The Ego Paradox

Let's elevate your career! Weekly advice to energise and elevate your job search and career - the tips & tricks recruiters don't want you to know.

Ego has probably helped you more than you realise. It gives you the confidence to speak up, put yourself forward, negotiate the salary, pursue the promotion or walk into an interview believing you deserve to be there.

The paradox is that the same ego that helps build your career can eventually begin to limit it. Every decision creates a ripple. The people around you notice how you behave, who you credit, how you respond to challenge and whether you are still interested in listening. They often remember it for much longer than you would like.

That is the part ego conveniently ignores.

Day to day

Ego is not automatically a bad thing. We all need enough of it to back ourselves, take calculated risks and recover when somebody doubts us.

It becomes a problem when confidence turns into certainty. You stop properly listening to feedback because you believe your experience gives you the answer. You take the credit because you led the project, forgetting the three other people who made it work. You start treating relationships as transactions rather than partnerships and only reach out when you want something.

It can also make capable people carry far too much. Instead of asking for support, hiring an expert or admitting that something is outside their strengths, they keep adding more to their own workload. From the outside this can look like independence and determination. Underneath, it is often pride, fear and the need to remain in control.

Ego is very good at protecting how you see yourself. It is not always as good at protecting where you are going.

Short term versus long term

Ego is brilliant at winning the moment. It helps you control the meeting, close the deal, deliver the strongest opinion and make sure people notice your contribution. In the short term, that can work extremely well.

José Mourinho is a useful example. His certainty, intensity and total belief in his methods have helped him win some of football’s biggest trophies. Those same qualities have also repeatedly contributed to relationships deteriorating with players, colleagues and boards.

The belief that creates the early success can become the thing that makes the environment difficult to sustain. People remember what you delivered, but they also remember how you made them feel while you were delivering it.

Your results might get you into the next room. Your reputation influences how long people want you to stay there and whether they recommend you for another one.

When nobody can challenge you

Adam Neumann took WeWork from an idea to a reported valuation of $47 billion. That required enormous ambition, charisma and self-belief. It attracted investment, employees, customers and global attention.

The difficulty came when too much influence sat with one person and too few people appeared able to challenge his decisions effectively. WeWork’s planned flotation collapsed, Neumann stepped down and the company’s valuation unravelled.

Self-belief can create momentum, but unchecked self-belief can remove the people and processes that protect you from yourself.

The colleagues you did not credit remember. The people whose feedback you dismissed remember. The relationships you neglected are unlikely to suddenly become strong when you need support. Somebody is always noticing how you behave when you think it does not matter, and it is often those people who later influence your next opportunity.

Confidence listens

Real confidence does not need to dominate every conversation. It can listen without feeling threatened, recognise when somebody else is better placed to lead and admit when an answer is not immediately available.

Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 after his leadership style and certainty created significant conflict. When he returned in 1997, he still had extraordinary belief in his vision, but the next chapter of Apple was not built by Jobs alone.

He worked alongside people with very different strengths, including Tim Cook, whose operational expertise helped turn ambitious ideas into a scalable global business. Jobs did not suddenly lose his ego. He became more effective because his vision was supported by people who could do the things he could not, or simply did not want to, master himself.

The vision mattered, but so did knowing who else needed to be in the room.

From know-it-all to learn-it-all

Satya Nadella took over Microsoft in 2014 when the culture had become known for internal competition and defensiveness. He began shifting the business away from being “know-it-all” and towards becoming “learn-it-all”.

It sounds like a small change in language, but it represents a significant change in leadership. A learn-it-all culture accepts that experience does not remove the need for curiosity. Leaders can make decisions while remaining open to new information, different perspectives and the possibility that somebody else has a better answer.

Microsoft went on to rebuild its relevance across cloud technology, collaboration and AI, becoming one of the world’s most valuable businesses. That did not happen because everybody became less ambitious. It happened because ambition was supported by learning, listening and the willingness to adapt.

Empathy and curiosity might not feel as impressive as winning the room, but they are often what allow people, teams and businesses to keep progressing after the initial excitement has passed.

Mine

I ran on ego for a lot of my career. It helped me achieve things, prove people wrong and keep moving, right up until it did not.

I was confident in what I could do and often believed I could work everything out alone. Asking for help felt uncomfortable, so I normally waited until I was already in difficulty. I had not invested properly in some of the relationships around me, and when things went wrong, the support network I assumed would be there was not as strong as I needed it to be.

Eventually, it came down like a house of cards. The help I had been too proud to ask for could have saved me a lot of pain if I had asked for it sooner.

I have spent the years since rebuilding things differently. I reach out before I need something, lean on people who know more than me and hire experts instead of guessing my way through everything. I pay more attention to the impact my decisions have on other people and try to notice when confidence is beginning to turn into control.

It can feel slower, but it is the only version I trust now. The lesson was never to lose my confidence. It was to understand where confidence ended and ego began.

Job hunting

Ego cuts both ways when you are looking for work. You need self-belief to apply for the stretch role, explain your value, ask for more money and walk into an interview like you belong there.

The other side of ego convinces people that asking for help is a weakness. They go quiet after redundancy because they feel embarrassed. They stop speaking to recruiters because they believe their experience should be enough. They avoid asking their network for introductions because they do not want to appear desperate.

They may continue using the same CV, LinkedIn profile and application strategy even when it is not producing results. Accepting outside input would mean admitting the current approach is not working, and that can feel harder than simply sending another application.

The people who move forward fastest are not necessarily those with the least ego. They are the ones who understand which part of it to use. They back themselves while remaining willing to listen, adapt and accept support.

Even Richard Branson, about as closely associated with entrepreneurial self-belief as anyone, needed strong relationships to survive difficult periods. When Virgin Atlantic was under pressure, he sold Virgin Records, the business that had made his name, to help secure the airline’s future.

There is confidence in pursuing an ambitious vision. There is also confidence in accepting that the original plan needs to change.

Leadership and business

Leadership tends to magnify whatever is already there. Curious people gain more opportunities to learn, while insecure leaders can become increasingly controlling. A leader who needs constant recognition may surround themselves with people who agree with them. A founder who is afraid of being exposed may avoid hiring people who are stronger than them in certain areas.

The strongest leaders do not need to provide every answer. They create an environment where the best answer can come from anywhere. They give credit, challenge people without humiliating them and remain open to changing their minds when the evidence changes.

Founders face a particular version of this paradox. Building a business requires a slightly unreasonable amount of self-belief. You are asking customers, employees and partners to believe in something that might still be taking shape.

Eventually, though, the business needs more than the founder’s belief. It needs different skills, honest feedback, proper structure and people who can challenge decisions without being treated as disloyal.

The same is true of a career. The qualities that helped you reach your current level might not be the qualities that take you through the next one. Sometimes progress means doing more. Sometimes it means listening more, sharing responsibility and getting out of your own way.

A useful check

If you are questioning whether ego is influencing your decisions, ask yourself:

When did I last properly change my mind?

Who can challenge me without worrying about my reaction?

Am I building relationships or only contacting people when I need something?

Do I listen to feedback or wait for my opportunity to defend myself?

Am I refusing support because I do not need it, or because accepting it feels uncomfortable?

Is my current approach producing the outcome I want?

What might become possible if I stopped trying to solve everything alone?

The answers may be uncomfortable, but that is usually where the useful work starts.

The line

Ego can get you off the ledge. It should never be the reason you jump.

Your decision has to be true to what you actually want and honest about the impact it will have on the people around you. A career is not built through one impressive moment. It is shaped by hundreds of decisions, relationships, conversations and impressions that compound over time.

Keep the confidence. Keep the ambition and continue backing yourself. Just make sure you remain somebody people want to work with, support, recommend and welcome back into the room.

If this is landing

This is exactly the type of conversation I have with people through Careers BFF. Sometimes the challenge is not a lack of ability or ambition. It is separating the confidence, frustration, fear, pride and pressure that have become wrapped around an important decision.

You may be questioning whether to stay or leave, struggling to ask for help after redundancy, preparing for a bigger leadership role or repeating a job-search approach that is no longer delivering results. You might be building a business while carrying too much alone, or wondering whether your next move is being driven by ambition, fear or ego.

The Untangling is a focused 90-minute session designed to help you step back, make sense of what is happening and decide what needs to change.

Careers BFF also offers flexible 1, 3, 5 and 10-session options covering career direction, confidence, job searching, LinkedIn, CVs, personal branding, leadership, interviews, networking and the practical plan required to move forward.

I have been helping people navigate their careers since 2014, supporting jobseekers, experienced professionals, leaders and founders through the decisions that can feel difficult to make alone. The support is shaped around you, your situation and your budget, with flexible ways to pay available.

If you are ready to untangle what is happening and work out your next move, let’s have a conversation.

https://careersbff.com

https://calendly.com/dan-thebffgroup/30min

dan@thebffgroup.com

Because every career should have a BFF.