Asking Dan, a C-suite leader, about “intrapersonal isolation and loneliness” was like putting in an acupuncture needle. There was visceral resistance and deep relief at the same time. I’ve always suspected it feels indulgent for people who are smart, networked, thrive under pressure and have a cockpit-like set of levers and switches to choose from, to consider words mostly used for the disconnected and disempowered.
When the world woke to Covid, no one had a playbook. Adrenalin and agility saw many leaders rise to their finest, sharpest hours. They were captains on watch when their ships entered cyclonic waters. In the same way that, if you were in a dinghy with a giant swell coming towards you, you wouldn’t stop to form a committee, leaders led and followers followed. There was, uncharacteristically, little time for dissent as we set records for the unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented”.
“Would it be wrong to say it’s had a price?” I asked Dan, and he was quiet.
The last thing most leaders have done is focus deeply on self and impact. There’s been no space or time to divert the shareholder and morale-building employee town halls and allow vulnerability to have its voice. It is counter-intuitive in an environment that remains in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) state. Like Dan, most leaders had their eyes fixed on board, shareholder, employee, market and contractor dashboards.
What has this cost us?
Dan’s success has never been in question. But there always seems to me to be something frustratingly binary about thinking that just because things have gone well, there has not been a price to pay. In a world privileging toxic positivity, it’s not negative or doomsaying to name that price. It is a risk that we can’t talk about the things that bring us closer, increase our learning and enable a rebalance.
Like the athlete who sees the team physio with a tight glute before it becomes a hamstring tear, it is the essence of high performance to visit something before it is in your face. Just because you can keep going the same way in a cognitive override of what our biology was wired for, it doesn’t mean you should.
After a brief pause, Dan’s list revealed long hours, decision fatigue, over thinking and difficulty sleeping. Like a motor left running overnight in case it was needed, he knew it had been a long time since he turned down the vigilance and now he wasn’t sure how.
Under stress, humans revert to doing more of what is their natural tendency. If you consult a lot normally then, under stress, you over-consult. If you are a planner, planning goes into overdrive. If you are risk averse, you go into threat mode. Every decision seemed to churn a fair bit of battery for Dan. Hardly any process seemed organic.
Vulnerability is counter-intuitive but is never more necessary for leaders to be well, just as by attending to muscles that aren’t causing trouble, Pilates prevents injury later on. If every spot on the dial is a comfortable place to be, you’ll calibrate to the right one. It’s great that you can sprint but, if you’re only doing one speed, half the time it won’t be the right speed. That’s entirely understandable—but it’s not peak performance.
How not to self-destruct
The avoidance of vulnerability is to be in self-protection mode. Being in self-protection mode is to be defensive. Being defensive is to reduce empathy and lose self-compassion, which often results in self-destructive behaviours such as: ceasing exercise, working when sick, taking on things that others can and should do, and pepping up on caffeine and winding down with wine.
Over the time of our three sessions, Dan’s sleep reverted to normal. He reported feeling more in flow and less isolated, even when around others. He could exercise again without being anxious and walk the dog without checking his phone. He developed more “bandwidth” to focus on other areas, in fact.
In a text recently between sessions, he asked if we could discuss his role in company culture at our next meeting. I admired him deeply for his hypothesis that, as CEO, he must have had a role in writing a story he was uncomfortable reading.
Out running that night, I reflected on how rare it was for a leader to be able to ask that question and, actually, what incredible hands his company were in with his leadership.
Peta Slocombe is a practising psychologist, author and speaker, and CEO of Performance Story.