John Gunter

Thoughts on Life and Living

Reasons for leadership isolation

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The phrase “it’s lonely at the top” is cliché and a bit trite, but it does speak to a much broader danger.  As I talked about in “‘it’s lonely at the top’ – Leadership Isolation” (click here if you have not read that article), there is a real and present danger of individuals involved in leadership to become lonely in life.  Many times loneliness puts leaders on a course spiraling towards isolation and this often ends in colossal moral failures of any and all varieties.

John Gunter looking isolated
Me looking isolated. . .

In my experience of both leading and in being directly exposed to high level leaders in the business, education, ministry, and non-profits worlds, I feel that some of the reasons that leaders become dangerously isolated are the following:

  1. No one knows the extent of your job – the higher one gets in organizational leadership, the less direct oversight they have.  With this comes greater freedom in scheduling and even in setting up job responsibilities of the leader.  His/her bottom line is the health and growth of the over-all organization.  If it is growing and thriving, then everyone trusts that the leader is doing his job well.  They are generally left alone.  What happens [Read more…]

“It’s lonely at the top” – Leadership Isolation

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The statue of David
King David saw isolation open the door for his moral collapse.

I have been grieved this week to read of three high-level men, one in ministry, one in education, and one in politics, who have apparently all fallen in horrendous sin.  Two of the men are being accused of pedophilia and the other of murder.  Like you, I read these accounts and I am mortified over the thoughts of such moral deadness and absolute failure on the part of these men.  They have all taken vows to care for and protect those under their domains of responsibility and done the complete opposite.

It has gotten to the point where stories of “fallen” leaders are the norm, rather than the exception.  Whether it is sexual indiscretion (too many cases in politics and ministry to recount), financial corruption (as is the case in the main story of fallen leadership in the country where I currently live), or emotional breakdown (the recent break of the producer of Kony2012), “fallen leaders” seem to be dominating headlines across the world.

While there is clearly no one answer for this problem, I do think that one of the core issues of moral failure in leadership on this level is ISOLATION.  The “higher” you get in leadership, the fewer the peers and the greater the responsibility. The fewer peers you have, the less healthy outlets there are to “decompress” in life.  The greater the responsibility you have, the higher the emotional toll and stress you shoulder.  The result [Read more…]

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