown practices, and how to find yours

Reflect On This:

1. What is one practice helping you slow down this summer?
2. What do you need to let go of before Q3?
3. What are you most hopeful for in the second half of 2026?

Resource: Download the free 7th Inning Stretch for Leaders Checklist and catch the full summer series: Becoming an H2 Leader.

Tara Owens has spent over twenty years as a spiritual director, and she also trains other spiritual directors. She's the author of Embracing the Body, the executive director of a nonprofit, a boxer, and a coaching client of Alan's. That last detail matters, because this conversation is about something most leaders quietly wrestle with: which kind of helper do I actually need right now?

Alan and Tara unpack the three lanes (therapy, spiritual direction, and coaching), where each one shines, where leaders most often apply the wrong tool to the wrong problem, and what it cost Tara to finally say yes to a coach after years of resisting it.

Who this episode is for

If you've been in therapy for a while and have a gut sense the season is shifting but you don't know where to go next. If you've been pursuing growth through one modality and quietly suspect you've been trying to use a hammer on a screw. If you're a leader who's allergic to coaching (or to spiritual direction, or to therapy) and you want to understand what you might actually be allergic to. If you sense you're stuck and you can't tell whether you're stuck in the past, in the present, or in the future. This one is for you.

What you'll take away

• A simple framework for which lane fits which season: therapy integrates your past, spiritual direction sits with you in the present, and coaching is for the leader who needs someone in their corner for the future
• What spiritual direction actually is (and isn't), and why "director" is a confusing word for what's really a non-anxious, non-manipulative, agenda-free listening presence
• Why "there are no spiritual direction emergencies" and what that reveals about the slower, deeper work most leaders never make space for
• The trap of "spiritual cannibalism" that helping professionals (and pastors, and leaders of any kind) need to watch for in themselves
• Why Tara, a deeply respected spiritual director, had a years-long allergy to coaching and what finally moved her
• The phrase that named what she was missing: "I didn't have anybody in my life who was for my future"
• Why the resources you actually need are usually closer than you think, often already on your team and under your nose
• How to evaluate fit when looking for any of the three, and why "they say they're your coach" doesn't mean they actually are

Quotes worth sitting with

"There are no spiritual direction emergencies."

"You're not Jesus. I'm not Jesus. That's not our job."

"I didn't have anybody in my life who was for my future."

"Hope is the ground of everything I do, and it's probably my weakest muscle."

"So much about coaching is naming and permission."

"Ask 'who' instead of 'what.' Some of God's greatest 'what' questions or opportunities are answered by 'who do I need.'"

Reflection questions

Where are you actually stuck right now: in something from your past, in something happening in your present, or in something you can't see clearly about your future?

What's the right partnership for that specific kind of stuck, and have you been trying to solve it with the wrong tool?

Who, not what, might be the answer to the next thing God is doing in you?

Resources

Embracing the Body: Finding God in Our Flesh and Bone by Tara Owens.

Learn more about Tara's work at anamcara.com.

For coaching, frameworks, and tools to help you lead well, head to h2leadership.com.

If you're a leader sensing you need partnership but can't quite name where the gap is, that's exactly the kind of clarity our coaching work is built for. Schedule a breakthrough coaching session.

Jillian Johnsrud has taken thirteen mini retirements (sabbaticals) over the last twenty years. She's raised five kids (three adopted), built and renovated rental properties that changed her family's financial trajectory, and coached hundreds of leaders through their own sabbaticals. Her new book Retire Often might be the most practical and philosophically rich thing written on the subject.

She joins Alan Briggs for a conversation about something most leaders get wrong: the assumption that caring about your work means never stepping away from it.

Who this episode is for

If you're a leader who runs hard and assumes the operation falls apart without you. If you've watched peers burn out and quietly wondered when it's coming for you. If you're caught between a 60-year-old generation that grinds and a 25-year-old generation that won't, and you're trying to figure out a third way. If your identity is so wrapped up in what you do that you're not sure what's underneath it. This one is for you.

What you'll take away

• The halftime analogy that reframes extended rest as competitive strategy, not indulgence, and why the leaders running sprints through their break aren't the ones winning long term
• A clear three-part definition of a mini retirement (one month or longer, away from your primary profession, focused on something meaningful) and how that differs from a vacation
• How to address the four objections that stop almost every leader from doing this: money, work obligations, "what would I even do," and "what if it goes badly"
• Why "my whole identity is my work" isn't a badge of honor, it's a problem to solve before it solves itself
• The "spring cleaning" effect on your business or team when you step away, and why most leaders come back to a tidier, more efficient operation than the one they left
• Why your sabbatical plan is a hypothesis and your sabbatical reality is an experiment, and how that one reframe eliminates the emotional suffering most leaders inflict on themselves
• What Jillian thinks AI is about to change about leadership, and why the companies that figure rest out are going to dominate the next twenty years

Quotes worth sitting with

"The only options are you figure it out or you die at your desk."

"Machines are getting better at being machines. Humans need to get a lot better at being human."

"No one looks at the basketball players running sprints during halftime and goes, oh, they're the ones who really care. No, they don't. They're being stupid."

"You're always more tired than you think."

"You don't include yourself in the people first."

Reflection questions

If your identity is entirely defined by your work, what would it take to start building meaning and purpose outside of it before life forces the issue?

What season are you actually leading from right now (spring, summer, fall, winter), and is your current pace honest about that?

What would have to be true for you to take a real break with purpose? And what's actually stopping you from making that true?

Resources

Retire Often by Jillian Johnsrud, available wherever you buy books.

The Sabbatical Journey field guide by Alan Briggs, available from Amazon & Barnes & Noble

This episode is also featured on The Sabbatical Journey Podcast from our sister organization, Sabbatical Coaching Group, which helps leaders prepare for, experience, and return well from a life-changing sabbatical. Learn more at sabbaticalcoachinggroup.com.

For coaching, frameworks, and tools to help you lead healthy and with higher impact, head to h2leadership.com.