Who is the Person Behind the Leader Everyone Turns To?

By Diana Agaronjan

After 20 years alongside CEOs and senior leaders, I have learned that behind professional confidence lie personal questions that need understanding before they need advice.

I once received a call from a CEO who wanted us to contact a magician.

Not a consultant. Not a strategist. A magician.

We contacted one together and participated in rituals intended to help things work out.

What stayed with me was not the ritual, but the person behind the request.

After more than 20 years working closely with CEOs and senior leaders, I have learned that before someone asks for advice, they may first need a place to speak openly, without judgement or fear that a private doubt will change how others see them.

Who Is the Person Behind the Position?

For more than two decades, I have worked with CEOs, entrepreneurs and people in positions of considerable responsibility. I have seen them negotiate, decide, lead and carry expectations that few people around them fully understand.

Yet the person behind the position has always interested me more than the title.

We assume that someone who can run a company or make decisions affecting hundreds of people must know how to handle almost anything. In reality, each of us has areas where we feel sure of ourselves and others where we do not. Success does not make a person immune to fear, hope or embarrassment.

The CEO who wanted to contact a magician was looking, as I understood it, for reassurance. We participated in the ritual together. I did not see it as my role to ridicule his request or promise that it would change the outcome. What mattered was that he trusted me enough to show a side of himself he might not have wanted colleagues to see.

When everyone expects you to be certain, admitting that you need reassurance can be difficult. That is why the moment before advice interests me. There may not yet be a practical question to answer. There is simply a person trying to find some steadiness.

Why Can Something So Ordinary Be So Difficult to Admit?

I remember a woman in a very senior role who was confident and capable in her work. Yet she found something in her private life painfully difficult: meeting a man with whom she might build a relationship.

She was embarrassed to talk about it. From the outside, creating a dating profile might seem like an ordinary task. For her, admitting she wanted help took courage.

We talked and eventually made an online dating profile together. We considered how she wanted to introduce herself and what felt true to her. There was no extraordinary technique. We took a small, concrete step towards something she wanted.

I remember this story because of the contrast. Someone who could manage complex professional situations hesitated over something other people did without much thought.

What comes easily to one person may be difficult for another. That applies to women and men, regardless of the authority they hold at work.

I do not tell these stories to suggest that leaders are more fragile than anyone else. Quite the opposite: they remind me that leaders are people, and that the pressure to appear competent in every area can make perfectly ordinary needs harder to admit.

Are We Living Our Own Lives or the Roles Expected of Us?

I have long been drawn to Carl Gustav Jung’s idea of the persona: the face we present to the world and the roles we come to inhabit. It is useful to remember that this public identity is not the whole person.

Our roles matter. They help us work, care for others and fulfil responsibilities. But the more familiar a role becomes, the easier it is to confuse what is expected of us with what we actually want.

A leader may be celebrated for growing a business while privately wondering whether the next stage of growth is right for their life. Someone else may feel grateful for their achievements and still long for a different kind of relationship, pace or purpose.

I have learned not to rush those thoughts into a plan. I would rather begin with a simple question: What do you want, apart from what everyone expects you to want?

Sometimes the answer is immediate. Sometimes people are surprised by how difficult it is to say aloud. And sometimes there is no answer yet. That is not a failure of the conversation.

The important thing is to make room for the question without treating uncertainty as a weakness.

What Are We Sending Into the World?

I also bring a personal, spiritual practice into some conversations. I believe it matters what we give our attention to and what intentions we send out into the world. I think of them as energetic waves offered to the universe.

I invite people to become aware of what they are truly asking for: to name a wish honestly, hold it in their attention and consider what action they might take towards it.

This is my belief and a reflective practice I teach, not a scientific claim that thoughts change external events. Naming an intention cannot replace hard choices, professional expertise or the realities we cannot control.

For me, its value lies in noticing when we are living entirely in response to other people’s demands. We can become so efficient at meeting expectations that our own wishes stay vague.

The woman who wanted a relationship needed room to say that she wanted one before we could do anything practical. The CEO who sought a ritual seemed to need reassurance at a moment when no one could promise certainty.

Their experiences were different, but both asked me to listen to what mattered to them, rather than what I assumed should matter.

Why Can’t Every Conversation Begin With a Solution?

When someone tells us about a difficulty, we often move straight to advice. I understand the impulse. Offering a solution feels useful; sometimes it is exactly what is required.

But I have seen how easily a suggestion can arrive before the real question has emerged. An apparently professional issue may connect to family life, identity or a changing sense of purpose. A personal worry may be less about solving a problem than about feeling able to speak of it at all.

Over the years, three simple habits have guided me:

• Listen before interpreting. The meaning of an experience belongs first to the person living it.
• Do not minimise what seems ordinary. Small steps can carry enormous emotional weight.
• Ask what is wanted before suggesting what to do. Sometimes the first need is reassurance, not a plan.

An independent, confidential conversation is not a replacement for coaching, consulting or therapy. Each has a distinct role. Nor can any conversation guarantee clarity or a particular outcome.

What it can offer, when trust and appropriate boundaries are present, is a chance to think without performing. That possibility matters to people of every gender and background, including those others routinely look to for answers.

Conclusion: Before the Advice, There Is a Person

After more than 20 years alongside senior leaders, I no longer confuse professional confidence with personal certainty. The CEO looking for reassurance and the woman who struggled to speak about dating taught me the same lesson in different ways: capability does not cancel the need to be understood.

As expectations of leaders continue to grow, I hope we make more room for conversations that begin with curiosity rather than solutions. Before asking what someone should do next, we might first ask what they are really trying to say.

About the Author

Diana Agaronjan is the Founder of The Private Within. With over 20 years of experience working closely with CEOs, entrepreneurs and senior decision-makers in international business environments, she brings a deeply human perspective to leadership. Her work explores the person behind the professional role, with a focus on confidential conversation, self-awareness, clarity and personal perspective.