I recently watched a documentary about the acting teacher Roy London, in which one of his former students said that, To Know is about ego, to NOT know is about growth. As someone who is actively looking for ways to learn and improve, this quotation gave me much food for thought.

Every day I see battles of egos at play and watch as ego preserving barriers block individuals from learning and growing. In the workplace, the inability of employees to see the less than pleasant character traits beneath their egos poses a great problem for their growth and ability to contribute to the success of their companies. By recognizing that pride and ego create resistance to personal and professional development, we can then start as individuals to really see where we can improve.

If the ego is all about fear of exposure, fear of criticism, and fear of change, how can we commence letting it go to get to the route of some of our problems. That is where the line above can bring us some insight. My suspicion is that if we accept that we are not perfect and not feel pressured into pretending we have it all figured out, only then can we actually break down the walls of our shaded perception.

I have witnessed a great amount of pretending and people-pleasing in offices, but faking it until you make it at work can result in poor performance and critical mistakes than can ultimately jeopardize a company’s reputation. A recent interaction with a telecom company illustrated the problem: I called the company to request that they stop calling me at all hours of the night to set up a service that I had been forced to cancel with them due to poor service. Every person I spoke with sounded confident and happily transferred me to the “right” person. After an hour of being transferred around and speaking to six different people, no one was able to resolve the problem. I had to literally block that company’s telephone number from my phone in order to stop the calls!  No one knew who to transfer me to, no one would admit it, and there was no system in place for employees to ask and admit they could not answer a simple customer question.

In conclusion, employers should aim to have an open dialogue that allows for employees to ask questions and admit when there is a gap in their knowledge and the boss’s expectations. While the “figure it out yourself” command may make the bosses life easier in the short run, this approach may require incredible amounts of back tracking and cleanup in the long term. If I pretend to know html as a web site designer since the boss expects it, but I actually don’t, any errors I make could potentially cost a client lost revenue if their site is not working. By opening the dialogue to focus on honest communication devoid of ego, there will likely be less guessing, and greater efficiency in the long term and hopefully greater client satisfaction as well.

Stay tuned for my follow up post on the evolutionary role of denial in human development and how this may fit into the topic of the ego and growth.