Coach as Instrument: Loneliness at the Top (and the Middle and the Bottom)

This Week's Attunement 

“Loneliness is like an iceberg — it goes deeper than we can see. It’s contagious, heritable, affects one in four people – and increases the chances of early death by 20%,” says US Social Neuroscientist John Cacioppo.

Last week at the entrepreneur roundtable I led, we identified loneliness as a theme from our check-ins. We were each experiencing loneliness in our own unique way. For some of us, loneliness was the result of missing the sense of connection that comes from building something with a team of capable and passionate people. For others, loneliness was the result of not feeling understood or felt. And others felt lonely simply because they believed that they were the only person in the world who could do what needed to be done for their companies and families. We have many ways and reasons for feeling lonely.

As we discussed our sense of loneliness together at some length, I had an epiphany of sorts about my own sense of loneliness — my loneliness was largely the result of my own expectations and actions.

For me, my loneliness resulted from how I expected other people to respond to me or how I wanted other people to "be there for me" in ways I hadn't even defined. I realized that my loneliness was a kind of confinement of my own making. My loneliness was more a function of how I was relating to myself and others than it was about how some general, non-specific "others" were relating to me. Also, I realized that I had opportunities for connection that I was choosing not to avail myself of.

I'm not saying this is true for everyone. And what I do believe is true is that:

1) We are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness (it's the topic of Surgeon General Vikek Murty's book, Together)

2) We each experience loneliness in our own unique way

3) Our clients are experiencing loneliness and likely not talking about it. Let's face it, it can be embarrassing to talk about being lonely. We can have all kinds of judgments about it. And chances are, our clients are feeling lonely and not talking about it.

Consider asking your clients about how connected they feel around their deepest challenges, their support network, and who they can go to and talk about their deepest concerns. Perhaps you can support your clients in having their own epiphanies around how they maybe don't need to continue to feel lonely.

At Learning in Action, we've been examining what keeps us separate from each other for the past decade. It's what our WE-Q instrument and training are all about. Learn more here.

Until next week!