Ego Will Destroy the Team

Hey team. All right, so here we are. It’s another Wednesday Workshop, and I saw this quote as I was scrolling through. I obviously like to read a lot of quotes, I like pithy statements, things like that. I was reading this one. It said, “The biggest danger, the most dangerous thing to a team’s strength, is a player’s ego.” I’ve said it time and time again. I have a little thing framed in my office. It says, “Ego will kill your talent every single time.”

Ego will kill your talent. The most dangerous thing to a team’s strength is an individual player’s ego. Thinking that they deserve more, need more, have to have more things like that. While they themselves may end up prospering for a short time, the organization they work for, the organization they’re part of, the team they’re part of, will falter and fail ultimately long term because of the ego that sets in the heart and the mind of an individual.

We just recently in leadership talked about a very similar subject, talking about humility and what an ideal team player has to have on board inside of them to be great, to work with others. Humility, which is one of our core values, happens to be at the top of that list. Another is having a hunger to succeed, to grow, and to do. And the other is being emotionally smart, being intelligent about how you treat people around you. And that hungry, humble, and smart category, those three components, virtual traits, I guess you could say, virtues, are major components for building team health and for building a group of men and women into a solid force to be reckoned with in the dynamic of industry.

I’m grateful to be working with so many men and women like yourselves that understand that, that grasp that. And for those of you that maybe have been around people with ego, or maybe you yourself think that you’re worth more than you have right now, I get wanting more, I do.

But when you start to think you’re more important than everybody else on your team, be careful, because that pride, that ego can destroy your team, and more importantly, it can end up tearing you up. It will kill your talent, no matter how talented you are. I’ve met many, many people with super amounts of talent, but their ego has killed it and stifled it and kept it from truly transporting. Again, people don’t want to be around a ball hog. Nobody wants to be around a person that is so self-absorbed that they have no room for anybody else.

So on this Wednesday, think about those things and remember, ego will kill your talent. It’s the greatest thing that can destroy a team, is individual ego amongst groups in that team. So God bless you guys, have a wonderful Wednesday. Enjoy the rest of your week. Can you believe it, we’re almost in March? And here we go, two months are almost down. So God bless you guys, and I’ll see you next week.