Ego is a positive thing for people and yet it can be a negative too.
Too much of ego is arrogance and not enough ego means you are laid back.
Let's look at defining ego.
Inner ego is the inner belief or inner strength that is purpose-based and is looking at the self. Outer ego is actually arrogance where one is driving oneself to appear to be better than others in front of everyone else. It's to the world at large and not for any other benefit.
Another way to view ego is to have the understanding of who you are and what drives you and what makes you the person you are. To do this requires a bit of self-inquiry on what are your skills, traits, qualities, strengths, and weaknesses.
Following the self-belief or self-analysis route, it’s all about being true to yourself and not just doing things to look good against other people. Now, this happens in the business world a lot because you are competing against other executives to get promoted or are just playing an ego game of I am better than you! So, there is a tendency to compare yourself to others but not with your inner self.
This causes a lot of stress and issues in the workplace. You have people who don't collaborate with others because they want to be on top of others and they will only collaborate when the purpose suits them.
From a coaching perspective, people who aren't aware of the impact their ego is having are easier to coach and influence, as once they are made aware it, it's like a revelation to them. But then there are people who are very aware of this and use ego as a power game. It is can be challenging to get them to recognise the stress they create.
How does ego present itself in the workplace?
In the workplace when we notice certain signs like lack of collaboration, or a siege mentality or less alignment and division of the corporate vision, these are potential signals of ego in play. Siege mentality is where the team leader feels the team is the best team and goes ahead to climb all over other teams to achieve. Such a team and its leader are quite often aligned and share the corporate vision within the immediate team members but are unable to help connect it for other teams. In most scenarios ego in the workplace is the outer ego given the competitive nature of business.
Then there exists a scenario of those with underdeveloped ego. Contrary to arrogance, this leads to making the individual feel highly inferior and this insecurity quite often leads to someone having to overcompensate when under stress.
The action of overcompensation results in the person either showing how much smarter he or she is, through lots of academic qualifications, or how much better he or she is, by trying to outdo others.
It is hard to reach such people and break down the layers they have created internally in their own self. Their beliefs about themselves make them feel insecure.
There are different ways how an imbalance can manifest and not necessarily by only through arrogance.
Ego also comes about through the emotion of jealousy. The tendency to envy someone else's success is a sign that one's ego is not really balanced because the emotion triggers an inferiority feeling.
The ability in recognising your own self-worth, that you have the ability to contribute to the company, to the team, to the world, is something that if it's in place, then arrogance and ego would not be present.
In the business world, better leaders believe in themselves and try to bring people along with their vision. They focus on results and people and how to balance the two. Good leaders balance it well. As a leader, by being balanced in knowing yourself allows you to accept people and their capabilities and raise them accordingly.
To summarise, you need inner ego and belief in your inner self. It's the outer ego that detracts from you qualities...
