At Groq, Claire Hart served as chief operating officer, general manager of licensing, chief legal officer and a board member. She has also held leadership roles at Google, YouTube, Blizzard Entertainment and Genies. On October 9 she explained why she had joined Hannah Wrixon in building KELLA, a network of executives and founders. Her reason fit in one sentence.

She described when she first noticed the gap. “I’d had ten years of colleagues who understood the context without me having to explain it, and I lost that just as the decisions got harder.”

The data agrees with her. In its State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, Gallup found that 31% of leaders said they felt lonely a lot of the previous day, against 21% of individual contributors. Leaders also reported more daily stress, 46% against 39%.

We collected 515 LinkedIn posts and comments from the past month about isolation, peer groups and candor at the top. Many were written by people who sell a fix: coaches, forums, membership programs. The ones worth reading came from people who hold these jobs, and they described the problem more precisely than the sellers did.

The room narrows

Urs P. Zimmermann, an international executive and board member, wrote on October 2 that the issue may not be loneliness at all. “It is how easily the room can narrow around you.” As responsibility grows, he wrote, “people may become more careful about what they say, confidentiality limits what we can share, and the number of people with whom we can genuinely think out loud can become smaller.”

Erila Haska, COO and director of partnerships at GIMI, building on a point Douglas Scherer made at GIMI’s Think Tank, wrote on October 6: “Seniority is read as immunity. The more senior you are, the less anyone thinks to ask.” Under her post, Ruhshad Daruwalla, founder of DVLLA, replied: “Seniority can make people stop checking in, just when the decisions get hardest. Leaders still need somewhere to be honest.”

What a peer can say that a team can’t

David L. Schreiner, CEO of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership, explained the mechanism on September 25. Inside your own organization, “people rarely tell a CEO her read on a situation is off.” The leader with the most influence over outcomes often gets the least honest feedback. “Peers fix that. Not because they’re smarter than your team, but because they have nothing to lose by disagreeing with you.” (NCHL runs a peer program for senior leaders from hospitals, health systems and universities, which his post was promoting.)

Andre Sayles, interim chief of police in Seattle, wrote on October 10 about what the job had cost him before he changed it: “Long hours, missed family dinners, critical incidents processed alone in the car on the way home.” Now, he wrote, “I check in with a peer support network outside my agency. I have talked openly with a counselor, and I tell my team that I do.” He is building confidential peer support and debriefs after critical incidents into how the department operates. His post drew 95 reactions and 19 comments.

Daisy Auger-Domínguez, chief people officer at Digital Asset, is the author of Burnt Out to Lit Up, a book about burnout. On October 12 she wrote about spending two nights waiting out a swollen thumb before finally going in, and then nearly six hours on hallway stretchers. She described the delay as “the reflex so many leaders share: hold it together, keep the commitment, and treat your own pain as something to manage around, not something to answer.” She knows how to build that kind of cover for a team, she wrote. “I’m still learning how to let it be built around me.” Her question drew 62 comments: “Who carries some of it for you when you can’t?”

Auger-Domínguez is part of Counsel Collective’s People & Culture Power List 2026.

Partner

Comparing notes

The rooms leaders described this month sat outside their own company.

Robert Mahari, who works on AI for legal at Anthropic, announced on October 19 the next Generative Legal, an invite-only gathering he started with Hugh Carlson for general counsel, law firm leaders, technologists and investors. It meets at Cornell Tech in New York on November 4. His reason: “Most legal leaders figuring out AI are doing it in isolation. The ones making real progress are comparing notes.” The post drew 58 comments.

Celeste Ackert, chief financial and operating officer at Fairmarkit, thanked the inaugural CFO Program cohort at Insight Partners for “the energy, candor, and ideas shared along the way.” Norah Larke, EVP and chief HR officer at Wintrust, promoted The Rung, a new program from The Chicago Network for senior women on the path to the C-suite, built around “the relationships, guidance, and candid conversations that can make all the difference during one of the most pivotal stages of a career.”

Marie Myers, CFO of HPE, went to the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit after years of meaning to. “If something matters to you, you have to make space for it. The calendar will always fill itself.” Her accounting of the trip: “The ROI on this trip won’t show up in a spreadsheet, but it was one of the best investments I’ve made this year.”

What you bring back

Rebecca Wenglinski, who advises lawyers and accountants on business development, wrote: “You’ll build a stronger relationship over lunch with one person than you will working a room of 100.” Laura Fulton, chief business development and marketing officer at Katten, set the test for any gathering: “The real test of a great conference is what you do differently when you get home.”

The best rooms also do something for the people who aren’t in them. Two leaders in Counsel Collective’s Adelante class described it in almost the same terms.

Three questions for your next room:

1. Hart’s test Who outside your organization has made a decision like the one in front of you?
2. Schreiner’s test When did a peer last tell you they would have called something differently?
3. Segarra’s test Whose name did you say in a room they weren’t in?

Partner