A regular pattern that I have observed with my senior-level executive coaching clients is that they seem to be doing great but in reality are struggling. On the surface, they look successful: excellent results, composure under pressure, and abundant confidence in all the right settings. They wear the mask of executive presence. But underneath, they’re exhausted, and no one close to them notices or feels able to speak up.
This was brought home to me in a comment on one of my recent LinkedIn posts about the importance of human connection at work: “The person who just won Leader of the Year can be silently falling apart, and nobody notices because the performance is so good it looks like thriving. By the time it shows up on a dashboard, it’s not just expensive. It’s already downstream. Their team is carrying it. The culture is shaped by it. And nobody can name why.”
Loneliness and disconnection at work are endemic at all levels. At senior levels, these are among the most expensive, least visible problems in organizations today.
Being alone is about structure. Being lonely is about relationships
The reality of the organizational structure chart is as you move through your career, you have fewer peers, increased scrutiny, and decisions you can’t share with the broader organization. It comes with the territory. The higher you go, the fewer people can see or understand your daily reality.
Loneliness at the top is something else entirely. It’s what happens when the structural reality of being the only person in the seat is amplified by having no one around you who sees past your title to the person underneath. There’s no one who thinks to ask how you really are, no one you can share your up and down moments with, and fewer people who listen with empathy or provide honest feedback. You’re seen as a leader first and a human second.
Being alone can be managed. But you can’t solve loneliness by changing the org chart or joining another board. Only better workplace relationships can help close the connection gap.
Data every organization should pay attention to
The 2025 Fearless Report, based on Amy Edmondson’s research with more than 5,500 professionals in 33 countries, found that loneliness at work reduces psychological safety by half. Those who always felt lonely scored 42 on the psychological safety index, while those who never felt lonely scored 80, a 38-point difference.
When loneliness takes hold, people stop speaking up and challenging ideas. They stop having honest disagreements that raise the bar. The warning signs that something is wrong don’t disappear; people just stop voicing them. By the time the impact shows up in the numbers, the damage has been building for months.
One in 25 professionals responding to the 2025 Fearless Report shared that they always feel lonely at work. Research I conducted confirms this: In a dataset from more than 1,500 leaders, one in five reported having no meaningful workplace relationships at all. This is a leadership crisis hiding in plain sight.
When the mask becomes the trap
At a gathering of executive coaches, Alan Mulally, former CEO of Ford and Boeing, told a story that stuck with me. He realized that as CEO, “his face was no longer his own.” If he looked worried, people would talk: “Did you see the CEO’s face in that meeting?” Soon, it would turn into “something’s wrong.” A simple moment of concentration could become an organizational crisis by the time it reached the second floor.
As a result, leaders learn to manage their emotions, to mask what they’re really thinking and feeling. To some extent, that’s responsible leadership. As my colleague, Ruby Vesely, will often share with the leaders and teams she coaches, “Your energy affects everyone in the room and shapes what happens there. You bring the weather; are you bringing sunshine or storm clouds?”
Being mindful of the energy you bring isn’t just for show. It’s part of your job.
But the mask that protects the organization can also trap the person wearing it. “I’m fine,” or “It’s fine,” work when things genuinely are fine. But what happens when things aren’t going according to plan? What happens when the leader behind the mask is struggling, and the mask has become so convincing that nobody thinks to look behind it? Or the leader dare not take the mask off?
I will never forget my first meeting with a CEO who was considering working with me as his coach. Within minutes he started to cry. He kept apologizing. I simply gave him the space to move through the moment.
He was in the early days of a family bereavement, but hadn’t felt able to share that with anyone on his team. He was the poster child for “keep calm and carry on.” His mask was firmly in place, and had been for weeks, until I sensed he was carrying something heavy and asked a question that gave him permission to take it off.
Our conversation didn’t remove his grief, but it did give him something he hadn’t had since the loss, someone who saw him as a human being first and a CEO second.
His experience isn’t unusual. The underlying emotions behind the mask don’t fade just because they’re hidden. They ferment. Grief impacts how you show up everyday, frustration curdles into resentment, and doubt can harden into paralysis. The pressure continues to build, amplified by loneliness and the misbelief that it’s just you, that everyone else is handling this, that you’re the one who’s broken.
You’re not broken. You’re isolated, and there is a difference.
Contrary to popular belief, senior leaders are human too! They experience the same trials and tribulations as the rest of us: health scares, family crises, financial stress, self-doubt, grief. The difference is that the higher you go, the less permission you have to do any of those things publicly. “Everything’s fine” becomes the default response. And because the results are still coming in, you’re hitting your targets, nobody thinks to ask how you’re doing, only to celebrate what you’re doing.
Until, that is, everything’s not fine, you’re not fine. And by then, the damage is already further downstream in the organization. Your team has sensed things are different, even if they can’t name what. They’ve been absorbing the stress, compensating for decisions that didn’t get made clearly, navigating conversations that never happened. The team’s culture has been shaped by a leader running on empty, and nobody can name why, because from the outside it still looked like it was thriving.
What you can do about it
This isn’t a wellness problem. And it won’t be solved by telling leaders—or yourself—to be more resilient. Resilience assumes the individual is the problem. Loneliness at the top isn’t a personal deficiency to be toughened through. It’s a relationship gap. And it requires deliberate action, intention, and attention to your relationships.
1. Start by asking yourself: Who in your professional life would tell you you’re not okay, even if you said you were? In my book, Cultivate: The Power of Winning Relationships, I call this person an Ally, a truth-speaker who supports your success no matter what. At the most senior levels, these relationships can be more challenging to maintain. Most people may choose to tell you what you want to hear because honesty can be risky. But that risk goes both ways. It can be career limiting for them if they speak up, and a career risk for you if they don’t. It’s your responsibility to nurture those relationships and the culture that allows for candor. If you can’t name your Ally, someone you can be honest with and who can be honest with you, you’re not just alone at the top, you risk being lonely.
2. Find your truth-speaker. It can be a peer from another company, a former colleague, a coach, or a mentor. What matters isn’t their rank or expertise, but their willingness to be honest with you, especially when it’s hard. If you don’t have this relationship, building it is the best investment you can make in your leadership.
3. Stop pretending everything is “fine.” Next time someone asks how you’re doing, and you’re not okay, try giving a slightly more honest answer. You don’t have to share everything you’re thinking and feeling, but even saying, “I’m carrying a lot right now” or, “This quarter has been harder than it looks,” can be enough to create a moment of connection. When you’re honest, you encourage others to do the same.
The loneliest leaders are hiding in plain sight
They’re in your leadership meetings. They’re on stage at your company events. They’re delivering results that make everyone assume they’re fine. And they may be wondering if anyone would notice if they weren’t.
The question isn’t whether they are performing; of course they are. This is how they got to the top. The question is whether they feel connected to even one person beyond their job title, and whether anyone around them has the relationship, the courage, and care to ask what that performance is costing them.
If you’re a senior leader and this sounds at all familiar, you don’t need another program or leadership book. You need one person who can see past your results. And if you’re the colleague, board member, or friend to a senior leader, be the person who asks how they’re really doing, and stays for the real answer.
The loneliest leaders won’t tell you they’re lonely. That’s the whole point. Somebody has to go first.
