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I’ve been a CEO for a long time, and most people say good things about working for me. Well, at least when they talk to me. There are some people that have nothing good to say about me and according to a few, I’m to be avoided at all costs. Depending on who you ask, you would get a very different answer about me and what it’s like to work for me.
This doesn’t bother me, it’s the natural result of being a leader and making hard decisions. In some cases my detractors disagreed with a decision I made, and in some cases they projected their problems onto me. In some cases they needed someone to take the blame for their failures, and your CEO is an easy person to blame. In some cases I made a mistake, and they can’t see past it. In all cases I can’t control how they see me.
While it might not bother me now, it once did. When you first move into leadership, you are moving from being a peer to being in charge. The relationship you have with your team is very different as you are no longer their peer, and you can’t really be their friend. You might, of course, have to fire them. As a result, all relationships with your team have tension.
That first leadership experience is hard, because you want to have the same, friendly relationship with your team that you once had. You want to be friends with everyone and have them feel at ease around you. But they won’t because you’re in charge. If you’re the CEO, they might never even act like themselves around you.
Even later in your career, after the urge to be a peer subsides, it stings when you realize you can’t have the same relationship with your team that they have with each other. It’s like you are watching the company work from the other side of a glass wall, you see everything happening but you are detached in a way. We all want to belong, but once you are in charge you don’t really belong anymore.
There is also a strange detachment in the work you do. Your team is focused on today, and the tasks that lay in front of them. As a leader, you’re focused on the future and the problems you might encounter. You and your team might work at the same company, but they work at the company as it is and you work at the company that might be. Many days, it can feel like you work at two different companies.
So, what can you do? Are leaders cursed with being lonely in their jobs? No!
Here are some things I have done that help ensure I don’t feel alone:
Join a leadership peer group. As a CEO, I was always in a peer group with other CEOs of companies roughly the same size and stage. While we couldn’t solve each other’s problems, just knowing that we were all facing similar challenges was helpful.
Find a mentor. People who have been in your job before are great people to talk to about the ups and downs. They understand in a way few others can, because they have been there before.
Have a community outside of work. If your only social community is at your job, the loneliness of leadership can be acute. Join groups, teams or organizations outside of work where you can be a peer and connect with others as friends.
This is not a call for sympathy for leaders. All jobs have drawbacks, and this is just one of many for leadership jobs. There are many, obvious, benefits to being a leader that outweigh the drawbacks.
Even so, admitting it can be a lonely job is better than denying it. If you can’t be honest with yourself, it’ll get even lonelier along the way.
For more on Mental Health and Leadership, see: