What’s it like to be CEO? In a word, lonely—and you might not know for years, or decades, whether you did a good job

Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since September 2017 | Week 347 | May 3-9, 2024 | Text | Audio

Personal Development, Leading & Managing Section | 3

What’s it like to be CEO? In a word, lonely—and you might not know for years, or decades, whether you did a good job

By Ty Wiggins | Fortune Magazine | May 7, 2024

Extractive Summary of the Article | Listen

The article is adapted from a new book “The New CEO: Lessons from CEOs on How to Start Well and Perform Quickly (Minus the Common Mistakes),” by Ty Wiggins.

There are many misconceptions about being CEO. Unfortunately, the one about it being extremely lonely is not one of them. This is what CEOs most frequently tell the author when he asks them what the hardest adjustment is about the role.

Being CEO is like being alone in a crowd: you are rarely physically alone and yet at times you can feel like the only person on the planet. An often-cited study from 2012 found 50% of CEOs reported feelings of loneliness, with 61% believing it hindered their performance.

Loneliness can manifest in different ways. It’s lonely intellectually as you no longer have any peers to spar with. Hopefully, you have a good relationship with your leadership team and the chair of the board, but it will not be the same. It’s lonely in that there will inevitably be things that you know that you cannot share. It’s lonely in candor as you can’t just say whatever you’re thinking anymore. And it’s lonely emotionally—there are very few people with whom you can really share how you’re feeling.

One response is for CEOs to fight to feel part of a team, for camaraderie, and even a wish to be liked. But this causes knock-on issues as they struggle to separate themselves from their team. As CEO, you are surrounded by your senior leadership team, but you are not really part of it. You will need to regularly disassociate from the team in order to make the tough decisions that are necessary for your organization to succeed, short and long term.

The other coping mechanism is to further isolate yourself and become an island, which only blunts your decision-making, as well as your confidence in your decisions. Isolated CEOs can also start to doubt the level of trust and support from those around them. Unfortunately, it can be a downward spiral that makes a tough role even harder.

When the author ask CEOs about the best and worst parts of being CEO, they often give the same answer to both parts of the question: the responsibility.  What makes this even harder is that many of the decisions you’ll make as CEO don’t have a definitive right or wrong answer. Some are judgment calls. Or, in other words, “Whatever you think, boss.”  And what it means to be a CEO—to create certainty and clarity where there is none.

To add insult to injury, the type of decisions that CEOs need to make often carry a time horizon that offers little opportunity for short-term feedback on whether you made the right call or not. You may not find out until months, years, or even decades later. It can weigh heavily on your shoulders. 

3 key takeaways from the article

1. There are many misconceptions about being CEO. Unfortunately, the one about it being extremely lonely is not one of them.  Being CEO is like being alone in a crowd: you are rarely physically alone and yet at times you can feel like the only person on the planet. An often-cited study from 2012 found 50% of CEOs reported feelings of loneliness, with 61% believing it hindered their performance.
2. Loneliness can manifest in different ways. It’s lonely intellectually, lonely in candor and lonely emotionally.  as you no longer have any peers to spar with. 
3. One response is for CEOs to fight to feel part of a team, for camaraderie, and even a wish to be liked. The other coping mechanism is to further isolate yourself and become an island, which only blunts your decision-making, as well as your confidence in your decisions.  Unfortunately, both can be a downward spiral that makes a tough role even harder.

Full Article

(Copyright lies with the publisher)

Topics:  Leadership, Responsibility, Decision-making, Teams, Isolation, Personal Development