Have you ever worked for a boss with a truly big ego? I did – some years back. We’ll call him John – and John was famous in this large organisation for demonstrating a number of peculiar behaviours:

● He would routinely give orders – no: “bark” them out. Throwing temper tantrums or calling others idiots and incompetents, was part of his day-to-day vocabulary. Once started, he could not control himself. One December, he took a week’s leave (he was proud of the fact that he never took any leave) and decided to come to work unexpectedly. He got there to find that his financial director, himself a senior man, had parked his car in his parking space (the man’s own parking space was being renovated). He stormed into the building and screamed his head off at the receptionist. That same week, the financial man resigned. He had enough.

● He would use others for what he could get out of them. If you presented a potential “win” for him, you and him would get on famously well. The day you stopped, you would be discarded – like one discards an old shoe.

● None of his direct subordinates ever got a “superior” rating in their performance appraisals. John would always remind them that because his own standards of performance were so high, few people in this world could be expected to match them. Many ended up losing all motivation.

● He indulged into peculiar behaviours. For example, he would refuse to make any of his phone calls – but would insist on someone else doing so on his behalf. Even to his wife…And when he finally got through to his callee, he would keep him or her waiting a few minutes. Routinely. Similarly, whenever he chaired board meetings, John would hold a cigar in his fingers. An “unlit” cigar. It was an unwritten rule that no one in the room should ever offer him a light.

On this island, I can think of many people like John in business, political, religious and academic circles. What drives them? Some will say to you that it’s their ego-driven or “egoic” personality. They will claim that this personality goes hand in hand with occupying successfully a senior job. They will quote statistics claiming that 70% of our senior managers have large egos and by that they mean they are self-confident, self-opinionated, highly intelligent, highly disciplined, at ease with power and mostly unemotional.

I believe that if you look carefully underneath this mask of self-assurance, risk-taking, aggression and dominance, you will see that ego-driven personalities are essentially people who are afraid and stressed out. It is fear and insecurity that propels these individuals to believe that they are terribly important people – to confuse their role (i.e. “I am the CEO of a large company”) with reality (i.e. “I am therefore an important person”). The altitude they reach in their career path is so dizzying that it becomes a permanent dread of not being able to keep up, make it, succeed or hold on to their positions and status.

For others, stress is the major culprit. Driven nuts by the pressures of their jobs, they eventually loose touch with reality and become so stressed out that they become living canons, ready to explode at any moment. All this boils down to one conclusion: egotistical managers are extremely tough people to work for because they take themselves and their personal agenda “very” seriously.

What’s the way out for the egoic personality? It lies in awareness. Egotistical managers need to become aware first and foremost, that they have a huge ego – and that this ego is the very source of their difficulties. Next, and this is far more difficult, they must “catch” this ego the very moment it kicks into action. The moment it rears its head, they must be ready to pounce on it armed with conviction that this a prelude to a full-blown “ego attack” and that the thoughts and actions that will follow could be fatally flawed. Behavioural techniques such as relaxation or using self-depreciating humour can also be learned. Otherwise, executive coaching with a trained professional remains the only option.

Prof E. CHAROUX [email protected]