Keeping your ego in check: seven lessons for leaders
This is the second of a two-part blog focused on ego in the workplace. The first iteration addressed ‘seven workplace behaviours that suggest your ego is becoming a problem’.
Let’s be honest, leaders tend to have big egos. The very platform of leadership, the access that it affords and the doors that it opens can seduce the even the most upright of individuals. In leadership, having an ego is not a problem. The problem arises when an ego gets out of control and creates its own ‘micro-climate’. The best leaders well understand their ego fault lines and work assiduously to ensure that they do not open into chasms that consume them.
But what about those who are less assiduous?
This blog explores the challenges for leaders who do not seem to know themselves. As part of this, it highlights the vulnerabilities that ego exposes as well as the very real risk, faced by those in leadership positions, from those who may seek to exploit and undermine them.
Set out below are seven lessons for leaders, describing why they need to keep their egos in check.
1. Management manipulation
One of the dangers of leaders with egos, is that the predictability of their behaviour could leave them open to manipulation by others. This type of scenario can arise, when those around a leader become familiar with their personality and behavioural triggers and leverage that knowledge with the specific aim of exploiting them. Unsuspectingly, a leader who is given to flattery could be compromised, by those looking to co-opt their support or moderate their opposition. When leaders become predictable in this way, they can easily fall prey to their own egos.
2. Diversion of resources
Leaders who cannot keep their egos in check, become high maintenance, occupy time and divert resources away from where they are needed most. Under such circumstances, the very function of leadership begins to turn on its head. This will often be seen in the imbalance of effort and energy used by subordinates to serve the leader, compared to the time spent by the leader serving them. Leaders who cannot manage their egos become an unwanted burden on their teams. Under no circumstances should subordinates be providing ‘therapy’ for their dysfunctional leadership.
3. Subjective biases
With leadership development, previous experience can often provide a useful context to frame and understand current events. However, there are occasions when drawing parallels between the past and present can be detrimental, even when not intended to be. Whenever leaders feel compelled to make statements such as: “that’s not how I did it” or “I would never have done it like that”, they only serve to undermine the confidence of their subordinates. So, here’s the rub: if leadership is all about others, then leaders must resist the temptation to make it all about themselves.
4. The cycle of addiction
Let’s not kid ourselves, when the ego is fed it feels wonderful. The problem of course is that the ego always needs to be fed, because once the feeding stops, the awful withdrawal symptoms kick in until the next ‘fix’. Indeed, ‘fix’ is probably a better adjective to describe the compulsion than ‘feed’, because leaders who become overly responsive to their egos are no better than drug addicts. Lurching from one potential ‘dealer’ to the next, they require increasingly higher doses of ego stimulant to satiate their need for importance. Once the cycle starts, it is very difficult to stop.
5. Ego blindless
This lesson does not apply to the garden variety egomaniac, but rather the ‘innocent abroad’ whose levels of self-awareness dull incrementally over time. For such an individual the onset of ‘ego blindness’ occurs without them even noticing. As part of their day-to-day interactions with subordinates and peers, these leaders fail to realise that their ego has become a barrier to open honest communication. Especially that which calls in to question their competence. Leaders must constantly check their own temperature to avoid the degenerative condition of ego blindness.
6. The tenure effect
The wonderful thing about tenure in role is that it empowers leaders with a sense of confidence and belief that, even if they don’t know it all, they know a lot. Whilst lengthy tenure has clear advantages, it can also have decidedly negative effects. Regaling subordinates with a laundry list of testimonies and first had accounts of achievements and accomplishments, no matter how well intentioned can be intimidating. To that extent, leaders must be constantly aware of the weight of their reputations and the impact this can have on those around them.
7. Knowledge neurosis
Some years ago, a senior civil servant mentioned to me that their biggest professional thrill is to: be in the room when the decision is made. For leaders the message is clear: knowledge is not just power it is also status. Those with privileged access have leverage over those who do not. Whilst it can be bruising to be deprived of information, especially when there is a legitimate need to know, leaders with an obsessive compulsion to be ‘informed’, risk becoming neurotics. For these individuals, their ego driven sense of entitlement leaves them in a constant state of anxiety that someone knows something that they do not.
Under control and directed appropriately, a leader’s ego can have a positive impact on those around them. Especially when the purpose is to encourage and inspire others, rather than to elevate self. In the right moment, in the correct ‘dose’ and with the best motivation, ego can make a relational connection that might not be possible otherwise. However, the best leaders understand the dividing line between enough and too much and never cross that boundary. For those leaders, the key to keeping their ego in check is self-awareness.
Paul Aladenika is host of the 11th Thing Podcast