At the risk of showing my age, which I’m perfectly OK with, in the 1970’s, Australian glam rock band Skyhooks had a hit song called ‘Ego is not a dirty word.’ Great song – view it here if you are interested.
The song has some interesting concepts eg “if you did not have an ego you would not care about the way you dressed and if you did not have an ego, you’d just be like the rest” – which I get. Stand up and stand out, be comfortable with who you are. All good
When it comes to leadership and culture though, in my view, ego is definitely a dirty word.
I bumped into a colleague recently, who after 12 years with the same employer had just moved on to another job. I had met him when I was in discussions with his previous boss about working with them to improve leadership capability in individuals, the team and the boss. Things were going along well, and all of a sudden, came to a halt. It seems that while the team were excited about improving the culture, the boss realised that not only would he be involved in the sometimes challenging work of getting better, but he also realised that he may have to be humble and accept some responsibility for how things were.
Enter the dreaded ‘E’ word. It was the thing that stopped him progressing the plans to build a better culture based on better leaders. He didn’t have the capacity to be selfless or egoless enough to put others first.
Back to my colleague that I bumped into – he is one of a number of key people that have left the business and it is on a slide. Culture is worse, results are worse, yet ego remains unchecked.
Leadership is about making others better.
