What’s your ego costing your business?

Ego’s cost businesses billions of dollars every year! Think about it. How many decisions have you seen that have been made when someone’s ego has got in the way of what was ultimately the right choice?

Personally – has your ego cost you a sale, a client, a meeting or has your ego stood in the way of you adding value to your customers?

Your ego is just doing its job. The purpose of your ego is to protect you from the fear, anxiety, embarrassment that can arise when you interact with the world. The ego is the great mediator between you and your perception of reality. Ego is not altogether pathological, it only becomes problematic if the ego/logic relationship is out of balance and your ego is allowed to be the driver of the decision.

According to Dr. Sandy Gluckman;

“The result is that ego-driven decision-makers tend to make defensive, short-term, self-serving, and strategically inappropriate decisions, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong for the company, profitable or not”.

Although, I have found a vast amount of data on ego, I have found very little information on how to manage it. Dr. Gluckman suggest an approach she calls “Spirited Economics™ “which she call the “art” of making a decision with your “spirited self” in the drivers seat and your ego in the passengers seat. I find her approach effective as a guide to developing the inner dialogue needed to determine if ego is at play in a given situation

From my own experience I have found the following process to be highly effective at identifying and working through situation where my ego is getting in the way.

Putting your ego aside

1. Acknowledge – don’t deny its existence. Ask yourself why you are making the decision you are making. Is it for the greater good? Is it satisfying its intended purpose? Intimately understand your own drivers. Does it stand up to the scrutiny of a rational decision making model?
2. Assess – try to understand where it’s coming from, what meaning does it hold, what is the story it’s telling? What is your ego trying to protect?
3. Move forward – Once you have assessed the ego imbalance, take what you have learned, find meaning, and decide with intent to achieve the intended outcome.