Hidden Cost of Leadership

Leadership is lonely. The type of loneliness that comes from making the hard calls. Carrying the weight of responsibility. And knowing, that at the end of the day, the buck stops with you.

You have a team. You have peers. You might even have a mentor. But, very few people truly understand what it is like to be in your shoes. 

Employees will not tell you everything because of your decision making power. Peers in leadership are too busy fighting their own battles. Mentors are great, but they are not living your daily reality.

Everyone assumes you have it all figured out. 

But you don’t. 

You have heard it before. “My door is always open”. Sounds great in theory, but employees hesitate to speak freely. The higher up you go, the more people are careful with their words. They sugarcoat. They tell you what they think you’d like to hear. 

The more senior you become, the harder it is to get unfiltered truth. Without unfiltered truth, decision making becomes an echo chamber.

If you surround yourself with people who think like you, act like you, and agree with you, you will never grow. You will make decisions based on validation. Not insight.

You will mistake alignment for progress.

So, to fix it, start from the basics. Set your hiring right.

Challenge yourself to hire the person who sees the world differently. Asks the hard questions. The one who forces you to justify your decisions rather than accept them at face value. Reward their honesty, even when it stings.

The loneliness of leadership is not going anywhere. It is part of the deal.

But isolation is optional. 

A burnt-out, disconnected leader is not leading anyone to success.