Lam, Hodar
Werner, Mirjam D
Giessner, Steffen R

Interest in loneliness – broadly defined as the subjective, unpleasant experience of social disconnectedness (Cacioppo & Cacioppo, 2018) – has grown significantly in the last decade. In 2020, a Cigna survey of more than 10,000 American employees estimated that 62% of the working population suffers from loneliness (Cigna, 2020). As loneliness is shown to be connected to depression, social anxiety, and even increased mortality (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006), loneliness also has a significant negative impact on health and social care services (McDaid et al., 2017).

Despite its potential detriments, loneliness is rarely discussed in organisations. Unawareness of the issue, dismissal of its potential negative impacts, and the risk of stigma attached to admission of feeling lonely all contribute to the continued silence on workplace loneliness (Lam et al., 2024). In addition, organisations and their members often hold a romanticised view on and associate leadership roles with positivity, such as power, status, and charisma (Antonakis & Atwater, 2002; Meindl et al., 1985).

Prior work often assumes that loneliness is universally the same, and hence, comparable through measurement across leaders. However, this assumption ignores the nuances of individual relational expectations and meanings attached to leader loneliness experiences (Stein & Tuval-Mashiach, 2015; Wood, 1986). Questioning this assumption in the literature, we propose the research question: how do leadership expectations shape experiences of loneliness for leaders?

We adopted an inductive, narrative approach to understand how leaders make sense of loneliness experiences. We conducted in-depth interviews with 26 leaders in the Netherlands and extracted stories about their day-to-day leadership experiences in their organisational roles. Our narrative analysis revealed that leaders self-portrayed in the meta-categories of task-, relations-, or change-oriented leadership (Bormann & Rowold, 2018). Upon triggers of invalidating narratives (both internal and external) and unexpected leadership demands, such as making difficult decisions and handling personnel issues, leaders emplotted their loneliness experiences with characters of rescuers, victims, or lone wolves.

We conceptualised leader loneliness as a situated and performative experience. Specifically, we proposed a characterisation process model: adaptable leaders make sense of loneliness triggers by evaluating alignment in self-characterisations in leadership and loneliness narratives. Changes in loneliness characterisations, coupled with coping narratives of externalising, appreciating , and seeking relief for loneliness, then help leaders adopt another sets of internalised leadership expectations. Further, individual adaptability emerged as highly important: loneliness experiences are likely to perpetuate for those rigid in switching their characterisations.

1. To appreciate that loneliness in leadership is a lived yet often stigmatised experience that triggers leader well-being and mental health concerns.
2. To understand how narrative analysis can operationalise and capture individual social construction of sensitive and emotional issues at work.
3. To apply narrative and acceptance-commitment approaches to cultivate psychological flexibility in sensemaking of loneliness experiences at work.