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Ego — Books on a bookshelf of a software manager
When organizations look for leaders, not many would look for leaders with big egos. Yet when we look around, in companies or in society, we would undoubtedly label certain leaders as having big egos. Perhaps they’re somehow in their positions because their other qualities are more important to the success of the organization and people around them just learned to tolerate such behavior. Or perhaps they haven’t spent enough time doing self-introspection, and are completely oblivious to the fact that they are the egotistical maniac that everyone is pointing at.
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other, J.F. Kennedy
As many of you know, I enjoy reading — I like learning from other people’s experiences so that I can be better without necessarily stumbling over the same obstacles that others have already written down. When I observed some obnoxious behaviors, I looked into myself and asked “Am I like that too? How do I make sure I won’t become like that”. This is how I got started reading about egotistical behaviors and writing down “note to self”.
On the topic of “ego”, part of the challenge is that the term is somewhat nebulous. I still remember a long time ago when I first encountered the word in a workplace setting, I was happily regurgitating to myself definitions like ID, superego and other…
