The best leaders are those who can keep their egos in check

TOM HOWARD
JULY 31, 2018
Elon Musk’s recent behaviour — featuring attacks on various targets including individual critics, the media and most recently and bizarrely, heroic rescuers — makes for an interesting case study in how the ego can help us and hinder us in our entrepreneurial journey.
No doubt, Musk is a brilliantly talented engineer and entrepreneur. From learning to program at nine and selling the code for his first video game at age 12, he’s had an unbroken run of success, and is now running two of the most ambitious and potentially transformative companies we’ve ever seen, in Tesla and SpaceX.
You don’t achieve such feats without a big ego.
To keep building companies with ever-increasing complexity and impact in the face of powerful resistance from established players, competitors and critics takes self-belief and conviction that few possess.
No doubt Musk has taken pleasure from the kudos he’s received along the way, particularly in recent years as he’s become seen by many as someone who can help save the earth from environmental collapse, and help humanity become a multi-planetary species.
All this speaks of an ego that was formidable to begin with, and that has grown even more powerful as his success and the attendant adulation has continued.
But with his recent outbursts and deeply personal insults on perceived adversaries, we see ­evidence of fragility in that ego, and vulnerabilities that could be his undoing.
Criticism is an inevitable and necessary part of being a successful and powerful person or company.
As someone grows in power and influence, it is scrutiny and critique that helps to keep that person aware of what they are doing right and where they need to improve.
As entrepreneurs, if our reaction in the face of criticism is to react with temper tantrums or respond with personal insults, it’s an indication of fragility.
It says we’re unwilling to consider and process the criticism being directed at us, and we’d prefer people to hold their tongues and treat us like the fabled naked emperor.
At Uber, Travis Kalanick had a big enough ego to believe, correctly, that he could disrupt the taxi industry in cities around the world. But it’s this ego that prevented him from taking seriously enough the toxic company culture and the legal and ethical breaches that were happening under his watch, leading to his ousting as CEO.
At Zenefits, Parker Conrad’s ego empowered him to believe he could transform the US employee health insurance industry, but that same ego bred a hedonistic culture that played fast and loose with US state laws, also leading to his removal as CEO.
At Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes was a high achiever in early life and had solid successes as a software entrepreneur and science student, and came to believe she could transform the medical testing industry. But she was so beholden to that ego-driven belief that she engaged in serious fraud, leading to the collapse of the company and potentially irreparable damage to her reputation.
And at Apple, the famously ego-driven Steve Jobs built the company that set the standard in personal computing in the late 1970s and early 80s, but his colleagues and directors found his ego-driven behaviour too difficult to work with, and ousted him from the company.
It’s notable that in the 13 years he spent away from Apple, Jobs devoted much attention to spirituality and mindfulness practices. While Jobs was still famously ego-driven in his second stint as CEO, his success during that period speaks for itself, and a more ­mature, balanced ego was probably a major factor.
Conversely, when we observe founders and leaders who have steered their companies from formation to vast success and held their leadership role throughout the journey, we see approaches for keeping the ego in check.
Salesforce’s Marc Benioff has a spiritual adviser and regularly meditates.
LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Slack’s Stewart Butterfield both have master’s degrees in philosophy. Jeff Bezos’s annual letters to Amazon shareholders reveal the influence of concepts from mindfulness and stoic philosophy. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has spoken of including meditation as part of his daily routines. And Airbnb’s founder Brian Chesky, along with his co-founders Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, have always kept themselves grounded by being generous and humble in the way they’ve engaged with their community: hosting parties on the roof of their apartment building from the earliest days, travelling the world to meet with their hosts and hear their stories, and continuing to be both Airbnb hosts and guests even as they’ve become vastly wealthy.
Of course, this is not to say that all criticism should be taken ­seriously.
Much criticism, particularly of high-profile people, is motivated by the critic’s own need for attention, catharsis, or in the case of modern journalism, clickbait fodder. And in such cases, it can sometimes be justifiable to call out the critic and expose their true ­motives. But if we react with aggression towards our critics, we only magnify the impact of the ­attack, and hurt ourselves more than the ­critics.
Tom Howard is developer and start-up adviser for Moonshot Labs.