Executive Loneliness with Nick Jonsson

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The organizational peak is a perilous environment. It’s more complex and challenging than anything that’s gone before, and as a consequence, both executive tenure and corporate longevity are decreasing

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to survive and thrive at the perilous peak, executive leaders need to balance their functional leadership, a focus on execution with enterprise leadership that is ensuring the organization adapts in our new world.

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That’s what we’ll be exploring in the advanced executive leadership podcast. Welcome. I’m your host. Jacqueline Conway. I’m the Founder and Managing Director of Walden Croft, a consulting practice dedicated to helping executives and executive teams anticipate, navigate and lead at the perilous peak.

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I don’t think it overstates it to say there’s an epidemic of executive loneliness in the corporate world today. A recent research article in a well respected leadership journal noted that, and I quote all senior leaders, in contrast to middle managers, reported loneliness or an unmet need to belong. It’s ironic that with all of the social contact that a leader might have with others. They may not be alone, but they are lonely. And there are many contributing factors to this, but some of the obvious ones are that these roles can be both all consuming and stressful. Add to this the relentless scrutiny and much of the leader’s role can be performative, where they work hard to make it look like they’ve got it all together. There may not be a scarcity of peers for these leaders, but in those teams where they’re operating with colleagues from a place of competition rather than cooperation, it’s unlikely that they’re going to feel able to let their guard down and be themselves. On today’s episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Nick Johnson, author of executive loneliness, in this episode, he shares his personal experiences of striving for success while struggling with the negative consequences of a winning mindset, and he shares how self doubt anxiety and a colluding organizational culture that simply wanted him to smile and be successful led him to turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, including addiction, and eventually to him leaving the corporate world in a personal crisis whilst at his own Rock Bottom, a friend of next took his own life, and it was then that he realized how important it is that we support leaders who may be experiencing loneliness and depression in the workplace, and this provided a catalyst for a new life purpose and the drive to turn his life around and help others. It’s a brave, raw and deeply personal account.

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So nice to see you again. How have you been? Yes, I’ve been very good. Thank you so much, and thanks for making this happen. No worries at all. No worries at all. So my name is Nick Johnson. I was born in Sweden, educated in Australia, and then I lived and worked the last 20 years in Southeast Asia. I started my life back in Sweden, basically as a construction painter, doing the manual labor jobs and painting buildings and so on. And it was only one day when I had a traffic accident. I got hit by a motorbike driving a motorbike, and I had to change my career. And that’s when I went back to school and I moved to Australia to study. So that’s how my life started out. So what did you do then, once you got to Australia? Yeah, actually, I came there to learn English. That was why I went there in the first place. But once over there, I also decided to start study at university, and that was not something that I’d been thinking about before in my life. So I was actually 23 years of age when I studied at university, so that was a late start, and I felt perhaps that I had a second chance in my life at that stage, I thought I better take this opportunity. I started to study very hard. I got a taste for getting scholarships and awards for topping classes and so on. So that’s the mindset I had. I became a winner. I remember my dean at the time at the school telling us that, you know, at this university, we give you diplomas and we give you certifications. If you top the classes, we want you to win. And the dean even said, look at the sports stars. If you win, you get a gold medal. If you’re a silver silver medalist, then typically you walk off crying. And he encouraged us to approach our studies in the same way. So that was a bit different to me, and I took it to my heart, and I studied hard. The issue with this was that when I came into the.

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Workplace, I kept this winning mindset with me. I kept trying to impress the bosses, hitting the targets, and it worked. I got the promotions. I got salary increases, bigger roles, bigger responsibilities, but it’s almost like I elbowed my my way to the top. I was only looking upwards, and I didn’t care much on what I was stepping on to get to where I wanted. And it’s so interesting, isn’t it, because that winning mindset that you talk about can be very addictive. Can to I mean, I think you’re, I think you’re kind of alluding to that, that once you get a taste for it, at what point do you put it down? Yes, absolutely. I once, I started to top one class and I wanted to atop another class at the University. I said that that’s my standard, and I accepted nothing else. And when you put that pressure on yourself, it’s not a very nice place to be, but you keep achieving. And that was also how I then worked, how I treated my workplace. Everything was about winning. I worked longer hours. I didn’t mind if I had to work weekends. I didn’t have a good way of separating my life or work and my personal life. And therefore I became, what they say, an anxious over achiever. It was always that of what fueled me was the fear of failure, the fear of losing. And therefore I was willing to work harder than perhaps the most people would, and that is a common trait, as I found later on, high achievers. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess the question is, what happened then? Yeah, so once I reached the top, and it took me about 10 years in my career, from after university to start basically account executive, account manager, account director, General Manager, Managing Director, and from bigger to smaller companies, and once I then was at the top I I asked myself, is this what I worked so hard for? I thought I should be happy now. This is, if this is what society sets everyone up for I’m supposed to be happy now, but I wasn’t. And with that, I start to have self doubt and even questioning myself, is this what I should do? And with that, I lost also interest for my job, and we’ve gone from a high performer, I remember start making mistakes and not really caring. I rather cared about my image, and I didn’t want to be exposed. I didn’t ask for help around the mistakes I did, and also they went unnoticed because I was a high performer, a high achiever, I had, by that time, earned a respect, so no one looked at me for any mistakes. And that was a very, very depressing state to be in, I eventually then started craft my resignation letter, and I resigned from the job without really having a plan what else to do as well. Wow. I think what’s really interesting about that is when you talk Nick about earning respect, that in some ways, organizations collude with high achievers, don’t they to to give them more and more,

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and so it’s like a co dependent relationship in which the High Achiever gets some of their needs met and The organization gets some of its needs met, and yet there’s something deeply dysfunctional about that, because the human cost is the one that is often unseen but deeply felt. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I was hired because I had good grades at university. I came out as a top achiever, and companies are naturally looking at that. I remember sending my CV to a few different agencies, and I started in the advertising world, and I was even encouraged by the people who helped me to write my cover letter. I remember I also been in headline with it, you know, I said I’m a high achiever. I just graduated from this university, and I led with that, and I’m willing to, I’m ready to come into your organization and deliver at the best and work very hard. And that is what people want. If you’re hiring people, that’s what you want. You want people to deliver the results. And therefore, you know, I could step on the toes of other people, as long as I hit the targets, got the promotions. And in my case, I was mainly in sales, business development, that kind of leadership. And as long as I brought in the big contracts and brought in the business, renewed the big accounts, then I could behave very much as I wanted, and I could play with different rules. I didn’t need to have fixed working hours. I can come and go as I wanted and do what I wanted to do, they only cared about the results, and if some people didn’t like it that they would even my boss, I remember protecting me because I was a high achiever, yeah, and I’ve seen that so often too. I’ve seen where there’s a person who is gifted and able for.

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Is pushing themselves, and they’re pushing the organization to to a way that is dysfunctional, perhaps toxic, and yet, and it’s widely accepted and unknown, and people, whether that’s their boss or the CEO, or whoever that might be, or the people in HR, can see the impact, and yet there’s a real reticence to do anything about it, because that person is high performing, and,

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and, and, I mean, I know I have, I have personal experience of consulting in organizations Where the organizations were very, very slow to do anything about that.

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And actually the But inevitably, the answer in all of the cases that I know of was that they had to let that person go. That that if a person is operating at kind of a, really quite a toxic level, then they end up having to let them go. Now it sounds like in your case, you made that decision before any other decision. What? What? Why do you think that was for you? I mean, you were presumably still doing quite well. Yeah. So I had actually been let go from two roles earlier in my days. So as I start to make the mistakes in the role I’m sharing about now, the self doubting mistake, I thought that, here we go again. I going to be let go for a third time in my career, and I didn’t want that to happen, so I took basically in charge of my own destiny. I thought it’s better that I resign rather than be terminated once again, and other times when I’ve been terminated. One time, it was because I wasn’t good at handling conflict, and in that sense, it was a conflict with my boss. The second time I was let go was because the company was acquired, and I had a lot of

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self doubt and anxieties inside me from having been let go twice, and I was not ready to be let go a third time. So that’s what happened then.

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And so what did you do then? So you made that decision, you left the organization. I’m presuming then that there was a bit of a crisis of confidence and a and a rethinking about who you were and what what what a positive contribution might look like that was different from what you had assumed it had been previously. So what happened then? Nick, yeah, so indeed, I mean, I had all these self doubts, as I mentioned, inside me and I but I was lost. I didn’t know where to go. And the issue was I also didn’t have any coach or mentors outside my organization to talk to. I was given a mentor inside my organization, but obviously I don’t go to my mentor internally to say, Hey, I’m making mistakes here. I’m ready to resign, or at least that as the High Achiever I was. I was not ready to have that conversation, looking back now, yes, I should have had those conversations with that person internally, but I didn’t, and I didn’t have them externally. I didn’t have anyone, in fact, to talk to, and no one I trusted. I had great friends, but we spoke about sport and went to the bar drinking beer or playing golf and had a good time to forget about the bad times at work when we met. I was not vulnerable, I was not open, I didn’t share with them about the issue. So the problem was here that I just had pains and anxieties and so on, but I didn’t know how to deal with them. The best I knew was to drink alcohol to numb those feelings at night after work, but then the problems were there the next day. So therefore it was sort of an uninformed panic decision, if you will, to resign from the job. But that was something I had cooked in my own brain over six months to a year until I finally did it. And because I didn’t talk to anyone about it, I also didn’t have a proper plan for the next phase, and it was a very lonely place to be. And as soon as I had resigned from the job, also I became sort of dilutional. I jumped from job to job, and with that, I didn’t know where it was home for me anymore. And I also filed for divorce

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after 13 years relationship with my ex wife, and with that, I became separated from my five year old son as well. Wow. Okay, so was that rock bottom.

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It was the start of me looking for my rock bottom. So it took me about two, three years of keep going from failure to failure and being especially dilutional, doing everything I could to cover it up, acting on the outside like everything was good when it clearly wasn’t, and also not speaking to anyone about my feelings. It took me there for three years, until I was in so much pain that I couldn’t take it anymore, I decided to start opening up about it, and that was the turning point. And how what? What methods did that take? Yeah, so.

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I had, by that time, met another woman who today is my wife, and at that time, when I was in so much pain, and I had reached a point where I wrote my will, my testament, and I was basically planning for my own funeral, and I thought that she deserves to know that I’m not 100% well internally, and even despite that, she was by my side, and we just got married, then even her didn’t understand or had any clue that I was unwell internally, the fact that we went to the bar and had a good time after work and so on, she thought that, you know, it was just life, and she thought it was good and normal, and I was very good at covering it up, obviously. So she was very surprised and shocked when I told her about my feelings internally, but also the fact that I did share it with her, I was instantly feeling better. And there is this saying, a problem shared is a problem halved, and that’s exactly how I feel. I understood that saying from that moment. Because imagine if you’re so sick and tired that you’re writing your own will and testament and you can hardly get out of bed because we’re in such a deep depression. And if suddenly that problem is half fixed in one go, in 10 seconds, you can feel that it’s like you lifted from yourself up. And since that day, many, many, many things have happened, including, I haven’t had alcohol since that day. It’s six and a half years ago. I became a different person instantly, and I had this kind of V shaped recovery, and that just because I decided to be honest and open about my feelings, for the first time in my life, there’s something generational, and there’s also something about

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the expectations of men. Isn’t there about being able to carry things and hold things, and what it is to be to be strong. And I think, I think for younger men, they’re growing up in an environment where their ability to show or talk about the things that are going on for them is more acceptable, but certainly kind of middle aged men that was still very much a very vulnerable place for people to be,

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and so sort of fast forwarding to where you are today, and you’ve written this book on executive loneliness, and you’re now kind of consulting in that space,

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just tell me a little bit about the flavor of what life is like now. Yeah, it’s like a completely different life. And what I learned that day, by then sharing that to my new wife, how I felt that is now how I treat every day and my whole life. I’m surrounded by people, coaches, mentors, friends, sponsors, community groups, men’s groups, peer groups, mastermind groups, cohorts here and there. I’m completely engulfed in connection with people, and I’m completely transparent and an open book with them about my challenges, about my opportunities, always asking for help. So if that is then how it worked for my recovery to get out of bed and coming out of my depression by snapping myself out of it and stopping the alcohol addiction by asking for help and sorting it out. I thought that, what about if I approach every single opportunity and problem in my life in this way? And that’s what I done. So I see every day as an experiment in this manner. So everything I done before this moment, before that day in 2018 when I decided to change my approach, I’m now having a second go at that. And one example, for example, is that before I coming into my crisis, my personal crash, I had done marathons and triathlons, but I was pretty average at it. So then I thought, well, if I take the same approach now with my triathlon and marathons and so on. And I approach the best running coaches, I sign up for the best clubs and associations that are around, and just keep asking questions and learning and looking at that, where would that take me? And that has taken me to now being top 2% in the world in my age group in triathlon. And so it works for every single sector of our life, just the same approach. If you surround yourself with people and you’re being open and honest, then you will naturally adapt those health healthy habits and become great. This resonates so much with me, because I see this so often with the executives that we work with in Walden Croft. One of the things that we see in Walden Croft, we call it the facade of executive poise, where we can see these executives who, on the outside are looking like they’ve got all together, but internally, they’re really, really struggling. And so the story that you talk.

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About where you’re trying to you’re trying to make it all happen in the outside, but in the inside, it’s a it’s a very different story. It’s something that we see again and again.

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And so you’ve written this book about executive loneliness, and I think that that very splitting off of our true selves is inherently

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anxiety provoking and and loneliness inducing, because it is a deeply lonely place not to be seen and heard and known by anyone else. So let’s, let’s talk a bit about the book. I mean, you’ve told us your back story, but why specifically did you write this book when you did? Yeah, so as I was coming out of my recovery then, and I was about one year into it, I had basically shared how I felt in my success and so on in a closed cohort, it was with my wife, my family, my close friends, my recovery community and so on. But I still felt pretty shy to tell it to the rest of the world. I was not ready to tell my extended network what had happened to me. However, one day, this all changed. I lost a friend suddenly to suicide, someone who I was working with, and someone who I had seen just before this happened, and this man who seemed to be living a wonderful life, had just been to Mount Everest, where he climbed up the base camp, he had a girlfriend, and his career was going well. I had no idea that he was going through a difficult time. So when we lost him, I was full of questions. I was also full of anger, and I really wanted to figure out, how can I make an impact here? So I called up his friend who at the time lived in sorry, his brother, who at the time lived in the UK, and asked him what I could do. And that’s when the seed was planted for me to write a book about it, because I realized that this problem of isolation, loneliness and the fact that we don’t talk about our feelings is much greater than I could ever imagine. So that’s when I decided to start researching the topic. And I started by setting up a charity fund to raise awareness and also raise funds for this course. And as I did that, I made a video on LinkedIn that went viral, so only after an hour, it was hundreds of messages and more comments and posts that and shares than I ever seen on one of my posts, just because people were so grateful that there was someone talking about it and that, together with my decision to write the book, really propelled me forward, and I felt motivated and driven, and it was actually the day when I found my sort of real life purpose. I realized that I had to keep talking about this, because if I do, there are lives to be saved here, and that’s why I keep going, and that’s why I’m so grateful for that. You have invited me to talk about this today. Jacqueline, yeah, absolutely. So let’s then talk about the book, because you start with outlining the five warning signs of executive loneliness. And can you explain what those five things are? Yes, I think the I mean the somewhat of warning signs around loneliness and isolation and so on, and it might be hard to catch it, because, you know, the thing is that when you’re in a depression, or you’re in that state, you do everything you can to prevent yourself from being caught. And I call it the smiling depression in my book, because you will have a smile, and if you see my photos from the time, I will have a smile on the photos. And that is a fake smile. It’s just there to make sure that no one asked me how I am or ask me and go deeper, because I don’t want to be exposed. But if you’re in a in a relationship with someone of your colleagues or friends, what you can do you can look out for warning signs such as gaining weight or losing weight. In my case, I had gained about 30 kilograms of fat. Very, very quickly, I had lost my habits. I stopped going to the gym completely. Instead, I went to the bar. I had stopped eating healthy food at all, and I was just eating fast food and pizza and whatever was served in the bar. I didn’t care about that. So look also for any science, like hobbies, if someone, for example, before that, played a guitar and suddenly they stopped playing the guitar, those are signs. And perhaps also, if there’s a mother and they lose interest in caring for their own child or their own baby, those are warning signs. We need to be quite alert and look out for those and if something is there, we need to be able to support that person. There was no one who actually exposed me. There was no one who had any idea that there was things going on behind the scene when I was sick. And people should have realized I gained a lot of weight, but they thought it was because I was living a good life and I reduced on.

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Exercise.

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And so did nobody in your corporate jobs ever ask how you were, or was it that they were asking, or some people asked and you just you weren’t prepared to kind of give them the honest answer? No, there was no one asking anything. Rather the opposite. So I remember that they wanted me to come out and have more social drinks with them and be more fun and be out there. I shouldn’t take myself, my job and my my sports so seriously, they told me to be a bit more lighter and more fun. That part I remember, which was rather opposite when I needed it. And then also I remember, because I worked in the medical industry, so we kept doing blood tests and and my blood works was good. I controlled my alcohol really well during this time. It spiraled out the after I resigned and I drank more than because then I I wasn’t in that space, but then I didn’t have, also any any colleagues who were looking out for me, and I also lived in live with my parents, and I filed for a divorce with my wife, so it was no one who knew if I was consuming alcohol almost every day at the time.

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And so what is the responsibility? Do you think of organizations for people who are struggling like you were, Nick I believe that we have to be very careful how we do this, because if we point finger at an individual, then actually, again, people will not step forward. So what we need to do is to provide safe spaces, both inside and outside our organization, for our employees, and if we look at safe spaces internally. This can be to provide mentors, have coaches and so on, have buddies, people who new comers can team up with and talk with and encourage team gatherings. Even what I do in my company, have some budgets for the staff where they can have lunch or coffee together, go for karaoke together, to build some social connections inside the workplace. Many companies also, these days, set up a professional hotline where you can call a therapist or a counselor if you have some issues, like a hotline, and if your company is small, there’s many of these service providers you can sign up with. So you have all these tools internally when it comes to the externally, what I see many companies can do is to at least encourage everyone to join organization and clubs and so on. Externally. So if you’re a HR manager, that you can join the HR Association, and you can take roles in there to be with like minded, and it’s so important to have a group of peers. Externally, also it can be peer groups and mastermind groups. I also belong these days, and run and facilitate a men’s group for men, where we log on once a week, where we share what’s on our mind. There’s women’s groups there. There’s all these kind of groups which can be our tribes. And I think as a company, we can encourage everyone to be part of these more. It doesn’t have to be that we give them a budget, but at least acknowledge that we want them to be part of it, and we can therefore show that it’s okay. And what we can do as leaders is to lead by example as well, by joining these clubs and associations, and finally, have mentors. Have spawned, have sponsors, have coaches externally to support us as well, especially if we go through a hard time. Yeah, absolutely. When you talk about that, lead by example, I’m reminded of a chief executive who

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is always looks kind of quite together and in one session that we ran, for whatever reason, chose to be more vulnerable, let his guard down, talk about some of the real, genuine challenges, and the quality of the conversation that this executive team were therefore able to have, And the sharing that they were able to do because the most senior person in the room had taken the lead and had done some role modeling of it, was really astonishing, and something quite powerful shifted in that team that day. What I’d like to ask about is

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you talked about how important connection was. So in your sharing with your wife, the internal struggles that you were going through, and you said you talked about, you know, a problem shared as a problem halved, and then the the importance of sharing and connection for Being Well,

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that really resonates too. And I guess one of the things that it resonates with me is that, you know, can we create working groups? And obviously, in Walden Croft, we work with executive teams. Can we create something that goes beyond just the work task, where there.

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Deep trust within that team, where people are able to show up and really be themselves, rather than this facade of who they assume other people want them to be. What I mean, tell me a little bit more about connection for you now.

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I mean, you run your own company now,

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what mechanisms are in place for you all to be connected to one another? Yeah, so connection is a crucial part indeed here, and there’s a few things that we can do as leaders, and you touched on it there before we have to lead first. We have to be vulnerable from the top. These matters cannot stop start at the big bottom up in an organization, the leader, either as a whole organization or the leader of a team, have the opportunity to be open, to be vulnerable, and therefore the staff and the teams will feel comfortable. I have an example of this in my book, by a woman who was a managing director at the time of a big international bank in Singapore, and she had not been open. But when I interviewed her for my book, she disclosed to me that she had rehearsed her own suicide twice, and that was the I was the first person she had disclosed this to, and I so I interviewed her further about this, and asked for her permission to call a counselor, also to who came in and to support her, and also the counselor called her husband, and they discussed it, and a lot of things came out of this. She was a woman in a man’s world. She had a lot of pressure on her, and she had gone through a very difficult time. She had a surgery after an accident, and she lost her confidence. So it was many things leading to this. Then what happened after this was that she took sabbatical leave from her work to work on herself, and as she came back, it was in the middle of the pandemic, and the company was in lockdowns and so on, and they had an all hands meeting and with

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her husband’s permission, and working with me, she prepared to share her story with her team, and this story is also included in my executive loneliness book. And the whole team was completely shocked when she explained that she hurts her own suicide twice. But what happened from that day was the company culture change like this. The team members were stepping forward and said that they also gone through some difficult times. And the next week, when someone else had a difficult problem, they stepped forward and also shared about their issues, and even one of her senior, senior partners of her organization had also gone through some difficult times earlier, and because she opened up about this, he decided to step forward and share that as well. So the whole culture was transformed in an instant of this culture. So when it comes to connections, as leaders of family, leaders of clubs, associations of or organizations, we have that responsibility to really bring these stories forward and share them, and

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that can be quite tricky. And in this case, I help this lady to do it, and these days I help leaders to do this. I work on a one on one basis with leaders to do just this. What we’re discussing now to be more open, be more human, be more vulnerable. And we can do this in workshops, all hands, meetings in one on one, meetings with key staff. And I’m also doing workshops now where I go into the teams, and we have workshops together when we practice the vulnerability, when we learn to open up. And I do this in a safe way, so everyone should leave a session feeling that they know each other more. They know the boss more the boss is more human. My colleagues are more human, and we have some common ground, but this will not happen naturally, because normally we are not comfortable to share this. So we need to make sure that we proactively do these exercises Absolutely And so tell me a little bit more about some of the people that you’ve worked with, some of the case studies that you have where people have been really struggling, and by tapping into that sort of help, they’ve been able to turn things around. Yes, I can mention also the about the one of my clients, who is a family owned business where the Son has taken over a CEO of this particular organization. And naturally, for the Son to step in, in the big shoes of a big company who expanded up to a few 1000 employees, he suddenly have to take over what the Father has built up, and is a big pressure on his shoulder. He need to come in and show all the staff that he is now in charge his confidence. He can do this at the same time. He’s not only having to manage all this expectation in a big role, he also have to manage the father’s expectation, because he has built this from ground up, this organization and.

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While the son wants to step in and take over and show confidence, the father might not be in ready to let go at the same time. So I’m now coaching this young, new CEO that same time, show confidence to the team, yet be vulnerable, so you can win the hearts rather than show that he’s a powerful leader at the same time, manage the complexity of the family and of the father. So he feels that he’s still involved, not completely cut the court off, and that is a very, very complicated space for him to be. And it was only when this young, new CEO managed to be vulnerable to his own father in this case, to explain to him that this is not easy for me to manage, that I’m trying my best, and he explained how he felt about it. That’s when the dad saw them, and they managed to come together again. But so often in business, we’re trying to show that we are tough, that we can do it, but then the other side will do the same, and it just becomes a battle, and we are not getting anywhere. So that is another case of many of relationships where I’m trying to work with them, and it is only through vulnerability, honesty and exposing ourselves and daring to do what’s difficult that we can win the heart of the other side, and then it becomes much easier. Yeah, absolutely. And you were saying that you work with men’s groups. You host some men’s groups. So I’m in the UK. You’re in Singapore.

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I think there are some men’s groups here in the UK, but they are. It’s very fledgling. It’s not usual. So tell me a little bit about how that works, what sort of work you do together, and what sort of main sign up for that? Yeah, I learned that covering into recovery groups can be a fantastic way for us to learn and grow and feel the connection together. So as I mentioned in 2018 when I had my personal crisis, I identified that I had an alcohol problem, and also as I shared that everything that was an issue an opportunity, I would work on in detail, I would be honest, I would own it, and therefore I had to agree with myself that I need help about my alcohol issue. And what happened then was that I came to one of those 12 step programs. There’s a lot of 12 step programs, everything from alcohol, drugs, sex, overeating, gambling, you name it, there will be a program and recovery program full of volunteers, people who’ve been there before, who’s now helping and giving back. So I came into that space, and I learned so much. I learned then that wow, if we come in a group with like minded who gone before, before the stigma is gone, we feel the sympathy, and it’s a great place to be. So despite I not had a drink for six and a half years now, I’m now a volunteer, and I attend these meetings, and I do this every week, one or two meetings, normally per week. No matter where I am in the world, there will be meetings in all cities, and I’m coming to give back there to help others, because I remember they were there for me when I needed them. Now it’s my time to give back for the rest of my life. But then many other men, especially told me, Nick, that’s great for you. You’re so lucky to have an alcohol problem, because you found that community I don’t have an alcohol problem. What should I do? And I obviously didn’t tell them, Well, get an alcohol problem. But instead, I start to look around. Where should these men go? And I couldn’t find anything. And like you said, there’s a few around, but not many in the UK, and that is what I found all over the world. So that’s why I started a men’s group and you and it doesn’t matter if you have an alcohol problem or not. We do it for all men, and we discuss topics or common for all men, such as masculinity. One week, next week, nutrition, next week, sleep, next one, relationships with your partner. Next one can be about children and so on. So we cover the topics that are important, and we created as a safe space, a confidential meeting. We are now 17 in this group, and we kept it at that. We don’t want it bigger. And I’m about to launch a second group now, and it’s our safe space. And we have then a chef group in between, where every morning, the men are sharing the gratitude list, the things that they are grateful for every morning. So this positive start for everyone, where we put our brain in a positive focus and share it. So being vulnerable, you’re also surrendering them to the process of sharing it. And then there’s the readings and thoughts and so on, shared out throughout the day, if there’s something going on, and then we meet once a week for one hour. And that has been a game changer for many of these men. And in my group, it’s mainly expats working for big firms around the world. We have people from Canada, Europe and Asia coming in together, and that has been a game changer.

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For many people. And we learned this from the women. Women had women’s leaders groups for a long time, and did it much better. So I said, Well, we should have for men or men also. And some even don’t believe me. Jacqueline, when I said this to some Australian some women said, No, I don’t think it exists. Are you joking? No, this is real, actually. Wow. Wow. And so if you are, whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re in an executive role and you’re really struggling, what would your advice be? Yeah, first off, if you’re really struggling, I think it can be good to first have some one on one sessions to find perhaps a life coach or someone who can help you to really discuss through because what we do, and I’m also a life coach, is to really discuss that we love life all the areas of your life, to have an understanding is there some area where you’re falling short, and that was where I started. Also I had to own up to the issues that I had where I was falling short. I also had really poor relationships with my parents at the time and my sister. I had to really repair these and I did that by, you know, being honest about them and addressing them head on. If someone has been into addiction or being sick and not being well, then naturally we have not only hurt ourselves, we hurt the people we love. We have broken relationships. And no one as a human being can move forward in life without repairing those so that would be my first recommendation, is to really get honest work, one on one, and then after you feel good and you have the connection with yourself and forgiving yourself, get out in all these groups and communities and socialize. And this is something I do daily. Jacqueline, yesterday, I met up with one of my neighbors, a 79 year old man who people might say we don’t have anything in common. Well, I asked him out for coffee, and we spent one and a half hour together, and I asked him a lot of questions, and I learned a lot, and he was so grateful to have someone reaching out to him and being interested in him, and we can even connect with younger people. We can learn a lot from them over fika, as we say in Sweden, the coffee LT, or whatever it is. So it is about having these connections with all the people around us. Yeah, wonderful. Well, Nick, where can people find you? If any of this resonates with them and they would like to touch base with you to get some help or support. Yeah, so my website is Nick johnson.com and it’s spelled n, i, c, k, j o N, S, S O N, or they can find me on LinkedIn again under my name, Nick Johnson. And finally, if someone check out my book. It’s on Amazon, and it’s called executive loneliness, wonderful Nick. Thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks for sharing your story so honestly and being able to just show up in a really, real way. I think that the more we hear these stories, the more we make it acceptable to talk about them for everyone. So I’m hoping that someone today, having listened to this is feeling more able to reach out to somebody if they need that help. So thanks so much. Thank you so much for covering this topic, and thanks all the listeners. Thank you.

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If you’re experiencing any of what we’ve been talking about today, there are places you can turn to, and I’ve added some links in the show notes. If you’re in crisis. In Walden Croft, we provide individual executive and team coaching to get to the root of some of the isolation that executive leaders are experiencing. And next, details are also outlined below,