Lonely At The Top: 4 Key Strategies to Transform Executive Loneliness Into Connection
Loneliness is different from depression, being alone, or feelings of solitude. It has more to do with the quality of our social relationships rather than their quantity.
One of the few studies focusing on the workplace, "Work Loneliness and Employee Performance", finds that loneliness undermines individual performance, team performance, and a sense of connection between employees and their organisation. What's more, lonely people tend to act in a way that increases their own loneliness, as they become progressively more reluctant to initiate social interaction and sensitive to the responses of others, expecting a potential threat or rejection from the surrounding environment.
What is it like for leaders?
Leaders often perceive loneliness as a natural cost that comes with power, responsibility and the scope of the job. As the old saying says ''it is lonely at the top, but the view is terrific''.
Now, is it really?
There is the price of being excluded from birthdays and other social gatherings, as your previous-peers and now-reportees, might not feel comfortable with having their boss around as they let their hair down. This can be the case both if you have been recently appointed to your position, and if you have held your post for a while and there is a notable experience/ age gap between you and your team.
What follows is lack of opportunity to connect with the team on a more personal level and find out their real pains, challenges and aspirations.
Or to appropriately share your own, for that matter.
Then there is the cost of information isolation, as your junior colleagues might avoid sharing with you negative feedback or information on what's not working well, for the fear of backlash and being held responsible for the situation at hand.
As leaders, we continually risk placing ourselves in the ''echo chamber'' of our own ideas. Every time our own opinions are regurgitated back to us they reinforce our blind-spots, causing us to make decisions in isolation from genuine input from relevant stakeholders, and thus often leading to otherwise avoidable strategic mistakes.
Let's not forget about the burden of decision-making loneliness, with choices regarding conflict management, stakeholder overload and sustainable expansion, which top leaders often face alone. Yes, there is the board, and a collective decision-making process which may be more or less prevalent in your organisation depending on its culture and structure, but somehow you can't shake off that persistent feeling that the buck stops with you. This is often magnified by issue complexity making it near impossible to confide in, and feel understood by, a family member or a close friend unfamiliar with the sheer scale of your role.
Finally, the dearest cost is simply to yourself. Your sense of purpose and of connectedness, to the people within and beyond the organisation, are at stake in the long-term. When we are lonely, we become prone to view polarisation but also, more prone to losing our why and burning out in our tunnel vision.
So, what can you do?
4 Top Strategies to Transform Loneliness Into Connection
1. Prioritise self-awareness.
Understand your behaviour and triggers. Ask yourself on regular basis:
Am I lonely?
Does my current state promote energy or depletion?
Time alone to focus is precious and necessary. But do I create enough time to be approachable and to approach others? How can I improve this and make it a regular occurrence?
2. Invite others to challenge your thinking
Create opportunities for unfiltered feedback from a variety of stakeholders across the organisation. Make sure they feel safe in offering honest opinions and will not be penalised or ostracised, by you or others, for their views. Invite feedback by questions such as:
What else am I missing?
Is there anything in our approach that doesn't make sense?
What would you change?
3. Strengthen your external support network by a coach and professional peer group
First, it is incredibly empowering to share your fears and challenges with someone trusted who is impartial but supports you and understands your struggles. As a coach, I often find myself in the role of a solo advisory board, acting both as a mirror and a catalyst for leaders to face their fears and implement more authentic solutions. The sole process of vocalising the experience of executive isolation can be liberating. Coaching can be a transformative experience allowing you shift your perspective, remove those blind spots and adopt effective strategies to bring you closer to yourself and your peers.
Secondly, the importance of a trusted peer-group is not to be underestimated. When I worked in executive education in C-suite leadership development programmes, one thing that participants raved about time and time again, was the opportunity for them to share their struggles with other executives. It turned out that the challenges they faced, loneliness crowning among them, was common across all markets and industries. Whether it's your MBA cohort or your local members club, make sure to reach out and be honest in sharing your challenges, thus paving way for others to do the same.
4. Become the centre of connections for others
Rather than allowing your leadership role to justify your loneliness, become the centre of connections for others, uplifting talent and creating opportunities.
Make cultivating connection your core leadership mission, and you will no longer feel distant from your team, but supported by, and at the very centre of, your broad network.
Human connection lies at the very centre of heart-centred leadership and it falls to the leaders to dare shift the existing paradigm and emerge from their loneliness, using all the tools and support mechanisms at their disposal.
Warm wishes,
Natalia Mank
Leadership Coach
Published by Natalia Mank, Rise To Success Newsletter, on the 14th of June, 2022