The Emotional Load No One Sees

A leader absorbs the anxiety of the whole system and is expected to stay composed doing it. That containment is real work, it has a real cost, and almost no one accounts for it.

Leadership gets described in terms of what it grants: influence, authority, the ability t...

It isn't only that the top is lonely. It's that the two things a person needs — somewhere safe to be unguarded, and someone who actually understands the problem — both get scarce at exactly the moment the problems get harder.

The loneliness of leadership gets described a lot, usually as a feeling: ...