Episode 18: The Ego Traps of Leadership: Certainty, Avoidance, and Control

"Leave your ego at the door" sits right next to "bring your whole self to work" on the list of advice nobody can actually follow. Fred's starting point is that ego isn't the problem. You need a sense of self to function. The trouble starts when the ego gets out of shape.

What do we mean by ego?

Kristina draws on Freud and Buddhism: ego is the conditioned self, the outfit you've worn so long you forgot it was clothing, built for survival and focused on promoting itself. Fred adds self-image. When it's rooted in something authentic, it's healthy. When it's rooted in titles, trappings, and other people's approval, it starts to drive.

A trap, in this conversation, is the moment you stop noticing that it's driving.

Trap one: what's wrong with being certain?

Leaders hear all day how smart they are. Fred's favorite line here: you may be certain, but you may not be right. Certainty feels good when everything else is moving, and it protects you from critique. It also cuts off every perspective in the room.

His fix is for the leader to speak last. Frame the problem, hear from everyone, take notes, then share your thinking and credit the people who changed it. Kristina adds that the same trap applies inward. We get certain about who we are, as if we were one fixed person, when we're closer to an ecosystem.

Trap two: is your niceness actually avoidance?

Where certainty comes from feeling superior, avoidance comes from feeling inadequate. It's the leader who wants to be liked, so every hard conversation gets pushed off. Fred lived this one as a young manager trying to stay buddies with people he now supervised.

The way out is the difference between nice and kind. A kind leader treats people with dignity and still holds them accountable. Fred's working distinction: responsibility is the activities, accountability is the result. Ask someone what they're accountable for and they'll usually list activities.

Kristina adds that every relationship needs a way to handle conflict, or it hasn't reached any real depth yet. Her example is the classic mismatch where one person needs to walk away and cool off while the other can't rest until it's settled. The answer is a time box: take two hours, then come back.

Trap three: is your team managing you instead of the business?

The gravity trap is when the leader's mood becomes the weather. People wait for the right moment to deliver bad news, so the bad news arrives late or never. Fred describes taking two CEOs aside over the way they publicly humiliated a favorite target. He described the behavior without labeling the person, and pointed out that everyone else was watching and wondering whether they'd be next.

Kristina owns her version. As a VP, she was a "no, no, yes" person, someone whose first answer to any change was no. A trusted colleague finally told her, laughing, that she was terrible at change. The comment landed because it came from someone she trusted, delivered when she could hear it.

How do you check yourself in the moment?

They close with a head, heart, and gut scan. The heart asks how you feel about this and whether you're being a good steward. The mind asks whether you have enough information. The gut asks whether it's safe and whether you have the energy for it. Fred says the skill gets built backwards: first you notice after the fact, then in the middle, then before you act.

Kristina's tool for the in-between is box breathing. Four counts in, hold for four, four out, hold for four. It puts a little distance between the sensation and the reaction.

What if the old self has to go?

Ego death, they're careful to say, isn't self-erasure. It's outgrowing an image of yourself, like a kid outgrowing clothes. It can follow a divorce, a death, a demotion, or a promotion. Kristina just came through one that lasted months, set off by trouble with her house. Her advice is the water slide. Kids sit up and scream the whole way down until they finally lie back. Stop gripping the sides.

Listen to the full episode of The Executive and the Mystic on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.