As soon as I activated LinkedIn, I saw a barrage of folks sharing this HBR article from 2018. And of course, the title is catchy enough so I gave it a read.
The article provides excellent insight on why it’s important for leaders (I would argue for managers at all levels) to keep their ego in check so to not to lose sight of reality and fall for Hubris Syndrome – a disorder of the possession of power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years.
Here are a few key learnings:
- Our ego is like a target we carry with us. And like any target, the bigger it is, the more vulnerable it is to being hit. In this way, an inflated ego makes it easier for others to take advantage of us.
- Our inflated ego makes us believe we’re the sole architects of our success, we tend to be ruder, more selfish, and more likely to interrupt others. This is especially true in the face of setbacks and criticism.
- Our inflated ego makes us more susceptible to confirmation bias, making us believe the ideas that we always have without the additional due diligence and thought process required to make a decision. If we let our ego determine what we see, what we hear, and what we believe, we’ve let our past success damage our future success.
Please do read this article in its entirety – Ego is the Enemy of Good Leadership.