The price of wearing (or not wearing) the crown: The effects of loneliness on leaders and followers

Abstract

Loneliness has become a complex, ubiquitous problem in organizations. We review the research on loneliness in leader and follower roles and develop propositions related to understanding loneliness in organizational settings. Utilizing critical perspectives on leadership to better understand this phenomenon, we propose that loneliness is more emergent when leaders are either new to the leadership role or enact more “transformational,” “transactional,” or “authentic” leadership behaviors. Our analysis sheds light on the dark side of these popular leadership theories, especially with respect to the lack of development of high-quality relationships—and the resultant loneliness of both leaders and followers—in organizations stewarded by such leaders. We discuss implications and suggestions for future research.

Keywords

Loneliness leadership emotion critical perspectives on leadership leader disposition

On both sides of the Atlantic, loneliness has become a complex, ubiquitous problem. In the U.S., a recent Cigna survey of 20,000 Americans found that over 40% of Americans are lonely, which has raised the decibels on siren calls of a “national loneliness epidemic” (Cigna, 2018). In this survey, 43% of Americans acknowledged that they feel isolated from others and that their relationships are sometimes or always not meaningful. The “epidemic” designation has also been used in the UK—for example recently by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP, 2018)—which has a more robust track record of developing policies to reduce loneliness, including the appointment by Prime Minister Theresa May of a Minister for Loneliness in 2018. Prime Minister May reached this decision on the heels of two studies that found that 9 million UK citizens are often or always lonely (Yeginsu, 2018) and British children spend less time outside than prison inmates (Rhodan, 2016).

Loneliness, however, is not a new phenomenon. Over seventy years ago, Weber (1946) theorized that bureaucratic institutions are intrinsically impersonal, and that the division of organizational actors into highly specialized roles disconnects them from both the means of production and each other. Weber characterizes modern organizational cultures as the carrying out of business according to calculable rules

without regards for persons … Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanized,’ the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is appraised as its special virtue by capitalism. (Weber, 1946: 216)

The effects of loneliness are well established. A robust stream of empirical research points to the ominous association of loneliness with an individual’s psychological health, including expanded incidences of depression (Leary, 1990); increased anxiety (Baumeister and Tice, 1990); reduced self-control (Williams et al., 2000); reduced self-esteem (Leary et al., 1995); poor work performance (Ozcelik and Barsade, 2018); and job burnout (Cubitt and Burt, 2002). In addition, the distress caused from the failure to connect meaningfully with others carries a social stigma (Rokach, 2012). As a recent Harvard Business Review article expounds, the workplace is in no way immune to the effects of the loneliness epidemic (Murthy, 2018). For these reasons, acknowledgment of and discussions about loneliness in the workplace are often a private, taboo matter; a phenomenon that may be particularly pronounced for leaders,¹ who are often “distant and detached, from those in subordinated positions, who are frequently marginalized and silenced” (Collinson, 2017: 274). Social distance from leaders (Antonakis and Atwater, 2002) is likely to increase the loneliness of followers, who may feel their organizations are not appropriate contexts for the holistic self-disclosure that can buffer loneliness (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). Paradoxically, the effects of loneliness among both leaders and followers may manifest in very public ways, with increased hostile and anti-social behaviors (Cacioppo et al., 2015).

As per information processing theories of leadership (Lord and Maher, 1991), individuals in leadership positions are often perceived as organizational influencers, and it is precisely this perception that makes them appear powerful and socially well-connected. The archetypical perception of the self-reliant leader portrays a sense that normal rules of social intimacy do not apply to leaders, which is perhaps driven by the historic notion that leader’s relations with followers are “personally detached and strictly objective” (Weber, 1968: 975). Like others (Boyatzis et al., 2006), we challenge this view and argue that leaders have relational needs in organizations that, in some conditions, cannot be met.

Correspondent with a call for theoretical advancement in the elaboration of the phenomenon of leadership at the within-leader level (Ashkanasy and Humphrey, 2011), we propose that in organizational settings, loneliness is theoretically and practically important for two primary reasons. First, loneliness is a “real” phenomenon reported by leaders and their followers but strangely absent in the leadership and organizational studies literature. Second, there are currently no theoretical frameworks for understanding leader–follower loneliness, and therefore consideration of this phenomenon and appropriate remedies is limited. Understanding such within- and between-person variability in relevant real-life experiences is one of our core motivators for this paper and contributes to our understanding of both loneliness and leadership in contemporary organizations.

Toward this end, we integrate loneliness and leadership research to help understand why a leader and their followers might report feeling lonely in their roles. We examine three popular leadership theories, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and authentic leadership, and argue that the prototypical leader behaviors associated with these theories can produce conditions conducive to the development of loneliness in both leaders and followers. We focus on transactional, transformational, and authentic leadership because these are some of the most common relationship-oriented theories of leadership (transformational and authentic leadership) and the most common task-oriented theory of leadership (transactional leadership). In fact, there has been more research conducted on transformational leadership than all other leadership theories combined (Spector, 2014). We explore these theories in relation to leader and follower loneliness, given that workplace loneliness exists as an emotional condition embedded in organizational relationships (Ozcelik and Barsade, 2018).

In exploring how critical perspectives on leadership elaborate the link between leadership and both leader and follower loneliness, we note how unitarist elaborations of leadership such as transformational leadership and authentic leadership theories (Tourish, 2013) do not allow followers to identify a unique sense of self. The reason is that their very identities are appropriated by leaders’ intent on propagating their own inflexible interpretations of desirable organizational values (Ford and Harding, 2011). The result for both leaders and followers can be a narrow work existence in which uniqueness and voice are in low supply, setting the stage for the toxic effects of loneliness to emerge. We attempt to understand how transactional, transformational, and authentic leadership styles influence relational dynamics in organizations, with a particular focus on loneliness as it is experienced by both leaders and followers. We caution readers that the elements within our discussion and propositions are not intended to be exhaustive; rather, they are intended to be illustrative of some emergent causes of leader and follower loneliness in organizations. We begin by laying the necessary foundation to understand the nature of loneliness.

Loneliness

Most people experience loneliness at various times in their lives and have an intuitive sense of what it is and can differentiate it from objective states such as social isolation or solitude. Loneliness is a universal, common phenomenon (Beutel et al., 2017) yet a challenging concept to define because of its subjective and affective nature. Parsimonious definitions exist along the lines of “subjective social isolation” or “feeling alone”; however, these words leave much out of the experience. Loneliness has been alternately defined as a “subjective emotional state” (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015: 228) or a negative transient emotion (Qualter et al., 2015) engendered by an individual’s subjective perception of social isolation. That is, loneliness is a distressing affective reaction to a perceived deficiency in social relationships or an absence of desired closeness, sincerity, and emotionality in relationships (Masi et al., 2011). As such, one can be alone and feel no sense of loneliness or, conversely, one can feel painfully lonely despite being centrally embedded in a social environment (Cacioppo et al., 2015).

Unlike depression, loneliness has a motivating aspect to “rid oneself” of the feeling. Depression is associated with an individual’s experience of their life as not being as meaningful as they would like it to be, whereas loneliness is associated with an individual’s experience of their social relationships not being sufficiently meaningful (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). Unlike depression, loneliness has a clearer determining factor—a lack of sufficient meaningful social relationships—and, hence, a clearer pathway to reduce it. Consequently, loneliness tends to more frequently generate action tendencies, and most people become more attentive to social cues to avoid the feeling of loneliness; a phenomenon that has been conceptualized as the reaffiliation motive (see Qualter et al., 2015 for a review). Other research corroborates that individuals are motivated by a subcognitive “sociometer,” such that when they perceive a lack of social resources in their environment, they become more attentive to social cues to address this perceived scarcity and develop healthier relationships (Gardner et al., 2008).

Given this motivational component, loneliness acts as an adaptive signal that prompts an individual to change their behavior and socially reconnect with others (Cacioppo et al., 2015). However, this adaptive signal assumes that individuals have freedom in their environment to move away from particular situations that may be causing loneliness and to move toward environments that might enhance relationship connection. In everyday life, relationships are usually generated spontaneously through informal social structures (Krackhardt and Brass, 1994). Due to role boundaries, leaders cannot easily tap into informal social structures within the organization nor can they simply avoid negative relationships and orient to those relationships that enrich them. Working and interacting with others and making unpopular decisions about people and processes is a requirement prescribed by the executive’s role. For some leaders, these relational boundaries and interactions can spark affective triggers (Cropanzano et al., 2017) and create a sense of social detachment and potentially loneliness.

Yet, it also must be noted that if a leader has a low desire for social relationships within the organization, or if a leader develops sufficient relationships outside of the organization, then they may not experience loneliness, or subjective social isolation, during their workday. Instead, they are likely to experience objective social isolation (sans any associated negative emotion of loneliness) due to their peripheral location in the organization’s informal social network. If negative emotion is not felt in this situation, the reaffiliation motive is unlikely to be activated because the desire for relationships is muted in this context. Given unequal power dynamics in organizations (Keltner et al., 2003), for some people, social isolation and loneliness might arise when they enter into a leadership role within an organization. It is to this phenomenon that we now turn.

Leaders and loneliness

It’s very lonely … there’s nobody there with you to make the decision. There’s nobody there to help you. You make the decision. You’re held accountable… you are ostracized because of your position. (School principal, research participant cited in Howard, 2002: 93).

There is some evidence that the characteristics of the leadership role in complex and rapidly changing economic climates are changing the nature of leader–follower relationships (Kark, 2012). Leaders are simultaneously contending with the dual challenges of short-term organizational performance and exchange relationships (usually through more distant leadership), and more long-term issues such as climate and culture created through more intimate and relationship-oriented leadership. In such relationships, the parties involved feel satisfied with the relationship and enjoy mutuality and relational depth (Ferris et al., 2009). However, developing and maintaining relationship intimacy involves accepting vulnerability and experiencing psychological safety in the relationship (Carmeli, 2009). Such intimacy is potentially more challenging in role-constrained relationships because trust and reciprocity are usually derived from personal sources (Ibarra, 1993). As such, the role of the leader is likely to affect the quality of relationships they are capable of developing with subordinates (Ferris et al., 2009).

A paucity of academic research has focused on the impact loneliness may have on leaders and their followers. The business community has taken more of an interest in the topic, particularly with regard to senior leadership roles. The topic of being “lonely at the top” is infused in the popular press (e.g. It really is lonely at the top (Trapp, 2013)). Saporito (2012: para 2) writes that loneliness is “often dismissed and rarely discussed” and that “many CEOs are plagued by feelings of isolation once they take on the top job.” This article, amongst other popular-press articles (e.g. Hedges, 2012) reports that the peerless senior leadership role engenders loneliness, while others claim that the role is lonely because relationships at the top of the hierarchy are often brittle (Petriglieri, 2014). However, the connection between leadership and loneliness does not only exist at the very “top” of an organization; those in middle- and lower-level leadership positions are still vulnerable to feelings of relational disconnectedness.

It is regrettable that a phenomenon so potentially painful and damaging at the within-leader level (as per Ashkanasy and Humphrey’s (2011) multi-level model of emotion and leadership) has received so little attention in the academic literature. The idea that leadership is a relational process is not new, given that leadership is fundamentally about the development of relationships to meet particular ends (e.g. Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995)). However, to date, the topic of leader loneliness remains a nebulous and under-examined topic, both empirically and theoretically. Loneliness has implications for leadership because it tends to distort social cognition and engender counterproductive interpersonal behaviors such as increased hostility, negativity, depressed mood, anxiety, and decreased cooperativeness (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). Cacioppo’s research (2008) also indicates that lonely individuals experience decreased executive functioning and performance on complex cognitive tasks (e.g. planning, decision making, abstract thinking), all of which can impact upon task, team, and relational performance (Ozcelik and Barsade, 2018).

Antecedents to leader loneliness: Proposed theoretical framework

Our proposed model integrates research on individual and contextual factors to help explain why a leader might report feeling lonely and the impact this may have on their followers. It is important to note that our proposed theory does not apply to all leaders; rather, the model attempts to integrate the literature to help understand the reports of those leaders who actually feel loneliness in their role. Furthermore, it is beyond the scope of this paper to canvass the preventative aspects or treatment of loneliness (see Wright, 2015). The first three propositions discuss the emotional and contextual conditions to understand loneliness in leadership contexts. In other words, reports of loneliness are more likely to represent a situational phenomenon rather than a stable disposition inherent to the individual and can be induced due to leader social distance. The remaining six propositions focus on leadership style: we critique the nature of transactional, transformational, and authentic leadership behaviors to help understand the experience of those who report leader-related loneliness.

Experienced emotions: State loneliness in leadership roles

In addition to the criteria for defining loneliness outlined in the introduction, it is important to distinguish between “trait” loneliness and “state” loneliness when deciphering reports of loneliness. This distinction is essential, particularly when discussing loneliness in specific social contexts such as organizations. Trait loneliness is an essential dimension of a person’s disposition and is attributed to a stable, chronic, and deep sense of personal inadequacy and disconnection in social relationships. State loneliness, by contrast, is circumstance-specific and temporary and usually results from a reaction to a life event or transition.

State loneliness can often be ameliorated by changes to the very same circumstances or interactions that may have triggered it in the first place, whereas trait loneliness is much more difficult to combat and can have severe and debilitating health outcomes (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). The loneliness literature consistently suggests that the people most likely to experience trait loneliness are those who report shyness, low social competence, emotional instability, and low self-esteem (e.g. Ernst and Cacioppo, 1998). Trait loneliness therefore tends to correlate with individuals who are (or feel) permanently estranged from, misunderstood, or rejected by others (Sergin and Kinney, 1995) and are more likely to have dysfunctional relationships in general (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). Moreover, trait loneliness is more resistant to amelioration irrespective of environmental conditions (Mijuskovic, 2015). Given such attributes, it is unlikely that a person who feels such existential loneliness would obtain or hold a leadership role within an organization, as their personal qualities would probably inhibit their ability to perform in such a position. When thinking about loneliness in the context of the leader in an organization, we argue that leader loneliness is a state-like experience and needs to be considered in relation to the contextual circumstances in the individual’s environment. In other words, we consider that the nature of the role can induce loneliness rather than it being inherent to the leader.
Proposition 1: Lonely leaders are more likely to report affective experiences and emotional responses associated with state loneliness than trait loneliness.

Leader work environment

A critical element in the leader’s work environment that we propose is likely to galvanize leader loneliness is the leader’s status differential and social distance from followers.

Status differentials and social distance between leaders and followers

The quantity and quality of actual social relationships may be influenced by a leader’s social distance from subordinates, which is referred to as “perceived differences in status, rank, authority, social standing, and power” and has been argued to “affect the degree of intimacy and social contact that develop between followers and their leader” (Antonakis and Atwater, 2002: 682). Given that followers who experience more frequent interactions with their leader are likely to have closer relationships, it is not surprising that the concept of social distance between leaders and their followers has been at the center of many leadership theories (see Bligh and Riggio, 2012). Some research suggests that leader distance can be beneficial to an organization’s culture by reducing “micromanagement” issues and other interpersonal problems (Howell et al., 2005). However, most of the literature points to leader distance creating negative outcomes, including poor relationship development and follower perceptions of leaders as uninvolved or less engaged (Anderson and Brown, 2010).

Meta-analytic results suggest leaders who accentuate their status differences in their interactions with followers do not tend to develop high-quality relationships in their organizations (Dulebohn et al., 2011). Status has been defined as the respect, prestige, and prominence ascribed to an individual by group members (Anderson and Kilduff, 2009). Status is bestowed from an external source (Blau, 1964) and is based on the evaluation of others by way of status-conferral processes (Blader and Chen, 2012).

Compounding the social distance between followers and leaders, followers are likely, at an unconscious or even conscious level, to resent the machinations of (e.g. transformational) leaders to create a vision and compel followers to adhere to it (Amernic et al., 2007) as a salient manifestation of accentuated power inequities in organizations (Collinson, 2017). Yet, it is also possible that followers that respond positively to one of the four cardinal behaviors of transformational leaders—idealized influence—may develop even stronger feelings of admiration and affinity toward such leaders (Colbert et al., 2008). This exception notwithstanding, individuals who practice transformational or authentic leadership might be particularly susceptible to excommunication from in-group members. The consequent lack of connections between leaders and followers could produce loneliness in both groups and is explored further in proposition 4.

Status differentials between leaders and followers tend to stimulate intergroup dynamics in which out-group members (in this case, the leader) become depersonalized by in-group members (e.g. subordinates) (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). Once leaders begin to become outcasts due to their higher status, they may express more high-arousal negative emotions such as anger, which confer higher status in the eyes of followers, and less low-arousal negative emotions, such as sadness, that reduce their status (Tiedens, 2001). Such a leadership trajectory has been attributed to numerous organizational leaders, such as Lee Iacocca, the former CEO of Chrysler (Spector, 2014).

While such emotion expression may be conducive to status protection, the same cannot be declared in relation to the development of high-quality relationships with followers (Kark, 2012). A good example is Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, who was widely attributed with high status and poor leader–follower relationships due to his unpredictable display of anger and other high-arousal negative emotions, including frequent expressions of “extreme emotionalism … petulance and impatience” that often led to employees feeling humiliated (Isaacson, 2012: 93). In general, these power-induced status differentiators within organizations are also likely to compound leader social isolation and loneliness.
Proposition 2: Status differences are likely to produce higher social distance between leaders and followers and, consequently, increased leader and follower loneliness.

The empathy problem

Over the long term, as individuals rise to positions of high status, they tend to become excommunicated by followers into an “out-group” due to their status differential with followers. This temporal process is ironic, as leaders are often selected or elected due to their prototypicality in representing the values and characteristics of the group. Once leaders assume their roles, however, they tend to become fixated upon by followers that they begin to aggrandize themselves and become less attentive and empathetic to the needs of followers (Hogg and Terry, 2000).

In fact, individuals in high-ranking positions tend to be less polite, more likely to speak out of turn and interrupt others, and more socially inappropriate, which has been attributed to lower empathy for others. For example, in an experimental study, three-person teams were tasked with writing a document together. One of the individuals in each group was assigned the role of evaluation, accentuating their status within the group. When cookies were provided to each group, the higher-status group member was more likely to eat with their mouth open, to consume a second cookie, and to allow crumbs to fall out of their mouth (Keltner et al., 2003). Conferring power on an individual can also cause them to become less accurate in perspective taking (the cognitive form of empathy) and more likely to permit stereotypes to guide their judgments of others (Ebenbach and Keltner, 1998). In general, high-status individuals tend to pay less attention to others (Keltner et al., 2003). The reduction in leader empathy as the leader shifts to the out-group is problematic, as the ability to provide interpersonal support to others is a basic dimension of effective leadership (Avolio et al., 2009).

The decrease in leader empathy as the leader moves to the out-group creates a notable imbalance in perspective taking. In such a situation, followers tend to do the opposite—devote more attentional resources to information seeking about the dispositional characteristics and personal idiosyncrasies of leaders—because they perceive this information to be predictive of a leader’s future behavior (Hogg and Terry, 2000). Hence leaders, by the nature of their organizational role, often sit outside the informal friendship network, which by its very nature excommunicates them to the out-group through social identification processes (Hogg and Terry, 2000). Being in the out-group, even if only in one’s imagination, can be a marginalizing and ostracizing experience that can create feelings of loneliness (Gonsalkorale and Williams, 2007).

Yet, leaders are not the only culprits in creating the empathy problem. Personal communication, it turns out, is often not reciprocated in situations when the parties have unequal status. There tends to be more willingness to self-disclose up (i.e. from subordinate to boss) than down the status hierarchy (Earle et al., 1983). Perhaps, for this reason, survey research suggests that managers’ empathy toward non-managers (which requires self-disclosure by non-managers) tends to go unreciprocated (Toegel et al., 2013). The reason is that while leaders deem their expressions of empathy toward their followers as “extra-role behavior,” followers can hold a contrary view. Toegel et al.’s (2013) study suggests that followers consider leader empathy to be “in-role behavior” that leaders enact for strategic reasons, which hence does not merit reciprocation. Moreover, other research (Ames et al., 2004) suggests that when the recipients of leader empathy deem the empathy to have been provided by the leader for instrumental reasons (e.g. to increase the leader’s understanding of a follower in order to optimize the follower’s future performance), this leader empathy is less likely to be generative of a high-quality leader–follower relationship. Hence, it seems that while followers are finely attuned to social information emanating from the leader in order to predict the leader’s future behavior—understandably, as this behavior can promote or threaten their future livelihood—this information seeking does not translate into the interpersonal expressions of empathy that might attenuate leader loneliness.

Individual perceptions of a lack of empathy from others in the social environment in which they are embedded tend to result in an increase in ostracism (Gonsalkorale and Williams, 2007) and loneliness (Konrath et al., 2011). Hence, leaders that express empathy and listen to the personal and professional challenges of followers (perhaps in the hopes of developing a caring relationship and receiving empathy from followers in return), but do not experience this follower empathy, are likely to experience an increase in loneliness. Followers who trust and confide in early-stage leaders who subsequently become less empathetic and attuned to their own needs as those leaders rise up through the organizational hierarchy (Hogg and Terry, 2000) similarly are likely to experience an increase in loneliness.

This bidirectional empathy challenge is likely to be even more pronounced today than a few decades ago, as rates of both cognitive and affective empathy in the general population have decreased by approximately 40% (Konrath et al., 2011). This diminished experience of empathy, which has been construed as a coveted emotional “commodity” (Hochschild, 1983), may be a contributing factor to why many leaders and followers alike find themselves feeling increasingly lonely in their organizations.
Proposition 3: Leaders and followers who experience low levels of empathy from each other are more likely to experience high levels of loneliness.

Leadership style

Leaders who experience high levels of loneliness may exercise leadership styles generative of loneliness, including those characterized by transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and authentic leadership.

Transactional leadership

The status-induced disregard for the humanness of organizational members, conceptualized over a century ago by Taylor’s (1911) treatise on how leaders often treat followers as inputs, was later propagated in theories of transactional leadership that exhort leaders to emphasize extrinsic incentives to spur employee contribution (Bass and Avolio, 2003). Transactional leadership theory underscores a diminished emphasis on leader traits and the enhanced significance of (both implicit and explicit) contractual relationships.

This framework, also conceptualized as a cost-benefit exchange process between leader and follower, has been constructed on the assumption that if the job or work environment is not motivating or satisfying enough, the leader will maintain loyalty by compensating the employee for the deficiencies (Den Hartog et al., 1997). Feasibly, the lack of motivation and job satisfaction associated with some transactional leadership climates along with a disregard for the intrinsic motivations of organizational actors may lead to reduced meaningfulness. Consequently, this situation could also result in increased loneliness in both leaders and followers, as leader–follower relationship quality is often constructed through a shared motivation around common values and goals (Chen et al., 2016).

Empirical and theoretical research supports the notion that leaders who adopt a transactional approach are unlikely to develop high-quality relationships with followers (for a review, see Tse et al., 2015). Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) challenge this view, arguing that transactional leadership has been unfairly presented as “the dull, mechanical, carrots-and-sticks leadership that would be more ordinary and customary—a background against which charismatic-transformational leadership shines all the more brightly” and is therefore “a biased subset of leadership” (p. 12). According to Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013), transactional leadership has been set up by transformational leadership theorists as the unwitting counterfoil to transformational leadership that has become synonymous with extrinsic motivation, implying that intrinsic motivation is only captured by transformational leadership. Yet, followers of transformational leaders may not be permitted a sufficient sense of agency and individual choice (Amernic et al., 2007; Tourish, 2013) to experience the fulfillment of their intrinsic motivations. Additionally, research on the dyadic relational schema between leaders and followers suggests that high levels of congruent expressive relational schema (willingness to mutually engage in affective and extra-role social exchanges) generate high levels of leader–member exchange behaviors (Tsai et al., 2017).

An important question that remains, then, is whether the more recent relationship-oriented theories of leadership (for a review, see Avolio et al., 2009) such as transformational leadership (Colbert et al., 2008) and authentic leadership (Gardneret al., 2005)—might lead to reduced levels of leader and follower loneliness. It is to this question that we now turn.

Transformational leadership

This relationship-oriented leadership style has been widely considered the most effective form of leadership (Shamir et al., 1993). Transformational leaders are attributed with imbuing followers with respect, trust, and pride (Menges et al., 2011) and generally with enacting “leader behaviors that transform and inspire followers to perform beyond expectations while transcending self-interest for the good of the organization” (Avolio et al., 2009: 423).

Transformational leaders have been fashioned as individuals who alter the goals of followers such that their reengineered aspirations stem from higher-order values and are representative of the shared priorities of leaders and followers (Bono and Judge, 2004). Critical perspectives on leadership, however, take another view: in most cases, transformational leaders bear a disproportionate influence on these goals while lower-status followers feel pressured to conform to the newly elaborated organizational norms, resulting in a lack of dissent (Tourish and Pinnington, 2002). For example, in the case of Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, “the highly directive communications of Welch were intended to enforce the internationalization of values and behaviors he deemed appropriate” (Amernic et al., 2007: 1862).

Mainstream theories of transformational leadership adopt a unitarist approach where leaders declare a vision and followers happily fall in line through social information processes in which information communicated by the leader purportedly influences followers’ attitudes and behaviors (Ou et al., 2014). However, critical perspectives on leadership allow for the possibility of multiple purviews and disparate experiences of leaders and followers (Tourish, 2013). These perspectives also note the proclivity of transformational leadership theorists to depict these larger-than-life leaders as heroic individuals with a claim to moral superiority that compels followers to gleefully succumb to their directives (Spector, 2014; Tourish, 2013), a claim corroborated by in-depth analysis of specific leaders (e.g. Lee Iacocca (Spector, 2014) and Jack Welch (Amernic et al., 2007)).

Through this mechanism of heightened conformity and reduced dissent instilled by a powerful leader engaged in unidirectional interactions with their followers (Amernic et al., 2007; Tourish, 2013), those followers may experience poor relationship quality and the inability to generate or maintain satisfying relationships. These relational conditions could explain reports of loneliness due to the follower’s deeper value incongruence with organizational norms over which they have little influence. Additionally, followers may not experience authentic self-emergence in an organizational culture characterized by a “uniform definition of reality” exacted by the leader (Amernic et al., 2007: 1863). In fact, followers of highly assertive leaders often find it difficult to speak up about what they most value (Grant et al., 2011).

Given the uneven power dynamics in organizations (Anderson and Brown, 2010) in which followers are disproportionately influenced by leaders as they more finely attune to leader motivations and idiosyncratic behaviors than vice-versa (Keltner et al., 2003), a “transformational leader” will often step in and compound these inequities. Such leader behaviors render it more difficult for followers to develop a distinct identity separate from the organization. Without a strong personal identity, followers are likely to find it more challenging to identify their values and develop a unique sense of self, a precondition for experiencing value congruence with others.

This predicament of followers is critical, as value incongruence with those around them and not feeling understood by others were both cited as primary causes of the “loneliness epidemic” in the recent Cigna (2018) loneliness survey. Because leadership style influences how the leader models and values relationships in the organization, it follows that both transactional and transformational leaders may be generative of both leader and follower loneliness. However, this loneliness manifests in different ways: transactional leaders through the devaluation of interpersonal relationships and transformational leadership through the insistence of their subjective version of the values and norms through which followers must be transformed. In both cases, the resultant diminished leader–follower relationships are likely, in turn, to be a contributing factor of reported leader loneliness.

Transformational leaders that compel their followers to adhere to a singular, unitarist interpretation of an organizational culture can create a context ripe for both leader and follower loneliness. (It must be noted that any authoritarian leader with a unitarist interpretation of the organization’s culture, independent of whether they are transformational, is likely to create the conditions in which both leader and follower loneliness thrive.) In the case of leaders, the insistence of the transformational leader in unilaterally producing a vision and influencing others to accept it is likely to accentuate the leader’s status, which will in turn increase the distance of the leader in their relationship with the followers. The surface acting the leader enacts to live up to this idealized image as they assume their role each day is likely to alienate them from both themselves and their followers (Grandey, 2000) and increase leader loneliness.

In parallel, followers are likely to feel obliged to surface act to conform to the restrictive norms imposed by the transformational leader that they are unable to influence. Surface acting occurs when organizational members alter outward appearances to conform to emotion display rules (Grandey, 2000). Surface acting is generally considered an unhealthy form of emotional labor (for a review, see Humphrey et al., 2015) as it leads to self- and other-alienation (Grandey, 2000; Humphrey, 2012), which could, in part, explain the loneliness in such leaders.

It is important to note that our claims are not unidirectional: each leadership theory may also possess an intrinsic mechanism that might buffer against leader and follower loneliness. A benefit of transactional leadership, for instance, is that it acknowledges and respects the independent goals of leader and followers, enabling followers to express their independence of personal identity and vision rather than conforming to the leader’s dictates (Tourish and Pinnington, 2002). Followers who preserve their self-identity are less likely to experience the disconnection from self often associated with loneliness (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008). Hence, the intactness of personal identity associated with transactional leadership may diminish some of the previously documented effects of transactional leadership on follower—and, in turn, leader—loneliness.
Proposition 4a: “Transformational” leaders are likely to induce higher loneliness among followers than “non-transformational” leaders.

Proposition 4b: Any leader whose behavior generates follower loneliness is likely to experience higher levels of loneliness through the mediated effects of lonelier followers.

Proposition 4c: Through the mediated effects of lonelier followers, “transformational” leaders are likely to experience higher levels of loneliness than “non-transformational” leaders.

Authentic leadership

Authenticity has been traditionally conceptualized as integrity of self and behavior within and across situations (Baumeister, 1998) or acting as one’s “true” or “real” self (Rogers, 1961). In the domain of organizational leadership, authentic leadership has built on this association of authenticity with the internally defined self (Gardner et al., 2005) and defined authentic leadership as “a pattern of transparent and ethical leader behavior that encourages openness in sharing information needed to make decisions while accepting follower inputs” (Avolio et al., 2009: 424). Authentic leadership, according to its adherents, emphasizes high ethical standards, self-awareness, and the adoption of characteristics related to one’s “true” self (Gardner et al., 2005).

Critical perspectives on authentic leadership, on the other hand, hold that authentic leaders subordinate their deeper inclinations to a collectively-, organizationally defined self, resulting in their losing the very authenticity they pride themselves on (Ford and Harding, 2011; Ladkin et al., 2016; Lawler and Ashman, 2012). In fact, the only attributed characteristics of authentic leaders are related to the positive subdimension of one’s genuine self, such as optimism, confidence, hopefulness, and resilience (Gardner et al., 2005). Gardner et al. (2005), for example, describe “the positive psychological states and positive moral perspective that both contribute to and are enhanced by authentic leadership” (p. 345). Similarly, Luthans and Avolio (2003) define authentic leadership in organizations as
a process that draws from both positive psychological capacities and a highly developed organizational context, which results in both greater self-awareness and self-regulated positive behaviors on the part of leaders and associates, fostering positive self-development. (p. 243)
It seems that the possibility of authentically negative leader emotions or characteristics is not considered by authentic leadership theory (Ladkin et al., 2016).

The danger of this oversight is that the suppression of an individual’s true drives and motives—often embedded in the negative emotions they express (Gibson and Tulgan, 2002; Silard, 2018)—is likely to lead to self-alienation (Grandey, 2000; Humphrey, 2012). Given the isolating effects of self-presentation (Hochschild, 1983), this regulation of all negative emotions could be a contributing factor in reported loneliness. The reason is that authentic leadership, at least as it has been fashioned in the mainstream literature (e.g. Gardner et al., 2005), impels leaders to subordinate the parts of themselves that contravene the organizationally sanctioned cultural norms, which is likely to induce disconnection from self, reduced self-disclosure in relationships, and, hence, loneliness.

These critical perspectives on authentic leadership have refashioned the construct from its origins as an internal search for one’s “true self” (Gardner et al., 2005) to a multidimensional, externally oriented process of distilling fragmented identities into a coherent narrative (Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010). Hence, there appears to be a darker side of authentic leadership (Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014) that encompasses Jung’s “shadow self” (Ladkin et al., 2016) in addition to the more social acceptable characteristics of earlier, more singularly positive constructions of authentic leadership. Leaders who incorporate their unconscious motives into their leadership style are more likely to experience meaning in their roles, which is particularly critical for leaders to remain engaged in their work (Lips-Wiersma et al., 2016). This experience of psychological meaningfulness is likely to lead to more substantive workplace relationships and, hence, reduce the leader’s likelihood of feeling disconnected and lonely.

When individuals experience a crisis of meaning, on the other hand, they also tend to experience stress and anxiety and to psychologically, socially, and/or physically withdraw (e.g. Baumeister, 2005). This insular, inhibitive quality impedes the development of high-quality relationships where mutual intrinsic value is required. The retreating process involved serves to protect individuals from the pain they experience in their environment. On retreating, such individuals invariably discover that without meaningful human connection, there is only emptiness and a sense of ultimate loneliness (Mijuskovic, 2015). However, in order to regain a sense of meaning and build relational wealth (Leana and Rousseau, 2000), they need to trust others and feel care and empathy for and from others.

Lonely individuals tend to be more self-focused and non-responsive toward other’s needs (Perlman and Peplau, 1981). Research also suggests that lonely people make more self-statements, ask fewer questions of their partners, and change the topic more frequently (Pickett et al., 2004). The irony is that lonely people monitor social cues more closely as they desire social connection, called the “reaffiliation motive,” yet also emerge in relationships with increased hostility, exploitation of other people, low empathy toward others, and anxiety.

According to Ford and Harding (2011), conventional authentic leadership theory assumes that the “authentic leader” internalizes the organization’s values and then influences followers to embody the same values. Due to their higher level of power, such leaders may compel followers to become unable to distinguish clear boundaries between self and organization. As Ford and Harding (2011: 473) argue: “The follower … is an object to the subject of the leader. The follower is denied subjectivity, is not allowed to be an I.” The consequent identity loss of followers at the insistence of the “authentic” leader, who treats followers as mere objects in the attainment of the leader’s interpretation of value propagation writ large, is likely to cause followers to “suffer a psychic death” (Ford and Harding, 2011: 474) and may experience loneliness.

Leaders may fare no better from the enhancement of power inequities that these seemingly innocuous relationship-oriented leadership theories enable (Collinson, 2017). As Ford and Harding (2011: 474) suggest,
The outcome for the leader could be dire: those whose followers are but a reflection of the self is one who either may be plunged into ‘unbearable aloneness’ or who escapes into merger with like-self beings … where anyone who is different is not recognized.
Considering that, from a Sartrean perspective, the definition of the self is contingent upon its interaction with others (Lawler and Ashman, 2012), attempts by leaders to create a unitarist organizational culture (as transformational leaders, for instance, are prone to doing; Amernic et al., 2007) may undermine the healthy identity development of both the leader and followers, engendering a sense of loneliness.

While the philosophers, Heidegger and Sartre, did not agree on much, they were in agreement that each individual experiences existential angst in their attempt to realize who they truly are vis-à-vis the constraints of their family, culture, and society (Lawler and Ashman, 2012). Sartre deems this tension between being the person one desires to be and the person who is influenced by their specific life context, situation, or “being-in-the-world” to be at the center of the existential dichotomy that defines the self (Lawler and Ashman, 2012). In line with a client-centered clinical psychological approach, most critical perspectives on leadership view the self not as a fixed entity, but as existing in a continual process of “becoming” (Rogers, 1961). At the center of this dichotomy, our sense of authenticity is “to realize fully one’s being-in-situation, whatever this situation may happen to be” (Sartre, 1999: 54). The psychoanalytic perspective of Jung (Ladkin et al., 2016) reinforces the philosophical assertions of Sartre and Heidegger that individuation requires a collective context for its development, and the self does not flourish in isolation.

This perspective on the “becoming” of the authentic self is in stark contradiction to traditional authentic leadership theory. An existential crisis that produces leader loneliness seems almost inevitable when leaders only allow themselves to engage in positive, prosocial behaviors (Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014) that deny the multi-faceted, inherently contradictory nature of the self (Ladkin et al., 2016). In fact, studies on leaders who deny wholesale the expression of negative emotions that may be aligned with their “shadow self” in a Jungian sense (Ladkin et al., 2016) suggest that these positive-emotion performances can result in stress, burnout, and alienation from self and others (Grandey, 2000; Humphrey, 2012), which, as per our above arguments, could generate loneliness. Perhaps, for this reason, leadership has been referred to as an “alienating social myth” (Gemmill and Oakley, 1992: 113).

“Authentic” leaders who refuse to display negative emotions not only inhibit part of their authenticity, but ignore the socio-functional purpose of leader negative emotions (Parrott, 2002; Silard, 2018). Whereas positive emotions can induce a broadened attention span germane to creativity, feelings of contentment, and a reduction of “autonomic reactivity” in followers (Fredrickson and Branigan, 2005), the events linked to negative emotions are more vividly recalled and easily accessed (Amabile et al., 2004).

Leader negative emotions are also important for effective leadership, as when they are self-directed (e.g. sadness, anxiety, frustration, disappointment), such emotions signal to followers that a work outcome is highly valued by the leader (Gibson and Tulgan, 2002) and follower performance needs to be improved (Fitness, 2000). The expression of negative, self-focused emotions also enables the leader to express their vulnerability and provide followers with a gateway to connect with them (Cropanzano et al., 2017) without leading to follower stress and burnout of follower-directed negative emotions such as anger, ridicule, contempt, and rage. However, this “other side” of the authentic self is ignored by conventional authentic leadership theory (Ford and Harding, 2011; Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014). The discovery of negative self-focused emotions that are favorable to express in a leadership context could be an interesting new stream of research that would embolden critical perspectives on authentic leadership (Ford and Harding, 2011; Ladkin and Taylor, 2010). Such a research agenda would also broaden the repertoire of sanctioned leader emotion display beyond solely positive emotions such as enthusiasm, optimism, and hope.

The creation and maintenance of high-quality relationships necessitates trust, openness, and reciprocity beyond exchange value, therefore creating authenticity in dyadic relationships (Ferris et al., 2009). The mainstream definition of authentic leadership suggests that, in the long term, authentic leaders will develop more meaningful relationships (Gardner et al., 2005) and potentially keep loneliness at bay. Yet, contradicting such theorizing, leaders who are willing to be critically self-reflective (which entails opening up about a broader range of personal motives and qualities than the limited positive orientations sanctioned in the authentic leadership literature allows) have been found to be more likely to build trust with their followers (Dolbier et al., 2001).

Similarly, transformational leaders may face challenges in developing a high level of trust with followers due to their intolerance for dissent (Tourish and Pinnington, 2002). Lee Iacocca, for instance, has been over-attributed as single-handedly stewarding Chrysler’s turnaround and acting as a transformational leader despite flagrant abuses of trust and confidence with followers (Spector, 2014).² Consequently, followers of transformational leaders can be directly proscribed from expressing a significant proportion of their identity by leaders intent on transforming them as per the leaders’ subjective interpretation of the organizational values and culture (Tourish, 2013). Whereas, with authentic leadership, leaders might negate a significant proportion of their identity (the “shadow self”) (Ladkin et al., 2016). The existential crisis associated with such leader behaviors, as we argue above, could produce loneliness. This leader loneliness is then likely to generate follower loneliness, because if followers are interacting with a leader who is only sharing one dimension of who they are, these followers are likely to similarly feel that their holistic self is undetected, unwanted, and superfluous to the organization. Followers may also find it difficult to connect with and identify with the leader, resulting in a toxic amalgam of feelings including disconnection from others (including the leader) and a lack of inclusion and meaningful relationships, all of which can produce loneliness.
Proposition 5a: “Authentic” leaders (as defined by mainstream authentic leadership theory) are likely to only be authentic in the expression of positive emotions and to abstain from the authentic expression of negative emotions.

Proposition 5b: Through the mediated effects of the restriction of negative emotion display, “authentic” leaders (as defined by mainstream authentic leadership theory) are likely to experience more loneliness than “non-authentic” leaders.

Proposition 5c: Through the mediated effects of lonelier leaders, the followers of “authentic” leaders (as defined by mainstream authentic leadership theory) are likely to experience higher levels of loneliness than the followers of “non-authentic” leaders.

Discussion

This paper has traversed some possible theoretical foundations for understanding loneliness and leadership. Integrating multi-disciplinary literatures with a special emphasis on critical perspectives on leadership, it is evident that the antecedents generative of relational processes have a bearing on the prevention and development of loneliness (de Jong Gierveld et al., 2006).

We have also extended existing critical perspectives on leadership by examining how transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and authentic leadership, three of the most popular leadership theories today, do not account for how leaders who subscribe to those tenets may be inducing loneliness within both themselves and their followers. Extending research on the identity-negating effects of transformational leadership on followers (Amernic et al., 2007; Tourish, 2013; Tourish and Pinnington, 2002), we theorize that transformational leaders produce lonely followers who then compound the loneliness of their leaders. In parallel, we extend research on the inactivation of the intrinsic motivations of followers by transactional leaders, which can lead to poor leader–follower relationship quality through a lack of common values, motivations, or goals (Chen et al., 2016), likely accentuating both leader and follower loneliness.

We also extend research on the intrapersonal identity-constraining effects of authentic leadership on leaders themselves (Ford and Harding, 2011; Ladkin et al., 2016; Lawler and Ashman, 2012; Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014), which produces lonely leaders and then, through the social modeling of the leader and (ironically) inauthentic interactions with the leader, lonely followers. In the case of transactional leadership, transformational leadership, and authentic leadership, subscription to the leader behaviors prescribed by these mainstream theories is likely to induce loneliness in either the leader (authentic leadership) or followers (transactional leadership and transformational leadership), which then spreads to the other through value incongruence—a major cause of loneliness as per the recent Cigna’s (2018) study.

Leaders are not immune from the need to have at least one person in their everyday social environment with whom they can confide their personal worries, thoughts, and feelings (McPherson et al., 2006). Recognizing the conditions in which leaders feel lonely will help contribute to our understanding of both the more severe intrapersonal consequences that can result from being lonely, such as depression and physical illness (Ernst and Cacioppo, 1998) and the potential interpersonal consequences associated with the quality of leader–follower relationships (Maslyn and Uhl-Bien, 2001).

Limitations and future research

This article does not claim to account for every possible contextual influence that serves to cause or exacerbate leader loneliness. Future studies, particularly those qualitative in nature, will validate or refute the propositions and/or specify additional influences and outcomes of leader loneliness. Research agendas might also include contextual factors related to national and organizational culture such as individualism and power distance (Dulebohn et al., 2011; Wendt et al., 2009). Leaders of organizations that value the characteristics associated with high-quality relationships as a cultural norm, for instance, may experience less loneliness. Collectivist national cultures that place a high value on group harmony (Kim and Markus, 1999) may also moderate the effects on leader loneliness of the antecedents in our study.

In addition to cultural norms, a more granular understanding of what daily work practices look like for leaders (e.g. meeting practices) and how they contribute to relational processes (Baker and Dutton, 2007) may also help us understand and implement preventative strategies related to leader loneliness. For example, given that the development of mentoring programs (Allen et al., 2006) and compassion-based coaching (Boyatzis et al., 2006) enhances varying aspects of relationship quality, it is likely that such practices would concurrently prevent or reduce loneliness. Future research could also ask leaders questions about the typical topics of conversations they engage in with interaction partners, the levels of intimacy of conversation they experience, and who they turn to when confronted with a challenging issue. Understanding not just that leader loneliness occurs, but how it occurs, is the principal motivation of this analysis.

In this paper, we have drawn on our professional experiences and traversed multi-disciplinary literatures to understand the relational dynamics of those in the leadership role, with a view to understanding why some leaders experience loneliness and the associated outcomes of this loneliness. We hope we have convincingly argued the case for the genesis of robust empirical and theoretical interest among organizational scholars to understand the antecedents and intrapersonal and organizational outcomes associated with leader loneliness. Such research stands to influence leader well-being, organizational purpose and performance, and other critical organizational variables.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Anthony Silard

Notes

Author Biographies

Anthony Silard is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at the Jack H Brown College of Business & Public Administration at California State University San Bernardino, where he teaches nonprofit and public leadership. He is also a visiting Assistant Professor at Claremont McKenna College, where he teaches leadership. His research interests include emotion, leadership, relationship quality, and the discrete emotions of loneliness and secondary trauma.

Sarah Wright is a senior lecturer and postgraduate coordinator of management and marketing at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her research interests include emotions in organisations, social relationships in the workplace, loneliness, and human relations.

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