I’m So Lonely At The Top

They Don’t Like Me… It’s so tough making those unpopular decisions… No one wants to talk to me… They all avoid me… I feel so lonely at the top.

These, and many more of the same, are words that resonate in the offices of those that are at the top end of their jobs.

I had a phone session with one client who felt that he was lonely at the top. That loneliness made his job, and in turn, his life, unsatisfying and unfulfilling.

He had reached the position he had dreamed of for so long. Yet, once there, he awoke to the unpleasant realisation of loneliness and seclusion.

After a few sessions, he came up with a method to alter the feeling of isolation by his employees. He had decided to make regular and casual walks around the workplace. He would purposefully stop and chat with his colleagues at random and he would make a concerted effort to remember all of the conversations.

“I remember the time I chatted with one particular employee who seemed very tired; it turned out that her elderly mother came to visit her from Leicester and had been staying with her for the past ten days or so. Her mother was the talkative type, so the poor girl had had very little sleep,” he laughed.

“The following week,” he continued, “I hunted her down and enquired after her mother. She was so chuffed that I remembered our earlier conversation, she told every body around the office.”

Every time that he did his rounds since that day, he was greeted more casually and openly. His employees felt more professionally positive and relaxed around him.

Not long after, the lonely man at the top became the good and pleasant man.

If you feel lonely at the top, what would you do today to feel less isolated?

Female? 40-something? Read this client’s compelling story: Being Vulnerable