It’s lonely at the top as CEOs reveal that being the final decision-maker has its ups – and its downs
Swedish Radio in 2013, describing his job as “simply very tough”. In a real corporate world context, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said in a 2016 interview that he wasn’t looking for sympathy, but “the adage that the CEO job is lonely is accurate in a lot of ways”. In 2022, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, also revealed that when he was working on his starship rocket, he felt “quite lonely because I am just in a little house by myself with no dog,” Musk told Insider.
Closer home, Infosys co-founder, Narayana Murthy, said in April that he’s felt the same. “Leadership feels completely lonely at the top. I’ve been through that,” Murthy told an audience at a book event.
When Uday Kotak resigned as the CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank in September, he took to X to pen a heartfelt note about his journey with Kotak Mahindra Bank and said, “I stand in a lonely place of being a founder, promoter and significant shareholder of this great institution.”
Isolating up the ladder
There is data to prove that the higher you climb up the ladder, the more isolating it can get. A 2012 CEO Snapshot Survey from Harvard Business Review found that half of CEOs reported feeling lonely, with 61 per cent believing it can hinder their performance. First-time CEOs are particularly susceptible to this isolation with nearly 70 per cent of firsttime CEOs reporting that the feelings negatively affect their performance.
“Though exhilarating, rewarding and challenging, being a CEO can sometimes be an isolated space. It entails making multiple decisions on an every-day basis,” says Rahul Garg, founder of e-commerce unicorn Moglix. About 80 per cent of success coach and leadership advisor Anand Chulani’s clients are CEOs.
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