Ego Management

It’s been a year since we started Corporate CAPsule and I want to take the opportunity to thank each one of you on this call. It’s been a privilege for me to speak to you.

As I was reflecting on what to share with you today, I got caught up by a 3-letter word that sometimes has positive connotations but more often than not, is associated with negative connotations. I don’t know how many of you have heard the expression, ‘He’s getting too big for his boots’ or “he or she has a king-sized ego’ or ‘they think that they are the cat’s whiskers’. All of these sayings have to do with negative thoughts that are going out to a person who has a big ego or seems to trample on other people because of the way they think about themselves.


As I thought about this word ‘ego’ I thought it might be good for us to look at it from different angles and see whether we can glean any thoughts for our own selves in our lives. The dictionary has a couple of meanings: the self; distinct from the world and other selves; an exaggerated sense of self-importance; conceit; an inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others. This last definition is very seldom used in a positive context. If you’ve been around long enough, you and I both know that we come across people with huge egos and it’s very difficult to work with people or around these people without in some way, getting hurt by the whole experience.

Looking at research that has come out of David Markham and Steven Smith about ego in their book ‘Egonomics’ and they refer to the cost of ego and say that there are several detrimental workplace phenomena that you can see. In your own offices maybe you can recognize some of these traits that have to do with ego of people around you. Let me throw out some of these traits:

• Hearing but not listening
• Thinking more of themselves than the company
• Having the idea that only the ‘right’ people have good ideas
• The pressure to fit in or the failure to challenge the status quo
• Candid discussions saved for outside the meetings
• Failures being buried and never mentioned again
• Meetings going on longer than necessary
• Fear of making mistakes or admitting them

These are red flags that come up in an organization that allow you to know that you’re dealing with someone with a huge ego and that there is a problem in the company.

As we look at that, there are 2 things we can think of that can happen here:

1. Are there people around me with those issues or problems?
2. Am I one of those people who have a huge ego and if I am, am I detrimental to the work that is going out from the company?

Let’s start with other folks and see how do we handle somebody with a large ego? Matthew Hayward, consultant and assistant professor at University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of book ‘Ego Check’, says “Companies can be populated with talented, high IQ people with no shortage of vision, education, experience or good intentions, yet they may still have an undercurrent of out of control egos responsible for huge losses in productivity and profits. That is the key for all of you on this call, that you are responsible for productivity, for profits and if there are things that are causing problems then you need to be able to deal with them. He goes a step further saying that you need to be able to handle something like this and very often, people with ego problems are very difficult to handle.

I remember reading Lee Iacocca’s autobiography – an amazing read because we know that he was responsible for turning Chrysler Corporation around. He took it on when it was in debt for over a billion dollars and in all kinds of trouble, and he went to Washington, convinced them to give Chrysler a loan and was able to slowly turn it around until it was a huge profit making company. As Jim Collins would put it, Iacocca had a huge ego and it was that ego that got him dismissed from Ford Motors. But it was also his ego that took Chrysler into a place where they couldn’t recover from. In his book ‘Good To Great’ Jim Collins says that when he was interviewed on Larry King Live, Iacocca said, “Running Chrysler has been a bigger job than running the country. I could handle the national economy in 6 months.” He goes on to say that when he went to Japan he was cheered by thousands of fans. But the problem with Iacocca was that he couldn’t leave centre-stage. He couldn’t let go of the perks of executive kingship. He postponed his retirement so many times, that insiders at Chrysler began to joke that Iacocca stood for ‘I Am Chairman Of Chrysler Corporation Always’.

Sometimes a huge ego can be detrimental to a company. As we look at our own workplaces, what would be the things that we need to see? What would be the things that we need to check out? Nathanial Fast who writes in Harvard Business Review says “Bridled egos can create a bully-free workplace.” In essence, people with a huge ego are really bullies in the workplace. Having a bully around is no fun. That affects the company in terms of low creativity, decreased morale and a high attrition rate.

How do we handle bullying or huge egos in the workplace? Serena Cheyenne, a psychologist at U.C. Berkeley provides some insight from recent studies. “Power is partly to blame. However, in contrast to the old adage, Power corrupts; giving people power did not turn them into bullies. This is a key point. Rather it was the simultaneous sharing of power with feelings of inadequacy that led people to lash out. In our studies, the power holders who felt personally incompetent became aggressive.” This means that if you give an incompetent person power, then they tend to act like bullies in the workplace, not because they were power hungry or had dominating personalities, but because they were trying to overcome ego threat. “Put simply, bullying is a cheap way to nurse a wounded ego.” These findings come as no surprise if you’re dealing with somebody who is a bully or has a huge ego in your workplace.

What can you do as a leader to prevent having people like this in your organization? I want to give you 4 points as you hire people or mould people in the workplace.

1. When hiring managers, set the bar high with regard to interpersonal skills and leadership experience. Resist the common tendency to hire and promote solely based on technical expertise and/or academic achievement. Put your company in the hands of managers who are psychologically secure and have a strong sense of inner confidence. That’s not to be confused with outward arrogance. The two are mutually exclusive.
2. Help new managers feel comfortable in their high-powered role by providing training, reminding managers that it is normal to feel under-prepared and connecting them to experienced mentors or coaches to whom they can turn in times of trouble.
3. Remind managers to focus on core values, finding sure that certain power holders are less likely to become aggressive when asked to reflect on a value that is important to them, eg. Family and friends, professional achievement
4. Design jobs in such a way that avoid heaping unrealistic expectations on individuals. Use team effort rather than individual persons. Effectively distribute the weight of responsibility.

Just a few points that Nathanial Fast who is assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, throws out. Take the trouble to be careful with who you hire and then how you mould them into the company. That’s going to help the company to continue to grow and be productive and for profits to increase.

A final thought about Iacocca. After he left, Chrysler carried on for 4-5 years and then really tanked. They were bought over by Daimler Benz (that has been reversed in recent years). But the key was that Iacocca missed an opportunity because of his ego, analysts say, in having a successor be brought in. And a good successor who was already available, Bob Luck, he refused to put Bob Luck in because of his own ego. Chrysler suffered. Jim Collins says that’s the difference between a level 4 and a level 5 leader. A level 5 leader thinks far beyond his or her present situation and looks ahead to succession.

That’s where we ought to be. That we don’t look at the things that we are doing for just a day, but are able to look ahead for the good of the company, the good of the people who work around us and for us and be able to invest in the future and leave a legacy behind.

So, just a thought for you. How to handle people with ego or if you think that you’re that kind of a person and you wonder if you are? Well, if you use ‘I’ too many times rather than ‘we’. Or maybe you find yourself wanting to take credit for everything. These might be 2 good indicators that you are beginning to be more egocentric about things.

A thought from the Bible: “For the grace given me I say to everyone of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought; but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith God has given each one of us.”

God Bless You All.