Leadership is Lonely
An Embarrassment of Riches
As a senior leader, you're surrounded by people (virtually or in person). You like your team, you respect and appreciate your peers, your CEO is demanding but fair. Your calendar is productively full with 1:1s, cross functional meetings, staff meetings, phone calls, client meetings. You look at your calendar and remind yourself once more to block some thinking time - a moment or two in the week to sort your thoughts. You think your problem is too many interactions in a day, not too few….and yet the loneliness persists.
I can relate. In the C-suite, I was interacting with people all day, every day. I built a team I adored and was proud of. I made it my mission to forge personable, trusted relationships with my peers. And I had a full satisfying home life with great friends, a supportive and loving partner, and a happy thriving family. I had reached the pinnacle of my corporate career and was exhilarated by the intensity of responsibility that I was leaning into. I was happy, energized, focused and grateful for meaningful work.
But over time a new dynamic appeared that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. And one day I realized that despite the fact that I was interacting all day with people, I was just plain lonely.
It’s a dynamic that most senior executives wrestle with at some point in their careers. And it’s not a small issue. Loneliness at work has been proven to have detrimental effects on performance, commitment and authenticity.
Why the Long Face?
Successful leaders understand the impact their choices have on the people around them. This means we spend a lot of time thinking about how senior management decisions will affect the individuals in our organizations. This lens creates a necessary professional distance. We have insights into the ‘sausage making’ that would be unsettling to those not in control. While we strive to provide context, there are many filters we need to employ to maintain trust in the ecosystem of leadership. We keep confidences while tough decisions are being made about mergers, acquisitions, restructuring, cost-cutting, personnel changes. And sometimes we have to harness our human impulses to complain about decisions we don't necessarily agree with. Our peers can be a sounding board, but they're focused on a very different set of functional responsibilities and busy leading their teams with their own objectives and sets of challenges.
Naturally we also believe that in our elevated position of authority, everyone is looking to us for the answers. But let's face it - we don't always have the answers. There are market dynamics, board sensitivities, leadership changes, and calculated bets that are waiting to pan out - or not, that change the "answers" every day. There are only so many "I don't knows" we feel we can offer before we lose our credibility.
But no matter how big your book of business is or how many people you manage, you're still a human being---fallible and managing the same uncertainty and confidence-threatening internal doubts as everyone else in the world. The thing is, as you rise in your career, it seems there are fewer places to share those doubts.
The Cost of Sucking it Up
In Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. Among the many findings in the sweeping 80+ page report is that lack of social connection is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and that detrimental social factors (including loneliness) were associated with a 29% increase in the risk of heart disease and a 32% increase in the risk of stroke.
I’m not suggesting that senior leaders in thriving organizations are necessarily at the high end of risk factors where social isolation is concerned. But as the report itself describes, loneliness is: “a subjective distressing experience that results from perceived (emphasis mine) isolation or inadequate meaningful connections, where inadequate refers to the discrepancy or unmet need between an individual’s preferred and actual experience.” That is to say - loneliness felt is loneliness… period.
It’s not just personal satisfaction that suffers when we’re lonely; business suffers too. In addition to the Surgeon General’s correlative findings that: Supportive and inclusive relationships at work are associated with employee job satisfaction, creativity, competence, and better job performance, this study out of Wharton finds a causal relationship. Loneliness at work leads to decreases in performance, commitment and authenticity.
Obviously none of this is good news for an organization with lonely senior leaders.
What’s the Remedy?
There are so many facets to this issue, but here are three simple concepts to embrace to help you feel less alone in your leadership.
Cultivate relationships with your peers. Having trusted, candid partnerships with your peer group is a game changer. Camaraderie and understanding goes a long way to lubricating the dry joints in an organization, and fostering a sense of belonging and shared experience.
Model inclusion and curiosity in decision making. Rather than having definitive answers all the time, include your team in getting to the right solution. This has the obvious benefit of injecting creativity and diversity of thought into your team strategies. But demonstrating vulnerability in a well phrased, “I’m not sure yet, let’s work on it together.” has the added benefit of creating trust and common purpose.
Find a safe space to wrestle with your "I don't knows." A trusted mentor, advisor or coach can provide a safe space to drop the veneer of constructed confidence and optimism for a moment, and simply – BE. When we have a grounded, practical champion in our corner, they can help us see our blind spots, remind us of our gifts, and help us think differently about the possibilities and challenges we're wrestling with every day. When we feel truly understood, we are less alone.