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The Dangers of Being Alone

  • Writer: Bryan Van Itallie
    Bryan Van Itallie
  • 7 minutes ago
  • 3 min read

Why the isolation of leadership is a performance problem, not just a feeling.


I recently started watching the History Channel series Alone, where contestants are dropped

into the wilderness by themselves and last as long as they can. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the hunger or the cold that caused many people to quit. These highly capable, prepared people slowly came undone not because they couldn’t build a shelter or catch a fish, but because they had no one to talk to. Many contestants tap out not when their body fails, but when their mind does.


I’ve been thinking about that show in the context of leadership.


We talk a lot about the loneliness of being at the top, usually as a throwaway line. But here’s the part that should get every leader’s attention, and it’s the part we almost never talk about:

Isolation doesn’t just affect how you feel.

It degrades the exact capabilities your job depends on.


Studies consistently show that prolonged isolation impairs concentration, memory, and the ability to make decisions and solve problems. Research on people in extreme isolated environments, like Antarctic research stations, has documented measurable changes in the brain regions responsible for exactly those functions. Even a study tracking 342 people through COVID lockdowns found that cognitive performance dipped during isolation and recovered as social contact returned.


In other words: the more isolated the leader, the worse the decisions they make. That’s a hard thing to admit when you’re the one everyone is counting on to have the answers. The health research also supports this: the World Health Organization now treats loneliness as a global health priority, linking social isolation to higher risk of heart disease, stroke, and premature death. But the part that should keep a CEO up at night isn’t the mortality data. It’s the judgment data.


Solitude and isolation are not the same thing


I want to be careful here, because they get confused all the time.


In fact, I strongly encourage the CEOs I work with to take an intentional day away at least quarterly (alone, uninterrupted, no phone, no inbox) to step back and think hard about where the organization is going and how to get there. Call it a personal retreat. That kind of chosen solitude, where you go deep on the big questions and come back up with clarity, is one of the most underused tools a leader has. Time alone to reflect is not the enemy.


The danger isn’t being alone. The danger is being alone all the time. Having no one to test an idea against, no one who understands the weight you’re carrying, no one to tell you the thing you don’t want to hear before it becomes a crisis.



The trap that catches top performers hardest


That’s the structural reality of leadership. The higher you go, the fewer peers you have. Your team can’t be your sounding board for the decisions that affect them. Your spouse loves you but doesn’t live in your industry (and doesn’t want to hear all your issues). Your board sees you a few times a year. And so the hardest calls, the ones that keep you up at night, get made in your own head, with a brain that isolation is quietly working against.


There’s a particular version of this trap that catches the strongest leaders hardest: the ones who pride themselves on having the answers. The more capable you are, the easier it is to convince yourself you don’t need anyone to think alongside you. That confidence is exactly what closes the door.


The leaders who navigate this well aren’t the ones who tough it out alone. They’re the ones who deliberately build a circle of trusted peers. People who’ve sat in the same chair, who’ll challenge their thinking, and who won’t let them spiral in the silence of their own office.


On Alone, the contestants don’t have that option. You do.

Here’s the question worth sitting with:

When you’re facing your hardest decisions, who’s actually in the room with you?

And if the honest answer is “no one”, that’s worth changing long before the next storm hits.


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