Episode 1: Is Ego In Your Way?

The following is a written supplement to The Leading Lights Audiocast, Episode 1: Is Ego In Your Way?

We’ve all had that colleague.  When they make poor decisions or mistakes, they make excuses instead of taking ownership and redirecting accordingly.  During planning sessions, they think more about how people will feel about their strategy - how it might affect their reputation or image - instead of focusing on developing a strong strategic plan for the betterment of the organization.  They consistently use “my” over “our”, and “I” over “we”.  All roads lead back to them. 

We also know the other executive.  They made appearances at your wedding and your child’s first birthday party.  When you pass them in the office halls, they look you in the eye and say hello.  When the company is in crisis mode, they don’t simply seek solidarity.  Instead, they seek the advice, opinions, and the guidance from those wise contributors around them, considering the collective unit’s best interests.

Ego can be a driver of our motivation, energy, and perhaps even our confidence level.  But it can also tear us down, leaving nothing but a failure story in its wake.  There are countless accounts of ego standing in the way of business success, even stories highlighting people whose incredible early career successes inflated the ego quickly, clouding future decisions and ultimately leading them to complete failure.  Some of these stories are actually highlighted in Ryan Holiday’s book, Ego Is The Enemy - watch Ryan’s interview on London Real here.

Hall of Fame professional basketball coach Pat Riley once referred to ego as, “The disease of ‘ME’”.  There may be no simpler way to describe ego.  When asked how he approaches hiring, one CEO said that he looks for people with the biggest gap between skill level and ego.  Of course, this CEO was saying this in favor of inflated skill level, and deflated ego.

It is no secret that innate leadership skill combined with ultra-high performance and topped off with the absence of ego unite to become one of the rarest commodities in the professional world today.  Organizations realize that heavy ego in the executive office leads to singularity, less diversity of thought, and less collaboration resulting in very little innovation and very high turnover.

I once worked with a colleague who I found to be extraordinarily enlightened, collaborative, and balanced.  He was very driven, but incredibly inclusive, and it always seemed as though he was not to be phased.  On the backdrop of his desktop computer was a thought-provoking image of the milky way taken from the depths of outer space, light years from earth.  Within that image sat a very small arrow pointing at earth, which, in this image, was the size of a tiny pencil dot.  Captioned beside the arrow were the words, “You are here”.

Perspective, in the form delivered by my former colleague’s desktop image, is a necessary ego-tamer.  This perspective reminds us that no matter where we are in life or work, we must never forget that there will always be someone out there who has outworked us, outperformed us, is richer than us, or maybe even more famous than us.  This perspective momentarily mutes our egos, allowing us to make clearer decisions about our organization instead of catering to our own individual needs.

In today’s enterprise, where the buck stops with the executive, perhaps more than it ever has before, it is hard for an executive to not let ego take control.  But great leaders do not see hierarchy as simply a division of power and success.  They see it as a driver of efficiency and speed in decision-making for the betterment of the entire organization.

Ego will trick you.  It tells you that you are the only reason for your success.  It reminds you of this every minute of every day, when in reality, that is simply not true.  The greatest leaders are the most humble, and are most focused on the collective success.  They are confident, not because of an inflated ego, but because they pause momentarily for greater perspective in nearly every decision-making process they undergo.

So the question is this - is ego in your way?

Cultura Solutions is a strategic search firm in Minneapolis that partners with executives to help bridge high-impact leadership talent gaps. Our principals employ an extremely disciplined and transparent search process with a targeted sourcing model, and outreach focused on genuine human-to-human interaction, allowing us to turn non-active prospects into interested candidates. Visit www.cultura-solutions.com for more information.