Two Everyday Faces of Your Ego: Control and Approval

When faced with an annoying or uncomfortable situation at work, sometimes the best place to start is to understand why you feel like you do. This often helps give you more freedom to change that, and even to change your actions towards a situation (and so its outcomes). To play with this idea, try the simple three-step routine at the end of this article. First, let’s understand the two ego drives that often show up in work situations where are unhappy, frustrated, or uncomfortable, e.g. something that happened, didn’t happen, or is making you unhappy.

Drive One: Our need for control

In the workplace especially, we have a natural compulsion to maintain our sense of comfort by being in control. The nature of that control includes mental, emotional, or actual/direct control, for example:

• Mental: to ensure we know what’s happening/going to happen in a situation
• Emotional: To suppress our feelings/emotions in a situation, perhaps we are upset but avoid displaying that, e.g. keep smiling
• Direct: We use the force of our personality, will or position to direct events (make things happen)

Additional ways to illustrate egoic drivers for control include:

• Surety, e.g. ‘I can trust this situation/person’.
• The ‘known’ e.g. ‘yes, great, this all seems familiar’.
• Sameness, routine, e.g. ‘there can be no surprises here’.

Conversely, the ego typically avoids the potential threats of:

• Unplanned/unexpected change
• Personal exposure, e.g. failure, embarrassment, being ‘wrong’.
• The unknown, ‘I don’t know anyone here/I have no prior knowledge on this subject’, etc.

In the workplace, think about how people might resist change or find it difficult to adopt new systems or structures – especially when they are unclear or confused about what the change means to them. This is one of the ways that coaching conversations can help people assimilate or handle change. Because when we help people express themselves, what they think and feel becomes clearer. This helps them to relax and decide what’s really important, e.g. for them and their overarching work goals at work.

Drive Two: We seek to maintain the approval of others

Another common driver of the ego is to maintain (or avoid losing) the approval of others. Ways we might recognize this tendency in ourselves or others:

• Wanting to be viewed in a certain way by others, e.g. as popular, competent, kind, successful, attractive etc.
• Wanting positions of status or respect, e.g. ‘If I’m more senior I’ll be more respected’
• Being upset if we imagine that others think badly of us or disapprove of us in some way.

This is all a natural part of being human, remember, it’s not bad (or good) to want to be viewed as popular or kind etc. What’s useful is to have some choice about that, e.g. ‘I’d love to make the decision that would make me popular with my team right now, but it’s not the right thing to do longer-term’.

When we build awareness, we create choice.

In some situations, we want both control and approval, for example, things didn’t go well in a recent work meeting, and you’re bothered about that. Perhaps you got frustrated and said something harsh/negative, or maybe you lost your temper and upset the tone of the discussion. Thinking about the meeting troubles you, after all, you know that you were right in your opinions. In situations like this, we are upset because we have lost control, approval, or both.

Using the example of the meeting, when you ask yourself, ‘What was I seeking (that I lost), control or approval?’ you may realise that:

• You feel you lost some approval, e.g. because other people in the meeting may have thought that your overreaction was unprofessional.
• The control you want is over your own temper.
• That you want both control AND approval, but the loss of people's approval (respect, esteem etc.) bothers you the most.

Self-Awareness Exercise: Do you most want control or approval?

For a real situation, use the steps below to raise your ego awareness and choice.

1. Identify/remember a situation that you are frustrated, concerned or uncomfortable about in some way. If you’re really annoyed or upset, even better!
2. Reflect on it further, consider what is bothering you about this situation, e.g. how do you truly feel?
3. Now ask yourself:

Q. In this situation, what do I most want - approval or control?

Take your time, and consider, how the notion of approval or control relates to this issue, e.g. which of those do you want but you don’t have? I am suggesting that your discomfort with the situation is caused by your ego, because its need for either approval of others, or control, is not being met.

If you can’t decide, pause, sit with it, and relax into the question.

Find freedom of choice, by relaxing your need for control/approval

To find a more resourceful view of the situation, consider the following:

• Q. What would it take for you to give up your need for approval/control (or both) in this situation?
• Q. If you gave up the need for control/approval, what becomes possible – for example a fresh perspective, or a different response in the situation?
• Q. Action: What are you deciding to do?

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From Brilliant Coaching, 4th Edition, by Julie Starr, Pearson Education

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