Ego Free Leadership

by Brandon Black

  When we have a pinch, we think the triggering event is the cause of our reaction: what someone said or did, what we said or did, caused an unwanted outcome. For Brandon, the triggering event was Noah’s announcement. But his pinch actually happened because he had injected judgments about his self-worth into the situation. Identifying how we each do this is critical because our mind chatter when we are pinched is often a red herring. We churn out judgments, stories, and semi-sophisticated justifications that displace our real discomfort of feeling inferior. The key to defusing our reactive behaviors is learning to identify the more primal and childish interpretation underneath.

  Identifying and challenging these ego threats matters because we are at our least effective, and most destructive, when our egosystem is triggered. For the rest of that afternoon, “being right” over Noah had usurped Brandon’s goal of developing himself as a leader. This mundane seminar example illustrates how we derail ourselves. In our daily life, we can cause far more extensive damage. As Brandon described, he actually left a lucrative job at Capital One because of the perceived threat to his ego.

  Even though our reactions can seem sudden and too intrinsic to change, they are predictable. When we “sort” a pinch, we can dissect each piece of what happened as well as identify how to return to an at the source mindset.

  Brandon had a pinch with his CFO Paul in the early days of working together that illustrates this process. During a critical meeting with a potential strategic buyer, Brandon noticed that the PowerPoint deck they were using was different from the one he had prepped the day before. Thrown off, Brandon stumbled through the presentation, angrily surmising that Paul had changed it to make himself look good.

  When Brandon and I later broke down what happened, we identified his ego threats. This was right in the midst of his son being born; Brandon had been working fewer hours and was feeling self-conscious about not pulling his weight. After he left work the night before the meeting, Paul and his team had further revised the presentation. When Brandon discovered the unfamiliar document, it affected his ability to come off as the smartest person in the room. These familiar triggers made him defensive and accusatory.

  I asked him to “reframe” his perspective by extracting his ego threats from the situation. If no one was judging him—deciding whether or not he was number one was irrelevant—how would he characterize what happened?

  This step of reframing our perspective without our value involved can be difficult because we are often so blinded by this tension that we can’t see much else. Brandon was able to identify that an equally valid perspective was that his team was driving things forward on their own. They were proactive and accountable, and he wasn’t alone with everything that needed to get done. Instead of feeling annoyed, frustrated, and embarrassed, Brandon felt grateful. We know we have shifted our perspective when we actually feel a change in our emotional state, from at the mercy to at the source. Moreover, this event reminded him that one of his developmental goals was to “leverage the experience of his team.” Sorting his pinch revealed to him that his ego’s need to be number one was directly limiting his ability to unlock the full potential of his team.

  In this sense, the goal is not to avoid having pinches, but rather to notice and welcome them as opportunities to be more fully on our path of growth. The chart that follows shows the steps in sorting a pinch and using an awareness of our triggers to more fully embrace our highest self.

  REACTIVE PATH VS. SORTING A PINCH

  BRANDON

  I had many insights during the seminar, as if I had tapped into a part of my brain that had been closed off for a long time. It crystallized on the second to last day as I wrote a note to Shayne. I saw in a personal and palpable sense how my need to be liked and admired was so strong that I made other people feel the pain I most wanted to avoid. I rejected before being rejected; I judged others when I felt judged. I often went to the point of blaming others for failures I couldn’t acknowledge. It was a moment of great sadness for me. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried in front of anybody except Dana. Here, however, there was no embarrassment, just clarity.

  On the flight back to San Diego, I decided that it was important to talk with my team about what I learned. I prepared an outline and practiced it. I would give them a glimpse into my fears, how they were impacting the team, and enlist their support.

  But when I gathered my direct reports and several other pivotal leaders in the conference room by my office, all of my planning went out the window. I didn’t know what they were expecting to hear from me, but as I looked at them, fresh tears built up in my eyes. I abandoned my prepared speech and simply shared in unvarnished form what I’d seen. I apologized for how I had behaved in the past and committed to make the changes necessary to lead Encore forward. I hadn’t cried in public for decades. Now it had happened twice in one week. Honestly, it was liberating.

  CHAPTER 3

  WORKPLACE POLITICS ARE YOUR FAULT TOO

  My Reactions Create Our Dysfunction

  BRANDON

  The board’s challenge to create greatness somewhere in the business was the main topic of our August 2007 strategic planning session. We felt competent, even skilled, in many areas, but not great in any. After a lot of discussion, we concluded two things should define Encore in the coming years: leveraging India and becoming the authority on our customer.

  Despite the lack of traction in India, we had the opportunity to employ tremendously talented people at significantly lower wages. Success in India would save us tens of millions of dollars annually in operating costs and be the foundation for future growth. Nothing else could have as profound an impact on the company.

  We also felt that nobody really understood the people who fell deeply into debt. Characterized by words like “subprime” or “debtor,” their financial troubles were attributed to an illness, loss of a job, or a divorce. But there were plenty of people who experienced these hardships and kept paying their bills. We aimed to fill that void of understanding in order to improve how we did business, how we served our customers, and the return on our investments.

  We believed this combination of achievements would give Encore a sustainable cost advantage and the ability to outperform our competitors. Intellectually these priorities made complete sense to the team, but emotionally we were still reeling from our recent lackluster performance, the effects of years of significant pricing headwinds, and a lack of traction on key initiatives. Optimism had faded, and I noticed a distinct lack of energy—a resignation bordering on apathy—around the office. While my renewed commitment to work on my own dysfunctions opened my eyes to how frequently such behaviors occurred in the organization, when I pressed the leadership team to develop solutions, they seemed more focused on finding excuses for their own inaction or pointing out flaws in other people’s proposals. Most new initiatives were met with resistance lower in the organization. Sharon and her Human Resources team were a favorite target, often accused of having an agenda and operating in a silo. Any initiative around benefits, training, recruiting, or employee evaluation was met with skepticism. I spent hours coaching Sharon on how to push forward without getting pushback. But it seemed like her willingness to try was matched by a collective desire to argue with her ideas.

  I saw similar dynamics between our Operations, Finance, and Technology departments. The historical lack of cohesion at the executive level had created entrenched factions lower in the organization. Although our executive team was functioning better, their respective teams were still openly competing with one another and there were significant pockets of resistance to our venture in India.

  Over my career, I had shrugged off this type of infighting as a normal, if unpleasant, part of doing business. But Encore’s situation was becoming bleak, and I couldn’t comprehend wasting time and energy on issues that didn’t impact the bottom line.

  Achieving our dreams for the company meant changing the mindset of many layers of management, not just
the executives. I knew culture change, if even possible, would take many years to complete. I wanted to accelerate that process. Given the state of the marketplace, slow, deliberate change wouldn’t be good enough.

  We partnered with LaL to customize their in-house training program, called “WeLead.” Leveraging insights from another round of 360-degree feedback sessions, including one for me, we identified dominant cultural dysfunctions that were holding the company back. Determined to address them, we set four key goals for the program:

  1.Develop a culture of transparency around people’s learning and development

  2.Remove silos and “Us vs. Them” dynamics

  3.Improve the level and frequency of feedback and critique of ideas

  4.Transform complaining/blaming into co-responsibility

  We believed that if we could achieve these outcomes, we could transform our culture and collaborate in a far more effective way.

  The initial target audience was the executive team’s direct reports. Over time, we planned to cascade it down through multiple layers of the organization, ultimately impacting anyone in a leadership position, or approximately 100 to 150 people.

  I was hopeful that my newfound understanding of how I needed to lead differently, combined with the implementation of WeLead and our new strategic focus, would generate higher morale and profits. Only time would tell.

  SHAYNE

  Over the years scores of leaders have told me, “You should see the ego and politics in my organization!” Perhaps because ego-driven behaviors— people avoiding conflict or overcontrolling; personality conflicts; groups assuming ill intent or acting with a tribal mentality—are so pervasive, many leaders accept them as normal. It’s the air they breathe, and they become numb to the consequences.

  Learning to recognize the detrimental effects of individual egosystems on an organization’s culture is the first step in addressing them. These cultural dysfunctions are complex and important enough to warrant a chapter to dissect them—what they look like, what causes them, and how they affect company performance. After this discussion, the subsequent chapters will provide tools and solutions for forging a healthier culture.

  Over the past two decades, LaL has surveyed and consulted with many large organizations across dozens of industries, as well as the public, nonprofit, and academic sectors. Each organization had its own flavor, but four dominant cultural dysfunctions consistently showed up:

  •Widespread conflict avoidance, peppered with a few leaders who are abrasive

  •Us vs. Them dynamics (silos and turf wars, especially in matrix organizations)

  •Leaders being defensive and guarded about developmental needs (fear of being judged)

  •Employees being reactive, tactical, and overwhelmed by too much work

  Each of these cultural derailers is triggered by self-worth fears. The employees in every one of these organizations were talented and hardworking, but they underperformed their potential in proportion to the severity of these dysfunctions. Sometimes a culture was clearly toxic, and leaders were openly hostile toward each other. In other cases, artificial harmony left key performance and operational issues unmentioned and unresolved.

  Many organizations try to remove unwanted cultural tendencies through reorganizations, teambuilding outings, or redefining their mission–vision–values statements. While these efforts may produce other valuable outcomes, they rarely make significant progress on behaviors, because they don’t deal with the root causes. Cultural dysfunction is produced by many individual dysfunctions ricocheting off each other. When leaders are defensive, territorial, artificially polite, competitive, or abrasive, it tends to trigger similarly dysfunctional behaviors in their colleagues. It doesn’t matter what poster you put up on the wall. Dominant organizational dysfunction will not decrease until individual leaders identify and overcome their personal egosystem reactions.

  Encore, for example, was a fast-paced environment where a premium was placed on analytical intelligence. Being smart, knowing the answer, and being able to defend your position effectively moved you up in the organization. These qualities—intelligence, resourcefulness, and clarity of expression—are important. Applied with other qualities to organizational goals, they can produce breakthrough results.

  But recall our discussion of desired and dreaded images in chapter 1. Leaders at Encore with these qualities—like any one of us—also wanted to be seen as smart, competent, knowledgeable, and in control. Being wrong or asking for help felt like admitting incompetence. “If I can’t do it on my own, my boss will wonder why I’m in this job,” one director shared in a remark characteristic of how many at Encore felt. When protecting their desired and dreaded images became their brain’s default goal—which, as we’ve seen, is most of the time—it eclipsed learning, collaborating with others, and doing whatever it took to meet their responsibilities. Their unconsciously held ego goals were overriding their deeper, conscious aspirations.

  This has a social side effect. The less transparent a leader is, for example, the more dangerous it feels for his or her colleagues to reveal their own shortcomings. The less those folks are forthcoming, the more it stands out when any one person admits he or she is struggling. It is already painful enough for our ego to admit we need help; being the only one on a team to do it can feel shameful. This individual tendency to keep up a facade becomes a collective phenomenon.

  At Encore, this created a cultural norm of wanting to appear to be on top of things. This may have been fine for an organization in a stable industry where success was easily achieved. But Encore in 2007 had leaders in stretch roles facing unfavorable industry trends. Not acknowledging developmental gaps meant not getting help where it mattered most.

  While these tendencies often seem set in stone within an organization, they are actually quite reversible. At Encore, “developing a culture of transparency in learning and development” would become possible when a critical mass of Encore’s key leaders, one by one, overcame the discomfort of their dreaded images. The more they modeled transparently requesting and accepting feedback, the more “normal” it would become—until they created a more functional cultural tendency.

  How and Why We Stop Trusting

  BRANDON

  Besides greatness, the other deliverable we owed the board was a forecast for the remainder of 2007 and the upcoming year. We had spoken at length about the pricing pressure in the industry, and they were worried about the long-term profitability of the company if we didn’t improve the cost structure. Our budgeting process usually took two months. They wanted an answer in a few weeks. Paul’s office was right next to mine, so I stuck my head through his door to check in.

  “How’s the 2008 budget coming along? The board wants a quick turnaround. There’s no time for multiple iterations.”

  He laughed. “Our chances of getting anything done on the first try are close to zero,” he said. “It’s always the same routine. The administrative departments add in a bunch of new hires we can’t afford, and the ops guys set their goals so low they look like heroes when they over-deliver. Everybody postures to look good, and none of our inputs work when we roll it up to the corporate budget.”

  Paul had complained to me about this before. I needed to nip any delays in the bud.

  “We don’t have time to haggle over this,” I told him. “You get your team ready, and I’ll meet with the other VPs. I’ll make it clear how their teams need to act and make sure the message gets to the operating leaders.”

  I turned to leave Paul’s office just as Dave came around the corner. I asked him to come into my office.

  “What am I in trouble for now?” he said jokingly.

  “Nothing, I just want to talk about how we approach the planning process. I need you and your team to take Paul’s guidance seriously. I—”

  “Is that what you two were talking about?” he interrupted. “I’m tired of you and Paul making decisions behind closed doors and expecting the rest of us t
o fall in line. You should be asking me about my concerns. Instead, you take his side on everything.”

  “What are you talking about? My door is always open for you.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it. I manage this stuff day-to-day, Brandon. I know what we’re capable of doing. Paul is disconnected from what’s happening on the floor. Why would you listen to him and not me?”

  I was tired of hearing this from Dave. In addition to bitching about the budget process, he had recently begun complaining about our methodology for buying portfolios. One day we weren’t paying enough for new portfolios, the next day our models weren’t accurate. It seemed like he always had a complaint of the day and wouldn’t listen to anyone who disagreed.

  “If you recall, I was the chief operating officer for many years,” I said irritably. “I’m keenly aware of what’s happening on the floor. You’re not the only person with perspective.” I moved to put the conversation to bed. “I don’t always agree with Paul, but this planning process will be driven by him, and I need you to follow it.”

  “Paul and his team of MBAs have fancy models producing numbers that look good on paper. But without my input, the whole plan is disconnected from operational reality.” Dave sat back and crossed his arms. “Garbage in, garbage out.”

  I guess we aren’t ending the discussion. I was surprised how frustrated I was. Just a short time ago, we had come together on his development plan and were solving problems as a team. Now he was resisting things that shouldn’t be controversial. What was going on?

  “Look,” I said. “If we went with the numbers your team produces, we’d go broke.”