That said, I find idea of exploring where the line is fascinating. How much do you share as a leader? Do you share strategically (some might say manipulatively?) Or should you be who you are, and let the chips fall where they may?

In flying you live by the clock and the weather. Everything boils down to those two things. There's a rule that says if you're going to be later than plus or minus 3 minutes over a reporting point you must notify ATC. So as you can imagine I live my life + or – 3 minutes. It's incredibly boring but you're always where your meant to be.

Recently I stopped wearing a watch – my lesson for myself – become unsure of your position. For the clock that runs continuously in my head that's hard to do, but if you can let go a little, accept a “little loneliness” now and then you can continue to learn and discover things about yourself.

I was lucky yesterday that after 45 minutes of wondering around being lonely I bumped into someone who pointed me in the right direction. All I had to do was listen. And therein lies another lesson.

That feeling of being temporarily unaware of our position. That's really well put. I had one of those last weekend.

I guess the power of talking-as-a-salve is that verbalizing the problem helps you define it, and defining it helps you chunk it into more manageable pieces. And possibly mourn the pieces that are damaged or unfixable. And appreciate or celebrate the pieces that remain available to you, and weave them together in a new way to action them forward.

I really have to thank Jerry for allowing me to post. What you see in these posts is really me. Authentic is a powerful slave and you have to balance it carefully with other things. The listener yesterday also used the word open to describe me.

What really happened yesterday is that I temporarily lost my way. When I flew we never used the term lost – we just became temporarily unaware of our position… now that's real loneliness

I allowed myself to become caught up in a circular argument where instinctively I knew it was never going to work out. It's that forcing the square peg in the round hole syndrome. Both sides lost their composure and even though a resolution was worked out – you know it's never going to be the same.

Sometimes doing the right thing is so hard vs. making things right. Yesterday in the end I made things right and it was not authentic, that's why I left feeling lonely. As Jerry says, be careful because authentic is a powerful slave. Today I feel less of a slave and more of a master. I just needed a quick lesson to remind me what's what.

Thanks for listening.

However I did learn something along the way that relates to being lonely. After the “lonely” moment I headed out to a meeting and for once it was not software/tech related. I had a chance to sit with someone older and wiser and “just talk”. As you can imagine I was still ticked from earlier on.

She listened intently and then reached over and patted me on the arm – she said “there's your answer”. She had picked the point in my story where I was relating the argument and the other person had said to me – “I don't want a relationship, it's just business”. Talk about feeling lonely.

But the listener was correct – there was the answer. At the end of the conversation I asked her to sum me up. And here's where I learned something new…

The word she used was “Authentic”. (I modified our core values on our web site to reflect this). There's no question that at times the CEO's job is the loneliest on the planet. The single chair offers little comfort – but as she reminded me. Don't ever stop being authentic, even if it leaves you feeling a little lonely at times.

Not you specifically, Charlie, but each one of us.

A big, fat, sweaty, snorting elephant.

Ewww! Get that thing outta here!!

I enjoyed the full article you sent the link on for Inside-Out Leadership. It mentions an Olympic figure skater knowing vulnerability in executing jumps. Having sketched the recent Olympic figure skaters for my work, especially pairs, the work in tandem shows that open trust and vulnerability mentioned as necessary to succeed. I was gratified to see Carroll specifically reference skaters since I have been drawing them for a while now for the very reason he writes of them.

If only disqus allowed graphic posts as well as text.

Thanks for the link to the Carroll article.