I remember it being one of my first real “professional lessons.” I had joined a technology provider early in my career and had been thrust into the political game of working with a whole host of defense contractors. I was driving with one of the account executives who had become a bit of a mentor to me. I was complaining about some of the things going on and how egos were getting in the way. He paused and said, “Charlie, we all have egos. Having an ego isn’t bad. It’s a large part of what drives us and keeps us going. It’s only when we let our ego get in the way of making good decisions that it’s bad.”
It was an important lesson. And it’s one that is very relevant to us whenever we are engaging in a significant change effort. We often think of egos as being the enemy of change and teamwork. It can be if we let it. But our egos are also great enablers of a change effort if we learn to use them appropriately.
Ego is About Self-Worth
What is ego, really? It is simply our personal sense of our own worth. When we talk of ego being bad it simply means that we are letting our ego get ahead of the reality. It means that we are thinking too much of ourselves and letting that overly inflated sense of self-worth cloud our judgement. It leads to arrogance and to looking down on people. It creates a distance between us and others that limits our ability to collaborate and co-create. Left unchecked, a runaway ego will leave us isolated and even paranoid. And that’s what most of us think about when we think of “having an ego.”
But is the antidote to this to have no sense of self-worth? Of course not. I am a firm believer that few people will ever truly or fully believe in us until we are first willing to believe in ourselves. We cannot achieve anything of worth until we believe that we can. That we are capable and worthy. We must have an extremely strong and developed sense of self-worth before we can begin to have any meaningful impact in life. That sense of self-worth is our ego. And it’s a good thing.
Courage and Faith
If you look at where most organizational change efforts fail, it is almost always caused by two related things. The first is a failure of courage. Standing up and saying that something must change, that you believe you have a vision for what the future can and must look like and that you are willing to be a part of creating that change takes an inordinate amount of courage. That courage can only come from within and it is powered by a sense of self-worth that is powerful enough to overcome the fear and doubt that is between you and your goal. It is said that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the act of overcoming that fear. You need a healthy ego to have that kind of courage.
The second is the inability to believe that real change is actually possible. That lack of faith is generally a reflection of doubt in our own ability to affect change. We believe that the problem is too big for us to solve or that our efforts won’t make a difference. It is only through an abiding sense of self-worth that we can overcome these doubts and be willing to set out in spite of them. We cannot believe that we can achieve the impossible until we first believe sufficiently in ourselves.
So I will argue that one of the greatest roadblocks as we strive to drive meaningful change in IT organizations is a lack of ego. The right kind, the healthy kind of ego. We need to make it our mission to give ourselves ego boosts. And more importantly to give ego boosts to those around us. When is the last time you told someone on your team how great they were? How much of a difference they made with something they did? How often do you go out of your way to encourage someone’s efforts and tell them that you KNOW that they will be successful and that you’re cheering for them. How much more would our organizations be capable of achieving if we each started believing in each other – unashamedly and openly?
The results can be dramatic. You just have to believe. So what do you say, how about a little ego boost?
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