Solitude as a Leadership Discipline
“The bridge between a public life and private life is stillness, having time to remember who you are and who you are not.”
For business leaders, solitude is not withdrawal from responsibility. It is the discipline of stepping away long enough to hear what constant motion can drown out: stress, misalignment, exhaustion, and the quiet erosion of judgment.
I led a business from start-up through the expansion to seven locations over about eight years. Along the way, the COVID pandemic interrupted everything: all seven locations closed, then reopened. The work was constant, and the challenges never really stopped.
The last couple of years became a whirlwind. We were opening two locations while still emerging from the COVID pandemic. Staffing problems, financial pressure, and constant operational strain piled up. After six years, I was not working less than I had when I opened the first facility. I was working more: 80-hour weeks, few vacations, and very little room to step back.
Then, suddenly, I was out. The phone stopped ringing. The long list of meetings disappeared. The one-on-ones with staff were canceled. I was out, and the responsibilities were no longer mine.
I spent my newfound quiet time considering who I had become. I caught up on reading. I exercised and focused on losing weight. I reached out to old friends and acquaintances with whom I had lost touch.
At first, that quiet felt like the absence of work. Over time, it became something more useful: space to notice what work had been doing to me.
When I was reconnecting with my old friends after being so distant for a long time, I began to hear a common refrain,
“You were so stressed.”
“You were going a million miles an hour.”
“I could feel the workload pressing on you.”
Oddly enough, no one alerted me to my state of mind until after I was out of it. I asked them why they had not said anything. The common answers were, “It did not seem like my business,” “You seemed like you had it under control,” and “I thought you were enjoying it.” But one friend said something that stung: “I would have said something, but I knew you were not in a place to hear it.”
How does anyone unclog their ears? How do you avoid becoming so trapped by work that you lose sight of yourself? Friends and mentors can help, but in my case they were not enough. Entrepreneurship had become too all-encompassing for outside perspective to break through.
Exiting the business gave me a gift: quiet time. Time alone gave me perspective. Understanding yourself and your relationship to your environment requires introspection, and it takes constant thought and work.
Both the world and you are changing all the time. If you do not take time to consider those changes — the why and the how — you may not become the leader you want to be.
Now, as I start other new businesses, I give myself that gift. I set aside quiet time for consideration and introspection so that changes, whether of my own creation or thrust upon me, are understood before they overtake me.
