Make It, Don’t Fake It: Leading with Authenticity for Real Business Success by Sabrina Horn

Author:Sabrina Horn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

FIGURE 3 Lonely CEO

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

As I discussed in chapter 2, decision-making is at the heart of leadership. Everything unfolds, expands, contracts, rises, and sinks as a result of the decisions that you, and you alone, make.

Depending on the structure of your leadership team, you may have partners who vote with you on big decisions. Other times, a company may have two CEOs or two C-level executives who divide and conquer on specific decisions. Most often, though, there is only one CEO, one chief decision maker, and the proverbial buck stops with that person.

In figuring out what to decide, you solicit input from your team, advisors, board members, customers, and others. You do this until you don’t, when you have to make the final call. Your team will—you hope—support you, but it is your name on that decision. It feels lonely because you must make the decision alone. It feels especially lonely when the consequences are painful, like when you decide to do a layoff.

Sending good people whom you hired back home to their families to explain that they lost their jobs because of what you decided is one of the most horrible things a CEO has to do. Knowing that these people feel worse than you and that they probably resent you (or worse) only intensifies your disappointment, guilt, and isolation. You will also find no shortage of naysayers and critics who disagree with your decision. All of this can wear you down.

Sometimes being a CEO is lonely because you can’t explain all the reasons behind the decisions you make. You want to be transparent but you can’t, whether for legal reasons or because you don’t want the people who still have a job to think your ship is sinking and quit. You need to be at once empathetic and kind but also positive and strong. You have to provide a path forward, even when you might not be feeling so great yourself. You hold it together for everyone else while keeping your own thoughts locked inside.

That is Lonely with a capital L.

The killer is, you’ll find no peer, no other CEO, down the hall to talk to. Being able to relate to other people is vital to mental health and well-being. You can talk with your leadership team or your number 2, but on some level, you have to be strong for them, too. And when 100% of your friends are also in your business network, you have to be careful. Friends or not, you don’t want to show cracks in your armor. This kind of self-exposure can unintentionally blow back on you, like the time I was having lunch with a brand-new client and Bill, a close industry friend, stopped over at our table.

BILL: Hi, Sabrina. How’s business these days? You were going through a pretty rough time a couple months ago with those cutbacks.

ME: Hi, Bill! Let me introduce you to our brand-new client here, Kevin. Business has definitely improved and we were able to manage through all of that.

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