Leading with Connection: Strategies for the Lonely Leader

Leadership can be a lonely journey, often requiring you to stand apart from those you lead. As someone who has spent years in creative industries, I’ve experienced firsthand how leadership, including in collaborative fields like theatre, can paradoxically isolate you from your team.

When I trained as a Theater Director in the 1990s, I quickly realized that my role required me to remain outside the inner circle. While actors bond closely during rehearsals and socialize after work, the director’s role is different—you're both part of the team and separate from it. You have an outside, and more objective eye, and that distance can be isolating.

I recall one production at Battersea Arts Centre in the early stages of my career, that underscored this loneliness. The show, titled Beauty and the Breast, was a performance which ‘puts into perspective bits of you you don’t like’, it was physical theatre, using as few words as we felt possible to tell the story, and the ‘cellist Matthew Barley improvised gloriously throughout. All of the performers were mesmerising to watch, and worked well together. The play’s success or failure ultimately rested on my shoulders. Despite being both writer and director, I couldn’t help but feel isolated as the cast formed a unity which I wouldn’t say excluded me, but inevitably I wasn’t one of them. When the lighting technician, suggested by the arts centre got all the cues wrong on the first night, the responsibility quite rightly fell on me.

One of the hardest lessons from that production was how the strain of leadership can lead to feelings of loneliness. At the end of the show, one team member, whom I had hoped would be my support, confronted me, and I felt terrible. Exhausted and overwhelmed as I was, I was finding it hard to find any words at all... and I hadn’t yet properly thanked the team. It was a significant oversight of mine. Although her critique was valid, her delivery was harsh. I felt she could have thanked them on my behalf, until I was able to, or at least suggest what it was that I need to do, in a gentler way. It felt like she had sided with the rest of the team. This experience taught me the importance of managing my energy as well as maintaining a strong support system and clear communication with team members.

This experience was a long time ago, and that young team member will also have learned from the experience as she went on to do very well and I now admire her greatly. Some of our earliest experiences in leadership can be the most valuable, building resilience.

In business, it is important for a leader to be able to create a structure where feedback is safe to deliver, and delivered skillfully. Then everyone in the team can take the experience as an opportunity to learn. As leaders, we must accept that sometimes we’ll be the "body in the corner" or the outsider. It can help, as a leader if you don't need everyone to like you. But this doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to connect and minimize the isolation. In today’s world, tools like online meetings and regular in person or phone check-ins can help foster a sense of unity, even when the leader must keep perspective. Creating spaces where the team can share learnings openly and safely, discuss values, and celebrate small wins can build a shared sense of purpose and flow. Being open about your own vulnerabilities with colleagues, can help them open up themselves. Creating a protocol for meetings that allows quieter members to speak and more chatty members to listen, show everyone where the boundaries are.

The loneliness of leadership may stem from our role in holding the buck, but it’s essential to stay connected with ourselves and our teams. By incorporating practices like embodiment exercises, meditation, connection with nature or creativity as self care, as well as encouraging similar activities within the team, leaders can find balance and maintain their energy. This way, even while standing slightly apart, we can still be part of the flow, driving the team and the company forward together.

If you’re navigating the complexities of leadership and looking for support in fostering stronger communication and team dynamics, feel free to reach out. At Consult and Train we specialize in helping leaders build connected, resilient teams. We have a tool box of practical, effective tools to share with you. For example, we use a tool called VoicePrint, which will help you see how and what you are actually communicating with your words, and how you and your team can learn to talk more skillfully, in order to foster a well-balanced work place.

Contact us at:

Phone: +44 1234 567 890
Email: elspeth@consultandtrain.co.uk
Website: www.consultandtrain.co.uk

Let’s work together to turn the challenges of leadership into opportunities for growth and connection.