The 3-letter word that silently destroys leaders: Powerful tips from psychology to recognize EGO and put it in check!

We’re HUGE fans of psychology, and we believe that the better we understand psychological principles and how the mind works, the more aware and strategic we can be, and the better tools we can provide you to successfully lead your teams.

Our topic is a deep dive into a simple three-letter word that’s anything but simple. That three letter word: EGO. Now, before we get too far into this, we need to set some things straight before we dive in.

Unpacking Ego

Let’s look at the word ego and where it came from. In today’s society, when we hear the word ego, we often associate the word ego with a certain kind of person. We may all get a picture of an individual who is just bigger than life and has the self-centered personality to prove it. For me, I can’t help but picture Harvey Specter from the TV show Suits. He’s cocky, brash, and always gets his way. I think, even in the show, he is sometimes referred to as an “egotistical prick.”

While this has become our current version of understanding the ego, it’s actually not anything close to the way it was originally described by psychologist Carl Jung. Here is how Carl Jung actually described “the Ego” in his original work: The part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious, and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.

There’s a lot to unpack there, let’s start with the beginning statement: “The part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious.” This theory suggests that there are multiple factors at play here, and that the ego mediates, or has to create harmony, between the conscious and the unconscious. It has to figure out what is real and what isn’t, and therefore tests reality. It also functions to find personal identity, allowing us to build and shape our personalities and way we decide to show up in the world.

Molding Ego

At Mission Squared, we’ve created a more applicable definition by saying that the ego “is the part of your personality that was shaped as you moved through the world and made decisions about the world, how the world is, and how you need to be in the world in order to survive.” 

So what does all this mean, especially since we’re working with a few definitions and understandings of what “ego” really is? To sum it up into what I hope is a simple thought, the ego is WHO we decide to be when faced with the need to survive. As you have moved through life and made decisions to try to get through each day and avoid pain, injury, and suffering, your conscious self has made decisions that shape who you are and how you will behave to continue to survive. The ego is all about survival of self. 

Survival Mode

As our stress levels increase and our needs are threatened, we make choices to prevent pain and survive. Are we getting heat from a boss because a project isn’t done? In an effort to survive, we may get angry with our employees because we’re concerned that missing a deadline might cost us our job. Maybe a Director of Sales and their team are short of hitting their goal, and the Director of Sales can’t pay their bills without the bonus that comes with hitting attainment, so out of fear for survival, they start prodding their team members to work harder. 

Today’s society might applaud this person for taking control and riding their team to bring in sales, but Jung would actually say this person is acting out of fear and the perceived threat of missing out on a psychological or physiological need that gets filled from their work (remember this discussion from a couple months ago?). This Director of Sales, because they need the bonus, is treating their team poorly because of the perceived threat of psychological loss or pain. 

Ego Drives, Teamwork Takes Backseat

The egoic personality, or the crazy person that shows up when we feel we’re losing control, is the person we have become in the face of adversity or challenge based on previous choices and past successes or failures. Remember Jung and testing reality and finding personal identity? The crazy yelling individual is who we “feel” we have to become to make things work out in our favor or we don’t survive. 

When our needs are threatened, we start making choices out of panic just to get past the discomfort. In those moments, we let the ego drive because we are unable to slow down and actually use the more sophisticated tool attached to our bodies above the shoulders called our brain. While the ego may help us survive, it often lacks the perspective to think beyond ourselves and make decisions that may better support a team’s success.

Let’s take a look at a couple other examples where the ego is making choices that may negatively affect a team:

  • A department leader who is unaware of how their behavior and words affects their team, and is clueless about how their team feels because they’re only focused on their own needs.
  • A leader who is overcontrolling and micromanages because they fear their team won’t perform well enough. This person may even speak negatively about members of their team to other team members
  • Someone who creates a list of demands that NO ONE can meet, is skeptical of others, and holds knowledge and information to themselves as power.
  • High levels of defensiveness about their actions or behaviors and won’t listen to the needs of their team members
  • A person who is overly passive and who makes choices to seek approval from their team vs making decisions that are best for the team and the business. 
Ego Trips: Missing the Goal?

One of the things we have learned over the years, and studies prove it, is when people are driven by their ego, they tend to do things that are unproductive towards the very things they want. Let that just sink in a moment: When we are driven by ego, we tend to do things that are unproductive towards the things we want. Simply put, the more ego involved, the further we move away from our goal.

Let’s go back to our example of a Director of Sales riding their team. The Director of Sales thinks they’re doing the right thing by pushing and yelling at their team. Meanwhile, the team is exhausted, unrecognized, feeling like they’re not doing enough, and that their boss is mad or upset at them for not “hitting the goals.” This behavior will actually de-motivate the sales managers team and erode their trust. Because the sales manager is feeling afraid, that fear is passed on to their team through the actions and behaviors of the sales manager. Talk about counterintuitive and counterproductive!

As leaders, WE need to be aware of when we are acting from this place and we must learn to be able to use our mind and consciousness to pull out of those old, habitual ways. I know we’ve all responded like the sales manager at one time or another as leaders. It’s natural to be afraid when adversity and challenges come, but we don’t have to let these challenges give ego free reign in our choices.

To wrap up today, I’d like to leave you with 6 steps to help you take control of your ego and stop letting it grab you by the balls. 

6 Steps to keep your ego in check:
  1. Actively seek out feedback. Get out of your own head and start to get a better understanding of how you are perceived by others and how your choices impact others. Have a mentor, friend, boss, counselor, or some other person whose feedback you value give you an honest assessment of what they see. Feedback allows us to take a step back and see what’s happening through the eyes of another and adjust our behavior accordingly.

  2. Seek to understand other people’s needs and preferences and keep them in mind as you interact with them. I have a person I meet with once a month. One of their needs that I’ve come to understand is that they need a bit of time to connect at the beginning of the meeting before we start talking business. If I start this meeting and just directly dive in, it will throw the other person off, and they might think I’m mad or upset at them. Internally, I may see we have a lot to cover and I’ve only got 30 minutes, so I need to preface that we need to get right to it. Be aware of the needs of others so you can support them in being successful.

  3. Learn to Apologize. I don’t mean do a half-assed apology when you’re 30 seconds late to a meeting. No one cares that you were 30 seconds late. I mean apologize genuinely when you make a mistake. Apologize when something you do affects another person negatively. I think our society has lost the skill of a genuine apology. If the situation calls for it, apologize. Make sure the other person knows you mean it, and set the groundwork for an honest conversation.

  4. Admit when you don’t know something and when you don’t have all the answers. Not too many years ago, I heard a well-known speaker say that admitting you didn’t know something was the worst thing you could do, and would often cost you clients or a deal. I couldn’t disagree more with this person. When we admit we don’t know something, even how to handle a big problem, it shows humility and an awareness that we don’t have all the answers. It flies directly in the face of ego and the perception that we must be all-knowing.

    Admitting you don’t know something also opens the door to gather information from those around you and acknowledge when others have better insights or ideas than you. As leaders we don’t have to have all the answers, but we need to know how to utilize the skills of our team to find them. Let go of needing to be right or in control.

  5. We ALL make mistakes. When we see that someone has made a mistake, start from the place of knowing you’ve probably made the same mistake, and probably made it more recently than you’d care to admit. Did a team member mismanage their time because they thought a project would take less time than it really did? When was the last time you underestimated how long something would take? For me, probably a week or two ago. Don’t go off on someone because they underestimated the time it would take, and don’t accuse them of irresponsibility or laziness. Know that when someone makes a mistake, you’ve made the same mistake. Have some grace, and if this person is consistently mismanaging their time and delivering projects late, work with them on better time management.

  6. Tend to your own inner peace and confidence. Stop seeking reassurance from outside yourself. The more confidence you have about yourself and your skills, the less the ego has room to create fear. Ego will focus on everything negative and what’s broken. Get above this by growing your self love and self respect. Learn to meditate. Get a coach to help you shift your perspective (Hint: We’ve got cohorts for this!). Take a higher perspective that believes things will work out and be ok. Let go of the need to control everything or prove yourself. The more self love and confidence, the more you are protected from those survival behaviors and it will shut down the fear that ego creates. 

As a final thought here, we’ve talked before about how the brain loses 20 IQ points when we’re in panicked states. When your ego runs your life, you’re functioning and making decisions with significantly less than your whole intelligent self. Is that really how we, as leaders, should be leading our teams?

At Mission Squared, we help leaders and teams learn the tools and habits that help them be at their best and operate as far from ego as possible. If you’d like to learn more about how to equip yourself or your team with the skills to make decisions that help organizations work better and thrive, we invite you to attend our two-hour adversity hack crash course, where we dive deeper into these concepts and show you how working directly with Mission Squared can completely shift the mindset of your organization.

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