We all live in some sort of Organizations which are made up of people. Your organization can be your family, your Office, your own company, your society, and your club, your sports team where you find some people working, playing, enjoying or sporting with you. Like you, every member of your team has his/her own goals, aspirations, concerns, experiences, and dreams. And each of us has an ego. The ego allows us to believe that we are capable of performing many tasks successfully. In all likelihood, our ego is what propelled us to a leadership position. Our great efforts and desire to succeed lead to major accomplishments and accolades.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o />
When we do all this, we suddenly come across the paradox. Egos can vault us into a leadership position, because somebody else is also trying to occupy the seat of leadership. If you wish to be a leader, you must set your ego aside. Your ego can prevent you from being an effective and truly great leader. Before you became a leader, you likely operated as an individual contributor. You used your creativity and resourcefulness to meet objectives: a reduction of resources, an increase in quality, an increase in revenue or handling the general affairs smoothly. If you asked questions, they were about how you could accomplish a specific task. In general, however, your ego discouraged you from asking questions and disliked having to follow orders. Egos want to accomplish and achieve. And, egos crave recognition from others.
Every time you accomplished a task and met the objective, your status moved forward and your standing in the organization or community grew. With each accomplishment, your ego grew, too. Asking fewer questions and provided more answers. After all, with your success, others came to you as an oracle of information-perhaps even your boss or your boss’s boss. You do control. Your ego adds up to your esteem, you feel.
As a leader, we must relinquish control. We must shrink our ego and concentrate on our altruism. Our career advancement is no longer task oriented. Leadership is about allowing others the chance to achieve and flourish. Be sure, we can advance as a leader only when we place our employees’ egos above our own. The heads of many organizations are not able to do this. Their teams may still succeed based upon their drive for individual success, but they are not true leaders or one thing, their associates will not be inspired to reach their full potential because they know they will not receive full credit for their efforts.
So, as a leader, we should not lead with questions. Questions confer power and control to our associates. It allows their egos a chance to shine. And you, they, and the organization will all be better served. But Ego! That kills the basic initiative. Ego may tell you why you afford the submission; the concerned person may approach you. Actually, you believe that it seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief, because the ego is not sharply separated from the id. Because your ego comprises that organized part of the personality structure which includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious. The ego separates what is real. It helps you to organize your thoughts and make sense of them and the world around you.
Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality while satisfying your id. Its main concern is with the individual’s safety and allows some of the id’s desires to be expressed. Defense mechanisms like denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjections, inversion, splitting, substitution and sublimation are often forcefully used by the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society’s morals, norms, and taboos or the individual’s expectations through some one else’s expressions.
Literally, ego originates from the expression “I”. It denotes your own personality looking after your own interests, ignoring others. Ego development is known as the development of multiple processes, cognitive function, defenses, and interpersonal skills or to early adolescence when ego processes are emerged.
In modern-day society, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an inflated sense of self-worth; or in philosophical terms, one’s self. Ego is the part of the mind which contains the consciousness. It may mean a sense of self; however, he later revised it to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality-testing, control, planning, and defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory. If we draw topography of our mind, we may find that generally ego occupies half of the space in the consciousness, while a quarter is in the preconscious and the other quarter lies in the unconscious segment.
Ego can be an impediment in your further progress and later on, you may repent on certain consequences why you did not give up your ego for a better gain. You need to examine each case on merit basis.
One day, ego gave me a lesson for the life. It was another fine morning as the previous ones. Again, I was to start with the daily chores. Suddenly, I found my snap in the news paper, more surprisingly, in the obituary column. It was strange to me. How? Before I called for my wife, I recollected that last night when I was going to bed I had a severe pain in my chest, but I could not remember anything after that, I had a sound sleep.
Next day, it was the morning already 10:00 AM, when I woke up and saw the newspaper. I noticed that I was late for all the chores. I found none to be there, where my dear wife, son and daughter were, I screamed. Some thing was imagined by me to have gone wrong in my family.
When I came out of my room, I found there was a crowd outside my room. Why were so many people crying? I felt hearing that I was a very good person …I was, I am no more, I am dead. But here I am very much present to see them crying. When I restored myself, I saw one body lying on my bed – its illusions were like mine. It appeared that they declared me dead. I gathered all of my energies and shouted that I was very much there. But none listened to me. My wife, my son and my daughter, my neighbors, my friends, all of them were pointing at the body on my bed. I had to come back to my bed room. “Am I dead??” I asked myself. I tried to come out and contact my family members in the crowd out of my room, some of them were in the next room, at open space, in the front lawn, in the back yard. Some were silent and others were crying… still trying to console each other. My wife was crying… she was really looking sad. My son and daughter were also crying. What happened? They could not ascertain how I could go without saying to them that I really loved them, I really wished to care for their needs. How I could go without saying to my dear wife that she was really the most loving and most caring lady in this world. I was just 51 years old. How soon I could forget her for her benign love. I needed to reassure her of my fidelity.
My family might be doing all this out of sheer affection with me. It appeared that they were afraid that after my death, their needs would not be suitably met with. No, I had already arranged necessary means to meet their needs. They did not need to look at me. But my friends! How could I go without telling them that without them perhaps I had done most of the wrong things in my life… thanks for being there always when I needed them… and sorry for not being there when they really needed me. Amongst them, I saw some charming person standing in the corner and trying to hide the tears… an old girl-friend, perhaps willing to join me in the youth. At that time, a small misunderstanding made us part, and we both had strong enough ego to keep us away. I went near to her offering her my hand, “Dear friend… I just want to say sorry for everything, we r still best friend, please forgive me.” She did not listen to me. She was weeping, her tears were flowing out unchecked but she was still preserving her ego, I said to her sorry… even then!!! My heart broke – perhaps she was on revenge. When I again thought, I felt that she was not able to see me. She did not see my extended hand. It appeared that I was really dead. I knew she had always welcomed my extended hand. After my marriage, she came to my home but without giving any opportunity to me to explain my position. This time too, she had done the same – she was not giving any opportunity. She did not listen to me.
OK. None of the people gathered at my residence listened to me. I thought I should go out. Before leaving the residence, I felt that I should take some books, some little bits to eat and some clothes – but when I tried to pick up, I could not do so. Perhaps, I lost my power to pick up. Why I quarreled with every one to preserve all these things which I was not able to enjoy after my death. I should not go out empty hands. But I was not able to take them along. Why the whole life my ego, my greed and my intention to keep the material things to my chest? Why?
I finally sat down near my body; I was also feeling like crying and asking God to give me some more days to enable me to give up my ego with my friends, with my girl friend, with my nears and dears to make them realize how much I loved them and I wished to give up my ego which made me away from them in the name of my over busyness. I repeated prayed to God to give me one more chance to hug my children, to say sorry to my friends for everything I have not given to them due to my ego. Then again I looked up and cried and shouted…. “GOD!!!! ONE MORE CHANCE PLEASE!” God is perhaps busy somewhere, I did not get response and started to weep. My tears were coming out and all of sudden my wife was there, “You shouted in your sleep, you are weeping. Did you have a nightmare?”
I was sleeping. That was just a dream, my lovely wife, my young son and daughter were there to hear me. I was able to restore my calm, at the happiest moment of my life. I hugged them all and reassured them of my love. I felt it that it was second chance given to me by God to give up my ego.“THANK YOU GOD FOR THIS SECOND CHANCE.”
So, Now it’s not late.. Forget your egos, past……….., and express your love to others………. Be friendly…………… keep smiling and be happy for ever…
Life is made of moments and sometimes a moment becomes life…. if your ego is not there. Examine it if your ego is of worth to retain – mostly that harms us. Be happy – give up your false ego.