Episode 231 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: In this episode, we’re going to talk about how to identify if your ego is driving your priorities. You may say, no way. I have my own goals and priorities, but the ego is sneaky. And you might notice after listening to this episode, there are more ways than you thought where the ego drives your priorities and the way that you spend your day than you think. Here are the two questions this podcast answers.

0:00:25 Ramona Shaw: One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted? Although the competition and the expectations get bigger, this show The Manager Track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection, and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows.

0:00:58 Ramona Shaw: In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate, and act as a confident and competent leader. You know you can can be welcome to the manager track podcast. I’m glad that you’re here because we have an important topic to talk about. This is something that often comes up with my executive coaching clients when we do a bit of an audit on how they spend their time in terms of the daily allocation of time, as well as the weeks and the month.

0:01:22 Ramona Shaw: And we compare that against their goals and their list of priorities. And what happens is that sometimes we notice there are certain things that sneak into our days or our weeks that are not related to our priorities, and we want to find out why is that and what happens. And what often comes up is it’s actually an ego move. And I’ll talk a little bit more about what that exactly means and what you can do to detect in your own professional life how the ego might influence your priorities in a way that is nothing good and helpful for you in terms of driving impact and influence.

0:02:01 Ramona Shaw: So let me give you an analogy first, though. If you imagine being a hobby gardener, you have a backyard and you want to start growing vegetables and fruits. You get the right soil in place. You plant the seeds for tomatoes, cucumbers, a mango tree, and so forth. So you plant the seeds or you buy the plants and you put them in. Now you have to figure out how much water to give, protect them from the sun or from storms.

0:02:31 Ramona Shaw: You have to give them the proper nutrition. And that becomes the main priority because again, you set out to have a garden in order to reap the fruits of your labor, that is fruits and vegetables. But suddenly you find yourself being out there on your knees pulling out the weeds that start to grow in that newly planted soil that you put down and you might find some weed and pluck it out. And it feels really satisfying, you know, that, like, oh my gosh, it looks better now and it feels like I’m being productive and I’m attending to my garden.

0:03:08 Ramona Shaw: And you plug out the little weed and then suddenly move to the next area and just like a grassy field and you see more weed. And all of a sudden, an hour later you’re still there on your knees pulling wheat and it feels like you’re gardening and you’re doing the right thing and you’re definitely being busy and you get that sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. But what happened here is you deviated from your main priority.

0:03:36 Ramona Shaw: Pulling out tiny wheat does not influence the quality of or the quantity of the vegetables and fruits you’re going to reap. Also, the grass next to your garden has nothing to do with your objective. And this is where the ego of, oh, it feels so good, or this looks nicer derailed you from your main goal at work. This happens in small instances when we check emails too many times just because it makes us feel productive or it makes us feel good, like we’re on top of things.

0:04:13 Ramona Shaw: But it also happens in bigger ways where someone might say, hey, can I pick your brain? Can we go get coffee or can we have lunch? And you really kind of don’t want to because you’re busy and you have that time allotted for something else, something on your priority list, but you don’t want to disappoint that person or be seen as rude. So you say yes, in both cases, your ego is driving your priorities, not your priority list.

0:04:42 Ramona Shaw: So in both cases, it was your ego driving what you did with your time versus actually your priority list. And that is what we want to identify. So I gave you a couple of examples. Emails, people who want to get access to your time. It can also be when you have a presentation or a report that you need to prepare the senior team. You might want to look so good and be so well done to make sure that you leave a really good impression.

0:05:13 Ramona Shaw: Instead of achieving the accomplishment of providing that update, you spend 50% of the time providing the update and the content and you could be done with it, but you spend another 50% of just making it perfect. And yes, to a degree we can start to argue, well, but that was important in order to leave that good impression. Yeah, but was it all the way to the 100% that you considered 100% it’s likely that 50% was content and 70 or 80% would have been sufficient in order to leave that good impression or even that great impression. But no, you spend an additional 4 hours, 2 hours, 30 minutes, whatever that might be, to make it perfect, your ego was driving it.

0:05:58 Ramona Shaw: So anytime that we do something where we either do it because we want to feel good, we want to look good, or we want to be liked, that is when our ego starts to mess with our priority list. So the work that you do, the time in your days where you spend it on looking good, feeling good, or being liked, that is where I hope that after this episode, some alarm bells go off, where you start to assess yourself like, hold on a second, is this really necessary and part of my priority list, or am I letting my ego run the show here?

0:06:38 Ramona Shaw: And as I said, it’s sneaky, because as humans, we do want to look good and we want to be liked and we want to feel good. Our brains are actually wired to do that, but it comes at a cost if we’re not supervising our own brain and managing our ego, and that is that we’re eroding the impact and influence we can have in an organization in terms of driving results. Another way that this could show up is that you’re too involved with your team.

0:07:07 Ramona Shaw: So your team might do work that either you really like doing or you think you could do better, and you get yourself overly involved in it because you don’t want to delegate, because you don’t want to let it go. Yet a few episodes back, we talked about dealing with fading technical skills. So if you hang on to it too much, it’s an ego move. It’s you feeling uncertain and having some anxiety about no longer being up to date and your skills no longer being as strong as some of your team members.

0:07:40 Ramona Shaw: So you overly insert yourself. It’s an ego move. And your time allocation is now determined by your ego, not by the actual impacted by your goals. Another way that’s a final example that the egos could show up is in somewhat an opposite scenario where you think you’re already good enough. Your ego is like, I’m the best at this. I’ve done this a million times. I’m successful. I don’t need to practice anymore.

0:08:09 Ramona Shaw: I don’t need to do the prep work that everyone else needs to do. And so in those cases, the ego of like, I’m good, I already look good, and I’m already successful, is actually holding you back from spending the necessary time in prioritizing your preparation and showing up as your best self and prioritizing the preparation and the necessary work in order to achieve the results that you want. So this happens sometimes when people say, I have no problem winging it. When I have to talk to senior leaders or give a team update, I’ll just wing it.

0:08:48 Ramona Shaw: You can wing it and you know that you can, but you’ll never be great at it because there are people who are also good, but continue putting in the reps and doing the work, and they will quickly exceed you. When we see the sports world, by the way, when we see the stars sort of rise through the ranks in the team and they know that they’re the stars, there are those who will start to know that they’re stars and their ego will kick in and they will cannot let things go a little bit. They won’t work as hard anymore.

0:09:19 Ramona Shaw: They take success for granted. They take winning or being the star for granted. And then suddenly there’s younger talent coming up and they’re still eager. They still have this drive to become the star. If you, as a star, don’t continue to put in the reps and the hard work, these younger folks who will, will rise up, become the star. And if they don’t let their ego get in the way and they continue to challenge themselves, they’re humbling themselves all the time.

0:09:48 Ramona Shaw: They continue to work really hard, to train really hard. Their success will outlast the success of the other previous star who sort of started to let that ego go on that ego ride. And we see this over and over again, the downfall of some of these stars versus others who’ve created legacy careers because of their work ethic. In the corporate world, as a leader in the business world, it’s very similar. We see people who have success or say, like, I’ve done this for so long, I can do this without much prep work, and I can do this without thinking about it too much, or I don’t have to get a coach, or I don’t have to join training sessions because I know well those people are not the ones who will continue to evolve and grow with the organization.

0:10:39 Ramona Shaw: And especially in fast growing organizations, you have to grow at least at the same rate that your company is growing, because otherwise you’re going to be out the door because you can’t keep up with the increased complexity, increased demands, and often the pressure that you’re faced with. So the ego can both be on the like, being too successful almost and then taking it slow, as well as driving you to do more in order to be liked in order to look good or in order to feel good. So that aspirational part of the ego in both ways, if you don’t manage it and you don’t identify it, it will hurt your output and it will hurt your impact.

0:11:24 Ramona Shaw: So my suggestion and what I encourage you to do is to do a time audit. So to get that audit started, the first thing you have to do is to define clear priorities. Some of you may have worked with OKRs. Some of you have smart goals or goals in general that you’re pursuing. If you don’t have any goals, then that is a conversation on its own. But you should have, you know, at least I’m say like the three months goals. You might have weekly priorities or monthly priorities, but be really clear on what is the most important thing thing for me in my role and for the person holding the role that I do and the position that I do.

0:12:07 Ramona Shaw: What is the most important thing for me to do today, this week, this month, this quarter? Once you’re clear on this, you got to challenge yourself too with this. It’s like, is this really on me or could this be delegated to someone else? If you say like, no, I have to be the one who does the onboarding plan for my new hire, I would challenge you. Is this really something you have to do or could someone on your team come up with an onboarding plan? If you’re saying I have to set the goals for my teams, like, okay, do you have to set the goals or could your team collectively come up with a set of goals that they propose?

0:12:45 Ramona Shaw: So really challenge yourself there too? Is this really something only you can do? In most cases, when I do an audit like this with a leader, at least 20% of the things they put on the list as priorities are negotiable. We either could say, okay, actually no, someone else could do them, or at least part of what you have on your list could be done by someone else. So do that first, identify the priorities. Really challenge yourself. Is this really me or could I have someone else do it?

0:13:15 Ramona Shaw: Then step two is to do an audit on your time. So for a week or two, you’re looking at how you’re spending your days and the weeks. What are you spending your time on, how often you check your emails, what kind of meetings do you participate in and then what kind of focus work do you do and what kind of deliverables are you working on? Track it down. And it doesn’t take a lot of time at the end of the day, just quickly either open your digital calendar and add time slots and type in what you did during the day during these time slots, or take a piece of paper and a pen and write it down.

0:13:53 Ramona Shaw: But no matter what, that’s a really good exercise for us to get clarity on how we’re spending. For us to get clarity on our productivity and our ability or inability to manage time effectively. Then we do a time audit, a week, maybe two weeks, and then we’re going to look at, okay, how does this compare to the priorities I’ve identified upfront? And where did I deviate away from my priorities? Someone said, let’s go for lunch, I want to pick your brain.

0:14:25 Ramona Shaw: That was not attached to my priorities. Why did I do this? Was this really necessary? Because I see that as part of my role or my responsibility to be a mentor to others. And that in itself is sort of like a year long priority or something that I choose really deliberately or did I do this because I didn’t want to disappoint them or I didn’t want to look bad in front of them? No one knows except for you.

0:14:50 Ramona Shaw: You will only get to that answer if you’re actually being really honest with yourself. You’re the only one winning from doing this exercise. You got to be honest in order to win. Identify your priorities first, do an audit on your time and then identify where did you allocate time to things that were not related to your priorities? That is how you know how much your ego derails you from your priority list.

0:15:13 Ramona Shaw: You may think, well, no, that doesn’t happen to me. I’m pretty spot on and I would challenge you with that too, more often than not, and I’m most definitely part of that group as well. Our egos wanting to look good, wanting to be liked, and wanting to feel good are wired in our brains or our human desires that the vast majority of us are influenced by. So it takes discipline and awareness to overrule this and let another system, another approach, run the show.

0:15:44 Ramona Shaw: If you’re leading a team as well, pay attention to what your team does. If you want to increase your team’s productivity, have conversations with them on what they spend their time on and how long that takes. Talk to them about why they do what they do. Share this episode with them. Have them do an assessment on how much of their time or where they notice that they do things in their day. Because the ego drives the show and how much is it actually and how much is and how much of their time is actually allocated to pursuing their key priorities.

0:16:21 Ramona Shaw: By the way also you can have like more than, and by the way, also once there’s really only one priority, we know that, but we are okay with about five. But if you have more than five priorities, then we have to, you know, make sure that we’re very clear on what is a priority and forget the rest for now. That is what I wanted to share with you. Some food for thought, hopefully, and I do hope you take me up on this idea of doing an audit.

0:16:49 Ramona Shaw: The topic of identifying where your ego might erode your impact and your performance or that of your team is something that you can do for yourself, as we talked about. But it’s also a topic that is really helpful to address with an external coach because a coach will see from the outside, like looking in what you might not see yourself. And as a coach I may see things and can challenge you on what you have, like beliefs and stories, telling yourself that, no, I have to do this, almost definitely only I can do this job, and I might keep challenging you on that and try to find different options, different alternatives.

0:17:30 Ramona Shaw: We can’t see because we’re sort of like inside the chart. We can’t read the label on the outside. So having this outside perspective is tremendously valuable in an exercise like this. If you want to learn more about what leadership coaching and executive coaching looks like, check the show notes to find a link where you can schedule a strategy call with me directly where we talk about what is currently going on, where are you at? Where do you want to go?

0:17:56 Ramona Shaw: And then what are the different strategies and approaches to get you to the next level or achieve your leadership goals? This is a no pressure call. The goal is for you to walk away with that strategy and then for you to make an informed decision if you want to execute that on your own or with the help of a coach. If you found this useful, please give us a five star review on the podcast episode that you’re listening to that really helps us expand our reach and share it with some of your colleagues or friends or team members to inspire them to think about this as well. Thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll be back with another episode of The Manager Track podcast next week. Ciao for now. If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with.

0:18:39 Ramona Shaw: This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out at our arcova.org masterclass. The second resource is my best selling book, the confident and competent new manager how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out@archova.org books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there you can find all those links in the show notes.