Very few people talk about this part. They talk about the pressure. The dizzying number of decisions. The weight of having people's livelihoods on your shoulders. But the part that nobody talks about, the part I see behind closed doors with the CEOs, founders, and investors I coach, is the loneliness.

You might be surrounded by people, but not a single one of them has an accurate picture of what it's like to be you.

This type of loneliness is different from traditional loneliness. It's the loneliness of not being able to say what you're actually thinking. Not being able to admit what you're actually feeling. Not having a single person in your life who you can be completely honest about what it's like to be the leader with all the eyes on you, all the pressure on you, all the decisions on you.

You're the one everyone looks to for answers. You're the one who's supposed to have it figured out. You're the one holding the company together when things are falling apart. And so you're stuck carrying this massive burden internally. You carry it all mentally, emotionally, energetically. And it's slowly crushing you.

The Ghost in the Room

I've sat across from leaders who run billion-dollar companies, who have hundreds of people counting on them, who by every external metric are crushing it. And the first thing they say to me when the door closes is some version of: I don't have anyone I can talk to about this.

Not their spouse, because they made it clear two years ago not to bring the stress of work home. Not their team, because the dynamic doesn't allow it. Not their friends, because most of their friends don't operate at this level and the gap in understanding is too wide.

Behind Closed Doors

The conversations that matter most in my work never look like what people imagine coaching looks like. The conversations that matter most we aren't sitting in front of a white board, there's no goal-setting template, there's no "let's optimize your calendar." Those conversations do happen. But they're not the ones that create meaningful changes.

Behind closed doors, the facade comes off. Leaders tell me what's actually disrupting their thinking, their sleep, their marriages. The stuff they can't say to anyone else.

Just the act of saying it out loud, of hearing their own voice speak the thing they've been carrying, you can watch the weight start to dissipate. Their shoulders relax slightly. Their breathing settle. We haven't solved anything yet, nothing has been fixed. But something has already shifted, just because it's no longer bottled up inside them.

That's how starved most leaders are for this. One moment where they open up about what they're carrying internally and their whole body responds.

That's what happens when someone finally has a space to be honest and reveal what's happening in their reality. Just by revealing what they were carrying they start to see what was always there but they couldn't see before. It becomes clearer what they've been avoiding but need to confront.

This is when I truly get to see them. The one with fears and doubts and passions and loves. The whole person. And it's the thing I care about most in my work.

What You Actually Need

Programs don't change people. Relationships change people.

Here's what I've come to believe after 15 years of doing this work. The thing most leaders need is not a better morning routine or a leadership model or another book on execution.

Not someone who manages them or evaluates them or coaches them through a playbook. Someone who sits across from them and actually sees what's happening beneath the surface. Someone who can hold the space for the conversation they can't have anywhere else. Someone who isn't afraid of the mess. Without this, leadership is a very lonely journey.

When was the last time someone sat across from you whose only job was to focus on you? Not your company. Not your performance. You. But just to see you. To hear what you're actually going through. To reflect back to you what you can't see about yourself.

For the leaders I work with, it's the most important thing that's missing.

You Don't Have to Carry This Alone

Coming from a sports background I find it interesting that the greatest athletes in the world all have coaches. But so few people in the business world do.

The best athletes have coaches because they need someone who can see what they can't see about themselves. Someone who reflects them back more clearly than they can reflect themselves. Someone who cares enough to tell them the truth when everyone else is telling them what they want to hear.

In a world where everyone looks to you for answers, who do you turn to?