THE IMPORTANCE OF EGO MANAGEMENT

It’s a strange thing that as a member of the team you may hear almost nothing ‘from your ego’, but when you step into a leadership role it can raise its insecure head in unprecedented ways.??

?

Your ego, or your sense of self-worth, may have felt well-fed and unthreatened during your tenure as a team member, however when you step up into leadership there is an isolation and a vulnerability that can feel somewhat scary, and your poor ego can feel exposed. When you are simply a team member, and a fellow team member or even your manager criticises you, you may feel slightly hurt, but when the same kind of critique is aimed at you as a leader the impact of that can feel multiplied because of that sense of exposure mentioned earlier.?

?

The first step to keeping your ego in check in leadership roles is to expect that your ego may feel more exposed than it did when you were part of the security of a team. Fun fact-we humans differ from male lions in that we don’t consume our young. We’re hardwired to protect more fragile elements of human society. In the case of the ego, you may need to turn off, or at least downplay, your tendency to protect your ego in the face of what feels like an attack (but so often isn’t).?

?

I have a concept that has proved useful for me in dealing with this issue of being overprotective of my ego. When someone is critiquing my ability, I can feel my Olympic 4x4 ‘defensive’ relay team starting to warm up in order to run a 400m defence on my behalf. When I feel my defensive team warming up, I now know to tell them to stand down, knowing that if I let them loose and I react defensively or try to justify myself for the sake of protecting my ego, then things are much more likely to ‘go pear shaped’ for me. Conversely,? if I can avoid feeling so defensive and take ownership for the core issue being critiqued, the final outcome is likely to be much more constructive .?

?

Many years ago, I remember having a frontline leader on one of my development programs come to me and tell me that she would be finishing the program because she was quitting her job. When I inquired as to why she was resigning she told me that she was tired of her manager’s manager micromanaging her. When I ascertained that she loved her job and really wanted to stay with the company (with the exception of this micromanagement issue), I coached her to have a conversation with her manager’s manager.??

?

One piece of advice that I gave her was to avoid using the word “micromanagement”, because it could come across as an attack on the recipient’s leadership competence and in turn, their ego. So instead, I instructed her to restrict her conversation to the key issue which gives rise to micromanagement, which is of course lack of trust. She agreed, and we carefully scripted the conversation so she could replace “micromanagement" with “some areas where I’m not as trustworthy as I need to be”.??

?

Even this far softer alternative still caused the manager to react in a defensive manner, but because we anticipated this, she managed to continue to steer the conversation towards the ways in which she could demonstrate increased trustworthiness. The outcome was that things got clarified, she changed some of her practices, became more trustworthy in his eyes, and their relationship improved dramatically, and she was still with the same business many years later.??

?

On this occasion, we anticipated that the manager’s ego might result in some defensiveness, which was the case, and we managed the conversation accordingly to a positive conclusion for all concerned.??

It would have been easier if the manager had less of an insecure ego, or at the very least was aware of his ego needs and managed them himself.??

?

The vulnerable nature of stepping into a leadership role means that flaws in your ego may be exposed in ways that might surprise, or even shock yourself (and others). The more you can be honest with yourself about your ‘less than functional ego needs, the more you’ll have a chance of them not sabotaging your leadership efforts.???