Lonely Leaders: How to Mitigate Loneliness in the Workplace

Have you noticed that the higher you rise at work, the more alone you feel?

Me too.

For me, the more alone I am, the lonelier I feel. RHR International did a study called the CEO Snapshot Survey. In it, half of CEOs said they feel lonely in the job. And of those, 61% think it hurts how well they do their work. These are successful people who get paid well and are always around others. Their calendars are full. Their inboxes are full. They have working lunches, phone calls in the car, and meeting after meeting after meeting. And they still feel lonely. How can that be?

If this sounds like you, even a little, please hear me. You are normal. Most leaders feel this way too. We just do not talk about it. A long time ago, people decided that feeling lonely means you are weak. And they decided that leaders are not allowed to be weak.

So we hide it. We stay busy. We smile and say we are fine when people ask.

So the lonely feeling grows. We even admit that our work gets worse. And soon we burn out.

Lonely Is Not the Same as Alone

Let's get the words right. This is where many leaders get it wrong about themselves.

Being lonely has little to do with how many people are near you. You can run six meetings a day. You can eat lunch with your team. You can shake a hundred hands. And you can still feel very lonely. People who study CEOs found something surprising. Loneliness at the top is usually not about being around people. It is about the weight you carry that no one else knows about. Maybe it is a hard choice about a worker that you cannot talk about. Maybe it is money news you cannot share yet. Maybe it is a big call that only you can make.

Read that again, because it shows us the answer. Meeting more people does not help. A fuller calendar does not help. One more board seat does not help. What helps is slow, careful work. You have to let people really know you. I'll show you how in a minute.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Maybe you have made peace with feeling alone. Many leaders have. People say "it's lonely at the top" like it is just part of the job. Like being lonely is the price you pay for success. For some of you, letting people know you sounds scarier than being alone. I get it. I feel that way too. But in a moment you will see that this hurts more than your work. It hurts your health too.

A famous author and leadership expert named John Maxwell wrote a whole chapter in his book Leadership Gold. He called it: "If it's lonely at the top, you're not doing something right." Those are strong words. And studies agree with him. Loneliness is a real danger to your health. It is also a real danger to the health of your company.

Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad is a professor of psychology and brain science at Brigham Young University. She looked closely at 148 studies with more than 300,000 people. She found that being cut off from others is as risky to your life as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General used this finding to warn the country. He called loneliness a public health epidemic. That means it is a real health problem for many people.

Now think about your workplace. Gallup wrote a report called the State of the Global Workplace. It found that one in five workers around the world felt lonely the day before. Cigna studied loneliness too. It found loneliness costs U.S. companies about $154 billion a year just from workers missing work because of stress. And a study in the Academy of Management Journal by Ozcelik and Barsade found something clear. Lonelier workers do worse at their jobs.

Here is the point. You cannot read those numbers and still think loneliness is just part of the job. It is a leadership problem. It is a work problem. Most of all, it is a health problem for you and your company.

Why Leaders Get Lonely in the First Place

Leaders get lonely because of the job itself. There are at least four reasons. When you know them, you can choose how to handle them.

Getting promoted. The day you got promoted, your group of equals got smaller. The friends you used to complain with now work for you. You did not change. But the people around you changed. And no one warned you. Your new job cost you the friendship you had in your old job.

Keeping secrets. Most of what is on your mind must stay private. Things like plans to change the company, worker problems, or fights on the board. You cannot share these with the people you see all day. It would be wrong, and sometimes it is against the law.

Deciding alone. Some hard choices are yours alone to make. The choice is yours. What happens next is yours too. Carrying all of that by yourself makes you feel more alone.

Working far apart. Working from home made all of this worse. Gallup found that fully remote workers feel the most lonely, 25% compared to 16% for workers on site. Maybe you lead a team spread out in different places. The easy chats that used to happen in hallways and break rooms do not happen on their own now. You have to plan them on purpose. (I wrote a whole guide about this: Leading Remote Teams: Culture, Engagement & Trust.)

So hear me again. You are okay, and you are strong. Loneliness at the top comes from the way the job is built.

And the way a job is built can be changed.

You Cannot Give That Which You Do Not Possess

You cannot build closeness at work if you have none in your own life. So it starts with you. Here is how.

1. Be Honest With Yourself About Loneliness

Start by being honest with yourself. Loneliness is a sign that you are missing something you really need. Your body is telling you that something is wrong. The Surgeon General said it can hurt your health almost as much as smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day. It is okay to feel lonely. Stop being embarrassed to say that you are lonely.

Do not lie to yourself just because the truth feels bad. Facing the truth is how you start to change things.

2. Build a Circle That Has Nothing to Gain From You

You need people who do not work for you. People who do not want anything from you. People who will not be shocked when you tell them the truth. This could be a group of equals. It could be a mentor. It could be a coach. Find someone outside your company that you can trust with the details.

Most leaders know they need someone to talk to. And they still do not do it. Stanford's Graduate School of Business found that nearly two-thirds of CEOs get no coaching or outside leadership advice at all. But nearly 100% of them say they would want it. So almost every leader wants honest help from outside. Almost none of them have set it up.

Why?

Because asking to be known feels like admitting you are weak. But it is a smart thing to do. The talk you need is usually easy to set up. And people almost always say yes. It sounds like this:

"I've realized I don't have anyone I can talk things through with about the hard parts of this job. I'd like to set up a regular call, breakfast, or lunch, once a month. Whatever works for you. No plan except telling the truth about how it's really going. Are you in?"

Send that to one person this week. That's it.

3. Go First

Andy Stanley says that leaders who will not listen end up surrounded by people who have nothing helpful to say. The same thing happens with being alone. Leaders who never open up end up surrounded by people who are just as alone as they are. You decide how honest your company will be. Your people will follow your lead.

So go first. In your next one-on-one meeting, share something true. Maybe a choice you struggled with. Maybe a mistake you made early in your career. Maybe something you are working on in yourself. Do not share too much. Do not use your team as your therapist. Just be honest enough to show that it is okay to be a real person here.

4. Take the Friendship Question Seriously

Gallup has asked millions of workers if they have a best friend at work. Only about two in ten workers strongly agree that they do. The ones who do are far more engaged, get more done, and are more likely to stay. Since people started working from home, having a work friend matters even more for how well people do their jobs.

You cannot force people to be friends. Do not try. But you can make room for it. Let people really work together instead of just doing tasks alone. Do not fill every minute of a meeting with agenda items. Build regular team routines where people get to know who they work with. Friendship grows when leaders allow it and make space for it.

And one more thing. This is true for you too. Your job did not take away your need for friends. If every relationship in your life is only about getting something, that is selfish.

5. Build Connection Into How You Work Every Day

Here is where most companies get it wrong. They feel the distance between people. So they plan an event or a team building game. Maybe a happy hour meeting with a trust fall. Everyone comes. Everyone smiles. Hopefully no one gets hurt. But on Monday, the loneliness is right where it was before.

Closeness that lasts is built into the way you work. Gallup's research points to one habit above all: one meaningful conversation each week with each team member. Make it 15 to 30 minutes. Talk about their goals, their problems, and how they are really doing. Make it a real talk about how they are. Gallup also found that engaged employees were 64% less likely to be lonely than their disengaged coworkers. Engaged employees are people who know their work matters and feel appreciated for it.

Hear what that means. Work that matters, done with people who notice you, makes loneliness smaller on its own. So every habit that builds engagement also builds closeness. That means clear expectations, real praise, and honest emotionally intelligent leadership.

The Payoff

When leaders start to do these things, two things change at the same time.

The first change is personal. Your job is still just as big. But you stop carrying it alone, and that changes how it feels. Choices get easier to make. Burnout starts to fade. Your health gets better. And the job becomes something you can keep doing again.

The second change is in your culture. Teams always follow the person at the top. When a leader is truly connected, goes first, and protects time for real friendships, everyone else feels free to do the same. Closeness grows more closeness. And being alone grows more of the same.

Maxwell was right. If it's lonely at the top, something needs to change, and it should change this week.

So pick one. Just one.

Send the message to a possible peer. Schedule the talk with no plan. Tell one person the truth about how the job really feels.

Refuse to be lonely at the top. You'll be glad you did.