What to do if it's lonely at the top
As an executive coach, one of the things I have heard many times from leaders is their common experience of loneliness. Despite being surrounded by an army of directors, assistants, and advisers, it just feels lonely at the top sometimes. It’s not a sign of weakness – it’s just a fact of the job.
After all, leadership brings with it a whole range of challenges, including accountability for performance, hitting ambitious targets, ensuring safe workplaces, developing staff, steering the organisation through crises, not to mention guiding strategy whilst dodging constant obstacles and competitive threats. With pressure bearing down on a leader from their board, their staff, and their customers, as well as the weight of the leader’s own expectations, it can be an incredibly lonely experience.
Feeling lonely despite being surrounded by others
People relate to you differently when you're the leader. If you've been promoted from within the organisation, the days of peer camaraderie can quickly evaporate, as colleagues increase their distance.
Staff can be anxious to receive the praise, encouragement and approval of their leader – and it can create an echo chamber in which the leader hears only what others think they want.
Mindful of confidentialities, leaders must also be sensitive with information they share with their direct reports and the wider organisation. Constant diplomacy can leave no opportunity for frustrated leaders to vent, and little space for real conversations with people who will challenge, interrogate and examine alternative ideas with the leader.
The loneliness of a new leader
Being suddenly thrust into a leadership role can generate mixed emotional reactions – pride and excitement, but also anxiety and loneliness. First time CEOs may feel disconnected from their team despite their newfound authority. If others start to perceive you as aloof, it can of course hinder your reputation, impact and effectiveness as a new leader.
So what's a leader to do when it feels lonely at the top? Here's a few thoughts on what might help.
Find an executive coach
There are multiple benefits in having an executive coach. Executive coaches provide an important sounding board – a second opinion to help test ideas, examine alternatives and explore solutions in a safe environment.
By bringing a fresh and independent perspective, executive coaches can help you generate self-insights and a-ha moments that aren’t possible when you're buried in the detail of your own work. Those insights can help an executive understand how to lift their performance and drive even greater success.
(If you would find an executive coach helpful for your own development – perhaps check out our executive coaching program here).
Connect with other leaders
Being part of a mastermind group – a peer-to-peer mentoring group – can enable helpful informal and authentic conversations with other people who are going through similar experiences.
Meeting regularly, these groups provide insight into contemporary leadership challenges, but also become a network of support and advice that help leaders stay on top of trends and test their thinking in safe ways with other people who are facing similar day-to-day business challenges.
We’ve known for some time that scientific research has demonstrated the benefit of peer support in the medical sphere – people with illnesses helping others with similar illnesses – but it clearly also has a place in the business world. That feeling of connection with other leaders can provide a welcome boost in confidence, self-esteem and wellbeing.
Connect with your people
The old piece of management advice to simply walk the floor has a ring of truth to it. Management by walking around is just that – getting out of your office, speaking to your staff, listening to your customers, and getting advice from beyond the boardroom.
As a leader, it’s necessary to actively solicit alternative points of view. Even though your suppliers, customers and team members will not have the depth of perspective that you have, or indeed the power to act, they will help you feel more connected to the lived experience of those who interact with and rely on your organisation.
It’s about being out of the bubble and in the mainstream. If you don’t have a system to get cold hard facts, you risk being cocooned in an insular, isolated executive suite without the insights you need to do your job adequately.
The added benefit of this technique is the example you set to other leaders in your organisation – being a champion of connection helps to set a tone of people listening, respecting, and trusting the views of each other and is a brilliant tonic for organisational culture.
Self care
This one is not rocket science. One of the best things we can do for our own resilience is to ensure we're making time for ourselves. This is not easy for executives whose ego, sense of self-worth, and professional reputation revolves around making great personal sacrifices of time to ensure the success of their organisation.
When working extraordinary hours, it can be difficult to carve out personal time, but making space for a morning jog, an evening swim, a lunchtime walk, or even ten minutes of quiet meditation time, can be extremely beneficial. It improves the ability to sleep, it enables clear thinking, and it helps in stress release.
Pursuing those activities with others – a cycling group, a tennis partner, or a golf buddy – can help even more because it actively addresses the feeling of loneliness and disconnection. Actively looking for those opportunities to connect with others is the critical point here.
At the heart of these observations is an encouragement for leaders to be honest about the anxieties that come with positions of authority. Few people know how truly isolating and taxing leadership can be. For most humans, acknowledging our own imperfections and vulnerabilities is hard – particularly so for those leaders who feel the need to maintain an unflappable and confident exterior at all times.
Ultimately loneliness is a sign that we need more connection – if you’re feeling it as a leader, it’s time to act on it.
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