Soul Weary: When the Work You Love Starts Draining You | Margaret Benefiel, Ph.D & Margie Buchanan-Smith

What happens when work rooted in service slowly disconnects you from the very values that called you to it?

For leaders working inside humanitarian crises, nonprofits, healthcare, education, business, and other demanding systems, exhaustion can become more than physical. Margie Buchanan-Smith calls it “soul weary,” the feeling of dragging yourself from one demand to the next while losing contact with purpose.

Amy, Margie, and Dr. Margaret Benefiel, explore what it takes to stay human when need is immense, resources are shrinking, and systems increasingly reward compliance, metrics, and upward accountability. Margie brings the reality of decades in humanitarian leadership. Margaret brings a spiritual lens to organizational life, asking how leaders can draw on inner resources when systemic dysfunction cannot simply be worked around.

Replenishment emerges not as escape from responsibility, but as part of how responsibility is sustained. So do values alignment, contemplative practice, community, and the willingness to take thoughtful risks.

The work does not become less urgent when a leader pauses. Sometimes the pause restores the ability to see clearly. A breath, five quiet minutes, or an honest question about whose rules we are following can reconnect leadership with the people, purpose, and inner knowing that made the work matter in the first place.

Moments That Create Momentum:

When Compliance Pulls Leaders Away From Purpose – Explore how an intense focus on reporting, accountability, and organizational requirements can disconnect leaders from the people they serve and the values that brought them to the work.What It Means to Become Soul Weary – Understand how sustained pressure in purpose-driven work can slowly deplete a leader’s inner resources, and why burnout can become a signal that something deeper needs attention.Leading From the Inside Out – Discover why creating even a few minutes of space for reflection can help leaders reconnect with their values, balance soul and ego, and respond from a more grounded place.When Success Measures Lose the Human Being – See how an overreliance on metrics, bureaucracy, and traditional definitions of success can obscure the well-being of both leaders and the people their organizations exist to serve.The Difference Between Thoughtful Risk and Recklessness – Hear why trying to eliminate uncertainty can keep leaders trapped in old ways of working, while carefully judged risks create space for new possibilities to emerge.

Learn about The Soul of Leadership experience here: https://www.executivesoul.com/soulofleadership.html

About the Guests:

Margaret Benefiel, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Executive Soul, directs the Soul of Leadership program, which has been offered on four continents over the past 14 years. Over 3,000 executives, managers, and other leaders have participated in her seminars and programs. She has served as Chair of the Academy of Management's Management, Spirituality, and Religion Group, and is currently Vice President of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality. She served as Executive Director of the Shalem Institute for over 10 years, has served as Co-chair of the Christian Spirituality Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion, and has held various leadership roles in Spiritual Directors International. Author of Soul at Work, The Soul of a Leader, and Crisis Leadership, and co-editor of The Soul of Supervision, The Soul of Higher Education, Soul Food, and Hidden in Plain Sight, Dr. Benefiel has also written for The Leadership Quarterly, Management Communication Quarterly, Managerial Finance, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Organization, Personal Excellence, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, America, Presence, The Way, Studies in Spirituality, Radical Grace, and Faith at Work. She lives with her husband in Greenbelt, MD. and enjoys hiking, cycling, reading novels, and scuba diving in her free time.

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