There are many talented leaders out there who are severely limited by their unhealthy ego.
Here are the top three causes of that unhealthy ego:
Fear
They fear being wrong; being ‘found out’; losing their illusion of control; losing their position.
They often disguise it with expressions like ‘I’m concerned’; ‘I don’t like’; ‘not right fit’; ‘I don’t do that’; ‘no’; ‘I have my reasons’ (unexplained).
Habits
These are behaviours that occur automatically, particularly under stress, such as raised voice; micro-managing; telling instead of asking and listening; using the ‘I’ word instead of ‘us’ or ‘we’.
Ignorance
Simply not knowing, or forgetting or knowing what and why, but not how.
Often dealt with by avoidance or delegation for the wrong reasons or silence, or even total lack of awareness.
Here’s the self-help version of how they can be overcome:
Fear
Courage is the remedy – courage comes from being clear about your higher values, ethics, morals and living them in the moment; recognising that fear is most often merely an illusion of the mind/ego and that you are better than that.
The key is to become aware that you are acting from fear and decide to act from values based courage instead.
Habits
The remedy is disruption then better practice. Disruption comes from that moment when you realise you are being habitual right now and it’s not working!
The cause of disruption can be many external factors and best of all, the internal factor of your becoming self-aware again instead of staying in automatic.
Once you are self-aware you can deliberately follow better practice, until it becomes the new improved habit.
Ignorance
The only lasting remedy for ignorance is continual learning. As leaders, this is a key requirement since effective leadership includes having the mindset of the life-long learner.
Today more than ever, the stuck leader becomes ignorant fast.
It is an absolute imperative that leaders must continuously learn or hand in their ‘leader badge’.
What do you think?
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