The risks are real enough, and not to be downplayed.  There is no denying that when individuals contemplate whether they would like to take on a senior position or not, this level of exposure is a key consideration for them.  With integrity, and as they look at what those leading them have had to endure, some decide against such a move as a result.  Amongst those senior leaders who have gone further and experienced these pressures, the significant number moving from publicly-traded companies to privately-owned ones often cite less public exposure for them and their families as one of the key attractions of the switch. 

It is hard not to feel constantly judged in the court of public opinion, and yet for all the reality of that for many leaders, this is not the most demanding judge most leaders I work with have to encounter.  The toughest judge they have to satisfy is in fact themselves.  We all have a part, sometimes a well-known personality in our lives that we may give a label like our "inner critic", that knows us of old, that recognises all our patterns, and holds up a mirror we cannot hide from that shows us how we can be weak and ineffective.  Some of us refuse to look in the mirror, or alternately we keep looking obsessively into it.  Either way our behaviours at such times are driven by our inner critic in ways that risk creating a far more profoundly negative narrative than anyone external to us can muster.  This voice will often point out both our failings and our track record of being unable to address those failings, and in that moment reduce our capacity to initiate any improvements.  For those who feel these pressures, the question is how to move beyond these self-defeating patterns. 

These are moments when I tend to find myself remembering some of the many things I have learned from the well-known psychologist Richard ('Dick') Schwarz.  A fundamental of Dick's teaching is that we are not comprised of one personality, but of multiple personalities in what he describes as an "Internal Family System".  These different parts of us take on roles through our lives, particularly at difficult moments, but always with a view to protecting us from whatever is a threat at that time.  The difficulty is that often those parts get stuck in those stances, even though our lives have moved on.  So, when we are triggered in certain situations, and find ourselves expressing familiar behaviours that we know are counter-productive, Dick would say that this is because a part of us, a real personality within us, is acting to protect us from a danger that may actually be long gone or much less significant than it used to be.  This dissonance between what different parts of us know is often responsible for our inability to change some behaviours.  Our conscious mind wants to slam on the brakes, but another part we may be less conscious of, has her or his foot very firmly on the accelerator. 

So what are the implications of this insight? How do we use it to drive change?  Dick's work is very nuanced, but to pull out one essential thread here, he urges us to get curious about how the behaviours we want to change may have been of service to us, and to be compassionate rather than judgemental towards the part of us that is responsible for them.  This compassion is both the right thing to do, given that part's good intent, but the empathy it demonstrates is also most likely to encourage a change in their behaviour.  So, as we build more self-awareness and compassion, that part of us may be persuaded to step down from protecting us in that way, and divert his/her energies elsewhere.  So, while as leaders we may understandably feel the outside world holds our most uncompromising critics, it may be the judgement of our inner critic that is in the end the most debilitating of all.  The more we can learn to identify and understand what drives the different parts in our personality, the more effectively we can change and move on.