Skip to main content

Ego

Ego » Dianne M. Kipp - Personal & Professional Coaching 

 Ego is one of the hardest things to deal with as a new manager.

You are in a new situation, you are most likely leading people for the first time, you are probably a bit younger ... and you just feel like you HAVE to prove yourself.

This kinda makes sense right? You were obviously promoted because you knew your stuff and were really good at your old job, so now it MUST be your job to make sure everyone knows how good you are.

WRONG!

This is the number one mistake most new managers make. I totally get why, we have created this hierarchy in our corporate structures that makes people believe a good supervisor = a good manager = a good director = a good VP.

This. Is. Completely. Untrue.

The reality is that it takes different skills to be a good leader; and excellence at one level does not automatically mean excellence at the next.

To be a good leader, you have to always be trying to check your ego. Yes you are smart, you probably have good ideas, you probably have had a lot of successes ... don't lean on these to tell people the 'way' to do things.

A great leader helps his team. Works with them to get them to push themselves. Works with his team so that they share ideas together, to get them to challenge each other and to push to do better.

If you make it your job to be a 'leader' / manager that just gives the answers and wants to use stroke of the pen authority to get things done ... you won't end up being a great leader.







Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This 1 Thing Increases Your Career Capital More Than Anything Else

The Art of Better Decision Making Have you felt scared to make a decision? Maybe you get preoccupied with making the 'wrong' decision?  Did you know that 68% of people have admitted to not doing because they thought it would be harder than it actually is. Getting comfortable with making decisions is one of the biggest challenges new leaders face. You will be placed in situations where there isn't enough time to get all of the information. Or even harder, you will be placed in situations where you'll never get more information than what you have. The good news? Making better decisions is something that you can improve by being deliberate with your learning and how you choose to approach it. This is the approach I take to decision making. These have been test and is what I have used over my 15 year career to teach and develop teams. - Accept that you will make mistakes. There is rarely a perfect answer. Getting comfortable with ambiguity is a leadership muscle you need to...
2 comments
Read more

Your Next Five Moves

 There are two streams of thought when you start reading a book and you don't feel like you are connecting with it. Some people will say to stop reading it and move onto something else, the theory is that there are so many things in the world that you will enjoy reading, that you shouldn't be wasting your time on things that you don't. Camp B will tell you to stick with it, get through it and see what happens. If I had to "pick a side" I probably fall more into team B than team A, even though I do feel that there will always be some books / material that you should just put down. What has me more B than A? Some of the books that have had the most impact on me were a STRUGGLE to get through. I challenge that this may because they are pushing your boundaries and putting something up against your current worldview / paradigms. True growth and learning comes from when you can challenge and dismantle your own ideas, and rebuilt them anew. My first real experience with ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Decisions, Positions and Frames

  Making decisions and getting consensus is the most common activity that every person goes through. Whether in your personal or professional life, we are all selling, all the time. Selling? I'm not selling anything! Actually, that's not really true. At the most fundamental level, selling is about the transfer of belief. You are trying to get a person or a group to see things the way you do. If they accept that, you make the "sale" (i.e. you have transferred your idea/belief) as another has chosen to accept it. Where things get hard is when people hold onto certain ideas, frames or positions around a circumstance. It's interesting how little people realize what they share related to their position without even knowing it. The information is there, as long as you are listening. Always be listening. When someone repeats a variable or constraint that is a difference, that has major impact. They themselves they may not realize that they are essentially confirming what...
Post a Comment
Read more