Does Being a CEO Mean Isolation?
It’s the loneliest job in the company.
I hear from new CEOs all the time how isolating the chief executive role feels. Once you get to the CEO chair, it just feels different. There’s no boss to take your questions to. If you need counsel or a friendly ear, you have to find it outside the traditional company structure.
I once interviewed a former COO of Delta who had 80,000 people reporting up to him at the airline. He later left to become CEO of a 2,000-person software company. He admitted to thinking what many people think: If you’ve been an executive at a big corporation, doing the CEO job at a smaller company should be a breeze.
But like so many rising leaders, he soon learned that the CEO job is inherently different from all other C-suite roles. He found himself looking around for support like he’d had from his CEO at Delta . . . only to realize he was now that guy.
And while prepping for his first board meeting at the software company, he asked his team, “Who prepares the board decks…
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