How to Lead Without Ego? It’s so important that you don’t become an egotistical leader, nobody likes egotistical leaders. Here 4 keys to help you.
- Have Good people Around You
- Get over Yourself
- Share your Success
- Be a Constant Learner
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It’s so important that you don’t become an egotistical leader, nobody likes egotistical leaders. Nobody likes to follow them and you may not even realize that you are a bit egotistical. I know if I’m honest with myself I have an enormous ego. I think I am God’s gift to the planet and I have to keep that in check all the time. If you’re honest with yourself, if you’re a leader there’s a good chance that you think that of yourself as well. The problem is that not everybody sees the world as you do.
Not everybody thinks that you’re as amazing as your mum had told you. You’re going to have to learn to lead with some humility and keep that ego in check. Ego is important for getting the job done as a leader. You don’t want it to lead you because it will become destructive for your team.
1. Have Good people Around You
So how to lead without ego? The first thing is this, you need good people around you. You need to have a team of advisers and a team of people who will speak honestly to you. A Team that can call you on your stuff. If you don’t have people in your life that can keep you grounded and focused on the main thing, you’ll find that your ego gets the better of you. Sometimes you will behave in ways that you don’t even realize and it might be doing damage
One of the examples that I sometimes reference is Steve Jobs. An amazingly brilliant innovator but lost his company because he thought he was so amazing. He couldn’t see the people around him that helped him be amazing. His company ended up pushing him out. It wasn’t until later that he came back and was able to really take Apple to the next level. So just be careful that you don’t let your ego get in the way.
The only way you do that is to listen to the people around you. You have to have people around you that will pull you back down to the ground, not criticize you. You don’t want people who are going to tear you down but keep you grounded.
In Australia, we have this thing called “Tall poppy syndrome” where Australians tend to cut people down if they become successful. If you get a little bit ahead of your group, people will tear you down. They will either do a character assassination on you or just ridicule you. That’s not what I’m talking about when I say people to keep you grounded. I’m talking about people that you trust. People who will give you honest feedback, critique you on how you’re going and help to keep you in touch with reality.
My wife keeps me grounded. If I go and present a speech or give a talk, and I ask her how it was she’s not afraid to say to me “honestly it wasn’t your best one, I didn’t like the way you did this point”. Most people won’t say that to me, my team usually don’t feel confident enough to tell me that I wasn’t on my game. If you’ve only got people around you that are always saying “oh you’re amazing or you’re doing a great job” You might give yourself a false sense of your competence which then leads to arrogance and costly mistakes. You need people that can be a little bit honest with you, not cruel or nasty but honest. That will help you not to lead with your ego.
2. Get over Yourself
The second thing is that you need to get over yourself. Yes, you need to be confident as a leader and you need to believe in yourself. You also need to keep in check with how significant what you are doing is in comparison to the challenges around the world.
I love the story of the Olympic swimmer Susie O’neal. She talks about the day that she was going into one of her gold medal swims. It was an Olympic swim and she was really nervous. She called up her husband and said I don’t think I can do this. Her husband said, “well put it into perspective, you’re not curing cancer right now you’re swimming in a swimming pool.”
He was able to keep her in check. He helped her put it into perspective so that she didn’t inflate the importance of her events so much that it crippled her performance. She ended up going on to win and of course getting the gold medal but to perform at your best t’s really important to get over yourself, not over inflate your self-importance.
Few of us are inventing the cure for cancer or changing the world in significant ways. We’re all trying to change the world a little bit but just keep it in perspective. There are a lot of people doing a lot of good things and you’re just one of them. Don’t get ahead of yourself, I’m not trying to tear you down. We’re talking about ego here and that’s what I have to do sometimes for myself as well.
3. Share your Success
The third key is that you need to learn to share your successes. Whenever you accomplish something there is always a team that’s behind you. You need to look at that team and you need to be able to share your successes. You need to be able to share with the people that helped to get you there. The people that supported you, the people that encouraged you. You need to make sure that you don’t make it all about you. As the leader, you’re often in the limelight. You get a lot of the accolade, a lot of the praise but remember there are people that got you there.
If you share the success with them it will help to keep your ego in check.
There’s a moment in a recent Garth Brooks documentary that I watched, its a really fascinating documentary. While he’s accepting a grammy award he said in the documentary that at this point he and his wife were having some real difficulties in their marriage but as he made his speech he paused and said to his wife from the stage, “no matter where we end up in our relationship i want you to know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” He was sharing the glory and the success of his music with the person that had been his biggest supporter and fan. His wife helped him get there and that’s really important. You need to remember the people that helped you get there and that will help to keep your ego in check.
4. Be a Constant Learner
The last thing you need to do is be a constant learner. If you constantly push the boundaries of what you know and feel confident in you’re never going to be in the position of feeling like a genius. If you live in that place where you feel like you’ve accomplished everything and you are the best at what you do, then what you will find is that’s where ego takes over. You start to just live in that place of “oh look at me I’m so amazing, look at how good I am”
If you’re a constant learner and push yourself to do new things that you’re unfamiliar with, you’ll always be in a place of feeling uncomfortable with your confidence. I’m not so good at this, I’m still learning. Your ego immediately gets brought back into place if you keep pushing the boundaries and the limits of your growth. You should try to be in a place of learning so you don’t feel too confident that your ego gets in the way. So be a constant learner.
That’s four ways that you can lead with humility or lead without ego. Make sure you’ve got a team around you that keeps you on the ground. Make sure you take the time to get over yourself. Keep yourself in perspective with the rest of the world. Share your successes with the people that help you achieve everything. The last one is this, always be a learner. Be a constant learner and grower, you won’t ever get so far ahead of yourself that you think you’re god’s gift to the world.
This is really important if you want your teams to buy into you and engage with you. If you recognize this in yourself I encourage you to take the time to do something about it and be a more effective leader. I hope that this has been really helpful for you, let us know in the comments what you thought. If there are any topics you want us to cover in later episodes just let us know. We’d love to help you with appropriate content. If there’s someone you know that would benefit please share this blog with them.
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