{Listen to the audio version on SoundCloud}

Working with organizations large and small, for profit and not for profit, I’ve found one staff trait incredibly difficult to ignore: skills ego. Different from general self-esteem, skills ego can be thought of as that part of an individual’s self-worth related to competence and being valued for what they contribute.

The reason why skills ego is still a problem in the workplace is that no one seems to know where it comes from or how to diffuse it. When you don’t know these things, your best tool to fight it is to fire people that are hard to manage, edge them out with mistreatment, or wait for them to retire.

Those aren’t good management tools. What we really need to know are things like:

Why do staff become so defensive about appraisals of their performance?

Why are the best staff wasting time on things they are not being asked to do?

Instead of razing egos to the ground during the next series of one-on-ones, take the time to get to the bottom of these egotistical attitudes.

What Skills Ego Is Not

Now, when I say “skills ego,” of course I don’t mean having self-confidence.

Having self-confidence, especially in today’s “fail-fast” entrepreneurial market, helps people stay on track. In its best form, confidence allows individuals to tune out noisy fads and disheartening trends. Confidence helps them have the presence of mind to stay tuned into that inspiration-rich signal that directs them and compels them onward.

Ego isn’t self-confidence. Confidence is great, and ego is irritating.

If ego isn’t confidence, is ego just an exaggerated form of confidence?

No. Ego isn’t having too much confidence. This helps us as managers because we really want to hire confident people without having to worry that they’ll turn into ego-maniacal jerks.

If ego isn’t just exaggerated confidence, is ego comparing oneself to others and feeling superior to them?

No. But this is closer to nailing what ego is, because ego involves expecting positive associations and comparisons with the things and people we admire.

What Skills Ego Is

Just as high ego expects positive comparisons with admirable people and traits, a person with skills ego is expecting people to see in them just the qualities they see in themselves.

These quality attributes could be anything from the things about them that are interesting, their intellectual, social or emotional capacities, their technical and knowledge skills, or even the things that are unique about their voice, experience and perspective. People we manage have varying levels of all of these qualities — but managing becomes trickiest when there is a disagreement about those levels.

For example, when you tell your staff member that she’s good with people, maybe she’ll respond with something like, “Actually, I’m an introvert. It’s just that I am always prepared and that comes off well.” She seems annoyed and you are bewildered by the faint scent of antagonism lingering in the air.

Making it Personal

To make it personal, how do you see yourself on certain attributes? How do you think others see you? More importantly, is there a discrepancy between how you and others perceive your qualities?

Scenario 1: Can you think back of a time when another person said something to you or about you that made you feel unappreciated or invisible? Trace that experience back and find a set of abilities, skills or qualities that that person did not see or acknowledge? What are they? Do some discrepancies come up more often than others?

Scenario 2: Think of a time when another person praised a quality about you that you felt was an inferior trait or attribute. For example, if your company culture valued spontaneous genius and big ideas but you were characterized as being wonderfully consistent when you knew you had the chops for creativity. Did you feel annoyed by that praise? Did it come across as condescending, even though it was intended to be praise?

Scenario 3: Now think of a time when your team or a manager highlighted an accomplishment or skill that you agreed was your strong-suit. In comparison, how did that feel? You probably didn’t feel surprise or annoyance, right? Your ego didn’t get “inflated” because what you thought about you measured up exactly to what someone else thought about you. Instead, your confidence soared.

The difference between confidence and ego is in whether or not your idea of your greatest self lines up with others’ idea about your greatest self.

The Weak Ego

Now, when someone isn’t sure of his own talents or abilities, his confidence will be low. He might not take risks because practically speaking, he has no proof of a positive outcome in taking them. Also, his ego will be very weak. You say he’s good with people and he might respond with, “Really?” He’s not annoyed, but the return you get on that is zero in employee satisfaction.

A weak ego can be recognized by its unrelenting uncertainty in the face of accolades.

This person is in the process of putting the pieces of their identity together. You may feel that praise and promotions barely touch the surface of their core confidence. As a manager, this is a challenge because hours of coaching feel more like painting green over wilted grass than like planting and watering seeds that continue grow when you aren’t present.

Staff members with strong and weak egos are both equally tricky to manage. Some might say the ones with the weak egos are especially difficult because they have less resolve about where they belong on the team, which requires your constant vigilance.

When Egos Defeat Us

When those internal and external perceptions of value and ability are aligned, such as when a staff member is excited to contribute the skills you desperately need on a project, everybody wins and confidence grows.

When I don’t want you to give your perceived best, and I do want you to give your perceived inability, everyone gets frustrated.

Remember when you needed someone to be attentive about customer complaints and suggestions so you hired the vivacious person with the strong emotional IQ. But, it turned out she was more interested in bringing her A-game strategy and design background to the team and didn’t deliver what you expected. Nobody had done anything wrong, per se, but everybody felt stymied. You didn’t want to curtail a culture of creativity, but you hated feeling like you couldn’t depend on team members to do what they were supposed to.

In those scenarios, team members feel like their contributions go undervalued, and in a certain light, they’re right. You don’t really value about them what they value about themselves.

We all have had this happen in our personal and professional lives. When other people don’t bear witness to the things we love about ourselves, we feel cheated and our egos get bruised. What’s worse, if it keeps happening, our confidence sags a little more each time and eventually we resent our work.

Managing Towards Confidence

First, we can take advantage of feedback opportunities early and often. Tell staff what you valued (or not) about their performance and why, and look for responses that indicate surprise or disappointment. Did they not know they were such a great writer? Did they not know they were awful at serving staff needs in a timely manner?

Second, hire based on the skills people want to contribute, not on what their resume says they are capable of. Like me, they may be skilled in computer programming but completely averse to doing that type of work. If you think this new recruit would make a great accountant, make sure they agree..

Finally, if you have people on your team that are secretly angry that they’re not in the “right” roles, but you know they don’t have the necessary skills, help them discover that truth by being clear about the requirements they need to develop in order to be eligible. It’s a disservice to everyone for you to be vague about a person’s performance and value.

In the end, if you can help staff get into roles where what they enjoy about themselves is exactly what you enjoy about them, everybody wins and they finish work feeling more confident and creating more value.