This principle is one I most often explain to founders and CEOs, but it applies to a much broader audience, just not as dramatically.
I didn't come up with it and I really can't find where I got it from, but in essence, the loneliness of the winner describes the dynamic of any pyramidal structure where there is a winner on the top and where everyone else - even second and third place - are fundamentally losers.
Now this isn't about judging people's achievements or character, it's about describing a natural order of cohorts built around commonality between individuals.
The winner ends up alone all the time, because its cohort is always one. The losers end up in a group because their cohort is always everyone else.
This creates a division that winners have to handle.
Winners and losers face similar ongoing difficulties, but winners in their loneliness, won't find the support of the cohort. They won't get the compassion. They won't get the sounding board. Most losers will react to winners' problems along the line of "what do you have to complain about? You won.".
The reason this applies to a broad audience, is given a focused context, this replicates like fractals. The lead engineer is the winner of the team context. The manager of the individual contributor teams is the winner of said context. The director of the division is the winner of the management group. So on, and so forth.
The higher you are in the pyramid, the less likely you are to find peers at your level, so the loneliness hits you harder. You also end up in a treacherous environment, because most people aren't being honest with you - from 'managing up' to straight up lying.
It becomes difficult to keep a clear mind. You need to develop your stable points in the storm.
You want to cultivate relationships, a circle of people that will tell you the truth - even if they are wrong - above all else. Your emotions are the biggest reasons why you wouldn't be receiving said truths and why most people would not try to tell them in the first place.
No one who has nothing to gain - except maintaining their integrity - wants to deal with the fallback of emotional triggers.
Even if you think you're the least emotionally driven decision maker, you are still making decisions on emotion. These emotions are what upsets you, but also what pleases you. Both are triggers that take you away from your stable points.
Cultivate a sense of awareness and develop mechanism as to not be so emotional. I really can't do coaching by book but there are countless ways to look at this.
Beyond relationships, what you can do is establish a process for you to maintain perspective.
First, even if you communicate assertively, never forget that you could be completely wrong. This allows you to remain open to vulnerabilities without having to air dry them in public.
Second, develop and maintain a chain of feedback aka build trust with your "Losers". Allow the information to come raw and work on taking it without expressing negative feedback. At the very least, you'll be able to use quantitative measure to find the signal in the noise. At the best, you'll build some of the relationships I mentioned before - mostly likely with people who are winners themselves in their contexts.
Third, get outside perspective. A friend, family, peer, advisors, investors. Anyone that will give you a different angle and speak truths.
Last, learn to handle it, but accept that it may not be for you. Don't feel that being a winner is better than being a loser. The terminology isn't judgmental - I just continue using the one I learned since I couldn't find a better one. If this is an unbearable environment for you, don't force yourself into it under delusion. The outcome will be so much worse.
Every case is different, so it's hard to give more precise advice without a more precise context, but keep in mind that this paradigm applies a lot further than you can see and also applies to entities. Companies can experience loneliness on the top of the pyramid.