Executive Podcast #285: How Leaders Overcome the Ego Challenge

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holly, a Maxwell leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Goede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. One of the things that we get the privilege of doing is we’re in the field, we’re coaching, and we’re training, and a lot of these topics and contents that we talk about here come right out of the field. And so if you’re at all interested in some training for your team or some coaching, needing to take the culture to a little bit of a higher engagement level, we would love for you to jump on maxwellleadership.com/podcast. And there you can click on this episode, fill out a form, and our team would be more than happy to follow back up with you. Well, today’s topic is titled the Ego Challenge.

Perry Holley:
Yes. That’s all I got, the Perry Holly story. Perry Holly story.

Chris Goede:
Talk to us a little about this, because I think what we’re going to talk about today, people are going to be surprised about. That’s a little bit different than what this is titled.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. So last week we were answering viewer listener questions, and one of the answers we gave was about a challenge that comes up when you have an ineffective leader. And these challenges are talked about in the book John Maxwell wrote called the 360 Degree leader. And he writes about seven challenges that any of us and all of us can face by leading from where we are in the organization. People above us, people below us, people beside us. You’re leading in the middle. And I have to tell you, I’ve been teaching this a lot lately. It’s a very popular topic around how do I influence my boss, influence my peers, and influence my direct reports.

Perry Holley:
360 degree influence. But I got fascinated by one of the challenges, this ego challenge, because there’s an assessment we take in the course, and people assess themselves around which of these seven challenges most resonate with you. And when this one comes up, people go, I don’t know what, this has got to be wrong. My ego is not involved.

Chris Goede:
And I said, hold on.

Perry Holley:
It’s not about that. It’s not about you having an ego. But then I had to be honest, and you and I have had a little bit of discussion about this, is that I never dealt with this in the past, but I dealt with it more recently in my current role. And I woke up one day I’m teaching and going, oh, my stars, this is me. And started looking at some of the ways to handle this, but I thought we could just talk through what this is and how it applies. Yeah.

Chris Goede:
I think any individual contributor in an organization or any leader that is leading a team that still finds themselves in the middle of the organization could feel this and does feel it. Right. I think all of us, if we were true to ourselves, feels this. The ego challenge will say, hey, you feel like you’re hidden in the middle of the organization. It doesn’t mean that you have a big ego. And that’s what I was saying in the intro. It’s a little bit different than what this might be and that you need to humble yourself. That’s not what we’re going to talk about today.

Chris Goede:
But this could also be called the invisibility challenge, where you have a little bit of a blow to your ego because you seem invisible inside the organization, because you’re kind of stuck there in the middle.

Perry Holley:
Right. And that’s the big point, is that it’s not about you having a big ego. It’s about you feeling overlooked or not valued or I don’t matter, or those types of things, or I don’t get credit. I’m doing so much here. As I mentioned, it’s been real to me was when I came in this role that I’m doing now. I’m a motivational speaker. I’m a teacher, I’m an author, I’m a coach. And I had big plans.

Perry Holley:
I’m coming to my dream role. I’ve been contracting with Maxwell leadership for a while, but I came here and said, man, I’m going to finally be on the big stage. I’m going to do all these things I’ve dreamed about and worked for to be here to do that. And because of what I do, I started writing, and that’s kind of a behind the scenes kind of a thing. And then I coaching, it’s a very behind the scenes kind of a thing. Nobody is a part of that. And then the stages became smaller, but more intimate with smaller crowds and really making a bigger impact. But I didn’t see that.

Perry Holley:
I just saw nobody knows what I’m doing here. And I know you and I talked about it because I came to you and said, this is not acceptable. I mean, I was like, I don’t think I threw my fist on the table. But you were frustrated. I was frustrated, yeah. And I was kind of fighting it and then being vocal about it, which is kind of, if you’re a leader. If you see people that are being vocal and having emotion about things about their job, maybe this is something you want to think about. But you were in the room, actually, when I shared this.

Perry Holley:
The first time I was teaching this, Chris happened to be at the client location, and I was sharing my story about it. Finally woke up one day and said, I’ve been teaching this, but it’s me. I have the ego. So that’s really want to talk about was, what do you do? What does John coach us to do? Like you said, all of us can fall prey to this. We’re all doing good work, but is it really what we thought it would be? Are we really getting the recognition for it, or are we getting the fulfillment? Which, by the way, is another of the seven challenge, the fulfillment challenge. But am I being fulfilled by my work? Am I feeling good about myself out of my work, or am I letting other things get in the way of that? Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And I love your vulnerability there in the room with the team, but also here so that others can learn from it. John and many people talk about the picture, the word picture of the iceberg and many leaders, and what you see is just the top 10% of it, and then really what’s going on. And all the things that they deal with are really kind of hidden under the water. They’re the things that are not very exciting, they’re not very glamorous, and it’s just a fraction of their lives. And so we at times, probably see something or a part that looks like we want to be a part of or we should be doing that, but we really don’t truly know what all goes into that. And yet that just continues to fuel the ego challenge or feeling like you’re invisible to those that you’re working with. And so we want to give you a couple of things that you can kind of work through if you feel that way, and I would challenge you. I think that we all have felt that way no matter what level you’re at.

Chris Goede:
So the first one is concentrate more on your duties, your responsibilities. I love this than your dreams. Be in the moment, live and influence people in the moment and understand that a lot of people, when they begin focusing on the dreams, and I see this a lot in my children, and it’s like, well, I’m going to do that, and I think I should do that, or I think I should be able to have the opportunity to do that. I’m like, you will if you stay really current in the moment and keep plugging in day to day, then you may get to that dream, but it’s going to be a little bit of a process. And so I want to make sure that people are paying more attention to producing where they’re at and what their responsibility is and doing that well than just being promoted. And you and I have talked about this with different generations. We have an incredible course and training and coaching around leading multigenerational teams, and that’s one of the things we see in a certain generation comes up, it’s like, I’ve been here 30 days. I should be running the place.

Chris Goede:
And so you got to kind of work that. But I think if you begin to understand, hey, where you’re at, where your feet are, produce like crazy, then the promotions will kill them. Don’t focus on the promotions first and.

Perry Holley:
Don’T give up on your dreams. Keep your dream out there. Yeah, but what are the steps to get there, and are you working in that direction? What I found was I wake up and go, well, I’m not where I think I should be, but am I making progress toward where I think I should be, or am I perhaps doing something else that is adding value? Number two was that John would teach after, concentrate more on your duties and your dreams. Number two was, appreciate the value of your position and what you bring to the position is that when I was giving you a hard time about, where am I going here? Why am I not on? Your response was kind of, look at what you’re doing. I took 72 flights last year. I’m on a ton of stages. I am in front of a lot of people. I have a bunch of coaching.

Perry Holley:
And I said, what’s the value of that? Oh, am I actually doing what it is I set out to do? Yes. Am I doing it the way that I had dreamed and envisioned it doing? Sometimes, but not so much. And I thought, why am I letting that unravel my attitude and my approach and saying, I need to just appreciate the value of what I do here and that I am making a difference. I am adding value, and I am working in a form of my dream. And it may not be exactly what I thought, but it is bigger than I thought. So really, when you’re in the middle like that, not really feeling your value. Yeah.

Chris Goede:
And I would tell you, even on top of that, we talked a little bit about what this podcast has turned into, which was something that you guys have heard the story of. Perry saved me from, but the millions of downloads and the people, and so it looks completely different than any of us think. And so we’ve just been able to have those conversations, but it is something that every leader kind of works with.

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Chris Goede:
The other one is find satisfaction in knowing the real reason for the success of a project. It may not be your name announced or talked about in an email or at a company meeting, but, man, when you know the impact of what you did had on the outcome of that certain project, then allow that to satisfy you. Allow that to be your motivation. I’m a big proponent of being driven internally than externally, and I know there’s some of that. We all have appreciation languages, and we need to be aware of that. But, man, if your main driver is due to external things, then you might not be in the right field or the right area or the right calling or the right focus. Because I think, man, when there’s something that I’m called or passionate about, and maybe it’s just my wiring, my internal drive of understanding and knowing the certain project happened because of what I was able to contribute, that gives me great satisfaction and motivation.

Perry Holley:
Well, I know when we came out of that stage and you had heard me tell this story, you said, man, I’ve noticed now, as you mentioned, you’ve been a lot calmer, a lot more focused on what you’re doing, I go, yeah, it’s changed my whole outlook. And we were in Orlando with John a few weeks ago, and I used to be going to events like that, and I almost felt like I was elbowing my way into being in the presence of John and Mark and everybody, which is we’re invited to be in their presence. But I know what I wanted. And somebody said, you seem like you’re kind of standing back. I go, I don’t need anything. I know what I do. I know the value I bring. And if I can serve, I’m not here.

Perry Holley:
I don’t need anything. I’m just here to serve and be a part of. And I don’t know, I just felt this real peace come over me. A fourth way that John teaches is also to embrace the compliments of others who are also in the middle of the pack. I am awful at this. We got a thing of Susan, our team. She’s such an encourager to me, and she’ll say, man, I just really appreciate what you did. When you have that audience and I go, I’ll shut up, because what am I not? That’s a small stage.

Perry Holley:
There’s only 200 people, not 2000 people. No, they thank you and say, wow, yeah, that feels good that somebody in the middle with me recognized that our whole team has always come alongside of us and given us affirmations like that. And I just used to just blow it off. Now I’m just thankful.

Chris Goede:
I think it may even be more relevant from our peers.

Perry Holley:
That’s a great point, right?

Chris Goede:
Because they get it. We’ve all been in those situations, and maybe it hasn’t gone the way that we thought it went or we lost the room or we lost whatever. And so I think they get it. Versus someone that may not even be able to understand what that looks like. Well, number five is understand the difference between self promotion and selfless promotion. Self promotion says, if you don’t toot your own horn, no one will toot it for you. Selfless promotion is, I just want to help the team make beautiful music.

Perry Holley:
Yeah. It’s about how you see yourself and let your actions and your value speak for yourself and speak for you. I’ll just add a comment and get you to close for us. But what we teach a lot, and it comes up a lot about what kind of mindset do you have, an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset? And sometimes when you get a little tied up and I’m not getting what I need, it’s a scarcity thinking I need to get more from me versus an abundance mindset. That said, there’s plenty to go around for everyone, and I’m here to help spread that around. And in doing so, and being generous and thoughtful of others and my role and appreciating what I do, there’ll be plenty for me. Plenty for you.

Chris Goede:
Well, as I wrap up, just know you’re listening right now and you go, that’s me. That’s why Perry created this, because we feel like this applies to so many people. And so I got a couple thoughts for you as we close. Maybe you are saying, hey, I feel like I’m in the right area, the right calling, and I want to continue to get past this ego challenge and get out of the pack and maybe get noticed. One of the things I would encourage you to do is to strategically, and I use that word strategically, strategically.

Perry Holley:
I see what you just did there.

Chris Goede:
You like that offer, and I’m not even the writer at the table. That was amazing offer to take on projects. And the reason I said strategically is because you need to make sure that they do fit that skill set or that whatever. For example, Perry, because you are gifted at speaking on the big stage, you could be like, hey, anytime a speaker doesn’t show up or something happens, just call me, I’m ready. Or, hey, we’re looking, whatever it might be. But strategically think about where your skill set is and what your dreams are, where you want to go and begin to think about maybe putting your name out there. Just offer it periodically to take on projects. The other thing is right where you’re at.

Chris Goede:
Remember, good leaders get results. And once you start getting results, you get noticed, right?

Perry Holley:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
Like, we’ll talk about just this podcast. People are like, Perry and Chris are contributing to the Maxwell leadership, growth of people and awareness and adding value to people. Because of this podcast, we’ve been able, with our team, with Jake and the marketing team, we’ve been able to impact a lot of people. And that is awesome. And so just understand where you are. You’ve got to get results. And then finally, don’t allow, if you have the ego challenge and you feel invisible, don’t allow that to discourage you from growing. You need to continue to develop yourself and the essential leadership skills that align with how you’re wired and what your dreams are.

Perry Holley:
Fantastic. Great insights. And a reminder, if you’d like to know more about these offerings, like the 360 leader, five levels of leadership, or the other podcasts in our podcast family, you can do all that at MaxwellLeadership.com/Podcast. You can also leave us a question or a comment. We love hearing from you, and we’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us today. That’s all from the Maxwell Leadership executive.