The Reality of Leadership: Beyond “Lonely at the Top”
You’ve dreamed about it.
You’ve worked toward it.
You understood that achieving it, meant that you needed to BE it, before actually having the title.
Finally… You did everything right. You reached the highest level in your profession that you can achieve, the top rung of the ladder, you are “the boss”. As you stand there poised on the top rung of your ladder, you are excited because you are now able to do what you set out to do. You set out to make a difference, make things better, you may have visualized a better culture, a better way, an improvement, if you arrived for any of these reasons, then you climbed the ladder for the right reasons. If you set out to be “the boss” because you were excited to have that title, well, perhaps this article is not for you.
Reaching the highest level in your profession —becoming “the boss”—is a significant achievement. Those who aspire to make positive changes and improve organizational culture often make the most effective leaders. You may have moved from one organization to another to achieve your goal, but regardless of that, your motivation for climbing this ladder matters. Simply wanting the title of “boss” rarely leads to successful leadership.
Understanding the Dual Role
The distinction between being a boss and a leader is crucial. While both roles are necessary:
Leaders inspire change and guide organizational vision.
Bosses oversee operations and ensure goal completion.
Many top executives must balance both roles. This dual responsibility often leads to what’s commonly misinterpreted as “loneliness at the top”— it’s actually not loneliness but a form of isolation between upper management and other organizational levels.
The Leadership Challenge
First-line supervisors sometimes struggle to understand this dual role, which can create tension when executives must enforce policies or make difficult decisions. Supervision who miss the fact that their “leader” also has “boss” duties, may become disillusioned when rules are enforced or not enforced in a manner that they feel is appropriate or necessary. Further creating the isolation that those at top levels within an organization feel.
As Forbes notes, this isn’t truly loneliness but isolation—a fundamental sense of exclusion that can significantly impact well-being. Forbes goes on to say that a former Surgeon General calls it a “modern epidemic” and increases the odds of an early death by a whopping 20%.
Real-World Impact
This isolation manifests in various ways. For example:
– Staff excluding leadership from social activities like group lunch orders. Oftentimes leadership may not even know a meal order was made until the delivery person shows up with food for everyone, except leadership.
– Teams withholding recognition (such as birthday celebrations) from any form of leadership. I witnessed this with a particularly toxic shift’s attitude toward their leadership team within a year after a shift member was appropriately disciplined for a minor infraction. Within this PSAP, birthday celebrations were usually celebrated on each shift. When the supervisor had a birthday after that disciplinary action, his family brought him lunch, wished him happy birthday on the dispatch floor, and the dispatchers physically turned their backs away. Not one person acknowledged the birthday. The behavior created a feeling of true isolation and anger. Informal negative leadership can develop among staff members. Leadership is not always formal and supervision must be diligent in addressing it. It can be difficult to identify a growing toxic culture if no policies are being violated.
Building Better Connections
How do you combat informal negative leadership and how do you combat isolation? It must be intentional. Cultivating connections with people at all levels of the organization should be part of the core function of the leadership. Some leaders and bosses miss this point and think this means it’s good to go on vacations or party with their subordinates. That’s not what I’m saying. If one person in the leadership/supervisor team is doing this, that will automatically create dissension with the other shifts. That one person will quickly become the “favorite” giving informal negative leadership to gain a foothold on other shifts. It’s critical that the leadership/supervision team operate as a T.E.A.M.! Gratitude and acknowledgment can create a culture that can reduce workplace loneliness by making sure every employee at every level understands the importance of their contribution.
Remember, the goal isn’t friendship, that was not why you wanted to be in leadership. The goal to continue to grow your organization and avoid isolation is to cultivate meaningful professional relationships that acknowledge every employee’s contribution while maintaining the necessary organizational structure.
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