Leadership can become loneliest when the decisions matter most.

When responsibility becomes isolating

There may be many people around you—and few places to think out loud.

The expectation that a leader should have the answer can make it harder to acknowledge uncertainty, even to oneself.

It can be difficult to speak openly with a board, peers, employees or other people who are affected by your decisions. You may worry that uncertainty will be interpreted as weakness, that candour will create anxiety or that asking for help will diminish confidence in your leadership.

Sometimes the first challenge is not deciding what to tell other people. It is gaining enough clarity to understand what you are experiencing, what you need and what the decision is actually asking of you.

Therapy offers a private relationship in which you do not have to perform certainty. The work can help you notice what urgency, responsibility, fear or identity may be making difficult to see from inside the role.

Coaching, consulting and psychotherapy

Related conversations, different work.

My path toward clinical training grew partly from executive coaching and consulting. Work that began with strategy and organizational questions increasingly revealed personal concerns: identity, relationships, fear, performance, meaning and the cost of carrying responsibility.

Business consulting may recommend an organizational solution. Coaching may identify behaviours, capabilities or performance goals. Psychotherapy attends more fully to the person: the patterns, experiences, emotions and beliefs influencing how choices are understood and lived.

Therapy with me is not consulting by another name. I may recognize aspects of the terrain and ask direct questions, but I am not there to run the organization through you or prescribe the life you should lead.