Albeit CEOs and leaders are often surrounded by people they are equally at risk of loneliness. Type ‘loneliness in leadership’ into Google today and it cites about 16 million results. Ask your peers how they feel, and you might also be surprised to find that many of them deal with lonely stages in their roles more often than you might think.

Acknowledging that you feel lonely is a great start to understanding more about you as an individual, being fully aware of your emotions and feelings, recognising your human behaviour rather than making the assumption you need to be superhuman. By accepting ‘feeling lonely’ presents in an influential role is a mindset shift and having the ability to see it as an experience not something to be fixed is a powerful tool to use.

CEOs and leaders are under constant pressure to perform and some consider downtime as wasted time. However, creating time on a weekly basis is immensely beneficial to help bring added clarity, confidence and understanding to focus on the strategic processes needed. By acknowledging it is as valuable as any other meeting and scheduling it in the diary means it will get the priority that is needed.

Reflection gives rise to better outcomes and higher credibility with corporate boards, leadership teams, workforces and other stakeholders. It will lead to better insights into not only innovation but also strategy and execution too. It takes structure, discipline and structure but creating a daily or weekly routine can reap immense rewards.

Overwhelm is a common problem that many CEOs and leaders deal with on a weekly if not daily basis. Being able to utilise tools to prioritise and identify milestones, together with breaking down projects, clarifying tasks, having clear and manageable communication lines will greatly reduce or eliminate overwhelm.

Scheduling time daily to evaluate your priorities and the necessary ‘to dos’ for the day must always come first. By focusing on three to five most important tasks (MITs) every day will always produce results rather than trying to complete twenty. By planning more and allocating time the feelings of anxiety, stress and overwhelm will be highly reduced and ultimately you will produce much better results.

Many leaders struggle with navigating change no matter whether it is the organisation or the business sector. Having clear and concise communication with transparency is key to leading change. The timing and impact are tantamount to successfully manoeuvring change whilst ensuring trust is effectively and positively built upon within the team.

As the organisation seeks to gain added stability whilst maximising results it is important to eliminate unnecessary distractions when trying to balance creating an optimistic and exciting future.

Creating a clear vision of the organisation’s culture is imperative in the current economic climate and as your business grows. By capturing not only your opinion but that of the overall workforce will equally enhance and integrate a more visionary approach to nurturing and strengthening a dynamic, energetic and collaborative culture.

Building upon this process through continually learning and development with exceptional training for the team will equally bring significant rewards to the overall workforce and the organisation itself.

Defining legacy often presents the question – how can you grow into an effective business leader as the best version of yourself? Coupling the human need for personal growth and the service of others can present challenges when any CEO or leaders takes actions that don’t align with the organisation’s mission.

By defining your personal mission first, finding alignment between it and the organisation’s objectives and where action needs to be taken hopefully common ground can quickly be found. It is equally important that the management team have found added alignment too.