5 Planning Mistakes That Kept Me Stuck—for Years
The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast
Pete Scazzero
4.8 • 698 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As leaders, we want to make wise, Spirit-led decisions that move our ministries forward. But without realizing it, we often fall into patterns of planning that keep us stuck—repeating the same mistakes year after year.
In this episode, Pete Scazzero gets painfully honest about the five planning mistakes that hindered him for years—and how these missteps continue to trap leaders today:
- Insufficiently preparing
- Flippantly defining success
- Ignoring the most important work—listening to Jesus together
- Skimming on development
- Failing to anchor vision in calendars, limits, and next steps
Pete shares the lessons he's learned the hard way through decades of leadership in the local church and Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. With clarity, candor, and practical wisdom, he offers a better way forward—one that's rooted in prayerful discernment, emotional maturity, and thoughtful preparation.
If you're tired of spinning your wheels and ready to do the deeper work of strategic planning in God's way, this episode is for you.
Listen now and take your next step toward leading with greater clarity, peace, and purpose.
▶️ Download the Free Emotionally Healthy Leader Discussion Guide - https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/leader
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, my name is Pete Scazzarro. Welcome to the emotionally healthy leader podcast. Our theme today is five |
| 0:13.8 | planning mistakes that kept me stuck for years. Five planning mistakes that kept me stuck for years. Now, scripture is really clear, |
| 0:25.7 | especially in the book of Proverbs, how the plans of the diligent surely lead to abundance and the |
| 0:33.6 | value of planning, how, you know, we plan, the Lord establishes our steps. But I love this idea of abundance that comes out of planning. And of planning, how we plan, the Lord establishes our steps. |
| 0:38.1 | But I love this idea of abundance that comes out of planning. |
| 0:41.4 | And of course, it's all about listening to the Father. |
| 0:43.6 | Jesus listened to the Father, John 519. |
| 0:46.9 | In Acts chapter 13, we see them discerning the will of God as they send off Paul and Barnabas. |
| 0:52.3 | And actually in the book of Acts, we see this great Jerusalem council as well as they discern do some planning around how to go forward with |
| 0:59.4 | the Jew-Gentile mission. So I'm referring here when I talk about planning specifically to |
| 1:05.9 | larger strategic planning for you and your teen. Now, again, this can apply to you whether you're, |
| 1:13.6 | you know, lead pastor, a associate pastor, you're a director of a ministry or a team. Maybe it's |
| 1:19.2 | even your business. If you're in the marketplace, it actually could be you're leading your family |
| 1:23.4 | as well. All this planning material applies on all levels. But I'm thinking in particular |
| 1:29.6 | of not your daily check-ins. Patrick Lansoni in his book The Advantage talks about |
| 1:35.0 | for essential meetings that take place and healthy teams. And of course there's those daily check-ins |
| 1:40.3 | that you're doing, you know, five, ten minutes, coordinating what's going on. And then there's a weekly, probably some kind of tactical meeting, you know, 45 minutes to an hour to two |
| 1:48.0 | hours, kind of short-term execution of what you're working on. And then probably every month, |
| 1:53.1 | there's maybe up to a two-hour meeting that's kind of a, it's a focus on some major obstacles |
| 1:58.9 | that needs more than that weekly meeting where you're kind of |
| 2:01.9 | checking in and, but it's not just updates, but you're maybe taking a topic and dealing with a |
| 2:07.8 | larger topic for maybe even a two-hour period. But I'm in particular referring to the yearly, |
... |
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