It took me two years as a manager to reach the “leadership is lonely” phase. Folks had warned me that it would happen, and it did. The team was struggling to acclimatize after acquisition, and I felt like I was carrying the stress alone. I saw the problems, but didn’t know how to make progress on them. Two years later, I’d learned more about management, was increasingly able to rely on experience over invention, and was no longer lonely.
