Taming Your Ego

My relationship with the ego is complicated.

Like many young, Black professionals working in America, I was taught the importance of projecting impressiveness to avoid being perceived as inadequate. I believed every incorrect answer would drag me back to the low expectations of my coworkers. I knew my education and past accomplishments didn’t award me the benefit of the doubt - I’d have to earn respect in every job and with every interaction.

During the early days of my career, three thoughts constantly cycled through my mind:

• No one thinks I deserve to be here.
• No one believes in me.
• I’ll show these motherf*ckers.

Many (or most?) of my actions were driven by a desire to be perceived in a certain way. I wanted to be acknowledged as deserving, belonging, or extraordinary. Or at least, that’s what I thought I wanted …

Through five-plus years of conversations and interviews with other professionals of color, I’ve come to realize that my complicated ego relationship is not unique. Like the younger version of me, many professionals of color place great emphasis on the optics of their careers. “Will this be the brand on my resume that finally removes all doubt in my ability?” “Will this be the accomplishment that finally silences all my skeptics?” “Do I need another advanced degree from yet another Ivy to finally win their respect?”

Even though it’s true that for some bigoted people, no professional of color will receive their benefit of the doubt when it comes to ability, the impulse to answer these questions is driven entirely by the needs of our egos.

The influence of ego on the professional actions of executives of color is especially destructive. Studies show we are more likely to feel like professional frauds and overcompensate through our actions as a result. We are more likely to shape our emotions and actions to conform to what we believe to be acceptable behavior in the eyes of the privileged minority.

Only after extracting myself from traditional corporate environments and starting Bleeker did I begin interrogating the relationship with my ego. Why did I care so much about proving my worth to others? Why was I defining my actions for an audience that may not understand me, may not believe in me, and may not support me? 

Instead of letting my ego direct my career, I learned to carve my path using integrity & purpose as a guide; I learned to tame my ego. By taming our egos, “we can learn to minimize our need to control, to look good, to fit in.” And our leadership potential begins to soar.

Some of you might be wondering what your ego has to do with leadership. I’m here to tell you that ego has everything to do with leadership. And that if left unchecked, the problems of egotism and self-interest can extend beyond leadership and collaboration, with the potential to negatively affect your health and wellbeing.

In recent years, academics, psychologists, and social scientists have paid closer attention to egotism, exploring the positive and negative actions that can result from excessive self-interest. Heidi Wayment and Jack Bauer are at the forefront of this research, and their 2008 book, “Transcending Self-“Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego” demonstrates the many benefits of taming the ego.

In “Transcending Self-Interest,” Wayment and Bauer introduce the concept of the quiet ego to describe “a self-identity that is not excessively self-focused but also not excessively other-focused - an identity that incorporates others without losing the self.” Their research shows that a noisy ego leaves you unable to perceive and think about the negative qualities in your life. They illustrate that egoistic self-interest “seems not only to bring some short-term gain but also to cause long-term pain, for others as well as for self.” And while their research outlines the dangers of a completely silent ego, their findings point towards the overwhelming benefits of living life with a quiet or tamed ego.

According to Wayment and Bauer, those living life with a noisy ego spend significant energy identifying and defending the construct of their self that they want the world to see (that was me!) - the version of their self that they believe that their friends, family, colleagues, peers or associates want to see. Alternatively, those living life with a quiet ego are more attuned to the people and the world around them, they have a greater recognition of their true strengths and weaknesses (opening the way to greater personal & professional development), and they have greater compassion for the self and others. Instead of expending energy fabricating and manipulating their public persona, they spend that energy living and growing.

This more targeted deployment of energy makes a huge difference in the lives of people transitioning from noisy to quiet ego. The impact of ego taming is neatly summarized by Frederic Laloux in “Reinventing Organizations.”

We learn to look at our ego from a distance and often realize how our fears, ambitions, and desires have been secretly running our lives. We can learn to minimize our need to control, to look good, to fit in. Many scholars note that this results in a profound shift that increases our capacity to trust others and to trust life. It echoes wisdom traditions that have long affirmed that we can live from fear and scarcity, or from trust and abundance … Setbacks and mistakes no longer need to be met with fear, anger, or shame: we can truly see them as opportunities to learn about who we are and grow into more of our selfhood.

If you are committed to leading your company or community, in your team or industry, you will need to direct as much energy as possible towards the tasks and activities that deliver meaningful impact. Key to that energy efficiency is maintaining a tamed ego.

What’s the fiction

Carefully curating your public persona is an essential leadership activity.

What's really true

Without taming your ego, you spend significant energy identifying and defending your construct of the self that you want the world to see, not living and growing.

Things to try

1) Practice looking at your ego from a distance, questioning how your fears, ambitions, and desires have informed your actions; 2) Practice minimizing your need to control, look good, and fit in; 3) Practice accepting setbacks and mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow.

 Next steps

1) For the next week, as you go about your daily routine, jot down the negative and positive thoughts about yourself whenever you notice them; 2) At the end of each day, spend a few minutes reviewing and reflecting on the observed thoughts and associated patterns; 3) At the end of the week, see if you can associate your feelings with the events, conditions or situations that triggered them.

Things to read

Cocksure: Banks, Battles, & the Psychology of Overconfidence

by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker

“Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there have been two principal explanations for why so many banks made such disastrous decisions…But the first wave of postmortems on the crash suggests a third possibility: that the roots of Wall Street’s crisis were not structural or cognitive so much as they were psychological.”

This 2009 article chronicles the dangers of overconfidence in the worlds of finance, war, and beyond. 

PROMPT: Why is overconfidence both advantageous and dangerous? How did overconfidence contribute to the failure of Bear Stearns?

I, narcissist - vanity, social media, and the social condition

by Carmen Fishwick of The Guardian

“The numbers alone tell a powerful story of self-obsessions. More than 80m photographs uploaded to Instagram every day, more than 3.5bn ‘likes’ every day, and some 1.4bn people - 20% of the world’s population - publishing details of their lives on Facebook. Is social media turning a relatively modest species into a pack of publicity-hungry narcissists? Or were we already inherently self-absorbed?”

PROMPT: Is social media a tool for community or egotism? 

The Optimism Bias

by Tali Sharot on Ted Talks

“Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side -- and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial.”

PROMPT: Can optimism and realism coexist? How can an excess or shortage of optimism impact your life and decision-making?

Do you suffer from illusions of moral superiority?

by Tania Lombrozo on NPR

“A new study by Ben Tappin and Ryan McKay, forthcoming in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, follows previous work in finding that the tendency towards self-enhancement — towards judging ourselves "better than average" — is particularly acute in the moral domain.” This article chronicles the origins and dangers of moral superiority.

PROMPT: How can moral superiority be harmful to personal relationships? Society? Politics? International relations?