Ashish KothariMake flourishing your competitive edge

Why Leaders Struggle to Ask for Support

29 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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Ashish Kothari finds that senior leaders can name only two forms of emotional support: being hugged or listened to. After two decades working with executives, he argues this poverty of language leaves them starved for ways to ask for the deeper care that would actually nourish them.

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We need an emotional vocabulary and we need a relational vocabulary. I often ask leaders, if you wanted emotional support, not problem solving, emotional support, what could you ask somebody to do that would nourish your heart? Almost every executive group I've worked with for 20 years can only come up with 2. Somebody could hug me or they could listen to me. They say, we're gonna come up with 100. Starved for a vocabulary of how to dance with us in a way that would be emotionally nourishing.