The Higher Washington Leaders Rise, the Less Candor They Hear

By Elijah Fernandez

Ask a newly confirmed agency head or a contractor CEO how many people they talk to in a day, and the number is enormous. Ask how many would tell them plainly that they look exhausted, or that a decision is wrong, and the number gets small fast.

That gap is what the loneliness of success looks like in Washington. It is rarely a shortage of company. It is a shortage of people who will tell you the truth, and of people you can safely tell the truth to. For a senior official, even finding the right listener becomes a discretion problem, which is why therapy for high-profile professionals has become its own kind of care.

A 2026 CEREVITY report, 88% of High Achievers Say Success Made Them Lonelier, reviewed 312 high achievers who sought therapy through the CEREVITY network. Eighty-eight percent said reaching the success they had worked toward left them lonelier, and 61 percent said they now had fewer people they could be fully honest with. These are self-reported answers from people who chose to seek help, not a survey of federal executives. The second number is the one leaders should sit with, because it is the one they can change.

How candor drains out of a senior job

Nobody decides to stop telling the boss the truth. It happens through small, sensible edits. The researchers James Detert and Amy Edmondson, writing in the Academy of Management Journal in 2011, called the pattern implicit voice theories: taken-for-granted rules about what is safe to say up the chain, which lead capable people to censor themselves even when speaking up would help.

Washington adds its own layers. Deputies are thinking about the next appointment. Program managers are thinking about the next award. Peers at other agencies or competing firms may be across the table in the next budget fight or bid protest.

The editing runs downward, too. A senior official cannot vent to staff about a political appointee, a board member or a contracting officer without creating a new problem. Clearance holders often cannot discuss the work that weighs on them most. Spouses hear the cleaned-up version. A few years in, the leader is surrounded by people and still carrying most of the weight alone.

That is not only a personal cost. A leader with no candid input decides on filtered information. A leader with no candid outlet tends to carry strain until it surfaces as exhaustion, a short temper or a choice nobody saw coming.

Rebuilding honest counsel on purpose

Candor rarely comes back on its own. The leaders who keep it build it deliberately. Four habits help.

Keep one relationship in which you hold no rank. A friend from before the job, a mentor who has retired, a peer in a different sector. The test is simple: this person gains nothing and loses nothing from what you decide.

Ask for the bad news by name. "What am I not hearing?" works better in a one-on-one than in a staff meeting, and it works best when the first person who answers honestly sees no cost for it.

Protect the conversation at home. A standing hour each week in which a spouse or partner gets the real version, within what you are allowed to share, keeps the household from learning about the strain last.

Use a confidential professional when the weight is real. For many senior people, a therapist is the one listener who sits outside the chain of command, outside the org chart and inside a duty of confidentiality. For cleared professionals, as I wrote in these pages last month, the security clearance form itself says counseling is not, in and of itself, a reason to deny eligibility.

Washington rewards people who always have the answer. The leaders who last are the ones who keep a few people close who are allowed to say they do not.

Elijah Fernandez, MSW, PMP, CISSP, is co-founder and CTO of CEREVITY, a private-pay concierge network of independent licensed clinicians built for high achievers: executives, founders, physicians, attorneys and finance leaders. He has spent about 20 years in healthcare IT, including as director of IT operations at a national mental health company, and holds a Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California.