You have found ways to make your wound productive. You turned the thing that broke you into the engine that drives you — and somewhere along the way, you started calling that a superpower. You are high-functioning and deeply exhausted, achieving without arriving, performing your way through life while something underneath quietly starves. Patrick Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group and the author behind some of the most influential business books of the last twenty years, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. But this conversation goes somewhere his work rarely takes him. Patrick opens up about his own diagnosis with OCD — the fear-driven, control-seeking, maniacal cycle of obsession and compulsion — and the childhood wounds that fed it for decades before anyone named what was happening.
He and Christopher go deep on the real definition of OCD, its subtypes, including scrupulosity, and the specific way anxiety disorders attach themselves to the things of God and masquerade as faith. They also walk through what the dark night of the soul actually strips from a person — and why that stripping is not punishment but surgery. And Patrick makes the case for something the culture cannot stomach: that refusing to speak truth to someone you love is not kindness. It is cruelty wearing a gentler name.
If you have been performing your faith without living it, checking instead of trusting, arranging your world in exchange for a sense of safety that never quite holds, this conversation is going to name something you have been carrying for a long time. Patrick is not talking from a safe distance. He is still at work. So is Christopher. And what they both know now is that the wound does not become anything worth having until surrender has gone all the way down. That kind of surrender is not passive. It is the hardest thing a person ever does. This conversation will ask you to begin it.
Guest Bio
Patrick Lencioni is the founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to helping leaders build healthy organizations, and the author of 10 books on leadership and teamwork, with over 3 million copies sold worldwide. His best-known work, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, has become one of the most widely used business texts in the world, applied by organizations ranging from the Fortune 500 to the military to the local church. He lives and works out of the Franklin, Tennessee area.
Subscribe to the Podcast
Connect with Patrick Lencioni
Website | Instagram | Marriage Webinar
Resources Mentioned This Week
- Wondering why your spouse acts that way? Join Pat this June for a webinar around Working Genius and how it can transform your marriage.
- Healing What You Can’t Erase: Transform Your Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health from the Inside Out
Show Partner
SafeSleeve designs a phone case that blocks up to 99% of harmful EMF radiation—so I’m not carrying that kind of exposure next to my body all day. It’s sleek, durable, and most importantly, lab-tested by third parties. The results aren’t hidden—they’re published right on their site. And that matters because many so-called EMF blockers on the market either don’t work or can’t prove they do. We protect our hearts and minds—why wouldn’t we protect our bodies too? Head to safesleevecases.com and use the code WINTODAY10 for 10% off your order.
Review the Podcast
Click here to read the ratings, or even better, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Your rating will help the podcast get noticed and positioned on Apple Podcasts.