“A leader is one who leverages their influence by using their experience to adapt and exhibit the right behaviours to influence any situation to create a positive outcome for all”.
This is how I define a leader, but who should a leader prioritise in their decision making?
All great countries, projects and even families have a person that many consider to be a great leader, but why is that? This is because great leaders understand their behaviours and the difference is displaying confidence rather than ego.
As a leader, it is important to be aware of whether you are displaying confidence or ego as leaning to much towards ego can destroy your likeability factor, the trust of others in you and relationships. Confidence makes you likeable, authentic and trustworthy, whereas ego does the opposite.
Cy Wakeman, author of No Ego and writer for Forbes explains that “having confidence is to have faith in your own abilities and believe in yourself, but the ego is something else, entirely.” Unlike confidence, the ego operates out of self-interest. It seeks approval, accolades and validation at all costs in order to be seen as “right.”
“Egotistical people need attention whereas confident leaders trust in themselves and give their attention to others.”
Jas Toor
Bob Davids, entrepreneur and businessman, speaking at TEDxECSP, said that “when leaders gain support they receive power.” A leader’s job is to control how they use this power. The control of power changes the level of trust from your team. There are two options:
- Keep the power
- Give the power back
Keeping the power is a demonstration of ego as well as a show of insecurities. When deciding on the best course of action a leader needs to consider whether their decision is made from a place of confidence (giving the power back) or ego (keeping the power). When deciding on who or what to prioritise, then I refer to the end of my definition – “create a positive outcome for all”. A leader should focus on collective over individual gain. However, this does not mean individuals are ignored. There is a fine balance in how the priority is executed. From experience, when a leader displays the right behaviours then collective gain can be prioritised as it finds a way to steer everyone onto the same path, as one vision, but also gives the power back to individuals through sharing of a leader time, trust and respect.
Discover why ego has no place in leadership, why confidence does and how this applies to your leadership style here.
Thank you for reading, JT
