I was meeting with a colleague recently and they asked the question, “What’s the hardest part of your job?” My response was, “It’s lonely at the top.” They looked at me quizzically, so I had to explain. We’ve all heard that phrase, right? It’s lonely at the top! Seems to be self-explanatory. I always thought I knew what it meant until I started advancing the career ladder.
In my experience, it’s not that colleagues don’t want to have coffee, lunch or an adult beverage with someone that’s advanced their career — or the boss. But it dawned on me over time that I was hearing a lot about what was going on within the company, but most of it was superficial. And I’m not talking about gossip. No longer was I hearing about this problem or that failure. I was hearing about how great things were going, how we won this customer, how we saved money doing this, how we progressed an initiative.