Books by Penny Joy

I remember being in elementary school when the teacher would ask for leaders. I was always the first to raise my hand. "Me, teacher, me, me, me," I'd yell out, my hand flying in the air like a wayward kite in the wind. Back then, I just wanted to be first in line. I wanted to lead the other kids around the playground, decide the game, set the pace, be the one everyone followed.

Fast forward 45 years, and I've come to understand that leadership is not about being first at all. It's definitely not about leading people around by the coattails just to get them to follow you.

Abiding Leadership was not born out of my successes. It was born out of countless mistakes, oversights, and lessons learned the hard way across a career that ranged from nonprofit ministry to corporate work, government, and several entrepreneurial ventures. For years, I thought leadership was something I did at work. A title. A set of skills. A performance I gave when other people were watching.

It wasn't until later in life that I realized leadership wasn't something I did at work. It was who I was during all the rest of the hours of the day too, in my marriage, my friendships, my own private thoughts about myself. It was a lack of personal leadership, a failure to show up honestly for my own life, that quietly shaped what kind of leader I could ever become in the workplace or in ministry.

So when it comes to leadership school, I suppose you could say I graduated with a Ph.D. from the school of hard knocks. It was a schooling of losses, pain, and a series of health crises that finally made me stop, face the mirror, and take a hard look at who I had become, where I had been, and what needed to change. I could not keep leading from the outside in. Something had to break first. And it did. Me. All of me.

That is why this is not your typical leadership book. You will not find a list of tips, tools, and tactics here, no five-step systems promising maximum efficiency. This book unveils the human heart in all its fragility: limiting beliefs, fears, inadequacies, and trauma-rooted behaviors that keep a leader hidden, performing in the light while quietly living in the shadows. I have learned that only God, and a willingness to take a hard look in the mirror, can transform leadership at the heart level. Strategy can sharpen a leader's skill. Only healing can change a leader's heart.

As I did my own work and came to terms with my own inadequacy and insecurity, I discovered that God, in His infinite wisdom, had already given us the answer to leadership's deepest struggles, not at the level of strategy, but at the level of the heart.

This book is the raw testimony of a wounded leader on the path to healing the very issues that kept showing up in my relationships and in my work. Out of that healing journey, the Abide Framework was revealed through Scripture, principles that transform a wounded leader into a healing one. Abiding Leadership reveals that the true heart of leadership is found in the abiding presence of God. In His presence, He beckons us closer, gently exposing the hidden parts of us that keep us from the abundant life found in loving and leading both ourselves and others well.

In Abiding Leadership, Penny Joy challenges leaders to look beyond strategy, performance, and productivity to examine the condition of the heart. Written for business leaders, pastors, ministry leaders, and high-capacity achievers, this book addresses the hidden disconnect between outward success and inward alignment with God. Through the ABIDE Framework, readers will discover what it means to lead from a place of rootedness in Christ instead of striving, proving, or burnout.