There’s a phrase leaders repeat like it’s a law of nature: it’s lonely at the top. I said it myself for years. I don’t anymore.
The loneliness is real, but it isn’t required. It comes from a specific math problem: the higher you go, the more every conversation carries consequences. Tell your board your doubts and they hear risk. Tell your team and they hear instability. So you learn to manage the reaction instead of saying the true thing. That’s the loneliness. Not the altitude, the performance.
What changed it for me was having one room with no consequences. A place to think out loud, say the ugly version first, and find out what I actually believed before I had to present it. Sometimes that room is a coach. Sometimes it’s a peer who’s held the same seat. The title matters less than the rule: nothing said here needs to be managed.
That’s what I try to be for the leaders I coach now. Not an advisor with answers. A room where the thinking can be unfinished.
If you’re carrying something you haven’t said out loud to anyone, that’s not a character flaw. It’s a missing structure. Build the room.