When everyone comes to you, who do you go to?
There’s a particular kind of day business owners know well. The phone doesn’t stop, a team member needs a decision. A client is waiting for an answer. Someone wants your view, your sign-off, your reassurance, and underneath it all, things at home don’t pause just because work is busy.
You’re the person everyone comes to.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a team of twenty or no employees at all. You can be running a business on your own, at a kitchen table, and still have clients, suppliers and contacts routing everything back to you. Being the one everyone comes to isn’t about how many people you manage, it’s about being the place where every question, every decision and every problem eventually lands.
Here’s the question rumbling underneath it: when everyone comes to you, who do you go to?
It’s not just fatigue: it’s decision loneliness
It’s easy to put this down to being tired. And the tiredness is real; there are only so many decisions a person can make in a day before decision fatigue sets in. But this is something quieter.
It’s not that you’re worn out by deciding, more that you’re alone in it. No matter how many people are around you, the final call still comes back to you, every time. I call it “decision loneliness”. Not the social kind, as in the quiet house or empty diary, but the weight of knowing the buck stops with you on everything that matters. You can be busy, well-liked, loved and supported, and still carry the deciding on your own.
I know that weight because I carried it for years, leading large teams at Oracle where everything lived in my head: the risks, the deadlines, what everyone needed next. It shows up especially with men in business, so often raised to be the steady one who doesn’t wobble. Yet it isn’t a men-only story. Clarity isn’t gendered, and no one is built to hold everything alone.
Surrounded by people, no one to think with
Here’s the part that catches people out. You’re not short of , but those closest to you, for all sorts of good reasons, aren’t the ones who can help you think.
Why the people closest to you can’t be objective
- Your partner is too close to be objective, and you don’t always want to bring the worry home anyway.
- A good friend cares but cares too much to really challenge you.
- A capable team member isn’t there yet or it simply isn’t their place.
- Anyone with a stake: co-owners, shareholders, investors can’t be neutral, because the answer affects them too.
You can be surrounded by people who love you and believe in you and still have no one to simply think out loud with. Someone with no agenda or stake, with no reason to steer you anywhere except towards your own clearest thinking.
Don’t look for one person; build two or three
When you finally notice that gap, the instinct is to go to your one person. The trusted someone with all the answers.
I’d gently steer you away from that. No single person should carry that role. It’s a lot to put on anyone and narrows your thinking to one point of view. The strongest leaders I know have two or three people they can be honest with, people who know them in different ways and will tell them the truth, rather than what’s comfortable.
At least one with no stake
At least one of those should be someone with no stake in your business at all. Neither partner, shareholder, nor friend, but a steady outside head who can ask the question no one else thought to ask.
What a steady outside head can do
I think of a business owner who was about to hand the entire operational side of his company to a firm that had approached him. On the surface it looked sensible, but when we sat down and talked it through, a simple question surfaced that he hadn’t had the room to ask. It changed what he did next, not because he wasn’t capable – he’s run large organisations – but because he hadn’t had a moment to step back and think.
Deeper than a sounding board
That’s the part a quick chat can’t reach. It goes deeper than being a sounding board. It isn’t more advice, or another plan to work through. When your head is already full, the last thing you need is someone adding to the pile. This is space to put it all down, see clearly, and find the next step without judgement. When the noise settles, clarity brings relief.
One of your two or three
That’s what The Insights Room is for: a thinking space, not a coaching space. Somewhere to think alongside a partner who has spent twenty-five years leading through real situations, with no stake in your business except your clearest thinking. Not to be told what to do, but to work out what you need to do next, with a clearer head.
It’s meant to be one of your two or three, not your one and only. A good thinking partner is part of how you lead well, never a crutch.
So here’s the question worth sitting with: you’re the one everyone comes to, who do you go to?
If you’ve ever wished for someone to think things through with, that’s what I do. When you’re the one everyone comes to, it’s easy to end up turning everything over alone, late at night, in your own head. I’ve been there, and I know what it’s like to finally say it all out loud to someone with no stake and no agenda. It was never about having every answer; it’s about taking the next thing one step at a time, with a clearer head.
Book a discovery call, and we’ll make sense of all the noise together.
Or send me a message directly on + 44 7921 097233