Recently, several senior leaders have asked me for advice as they navigated genuinely difficult situations. There were complex relationships, competing expectations and decisions with no obvious or risk-free answer.
I asked questions and challenged assumptions, offered analysis and different perspectives, and we worked through options.
Yet when they later reflected on what had helped the most, it was the comments such as:
“That took real courage.”
“You don’t have to carry this alone.”
“What feels like the right next step?”
“What would be most useful from me?”
None of those comments solved the problem they were working through, but they did something important. They helped the leader feel seen, regain perspective and find enough space to think about what came next.
It made me consider a question recently posed to me by an avid reader of these Weekly Insights: what role do mentors play for senior leaders seeking to lead authentically, particularly when leadership feels lonely?
When the Role Changes the Conversation
The phrase “lonely at the top” can sound like a leadership cliché. It is also easy to dismiss it as one of the inevitable costs of senior leadership roles. You accepted the role, so you accept the isolation that comes with it.
Like most things in life, the reality is more nuanced.
Not every senior leader feels lonely, and loneliness is not exclusive to senior roles. In fact, a recent review of 71 empirical studies concluded that the research on leader loneliness remains conceptually fragmented and methodologically underdeveloped. Consequently, we should be careful about making universal claims.¹
However, seniority can change the nature of a leader’s relationships.
As you progress, there are fewer true peers. Some colleagues depend on your decisions. Others are affected by your success or failure. Direct reports may hesitate to question you. Board members and executives often see only part of what is happening. Family and friends may care deeply but have little understanding of the organisational context.
The result is not necessarily social isolation, but a shortage of people with whom you can share the unedited version of what’s happening.²
There is also the issue of judgement risk.
Across four studies, Professor Kelly See and her colleagues found that people with greater power were less likely to take advice. Confidence played a central role. Power increased certainty, and that certainty made people less receptive to other perspectives. In the final study, this came at a cost: the most powerful participants were also the least accurate in their judgements.³
The risk is not that power inevitably makes leaders arrogant or closed-minded. It is more subtle. The more certain you feel, the easier it becomes to mistake confidence for sound judgement and stop testing your assumptions.
At the same time, people become less willing to challenge the person holding the power.
That combination matters. You receive less candid input, just as growing confidence can make you less receptive to it.
This is where authentic leadership becomes more demanding. It asks you to remain self-aware, open to evidence, transparent in your relationships and anchored to your values. Yet none of those capacities develops in isolation. You need people who can reflect what you cannot see, question what you may have stopped questioning and to speak honestly when others remain silent.
Authentic Leadership is Relational
Authentic leadership is often reduced to the idea of being true to yourself. That is appealing, but incomplete.
Authenticity is not about saying everything you think, refusing to adapt or treating personal preference as a fixed leadership style. It requires you to understand yourself while remaining open to how others experience you and what the situation demands.
One influential model describes authentic leadership through four connected behaviours:
- Self-awareness: understanding your values, strengths, limitations and impact on others
- Balanced processing: considering evidence and perspectives that may challenge your preferred view
- Relational transparency: communicating with appropriate openness and honesty
- An internalised moral perspective: making decisions that reflect your values and ethical standards, rather than convenience or external pressure⁴
The model is not without criticism. Researchers have questioned whether authentic leadership is sufficiently distinct from transformational and other positive leadership approaches.⁵ Even so, these four behaviours offer a useful way to examine what leading authentically requires in practice.
They also show why authenticity cannot be developed alone. You need other people to help you see your blind spots, test your assumptions and understand your impact. You need relationships where honesty can travel in both directions, and where your values can be examined against the consequences of your choices. The process starts with an honest examination of the gap between how you see yourself as a leader and how others actually experience you, and why that gap is wider than most leaders expect.
The decision remains yours. But without trusted people prepared to reflect, question and challenge, it becomes much harder to know whether you are acting authentically or simply reinforcing your existing view.
That is the role a mentor can play.
A Trusted Counterweight
A mentor is not there to make the decision, remove the discomfort or simply reassure you that you are right. Rather, they can create the conditions in which you can speak honestly, regain perspective, test your thinking and decide what comes next.
Looking back, each of the four comments that stayed with the leaders I was supporting played a distinct role.
“That took real courage” acknowledged what the situation had demanded of them.
“You don’t have to carry this alone” interrupted the isolation that can narrow perspective.
“What feels like the right next step?” returned their attention to their agency.
“What would be most useful from me?” turned support into practical action.
Together, those responses form a simple framework for how mentors can support leaders through difficult moments. I call it HOLD.
H: Honour the courage
“That took real courage.”
When you are navigating a difficult situation, it is easy to focus only on what went wrong, what remains unresolved or what your decision may cost you.
Having someone acknowledge the courage involved helps you recognise what the situation has already demanded.
The comment lands because it names something specific. Perhaps you challenged a decision, raised an uncomfortable issue or acted in line with your values when remaining silent would have been easier.
However, courage and correctness are not the same. A decision can be brave and still need to be examined. A trusted mentor can acknowledge the courage without automatically endorsing every choice you made.
They might say: “You were prepared to raise something your boss did not want to hear. That took courage. How confident are you that the way you raised it helped your message land?”
That is not empty reassurance, but rather recognition coupled with reflection.
O: Open the circle
“You don’t have to carry this alone.”
One of the risks of senior leadership is that the circle of people with whom you can speak openly gradually narrows.
Opening the circle does not mean sharing indiscriminately or ignoring the responsibilities of confidentiality. It means having relationships where you can tell the unedited version without needing to manage the other person’s reaction, protect your reputation or maintain the appearance of certainty.
Being heard interrupts isolation and also helps to restore proportion and perspective.
A difficult situation can begin to feel unique and all-consuming when it remains inside your own head. A mentor can help you recognise that struggle is not evidence that you are incapable or unfit for the role.
But reassurance should not become minimisation. For example, hearing “There is nothing to worry about” dismisses your experience. While hearing “Everyone goes through it” may leave you feeling as though you should be coping better.
A mentor opens the circle by combining connection with honest perspective. They listen carefully, share relevant experience and help you consider interpretations you may have overlooked.
They might ask:
- “What else could be driving their reaction?”
- “What evidence would cause you to change your view?”
- “What part of the situation might you be underestimating?”
- “Are you responding to what happened or to what you fear may happen next?”
You do not need another person who automatically agrees with you. You need someone sufficiently independent to say what others cannot or will not say.
L: Look forward
“What feels like the right next step?”
A question such as this shifts your attention from what has happened to the choice now in front of you. The word feels does not mean relying on instinct alone. It gives you room to consider the evidence, your values, the consequences and what the situation now requires.
An experienced mentor can identify risks, offer options and share lessons that might otherwise take years to acquire. However, advice should strengthen your judgement, not replace it.
Consequently, the most useful questions help you connect your next action to your responsibilities and desired impact:
- “What outcome are you trying to create?”
- “What is within your control?”
- “What conversation are you avoiding?”
- “What would acting with integrity look like here?”
- “What consequences are you prepared to accept?”
Then comes the difficult part. The mentor stops talking. And that’s crucial because silence gives you room to think and prevents the mentor from quietly steering you towards the answer they prefer.
D: Do something useful
“What would be most useful from me?”
This question signals that you do not have to manage everything alone while leaving you in control of the support you receive.
However, when you are already under pressure, identifying and articulating what you need can become another task. A good mentor listens for where practical support would make a genuine difference and makes the offer specific.
For example:
- “Would it help to rehearse the conversation?”
- “I will call you after the meeting.”
- “Let’s map the stakeholders and identify where the resistance is coming from.”
The support does not need to be large, but it does need to be useful.
There are also boundaries. A mentor should not intervene without permission, become a conduit for confidential information or create dependence. Their contribution should build your capacity and leave accountability where it belongs.
Do Not Look For One Perfect Mentor
Traditional views of mentoring often centre on one experienced person guiding someone more junior.
Professor Kathy Kram’s foundational work showed that mentoring can provide both career-related and psychosocial support, including coaching, acceptance, confirmation and counsel.6
Building on this, Professors Monica Higgins and Kathy Kram reconceptualised mentoring as a developmental network, recognising that people draw different forms of guidance and support from multiple relationships.7
That idea becomes particularly important at senior levels.
One person may understand the industry but be too close to the politics. Another may challenge your thinking but lack experience carrying comparable accountability. Someone outside the organisation may offer independence, while an internal colleague provides context.
Rather than searching for one person who can meet every need, consider the quality of the network around you.
Do you have someone who:
- Understands the weight of senior accountability?
- Has no personal stake in the decision?
- Will tell you when they think you are wrong?
- Can help you examine the ethical dimensions of a choice?
- Sees you as a person, not merely as a position?
- Will provide practical help without taking over?
You may also find that no single mentor can provide everything you need. Different people bring different perspectives and forms of support. That was true throughout my corporate career, and it continues to inform how I mentor senior leaders today.
What’s Next For You?
Isolation rarely announces itself. It can look like efficiency, discretion or self-reliance. It can feel entirely reasonable to conclude that nobody will understand, be trusted, or have enough context to be useful.
Gradually, the circle narrows. When this happens, the risk is not only that leadership becomes harder to carry but that your thinking becomes harder to test.
So consider the decisions and pressures you are carrying now.
- Who hears the unedited version?
- Who can acknowledge what a situation has cost you without automatically endorsing every choice you have made?
- Who offers a perspective that is genuinely independent from your own?
- Who asks the questions that make your thinking better?
- And whose advice have you recently discounted, not because it lacked merit, but because you had already become certain?
Authentic leadership asks you to understand yourself, act from your values, remain open to evidence and build honest relationships. That work cannot happen entirely inside your own head. You need someone who can hear what is really happening, offer honest perspective, leave the agency with you and provide practical support when it is needed.
It is having someone who can hold the space for you without holding the reins.
The question is: who does that for you? And who might need you to do the same for them?
Getting you ready for tomorrow, today®
Award-winning author and global workplace expert, Dr Michelle Gibbings, helps leaders, teams and organisations unlock strategic influence to accelerate progress.
References:
- Lam, H., Giessner, S. R., Shemla, M., & Werner, M. D. (2024). Leader and leadership loneliness: A review-based critique and path to future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3), Article 101780. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2024.101780
- Zumaeta, J. (2019). Lonely at the top: How do senior leaders navigate the need to belong? Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 26(1), 111–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/1548051818774548
- See, K. E., Morrison, E. W., Rothman, N. B., & Soll, J. B. (2011). The detrimental effects of power on confidence, advice taking, and accuracy. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116(2), 272–285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.07.006
- Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34(1), 89–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307308913
- Banks, G. C., McCauley, K. D., Gardner, W. L., & Guler, C. E. (2016). A meta-analytic review of authentic and transformational leadership: A test for redundancy. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(4), 634–652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.02.006
- Kram, K. E. (1983). Phases of the mentor relationship. Academy of Management Journal, 26(4), 608–625. https://doi.org/10.5465/255910
- Higgins, M. C., & Kram, K. E. (2001). Reconceptualizing mentoring at work: A developmental network perspective. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 264–288. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378023