STP 151 | Secretly Wounded Leaders and the Cost of Carrying Trauma (With Jeff Mattson)
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Jeff Mattson: [00:00:00] I had to do a ton of work, James, to really, when I say get my baggage down, my trauma baggage down to carry on size. All right?
That's what we like to say at Living Wholehearted. This is what we do with leaders trying to get that trauma baggage down in our lives to carry on size so that we can actually be more healthy and available to love and serve others. Rather than using others to get our needs met in unhealthy ways.
James Marland: Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Therapist Podcast. I'm your host, James Marland. Today I am here with my special guest, Jeff Matson. He's from living wholehearted.com and my courageous girls.com. I went to the A CC about a month ago now already.
He had this wonderful presentation on leadership and trauma, and I thought, man, these are some of the heart [00:01:00] issues that leaders and business owners are struggling with, and I wanted to bring him on the show and talk a little bit more about what he does and how he helps leaders in communities.
Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Mattson: Oh, James, thank you for having me.
James Marland: why don't you introduce yourself a little bit where you're located and How did you get involved in these ministries?
Jeff Mattson: Sure. You bet. Yeah. Well, it my wife and I formed Living Wholehearted professional counseling, executive coaching and organizational development firm based out here in the Pacific Northwest back in 2011. And, uh, and then we also have a nonprofit, Mike, uh, courageous Girls. is a ministry for moms and daughters that actually is touching a global audience right now.
A curriculum that my wife wrote that is Biblical Clinical and Relational Wisdom that walks a mom and a daughter through their, her the daughter's second grade through high school years. helping them to have all those important conversations that moms and [00:02:00] daughters need to have and in community with other moms and daughters.
So, those are two things that we started living Wholehearted is a. Yeah, our business and then again, not the courageous girls, is our nonprofit ministry. Yeah, out here in the beautiful state of Oregon. I'm born and raised out here and there's the Pacific Northwest is in its full glory right now in the fall.
It's awesome. And you're out in Pennsylvania, so
James Marland: Yep.
Jeff Mattson: good fall colors
James Marland: Yeah I talk on the show. We go camping a lot and we just finished our fall foliage trip. Just we went camping around a lake and the trees were all like orange and took some walks in the fall. Weather, sweater, jacket, weather, campfires glorious. It's one of the, my.
Jeff Mattson: language, brother.
James Marland: It's my favorite time
Jeff Mattson: You are an outdoor, I'm an outdoorsman. I was just up this week, earlier this week trying to help my hunting partner out in in the Blue Mountains in Oregon. And it was there was a foot of snow on the ground, but getting there,
James Marland: already.
Jeff Mattson: the Columbia River Gorge with all of its colors. [00:03:00] So yes, love the outdoors. I'm glad you should do too as well.
James Marland: Oh, yeah. Yep. It's great. I don't like camping in July when it's like a hundred. I'm more of a, you know, seventies. 70, 75 person.
Jeff Mattson: Okay.
James Marland: So we met in, uh, Nashville actually with, uh, in 2025. And your presentation was on leadership and trauma. Just what a, you know, there's a lot of heart wounds in there and it comes out in different ways and homes and communities and churches.
And I want you to. This isn't a problem that's at like one church or one person or one community. It's a bigger problem. And you were talking to me about how you, how you came to realize that there needs to be more done about this. Can you kind of describe the problem that you saw, uh, with leadership?
Jeff Mattson: You bet. So leadership many have heard people say this, but leadership, it's lonely at the top. Tara and I in our younger [00:04:00] days I'm 49 today. Or not today, but just in this year in our younger years we began, um. Attuning to the problem of leadership and healthy leaders versus unhealthy leaders. for us, this comes back to our stories and our families of origin and just even in our own emergence through our growing up years and into our young adult years. You know, God really had us experiencing and sitting underneath healthy leaders and unhealthy leaders we began attuning to this and noticing this and, you know, wanting to grow in our own leadership capacity to be as healthy as we could be.
There was a lot of work we had to do. for me, that story really does come from my family of origin, where. My family was heavily Christian, if you will. There's a comedian out there, I can't forget who it is. Who jokes that those that were if you were a Christian in the the late eighties and nineties, you were super Christian.
James Marland: Yeah,
Jeff Mattson: And,
James Marland: I can identify with that.
Jeff Mattson: and so my family was the family that, you know, [00:05:00] was in church on Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday, and we lived near our church and, you know, there was a lot of emphasis in faith development and in, in the most beautiful of ways. God used this in my life. But my family also was highly achievement, performance, Christianity, you know, doing and keeping up images and appearances.
All the while there was a lot of abuse actually happening within my family system total incongruency. So growing up in this, my family of origin story is this really, I had to do a ton of work, James, to really, when I say get my baggage down, my trauma baggage down to carry on size. All right?
That's what we like to say at Living Wholehearted. This is what we do with leaders trying to get that trauma baggage down in our lives to carry on size so that we can actually be more healthy and available to love and serve others. Rather than using others to get our needs met in unhealthy ways. So when I was sharing about the leader trauma psych, the leadership trauma cycle, just talking [00:06:00] about many people respond to trauma in their stories. You know, we use Vander Koch, Dr. VanDerKolk's definition of trauma. Anything outta the ordinary that leaves a person feeling powerless or helpless, that's trauma. And it's stored in our bodies. We know this now. The neuroscience is awesome in this way. That we we gotta get that out. We gotta work that out.
We gotta address it. But most people will choose to respond to trauma in one of two ways. Either play the victim or they use achievement to cope. Now, achieving in achievement in and of itself is not. Bad. It's wonderful, but if, why are you achieving? Are you achieving to, to get away from and push and suppress things down that is dramatic in your story? Sometimes people play both roles in different relationships, right? The victim in one scenario, but then achiever in another. But just noticed over the arc of our journey as we were around leadership. And in leadership and seeing leaders and God was attuning our hearts to the problem. The problem is that much about leadership, so, and the achievers are [00:07:00] achieving and they, um, in the journey of leadership, they're leaking. trauma is leaking onto other people, their spouses or kids or co coworkers or colleagues or partners in whatever organizational structure there is. And oftentimes those leaders are totally unaware of this, where it comes from.
James Marland: I was just thinking about like some of my growing up, like your description of Christianity, the performance based image management. I could definitely. Really relate to that and how some of, some, of how I dealt with that is I went to school, went, got multiple degrees, always tried to have an answer.
Read lots of books. Research 'cause that's what I was good at. Like I was always trying to measure up, I was always trying to be something. That I was like, it's just one, like one more thing. Like, I gotta know one more thing. I gotta have the answers. I gotta be prepared for whatever comes up. And and it was [00:08:00] really a response to this internal feeling that, you know, you're never good enough.
You're not good enough things aren't, you're, you know, you're not like these other people. And just really trying to measure up and compare to something inside that I didn't even really know it was there for the longest time. So, and I know it comes out in different ways, but I'm just thinking some of that trauma came out in me and just trying to be better, you know, extra perform, which I guess you wouldn't say is, it's not wrong per se.
Right? It's not wrong to try to achieve, it's not wrong to try to get degrees, but. I don't even know why. I was like, why did I feel like I had to do all those things?
Jeff Mattson: Correct. Correct. And I that's a great example, James, you know, and leaders I sit with in an executive coaching capacity and we're walking through these processes of untangling this, like, where does this come from? I mean, they're Uber's successful, but, they are maybe also you know, white [00:09:00] knuckling humanity. And
James Marland: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Mattson: and it's not healthy for us to be doing that because that's where we see eventually it cracks and we don't have to wait until, we snap and you know, the next headline that we see of failed leadership or what have you. So we're really, you know, in our story, we're really passionate, about attuning to this.
And it took us a while. I mean all to really understand why, first of all, God brought us together. We had some clarity about. this word vocation. When we met, when Tara and I met, and it was in our undergraduate years at Seattle Pacific where we were attending and there was pretty clear connection towards relationship that we were supposed to be married.
You know, the joke is that when I met Tara, I had that, I felt like the Holy Spirit and I try not to overs spiritualize things, but this was definitely a moment in my life where I felt like God was, this is the person that I created for you. And this word vocation [00:10:00] was sort of come across my conscience.
And I'm thinking, you know, I actually had to go back and look up the word vocation. I'm in college and I needed to make sure I understood what this word meant, but. It would take 14 years after that of dating Tara and being, you know, being Tara with Tara and being then getting married, uh, four years after we, you know, had dated where that clarity of vocational call came into play. She went, entered in as a private you know, she in private practice and began responding to her caseload that was filled really quickly with high capacity leaders. And that was interesting. In many cases, they were twice her age and Tara has gifts and she was using those gifts and God was using her. To connect and be a safe space for these leaders and their family systems in many cases. So again, Uber per Uber successful in their businesses or their ministry organizations, but maybe their spouse hated them and their kids didn't want anything to do with them or whatever it might be. And we began to kind of [00:11:00] just pay attention to this in these patterns and we'd begin to take in these this, we were seeing things over and over again happening.
Same story, different. Players and actors. And so, you know, eventually, I mean, Tara was in private practice working with these leaders and their systems for 16 years and had a wait list all those years earlier. In that story, we realized, she realized I need to duplicate myself, and so that's where we began to slowly and steady. Add some clinical team members that she could pour into, them to really be trauma informed. This was before that became a buzzword and became as popular as it is. We're so glad counselors are more trauma informed and using therapies like EMDR and others to really help people from a trauma lens. That's where real help is. And but Tara was one of the first therapists in Oregon to be using EMDR back in the day. And, and so she duplicating herself. We were to respond to the [00:12:00] needs. We, I joke that I, many people thought I should also be a counselor. And, you know, I, at one point did did sign up to and was, you know, gonna be in a counseling program out at a respect respectable program in the Northwest here. In the first day of class I was like, this is not for me. I didn't even show up and I I realized that there's a different path for me. I'm wired differently. I so respect the clinical team members that are that time to address trauma in a slow and systematic way. And there's much respect for those that do that with character and competency. But I'm more, I want to go into things on the fruit level in people's lives and affect more change in a quicker pace. And so the, I love working with leaders that have done a lot of trauma work, if you will, or done work to address the trauma baggage in their life and now wanna deal with more fruit, you know, level work. Maybe it does still honor and connect with the trauma in their stories that they're in working out. [00:13:00] But, uh, communication and individuals and couples and family systems or business and organizational teams that are looking to enjoy quality of work better, where we spend most of our waking hours of the day at work. So I went back and did a master's in organizational leadership so they could gain access to leaders in their workplaces and in their lives. It's kind of a backdoor into their hearts and lives. Think of the clinical side as a front door, but a lot of leaders in business and organizational spaces don't want to enter that door. we created a back door into their leaders, their lives that is much more comfortable. they hire consultants like me all the time to help with team dynamics and organizational development type spaces. And so. But I'm there to gain access to their heart and their minds and the things that, that that they're, that keep them up at night. the people issues.
James Marland: Yeah. What are some of those people issues like? The leaders have a response to trauma. I think some is like achievement and [00:14:00] like image management. Can you talk just briefly, like step into the life of a leader who's struggling with this? What is their home life like, or their business life, or their thought life?
What's going on with them?
Jeff Mattson: Right. Well, it is the, generally the people issues we found that have, that keep those leaders up at night. The people at work they the dynamics that that exist with within pressures at they're at the board level, if they're with colleagues, with personnel, depending on what level or layer that leader is there, it's the. The pressures of maintaining profits so that, you know, people have jobs and layoffs are agonizing and all of those types of things. But then, you know, again, at home, these leaders again, they may be uber successful in the workplace, but they may be really struggling interpersonally with relationships that they would say matter the most to
James Marland: Why? Why do you think they struggle with relationships when they have success? In business.
Jeff Mattson: Right. Well, sometimes leaders, and we wrote [00:15:00] about this our leadership book shrinking the integrity gap between what leaders preach and live. We wrote about 10 symptoms that all leaders are gonna
James Marland: Oh, Lisa. Good.
Jeff Mattson: 10 symptoms. And so these symptoms are what leaders are going to experience whether they're earlier in their journey as emerging leaders.
And we kind of think of emerging leaders as that leaders up into their, up into the forties, if you will, early forties just from an age standpoint. And that does, they may be, you know, having. experiences in there, but then seasoned leaders, they're thereafter tho and the seasoned leaders have sort of been there and done that.
They've been in the seat of leadership, maybe the C-suites of leadership for years in different companies or organizations, what have you. But these leaders are vulnerable. All of us leaders are vulnerable to things like escapism. I mean, if you're uber successful at work and you're getting all of the dopamine hits there for being, you know, so great. Things aren't going so well at home. If you're married and you're, you have a spouse, or you've got kids and that environment is, for whatever reason is difficult for you, you're not getting those atta boys or out [00:16:00] outta girls, you know, in the same way yet you'd be vulnerable to escapism. Right. That's
James Marland: Ah.
Jeff Mattson: right? I don't want to be there. I like this place where I'm the hero. And so then you're living in a compartmentalized way, in a divided life, and it's, that only gets worse as you continue to escape. You know? The why is everything. Maybe other symptoms that, you know, again are common that we've wrote, written about, or isolation that fits into that space. The compartmentalizing we were all taught to do in the West some way that, you know. Success is measured by doing a lot of things and all of them really well, at the
James Marland: All of them by their self, like
Jeff Mattson: of them by
James Marland: Yeah. All by yourself. Yep.
Jeff Mattson: Yeah. So James we really think that the only maybe healthy form of compartmentalizing is for emergencies.
You know, God designed our bodies that when we are to, if we were going to be experiencing some trauma, significant trauma, that we actually dissociate. puts this mechanism that allows us to sort of [00:17:00] be insulated or protected in some ways from experiencing the harm to the fullest degree. That's maybe the only form of Healthy com.
You know, compartmentalization, I think better embrace the, and live out and practice the integration of being a whole person. I mean, the facts are we bring all of who we are wherever we go, right? So learn to integrate your heart, mind, soul, body and relationships in a congruent way. That's for us the definition of integrity. The integration of this, and we waste so much energy, compartmentalizing and compartmentalizing is a an avenue where leaders will begin to live dual lives and they're different at work than they are at home. That's a problem. You know? And they may not even really be aware of it, or they embrace it because we were taught to do this in some ways, right? Being an integrated person, a person who is bringing all of who they are and wanting to have congruency in these areas, and nobody bats a thousand at this but there's a, [00:18:00] a journey. It's a, an over the arc of our lives. May we grow and. Living more congruently and shrinking our gap between what we espouse and value and how we actually live.
So that's kind of why we wrote that. There's other
James Marland: Yeah. Oh, I, yeah that's a teaser to maybe check out the link to get the, in the show notes to look for the book. 'cause those are, you know, you can definitely see either yourself or leaders you've known or you know, the failed leaders you've seen. You know, many times leaders fail in isolation.
You know, they fail.
Because they're like, they're not living with integrity, as you say. so that, that leads me to, you saw the problem, you know, you had this long wait list and you're starting to think, well, we gotta do something right? Like, we gotta do something about this. 'cause you just like one therapist or one per person can't, she couldn't meet all the needs.
So what was, um, you wrote, well, I guess you did a couple things, but describe to me the process of [00:19:00] how you're helping leaders now. What are your solutions?
Jeff Mattson: Yeah. Well, to respond to the need of leaders feeling like they need a place to process again, leaders can't really process with everybody.
James Marland: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Mattson: They need a safe and confidential space to process with someone who's not associated with their livelihood, you know, or their business or
James Marland: Yeah.
Jeff Mattson: be, or their ministry. so they need a place to be human and to be able to unpack stuff and to be able to connect to the, you know, traumas in their story. I. So what we've done is we've developed a process and we integrate this in everything that we do from the clinical side of things, and actually into the leadership executive coaching work that we do with leaders.
We have a bunch of different ways that we get our hands involved, but we have all of them have this integrated process of helping leaders understand their wir. And we use an assessment tool called the Core Values Index. It's our instrument of choice. We've training and exposure to the 15 to 20 that mainline personality based indexes out there.
[00:20:00] And, you know, 14 years ago we were introduced by another me, another mental health therapist to the CBI, the core values index. And we took a two year journey to vet this tool. we ever started integrating it into our DI disciplines of counseling for my wife and the coaching space for me and or dev work and the long story shortage is that this tool helps us.
It does the best job of seeing the fingerprint of people, which all the tools are looking for unchanging, hardwired nature. So we help people, leaders to understand. Their stories their wiring first you know, anything else that they've taken in other assessments. So many leaders have taken so many assessments.
All of the things that they really resonated with are fully validated in the CBI. From previous assessments that really hit the mark for them. And then there's, you know, course correction that the CBI takes that helps leaders again, you know, go, well that showed up here in this other assessment that really never really resonated with that.
So understanding wiring allows a leader to understand how they impact, how they can live more [00:21:00] congruently and how they're wiring, how they impact other people. How other people impact them. The ability to grow an awareness of this is so key to being a healthy leader. A safe leader. And it allows you then, and here's a big barometer for us, this is, we just say it this way, is that let's, as leaders, let's do this less.
Let's stop using others to get our needs met in unhealthy ways. Let's do less of that, right? Figure out how we can be as healthy and whole as we can be, that then will allow us to actually love or serve others without trying to use them to get our needs met in unhealthy ways. And so knowing your wiring is the first part of this and really getting attuned with this framework.
The second step thing that we do with all throughout our all of our service offerings is to help leaders understand their story. So many leaders have never really gotten in touch or reflected on their story, their whole journey from as early as they can remember in timeline exercises [00:22:00] is what we call it and do, and a all a lot of your members in your audience are doing timeline work with their clients, and then. To the very present. And then what we're doing with, as a trauma-informed guide with them is looking in their story and helping them to see the points of trauma, the origins of trauma in their stories, and perhaps then how that led them to other maladaptive coping strategies over the arc of their lives.
That's still present to this very day, you know, like achievement. Nothing wrong with achievement unless you're running from something. Then if you are, it's leaking
James Marland: Yeah.
Jeff Mattson: about how it's leaking. Yeah, go
James Marland: I, just going back to my story, 'cause that's, you know, I was running from like the comparison or the fear that I was going to be found less than because that was inside me. That was one of my key negative thoughts. You know, you're not good enough. So I always had to be achieving, always had to do more, always had to [00:23:00] be, you know, try to be the smartest one in the room, or at least somebody who knows something.
About it. And but yeah, I just operated that way probably into my forties
Jeff Mattson: That's honest. Yeah. And
James Marland: without even realizing it.
Jeff Mattson: Pretty normal. Yeah.
James Marland: Why did I go back to school and get another master's degree? I don't know. I just, I was, you know, I just felt like I had to do something. Man. That's wonderful. So they're, you're looking for.
What's some of the change just quickly here what's some of the change that happens for leaders that when they, I know you do more, but you, you got the retreats, you got the book, you got the therapy, you know, you have, uh, the team. But what are some of the change that you're look, that the leaders experience when they understand their story, they understand their values and they can process some of their trauma.
Jeff Mattson: Yeah. The really, the thing that we're looking for, and I'm, we're on the edge of our seats, James, when we're with people like this, right. You know, it's for us, it's holy [00:24:00] ground and
That we are, you know, just a part of, can we play a what a privilege to play a part with God. Active in this person's life and in their story, this is holy ground. what we're looking for is we're looking for the, to help them through this process of lightening the trauma baggage, right? that impacts everything. Heart, soul, mind, body and relationships. It's you see people feel more whole, more congruent.
You hear them say, you hear them say, I mean, here's an, here's something happened the other day. That my wife was telling me about a story. She's working with a client in a coaching capacity with this client. This client has advanced degrees and was brilliant and, is a female leader and lost her way in academia she was given an opportunity to go back and do an MDiv. that she could be a uni a universalist pastor, and something in her clicked and she, Tara's been working with her in ex in an executive coaching capacity. And without revealing too [00:25:00] much of this and staying appropriate, just simply just to articulate, something happened when this invitation to do this.
And she just had a pause and, and she just, yesterday, Tara reports to me that this this woman is said to Tara that she feels like she's. feels God calling her back to the faith of her childhood and she feels so new at it, and Tara asks her, so who are some people that you feel like you would like to look to, to help guide you in this journey of rediscovering faith, you know, in a way that you feel like you're really wanting? And she mentioned a couple people, but one of those people was she said, well, you, Tara. You know, what a privilege, what an honor to be able to help people to come back to a place of wholeness or even to remember story that means something to them that they got lost in, forgotten, and to help lighten the load of trauma.
And is as leaders begin these journeys and whatever they're in and their. Journey. Wherever that's happening for [00:26:00] them is the net result is you see health and healing and wholeness come back. You see people return to places of authenticity and there's count the accountant, their countenance changes.
They feel more joy again. They have more hope and optimism. And this isn't like soft science type stuff. This is actual real lives saying. Ah, this other stuff, old way I was wasting so much energy com compar, managing negative situations in my life and or white knuckling things and living two lives I didn't even realize I was doing it. Now I feel more whole. I can show up. I'm more present. I'm able to listen to people just. Pretend like I am or, and I'm able to help others 'cause I'm learning how to regulate my needs and get those needs met in healthy ways, makes me then more available to see the needs of others, to attune to others, to build them up. And when leaders do this, [00:27:00] everybody in their wake benefits, we say, but when leaders don't do the hard work to get their trauma baggage done, to carry in size, everybody in their wake pays. It's just a matter of time. That's what we say.
James Marland: As you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, for many years with image management at church and at work, people would say, how you doing? And I'm like, I'm fine. You know, I'm great, everything is good. But internally I'm like, Ugh, I'm struggling with my thoughts. I'm struggling with my marriage. I'm struggling with my.
Like my, like comparing myself to others. I'm struggling with money, like I'm struggling, I'm just struggling. But if you ask me like in the foyer at church, everything's fine because it's not safe to be myself
Jeff Mattson: Yeah.
James Marland: in a place where you feel like you could be judged and it has taken a lot of work, you know, and to break through that.
But like you can tell a different, like when you say the countenance, when somebody experiences. Being able to be themselves and knowing they're not okay, but that's [00:28:00] okay.
It's, there's like a light bulb that goes off in the head where the, they walk different, they talk different. Their speech is different.
They're listening more because they're not guarded. It's just a whole, it's a whole different experience.
Jeff Mattson: Yeah, you're right. Much respect, James for taking that hard journey and being on it too. I'm in the same way.
James Marland: What.
Jeff Mattson: working on, on man maintaining health. And that's what the third thing that we do at Living Whole Art is once we help people understand that their wiring and their story, and we work through that and we kind of work on addressing and kind of those trauma baggage, getting that down to carry on size, then we try to help leaders just stay healthy, right?
And to know what is healthy at
Work, in the community. And so yeah, much respect for you in that, you know, it's a process, isn't it? And we, leaders model healthy vulnerability. Healthy vulnerability. That's an important caveat there. It, it allows other people in their following, if you will, to be human too.
And, you know, and so that's what we're shooting for. We're shooting for,[00:29:00]
James Marland: Yes.
Jeff Mattson: authenticity,
James Marland: So.
Jeff Mattson: more wholeness.
James Marland: Just a quick story about that. Re about five, six years ago, our church started it's called Regeneration. It's a recovery program, sort of like Celebrate Recovery, but just difference from watermark in Texas. And they asked me to be a leader, and I'm like like for the pilot program, I'm like I don't think you know what you're asking for.
I don't I can like lead a group, but internally I'm still struggling with stuff. And, uh, that really made a change in my life. Like being able to you take inventory of what's gone on in your life, good and bad, and the sins you've committed, the sins that have been committed against you. You, you bring 'em out into the open, you talk about 'em with a, a committed group of people,
Then you start, you know, working through that, making amends, making peace.
It's not, you know, it takes a, the program takes about a year, but it doesn't end in a year. Like you're continually working on those things and what you said about the leader going through it, [00:30:00] our elders and our pastor went through that group and they talked about stuff from the pulpit about getting things right with people.
It has really made a massive change in the culture of the church. We got work to go. But the leaders it's creating a new way of being open about, the, your life and being authentic at, in every, in every area. And your work, what you talk about that I just wish that for everyone. I just wish every,
Jeff Mattson: So
James Marland: I wish, I wish every church and every organization was led by somebody who's authentic.
'cause it just, it, the thing you talked about, the wake. That way it, it really impacts
Jeff Mattson: Mm-hmm.
James Marland: everything in the organization or the body of people underneath it.
Jeff Mattson: Yeah, that's right. You know, and when leaders, you know, are, are committed to, and our favorite leaders are those that on a journey of growth and [00:31:00] commitment, and they have that humility, they
James Marland: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Mattson: grace. Okay. They
James Marland: Yeah.
Jeff Mattson: they also, that they value truth and grace, like the parallel tracks that all of us have to really walk. And that dynamic of really trying to. You know, you can't have one without the other. That is such a dynamic tension to, to walk as a human, but also as a leader. and walk that out in your day-to-day life. Right? But uh, when we have leaders that get to that space where they're hungry to continue to grow, there's a humility there that grow in their awareness of themselves.
Learn to love the limits in their lives. cannot be all things to all people. I mean, and, but they're vulnerable to that lie and believing that, and that feeds a it can feed a narcissistic tendency that all leaders are on a spectrum of, hopefully on the soft end of that spectrum, which is like, you gotta have some, you gotta believe this that you have some good ideas and that people should follow those ideas.
That would be a, if you're gonna be a leader, you probably shouldn't be a leader if you don't really have any ideas that you think people should follow. But [00:32:00] yeah, you could be vulnerable to start believing your own press there and yet lose sight and travel down the spectrum of narcissistic behavior.
And you know, there also is just James, there's. the reality is that we do have wolves and sheep's clothing that are taking leadership positions to get to use others and abuse others and getting their needs met in the most unhealthy of ways. And we gotta be a better aware of that as well. In the church, particularly and in ministry organizations, we gotta have better practices and hiring that help us to vet and discern a leader.
This candidate gone through enough of the, their work to face the themselves, if you will. And how did they do that? Learn more about what they've done to get their trauma baggage done, to carry on sites or not. We gotta grow in our awareness of this and, um. so that's such a great pursuit.
That's an area of passion for Tara and I in our organizations is to help other leaders, particularly in the church capital C and then small C and all kinds of ministry [00:33:00] organizations, to grow in being more trauma informed, have a more trauma informed theology, and to grow in wisdom as it relates to your. Putting people in positions of power and influence over others. You know, it's not that we're looking for perfection, that's totally not the ideal. We are looking for people who've done some work who are in tune with their vulnerabilities and have, and how they have those and mitigated those and in, and integrated those into their stories to become healthier leaders so that they, when are they in positions of power and influence?
They use that and steward that well
James Marland: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I know, um. Let's take a moment before we end where you, you, uh, share about where people can find you if they have more they're curious about what you offer. I know you offer cohorts, you mentioned the book with, like, those the, um, the, I don't wanna say side effects,
Jeff Mattson: Of leadership. Yeah.
James Marland: side effects, [00:34:00] symptoms of the leadership, but trauma and leadership yeah.
Can you mention those things and tell our audience where they can find you?
Jeff Mattson: Oh, you bet. Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Our primary website, living wholehearted.com, is a great space to figure out a lot of the see it where a lot of the services that we offer from our podcast uh, the book resources to the, to the leadership cohorts that you did, that you mentioned that's a, that's for us is one of our favorite works.
We got leaders from around the country that. we'll come and we get our hands on them for one or two years in in a leadership journey that we can get really slow and steady drip of helping these leaders understand their wiring, their story, and to process health and to really address areas that all leaders are gonna be, navigating and managing and want to grow in things like time management, learning to live within your limits. What are your priorities and re integrating the best practices from spiritual formation, trauma informed mental health relational wisdom. So our information about our leadership cohorts are [00:35:00] there on the site. See. If people want to connect with me directly, they can. Also my bio and my emails on that site as well. just book Shrinking the Integrity Gap. Yeah. We wrote that to help leaders address the symptoms of leadership and then also the antidotes, like what we can do to help address these vulnerabilities that we as leaders are gonna have, whether you're earlier in your leadership journey and boy. We want that, we'd love that
James Marland: Catch it early. Yeah.
Jeff Mattson: right? Or you're a seasoned leader that's been there and done this and just can relate to so many of these dynamics, but needs a refresh, needs some to continue to grow in health and to get that trauma baggage down to carry on size.
We've got a great clinical team that does this and also the coaches, executive coaches that, are available to help leaders in that. In that space we are, we've tried to be a trusted resource for leaders everywhere to come and process and do that work and to get the help that they need.
Healthy leaders get help, healthy people get help.
James Marland: Yeah. [00:36:00] Wonderful. And thanks for providing that ministry and service. It's such, such a need for leaders to kind of address it and I know there's leaders out there going, I gotta deal with this, but, you know, where's a good place to do with it? How can I talk about it? You know, how do I Get what's outta my head and my heart like out there and talk about it in a safe place. Thanks for providing that resource for people.
Jeff Mattson: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you, James again for noticing that and the opportunity to speak about it.
James Marland: All right. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for being on the show. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I love the ministry and the work that you're doing and the heart you have for leaders and the congregations and, and the organizations.
Jeff Mattson: Thank you, James.
James Marland: Friends you've heard a lot here leaders have an exposure to trauma and you, you have, you want to reduce it to that carry-on baggage the, the carry-on baggage.
So maybe it's a little, it's time to do some work on that [00:37:00] and uh, before you put your mission in motion, so. Hey, thanks for listening to the show, and we'll see you next time.
Wow, what a powerful episode with Jeff and living wholehearted, uh, ministry and coaching service for leaders. The the last message was, uh, healthy leaders get help. People who help others have gotten help themselves and they are dealing with the trauma that they have experienced in their life.
If you're a leader that needs support and you're walking through some trauma and you don't know where to go to visit the website, you can find those links in the show notes. I wanna thank you, the listeners for listening to the show, sharing the show, uh, liking and reviewing it. Without the support of our listeners, this show would not be possible. I also want to thank the pro level [00:38:00] sponsors of the Scaling Therapist Services directory. right now there's one pro-level sponsor that's profit comes first.
And if you wanna become a pro-level sponsor and have your name read at the evident of the episode, just go to scaling therapist services.com and click get listed today.
I wanna remind you that your calling and your mission should not be in a desk drawer. It should be out there living and breathing and growing and impacting people. So maybe today is the day that you get your trauma, trauma issues, and your trauma baggage dealt with. So you can start helping people and putting your mission in motion.
We'll see you next time.
