What If Your Greatest Struggles Are Your Greatest Leadership Training?
The framework that transforms your hardest moments into your greatest leadership strengths, and how you can apply it to whatever you're carrying
Part Four: Series on Self-Leadership
"Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise."
What Happened: The Weight of Invisible Wounds
Here's what I discovered about transforming trauma and setbacks into leadership strength that no military training or business school ever taught me: The very experiences that nearly broke me became the foundation for my most meaningful leadership. For instance, the times I struggled with a difficult decision at work or when I faced a health crisis were the moments that shaped my leadership the most.
For years after my combat deployments, I carried wounds that weren't visible on any medical chart. Between leading Soldiers in combat, surviving cancer, and enduring multiple surgeries, I thought I was handling everything well. I was still performing, still leading, and still achieving. But underneath the surface, something was accumulating.
After returning from my second deployment to Iraq, I experienced significant anger issues, irritability, rage, and loss of focus. Initially, I sought help for what I believed were physical ailments (I thought I had mononucleosis), but I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and prescribed antidepressant medications. For the next ten years, I continued to function as a senior leader in the Army while struggling with my mental health.
In 2020, after many years of seeing different psychiatrists and therapists and receiving various diagnoses, including ADHD, OCD, depression, and anxiety, I was finally diagnosed with complex PTSD. I came to understand that my PTSD began not with my combat experiences but during my adolescence, surviving cancer and other traumas pre- and post-military.
The hardest part wasn't the diagnosis itself; it was realizing that everything I thought I knew about handling adversity was incomplete.
What Went Wrong: The Thinking Trap
I had spent my entire career believing that mental toughness meant thinking my way through challenges. Analyze the problem. Develop a solution. Execute with discipline. This approach had served me well in military operations, but it was failing catastrophically when applied to emotional and psychological wounds.
The mistake I was making, and that I see many leaders make, is treating inner conflict like a tactical problem that can be solved through willpower and analysis. I was trying to think my way out of trauma, strategize my way past grief, and mentally overcome what required emotional processing.
For years, I told myself, "I should be stronger than this." "Other people have it worse." "I just need to push through." I was applying external leadership skills to internal challenges, and it wasn't working. If anything, it was making things worse.
The turning point came when I stopped trying to defeat my struggles and started learning to work with them. I discovered there's a difference between suffering and productive struggle, and that difference changed everything about how I approach both leadership and life.
The Key Insight: Productive vs. Unproductive Struggle
Through my journey with the Warrior PATHH program and eventually becoming a PATHH Guide myself, I learned that struggle isn't something to eliminate; it's something to navigate skillfully. There's a profound difference between productive struggle and unproductive suffering.
Unproductive struggle tries to fight, avoid, or think its way out of difficulty. It's characterized by:
Resistance to the reality of what you're experiencing
Attempting to use logic to solve emotional challenges
Isolation and the belief that you should handle everything alone
Shame about having struggles in the first place
Seeing setbacks as evidence of weakness or failure
Productive struggle accepts difficulty as part of growth and learns to work with it constructively. It's characterized by:
Acknowledgment of what you're experiencing
Using appropriate tools for emotional and psychological challenges
Seeking support and connection with others who understand
Viewing struggles as information and an opportunity for growth
Understanding that strength includes the capacity to be vulnerable
The breakthrough insight: My greatest struggles weren't obstacles to overcome; they were curricula to master. Each setback, each moment of trauma, and each period of confusion contained lessons about resilience, empathy, and authentic leadership that no classroom or field training exercise could teach.
When I shifted from fighting my struggles to learning from them, everything changed. The same experiences that had been sources of shame became sources of strength. The vulnerabilities I'd tried to hide became the foundation for deeper connections with others.
Universal Application: The Productive Struggle Framework
Every leader carries something. Whether it's personal trauma, professional setbacks, health challenges, relationship struggles, or the weight of difficult decisions, struggle is not the exception in leadership; it's the rule. You're not alone in this. The question isn't whether you'll face inner conflict but whether you'll struggle productively or unproductively.
Here's the framework I've learned for turning your most challenging moments into your greatest leadership strengths. It's a five-step process that involves acknowledging your struggles, processing them, connecting with others, integrating your experiences into your leadership, and guiding others through similar struggles.
Step 1: Acknowledge Rather Than Avoid
Instead of pretending your struggles don't exist or minimizing their impact, name them honestly. You can't process what you won't acknowledge. This isn't about dwelling or becoming a victim; it's about accepting reality so you can work with it effectively.
Practice: Write down what you're carrying. Not what you think you should be able to handle, but what's affecting you. When I started journaling, it opened the bottleneck in my head where thoughts were just stuck, bumping into each other.
Step 2: Process Rather Than Push Through
Emotional and psychological challenges require different practices than tactical problems. This may involve therapy, coaching, support groups, or practices such as journaling and meditation. The key is using methods designed for internal work, not just applying external leadership skills. As we like to say at Warrior PATHH, do not “weaponize” your wellness practices.
Practice: Identify one appropriate tool for processing your specific struggle and commit to using it consistently for 30 days.
Step 3: Connect Rather Than Isolate
You can find others who understand your specific type of struggle. This isn't about general networking, it's about connecting with people who have walked similar paths and can offer both understanding and practical wisdom. Isolation was a safe space for me, but I had to learn to overcome my fear and shame.
Practice: Identify one person or group who has navigated something similar to what you're facing and initiate a conversation. Less is more.
Step 4: Integrate Rather Than Compartmentalize
Instead of trying to keep your struggles separate from your leadership, explore how your experiences can inform and strengthen your ability to lead others. Your wounds, properly processed, become sources of wisdom and connection.
Practice: Reflect on how your struggles have provided you with valuable insights that make you a more effective leader. How can you use these insights to serve others better? It is about filling the “right” cup.
Step 5: Guide Rather Than Hide
Once you've done the work of productive struggle, you've something unique to offer others who face similar challenges. Your experience becomes a resource for healing and growth in others.
Practice: Look for opportunities to share your insights and support others who are earlier in their journey. This is why I became a Substacker. The forum just felt right for me. Check out my article on LinkedIn below.
The leaders who have the most significant positive impact aren't those who have avoided struggle; they're those who have learned to struggle productively and can help others do the same. They understand that their greatest leadership strength often emerges from their most significant leadership challenge.
Your struggles aren't disqualifications from leadership, they're qualifications for a deeper, more authentic form of it. The question isn't whether you have struggles but whether you're willing to let them teach you.
What struggle are you currently trying to think your way through that might require a different approach? How might your most challenging moments be preparing you for your most meaningful leadership?
Next, we'll explore Part Five of this series: "Who's Really in Your Corner When Leadership Gets Hard?" I'll share how to identify and cultivate the relationships that support authentic leadership growth.