One of the issues I always ran up against in our work culture is the issue of trust and will. What I mean by this is that we typically do not trust projects to unfold in their natural course, and instead we put on a kind of iron will to “make things happen.”
Iron will is a kind of rigid efforting, and when the ego is applying iron will, we become stubborn, hard-headed, and unbending. I’m sure we have all run across situations and people who we feel simply have no opening. Culturally, we call this “sticking to their guns,” and often mistake this for true steadfastness of will, which is actually more permeable and flexible.
I would see the consequences of iron will over and over again because it results in a kind of pushing that feels like action:
* We didn’t make the right hire because we pushed
* We didn’t let our strategy mature and develop because we pushed
* We moved forward and then some other external consideration occurred and we had to re-evaluate or shift course pre-maturely
* We pushed a capability or technology for short-term gain to see it lose its traction later
* We pushed to create a new revenue stream when resources or capability wasn’t ready
The ego dynamic here is that it is avoiding the feeling and experience of the lack of essential support. In my own experience, lack of support feels like the bottom is going to fall out or that there are no legs to stand on. It’s a sense that something is missing that should be there.
And the ego reaction here is that it is convinced that is needs to take action on its own, and in order to do that, it has to “buck up,” to “suck it up,” and to harden itself to be able to do it.
Iron Will’s Impact on Teams and Relationships
If we are habituated and identified with this ego dynamic, we tend to think that applying an iron will is the only way that we will be able to get anything done. It feels too risky to relax and trust that support will be there, and even though I am referring to internal support, this lack of support also gets projected onto our external circumstances when we experience the desperate sense of not enough resources or not enough time.
The iron will obviously leads to issues that we’ve likely all experienced before, when managers or leaders – or even team members – feel completely rigid in their decision or path forward. There is no consideration for new factors that arise, no flexibility to listen to other perspectives, and a general lack of receptivity to alternatives.
We can see how this would impact relationships, team dynamics, effectiveness of leadership, and exacerbate politics. Ultimately, this leads to stalemates and an inability to make progress on key initiatives, which I would see time and time again. Someone’s rigidity and the misconception that they have to “stick to their guns” at all costs would prevent innovation, spontaneity, and other possibilities.
Iron Will’s Impact on Natural Unfoldment
The inability of an iron will to be flexible and receptive creates a larger issue – that the ego tries to force round pegs into square holes. It doesn’t allow for the natural unfoldment of projects or trust that things will develop naturally, because it doesn’t directly know the underlying support that we all have. And so it will cling to the iron will and this sense that it needs to push to be able to get things done.
The ego does this primarily because at its core, it feels incapable of handling what is here right now. What I mean by this that unconsciously, plenty of us don’t feel like we are able to be with whatever challenge is arising if we simply relax and respond to it appropriately.
Instead, we have to effort and strive in a kind of desperate attempt to do it, because we don’t feel the natural sense of support that is there in our authentic nature.
The ego of course doesn’t like to experience this lack of support because it is painful, uncomfortable, and feels like the bottom just got pulled out from under you. So it overcompensates with a show of confidence. And it is exactly that – a show. And this show is tiring to perform 24/7, but until we recognize the truth that we feel a kind of deficiency or inability to handle what’s in front of us, the show must go on.
The list goes on and on, because inherently the ego feels deficient and unfortunately had to figure out a way to muscle through it.
The problem with this is that the ego has a limited capacity to see all the parts of the whole and is actually disconnected from how these parts come together. Even if you look at this objectively, the truth is that there are countless parts of a moving whole in any project or initiative, and that unfoldment has a natural timing and development to it, which includes issues, problems, adjustments, and usually factors that we simply aren’t able to foresee.
Iron Will’s Impact on Culture
As a result of our collective lack of trust or knowing of essential support, our work culture is one of ceaseless pushing and striving and inherently a lack of trust that things will unfold as they should. If we take a moment to sense into this, there’s incredible tension and anxiety that results in this lack of trust, and it’s pervasive in our collective thinking about work itself.
If we look at how we generally operate in our work culture, we are messing with things all the time. We push for new revenue streams, and then we push for those new revenue streams to be on a timeline that we dictate. We push for advancement to happen according to our expectations. We push for projects to go faster than they actually can. We push our team members to work more than they can. We push ourselves beyond what is actually possible.
The fallacy that we are able to function in isolation as separate “doers” is deeply rooted in our work culture, and it’s easy to see how this then leads to burnout. Instead of trusting the natural unfoldment of our own progress or development, we struggle to push for that promotion, that recognition, that award, that win, that completion, that outcome…
Because we each to some degree unconsciously buy into this ego dynamic, our work culture as a whole believes that it is necessary for the ego’s pushing and efforting to be used to achieve any outcomes or goals. I think we all have seen at this point what the impact on culture this ultimately has.
A Vision for An Alternative Reality
The alternative path forward here is for each of us to turn inward and reconnect with essential support. This is a knowing – not a conceptual or mental knowing – but a deeper knowing that support is here in each moment, no matter what challenge we are facing.
This means laying down the iron will and feeling the experience of not having support, which requires a degree of courage, because it may feel like the bottom is dropping out, or that you are collapsing, or that you don’t know how to function. These are all fears of the ego because it was born from this specific kind of deficiency.
When we are able to detach ourselves from the belief that we need an iron will to function, we will be able to relax, and collectively we can free ourselves from the delusion that all this pushing, striving, hardening, stubbornness, and efforting is necessary.
The vision here is for us to be more aligned with the truth of how reality actually operates, which for the science geeks out there, is more akin to quantum physics vs. Newtonian physics. This paradigm allows for spontaneity because we have come into a direct knowing that we have the support and capacity to respond to the present moment.
This would mean that we no longer need to manipulate outcomes.
This passage from Longchenpa, a Buddhist scholar, illustrates the Dzogchen view of how functioning actually works:
Let whatever you do or whatever appears
Just be in its natural state, without premeditation.
That is true freedom.
Also,
The way of living according to me, the creative intelligence,
Fulfills all aims by letting everything be without striving.
Because everything is included within this inner reality,
There is nothing to accept or reject.
With hope and fear eliminated, anxiety is transcended.
In other words, Longchenpa is saying don’t mess with anything, don’t interfere with the natural unfolding of the present moment.
Imagine for a moment what this would actually be like and what kind of impact it would have on the workplace. Each of us would feel a natural, essential sense of support, we would experience an inner confidence that is not bloated or overconfident, and this natural unfolding would simply flow through the different stages of initiatives and projects without straining or pushing for an outcome.
This is what trust does. It relaxes the system, it allows for what is here to be here. This isn’t to say that this vision entails not having any challenges – it simply means that we trust that the support that is naturally here is actually here, and that we do not need to pick up and wield an iron will to get things done.
If the system can relax enough, we would see and be in contact with what is actually present. We may see that certain things in the system need to be addressed. Things like well-being. Things like how to support parents. How to support growth. How to support mental health. How to shift and adjust course.
This vision of course won’t happen overnight, or maybe at all. But my intention here is to point to the truth – that in many ways, we are steeped in a work culture that is prone to pushing and striving, which ultimately is the source of suffering for many of us. Individually – and certainly as managers and leaders – we can truly lead by working through our own issues of essential support and opening to the possibility of laying down our iron will and seeing how with support, we can function effectively, efficiently, and quite naturally.
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