Ego – what ego?

By your ego, I’m referring to your sense of identity that comes from your mind’s tendency to create a concept of who you are (and who you are not). So if I ask you to describe yourself, or what it’s like to be you, the descriptions you give me are likely to have been formed by your ego as it tried to make sense of being you in the world. For example, you might say ‘I’m a project manager, team leader, firefighter, doctor, father, mother’, etc. When you create the sense of being a firefighter, you automatically create a sense of what you are not; for example, I’m not a doctor. Other labels you might give yourself might include ‘I’m a hard worker, good person, great manager, lousy manager’, etc. These are all perceptions that your mind has constructed over time and now you accept them, often without question. For example, perhaps you’re not as great or lousy as you imagine?

Who do you think you are?

Your self-image is formed through these labels and descriptions, often by comparing yourself to others and the world around you. The ego compares, contrasts and judges as a natural function of understanding and keeping safe. In this way, the ego creates how it feels to be you in relation to the people and the world around you. So the ego is naturally geared to keeping us separate, noticing what’s the same, what’s different, what we are in control of and what we are not in control of.

In everyday life, our ego is a faculty of our mind and operates almost like a background program, influencing our thoughts, decisions and feelings. For example, if you have a view that you’re not a great manager, you might try to cover that up with certain behaviours, or feel discomfort about that. Alternatively, you may imagine you’re a great manager and feel fantastic about that. And, of course, both of those views are simply your perception, based on your observations, thoughts and comparisons.

A story of separateness

Our ego develops when we are babies, as we naturally try to make sense of being conscious in our body. So we begin to notice where our body ends and the rest of the world begins, perhaps how we feel different from the mattress we are lying on, or the blanket over us. We have discovered a sense of our ‘self’ as being separate and different from everything else, and then our ego continues to adjust and develop that over time. By the time you are an adult, you have a much more mature idea of who you are, and who you are not. Some of this is practical information. For example, it’s useful to have an idea of yourself as a ‘good’ person as it gives you some standards to judge your own behaviour against sometimes. Perhaps you’d stop yourself from saying or doing something unkind, simply because it didn’t feel like ‘you’ to do that. Some of our ego sense creates behaviours that reinforce separateness from people and situations. It’s less useful when our ego perception of ‘being a good person’ develops further into righteousness and places us in a position of being above judgement.

So our ego can inform and misinform us. As our mind works to rationalise our experience of apparent separateness, it builds perceptions and beliefs we forget to question. Some of our self-concepts are simply that; ideas and notions we created.

	‘Your ego is a false identity that your mind constructed and then you took up residence in.’
	Brandon Bays

Size or strength?

Unfortunately, in common use the term ‘ego’ is used to describe an attribute of someone who appears arrogant or overconfident. We’re familiar with the complaint, ‘He’s got a huge ego!’ Actually, we all have an ego, and it’s neither ‘big’ nor ‘small’ – it’s just our ego. If we wanted to assess our ego, it’s more useful to consider its strength rather than its size, i.e. how much influence does your ego have upon you? For example, at work, could you purposely wear mismatching clothes that clash and look strange or would your self-image stop you from doing that? Most of us try to avoid looking stupid. Our ego can control us in different ways, some of which are the opposite of arrogance or overconfidence. For example, a person who describes themselves as ‘painfully shy’ still has a strong ego acting upon them. If they literally find it difficult to speak and express themselves in some circumstances, this is due to the controlling nature of their ego making them feel self-conscious. When a shy person learns to relax this ‘consciousness of self’, by focusing less on themselves and more on other people, they will often find themselves able to calm the shy feelings. The same trick can work for people who feel less comfortable making presentations or speaking to groups. By focusing on our audience and connecting with them, we naturally relax our observation of ourselves and so forget to feel self-conscious.

Challenge your own assumptions

The natural mistake we make is to assume that the ego is who we are, rather than seeing it as a constructed idea of our self and how we ‘ought’ to behave. Spiritual seekers often work to free themselves from the influence or fixations of the ego. Doing this can bring a sense of freedom and liberation, perhaps an increased feeling of connection or relatedness to the world around us or a greater affinity to people. Of course, you don’t need to give up your day job to relax your ego. Instead you might choose a simpler goal of ‘everyday illumination’ or awareness.

	‘Don’t believe everything you think.’
	Byron Katie

By increasing your awareness of the key features and drives of your ego, you can create more self-awareness and choice in situations. If you are interested in studying this whole topic in more depth, I recommend A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (Penguin, 2009). In this book, Tolle provides a clearer sense of our own ego, and encourages us to work with that in practical, everyday situations.

As we saw in the earlier examples, your sense of who you are often relates to your job role or title, for example ‘I’m a junior manager/senior manager’. In reality, it’s all false, as all those roles are invented, along with the boundaries or limitations they suggest. But in daily life we act as though the roles are real. Partly that’s practical, as it helps to organise the work we do together. Defined roles also help people to play to their strengths, for example ‘I’m a technical expert – that’s what people expect’.

For most of us, our sense of who we think we are becomes a tangible influence upon what we do or how we feel in everyday situations. For example, if the organisation has defined you as a junior manager, does that make you apprehensive about speaking to groups of senior managers? And perhaps more comfortable speaking to groups of lower-ranked staff ? Or, if you’re a senior manager, how does it affect your behaviour in a meeting with people you imagine are more junior?

Now, keeping your personal image of being a manager in the office, imagine your holiday this year is a Caribbean cruise. Unfortunately the ship sinks. So you find yourself at sea, marooned on a life raft full of fellow tourists, like yourself. Then one of them explains they have extensive sailing and navigation skills. How does ‘who you think you are’ change during this experience? Maybe you stop thinking of yourself as a manager or tourist and start feeling like a victim – or a member of an amateur crew who needs to support the recently appointed skipper of the life raft. But is that new you true? Does who you are ever change? How can it?

Notice your ego through your emotions

Noticing your ego and its compulsions is the first step towards reducing its influence upon you. You can often spot signs of your ego’s control over you through the emotions you suddenly feel. For example, negative emotions may be brought on by something as simple as an unexpected delay or change of plans. Feelings of stress or frustration about something are often triggered by a sense of being ‘out of control’. Learn to pause, relax a little, accept what just happened and then decide how it best serves you to respond.

Control to stay comfortable

We have a natural compulsion to maintain our sense of comfort or surety by being in control. We also like to maintain our sense of control in a number of ways, perhaps to ensure we know what’s happening/going to happen in a situation, or to make something happen in the way we want it to. We try to control other people and situations, and we might do that by being directive, or more subtly manipulative, or simply by just wishing something will happen. Because of the ego’s driver to ‘fix’ things in position, our need to have surety, avoid change or maintain control is hugely influenced by our ego.

Some of us behave in a more overtly controlling way than others, and certain situations provoke us. For example, your colleague is preparing a report on the environmental policy of the company, which is a topic you’re already frustrated about. You see an opportunity to make a big difference with small changes and you don’t feel anyone really cares about the whole issue. Your compulsion to control may range from needing to influence the report’s recommendations, to having the headings set in a certain typeface. Or, less logically perhaps, you might withdraw from commenting on the report, but the idea that you’re not involved may really annoy you.

Your internal resistance (upset, frustration, etc.) to what happens is an indication that you want things to be a different way. Then the emotions that arise from your need to control can confuse your behavioural responses. For example, in the environmental report situation, you may get so annoyed about the situation that you end up saying nothing – which seems a contradiction.

How does our ego affect us in coaching?

By now I expect you’ve spotted the obvious link to coaching. In coaching we sometimes make responses based on our self-image, or need to control, and we’re unaware of that. Our idea of who we think we are, and so what’s ‘normal’ for us, creates a limit on our thoughts and choices. As an extreme example, it’s like saying, ‘I can’t give all this up to go and build schools in Africa – I’m a finance director for goodness sake.’ If that person felt they had pure choice in their life, the life change would be a valid option to consider.

When you recognise how your current self-image in the workplace affects your thoughts and behaviour in a coaching conversation, you can relax those ‘auto-responses’ more often. For example, if you have the self-concept of ‘the manager’, can you still listen to someone criticise the company without being defensive? If you are to be an effective coach, you need to be able to do that.

The irrelevance of right and wrong

The ego has a fixed viewpoint, for example ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong, or an attachment to how things should be. If your ego is a strong influence on you, you’ll have urges to operate from these ideas of right and wrong continually. I’m not talking about large-scale views here, such as ‘it’s bad to kill people’; I’m referring to less clear issues, such as whether we should be made to recycle, or if it’s wrong to park in reserved parking spaces.

Imagine you’re coaching someone and they criticise someone you know and like. It doesn’t work if you automatically leap to that person’s defence. As a coach you need to stay with their views, explore them, reflect them back and challenge them only if it’s helpful to the conversation. Maybe they’ve said that Sally is a liar and a cheat and you don’t agree with that. So now you have options.

1. Disagree with their view and state a contradicting opinion. This is likely to create a sense of disagreement and potentially reduce rapport as they are made to defend or justify their view. It may also distract the conversation onto a topic that’s actually irrelevant to the conversation, for example Sally (and your views of her). The conversation may best be centred on what’s caused the person’s remarks, i.e. their response to Sally or how they’ve got this view.
2. Ignore your disagreement and act as if you agree. Possibly a worse option than the first, as you’ve traded your integrity for an attempt to please them, or at least avoid breaking rapport with them. This may actually be done quite subtly, for example ‘Yes, I can see what you’re saying’ or ‘Yes, I guess I can imagine her doing that’. If actually neither of those statements is true (because you can’t see what they’re saying, or imagine Sally doing that) then that constitutes a lie and so your integrity is corrupted.
3. Stay in a neutral posture and don’t react to the critical nature of the remark. This is the most effective option, as it retains rapport and integrity. Also, as you ignore your own desire to defend Sally, you retain an objective, impartial view of their remarks. For example, you are able to see beyond what that person is saying, and stay interested in why they might say that. But by offering them neutral territory in which to consider their views, you help them to relax and become a little more objective. As you ask them about their accusations, they explain themselves, and perhaps realise that their view is a bit extreme. By listening and questioning further, you’ve loosened or relaxed that person’s views.

I’m not saying that as a coach you must ignore your own views, judgements and values, only that as you stay detached from your own opinion you can stay with the purpose of the conversation, which is to help someone think for themselves. A coaching conversation aims to elicit someone’s enquiry into a situation, and that requires a clear focus on them. As you relax the influence of your own ego in a conversation, you are able to create that clearer focus.

In a fight with the ego we always lose

The best way to reduce the influence of your own ego is to notice it, acknowledge it and create a sense of detachment from it. By detachment I mean to recognise that your ego is simply a function of your mind. Resisting your ego, for instance by getting frustrated with yourself when symptoms of it arise, won’t help. Going to war with your mind creates a battle without end where you employ your mind to work on your mind! Instead, work to notice its signs, such as a desire to control or having rules about needing things to be a certain way. When you notice your compulsions, acknowledge them, and then choose consciously what your response to a situation will be.

Going beyond ego

Good coaches (and managers) have learnt to reduce the influence of their ego upon them. This is because they have relaxed limits on their thinking and some of the automatic responses that are driven by their ego. For example, if the subordinate they are coaching begins to criticise a decision that they (as manager) have made, they are not automatically compelled to defend or justify that decision, or take control of the conversation. Instead they are able to remain in a more neutral posture, and stay aware of what the subordinate is saying. After all, the most important thing may not be the issue of whether or not the decision is a good one, but more that the subordinate is anxious about it and needs to deal with that.

As an incentive, some of the benefits of learning to relax the influence of your ego in coaching conversations include:

• less stress, for example from seeking to be in control, or resisting what you perceive as being controlled by others
• increased energy and a sense of being ‘freed up’, for example from who you are and who you are not
• increased sense of ‘possibility’ in situations, for example constantly working to control takes effort and creates a false limit on what happens (or what you allow to happen)
• increased sense of flexibility and ‘easy-goingness’, for example by your decreased sense of attachment to how things are, or how they should be
• increased openness, trust and relatedness to others as you become more ‘real’ to them (rather than the image of yourself that you work to project).

Control or approval (or both)?

Another way to explore the ego is to notice our tendency to try to avoid uncomfortable emotions – embarrassment, frustration, exposure, etc. To do this the ego develops strategies to avoid negative emotions by:

1. Inflation – we build ourselves up, perhaps exaggerate or boast, etc. We might develop ‘showy’ or ostentatious behaviour
2. Deflation – we reduce ourselves, being shy, withdrawing, ‘playing small’, etc. We might say, ‘I don’t really care.’
3. Rigidity – we become stuck, inflexible, intransigent or stubborn; refusing to change or adapt, etc. We might refuse invitations, advice or suggestions because they confront our fear of change.

To explore the above idea for yourself, think of a current situation that you are frustrated or concerned about in some way. If you’re really annoyed or upset that can work even better! Now, consider the following question: In this situation, what are you most seeking, approval or control?

In some situations, we want both control and approval, for example you’d like more control and also you’re troubled because you feel that you don’t have a person’s/group’s approval. For example, you’re upset because in a recent work meeting, things didn’t go well for you. Perhaps you felt strongly about something but didn’t speak, or maybe your frustration caused you to say something harsh that you now regret. The memory of the meeting is really bothering you and you’re not sure why. When you consider the above question (approval or control?), you realise that:

• You feel you lost some approval, for example because other people in the meeting may have thought that your overreaction was wrong or unprofessional.
• The control you want is over your own temper.
• On balance, the potential loss of approval/respect from the group bothers you most.

To move to a more resourceful perspective on the situation, the following questions can help:

1. What would it take for you to give up your need for approval/control (or both) in this situation?
2. If you gave that up, what becomes possible – for example a fresh perspective, different response or behaviours around the situation?
3. What are you deciding to do?

How do I know my ego is less strong?

Of course it’s very possible that you are emotionally very mature and that your ego has a much less strong influence on you than most people. See how many of the following apply to you.

• You’re able to take direct criticism well, for example you’re relaxed about being proved wrong in a situation.
• You’re not easily embarrassed, or you can laugh at yourself easily.
• You cope with unexpected change well, for example you stay resourceful in a crisis.
• You can accept how things are, even when they’re not how you want them to be.
• You’re relaxed about issues of status or position.
• You’re able to accept people with very different views from your own.
• You feel little need to impress, control or please people in situations; you don’t get hung up on what other people think about you.

It’s possible that all of these positive tendencies are more and less true for you, depending on the situation and personalities involved. Perhaps return to this list from time to time and see how your responses change.

How does our ego limit our ability to coach?

Our ego, our sense of self (or who we think we are) can directly impair our ability to coach people. That’s because our idea of who we are brings with it a raft of assumptions and beliefs, about what’s important and what’s not. For example, if we identify strongly with the role of manager, that can dictate certain rules of behaviour, based on our beliefs about our position. Those rules of behaviour may prevent us from adopting some of the core principles of coaching, such as equality, openness or a need to relate to someone else in their world. By recognising the influence of our ego upon us in situations, we can develop more ‘pure choice’ in situations, which means choice that is unaffected by the imagined rules of the ego. This enables us to stay flexible around the people we are coaching, and more present to their views and feelings.