The loneliness of the manager: why you feel alone, and who to talk to

In short. Manager isolation is the feeling of having no one to truly think a hard decision through with. It affects 45% of leaders (Bpifrance, 2016). It's neither a failure nor a weakness, but a consequence of the role. The way out: name what you feel, and find someone to talk to.

The day I understood what managerial loneliness really was

A few years ago, I was leading teams on a construction site in Congo for VINCI Construction. On paper, I had everything going for me: a senior role, a team, a clear mission. In reality, I had never felt so alone.

Thousands of kilometers from headquarters, with the time difference, I was making heavy decisions with no one to truly weigh them with. My teams expected answers from me. My leadership expected results. And in the evening, I would loop endlessly over situations I couldn't share with anyone. Not for lack of people around me, but because none of them were in the right place to hear my doubts.

That's where the idea for Vikl was born. Because I lived that loneliness in my own skin, and I now know it touches far more managers than we imagine.

What is manager isolation, exactly?

It's not about being physically alone. A manager spends the day surrounded: meetings, team check-ins, constant requests. Manager isolation is something else. It's the feeling of having no one to really think things through with, with no filter, when a hard decision comes up.

A manager sits in an uncomfortable in-between. They're no longer quite a peer to their team: they evaluate, they arbitrate, they carry decisions they didn't always make. And they're not part of the leadership circle either. The result: they often end up carrying doubts alone, ones they can confide neither upward nor downward.

And the numbers confirm how widespread this feeling is:

• According to Bpifrance Le Lab (2016), 45% of leaders feel alone in their role, including 11% who feel "very alone."
• Still per Bpifrance, nearly 3 out of 4 leaders of small and mid-sized companies feel they aren't sufficiently supported.
• A Square / Ipsos study from March 2024 confirms the trend: one in three leaders experiences loneliness tied to their work.

These studies focus on executives, but the mechanism is the same one rung down, for frontline managers. The moment you have a team to carry, you step into that zone of solitude.

Why do you feel alone when you become a manager?

Because the rules change overnight, with no instruction manual.

You can't say everything anymore. Yesterday you vented with your colleagues by the coffee machine. Today, those same colleagues are on your team. What you let show carries a different weight. So you hold back, and isolate yourself a little more.

You're supposed to have the answers. A manager is seen as the one who knows. Admitting a doubt feels like undermining your own legitimacy. So you take it in silence, keep up appearances, and the pressure builds.

Asking for help feels like admitting weakness. It isn't, obviously. But the belief is stubborn. Many managers would rather chew on a problem for weeks than say "I don't know how to handle this."

This isolation has a real cost. You postpone the hard conversations. You let tensions settle in. You decide in emotional urgency instead of with perspective. And over time, it wears you down. I'm well placed to know.

Who to talk to when you're a manager?

That's the real question. And there isn't one answer, but several, to combine.

Your own manager. In theory, that's the first person to turn to. In practice, many hesitate: you don't want to look like someone who isn't on top of things. That's a shame, because a good boss is a valuable resource. If the relationship allows it, go for it.

A trusted peer. Another manager, in another team, facing the same situations. These peer-to-peer conversations are often the most freeing, because there's no hierarchy at stake. The catch is that they require time and trust, two scarce things.

A coach. Managerial coaching genuinely helps. But it stays expensive (between €600 and €1,800 per session for managerial support, per 2026 market rates) and, above all, it isn't there at 10 p.m. the night before a conversation that's keeping you up.

A neutral space, available when the need shows up. That's exactly the gap we set out to fill with Vikl: a place to lay out a situation, at any hour, without judgment and in full confidentiality. Not to replace a human, a coach, a peer, a friend remain irreplaceable, but so you no longer have to wait for the right moment or the right person to make sense of what you're going through. In the evenings in Congo, that's exactly what I would have needed.

Isolated manager: what to do, concretely

A few simple habits that change a lot:

1. Name what you feel. "I feel alone on this decision." Saying it, even to yourself, already defuses part of the weight.
2. Get it out of your head. Write the situation down, say it out loud, explain it to someone (or something). As long as a problem loops in your skull, it grows.
3. Break the isolation before the crisis. Don't wait until you're on the edge of burnout. Set up your regular touchpoints, with a peer, a coach, a tool, before you desperately need them.
4. Remember it's the role, not you. The loneliness comes from the position, not from any shortcoming of yours. It has nothing to do with your worth.

In short

A manager's loneliness isn't an anomaly: it's an almost mechanical consequence of the role. Nearly one leader in two feels it. If that's you, you haven't failed at anything, you're simply in a seat that isolates.

The good news is that this isolation is far from inevitable. The only real mistake would be to keep saying "all good" to everyone, yourself included. The first step is daring to say things to someone. The rest follows. It's that conviction, born on a construction site on the other side of the world, that gave rise to Vikl.