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The day in 2007 when Simon and Schuster published Dave Marcum + Steve Smith’s Egonomics, there was a renewed call for servant leadership in business from Tom Peters:

Organizations exist to serve. Period.
Leaders live to serve. Period.

Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain (a 600SF retail space, a 4-person training department, an urban school, a rural school, a city, a nation), create/must necessarily create organizations which are no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair (We are all entrepreneurs—Muhammad Yunus) of diverse individuals (100% creative Talent—from checkout to lab, from Apple to Wegmans to Jane’s one- person accountancy in Invercargill NZ) is unleashed in passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose (= win a Nobel peace prize like Yunus, or at least do something worthy of bragging about 25 years from now to your grandkids) and personal and client service Excellence.

It’s not the absence of ego but ego and servanthood in equilibrium that characterizes the humility of servant leaders.

People with underdeveloped egos don’t tackle goals of the magnitude Peters spoke (and speaks) about. Leaders with healthy egos tackle those goals as acts of service. It’s not outsized egos or tiny egos, it is enormous hearts that rouse the greatness in people at work.

A few days earlier, Peters wrote:

Leaders-Teachers Do Not “Transform” or “Motivate” People! Instead, leaders- mentors-teachers: (1) provide a context that is marked by (2) access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities (projects) which (3) allow people to fully (and safely, mostly—caveat: “they” don’t engage unless they’re “mad about something”) express their innate curiosity and (4) engage in a vigorous discovery voyage (alone and in small teams, assisted by an extensive self-constructed network) by which those people (5) go to-create places they (and their mentors-teachers-leaders) had never dreamed existed —and then the leaders-mentors-teachers (6) applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops,” and ring the church bells 100 times to commemorate the bravery of their “followers’” explorations!

That’s the kind of generous leadership it takes to assemble and support teams that produce breathtaking results — what Bennis + Beiderman call Great Groups in Organizing Genius: “The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover their greatness,” they write. But:

Either because they lack the requisite skills or because the dream itself is so complex, leaders often find themselves driven by an aching powerlessness to realize their vision in any other way but collaboratively.

In other words, leaders may have no choice. “Disney could dream it,” they continue, “but, in truth, he couldn’t do it unless he got hundreds of other talented people to go along. The leader may be the person who needs the group most.”

That reality may be the wake-up call that arouses humility in a leader. Guy Kawasaki asked Egonomics author Steven Smith to talk about Steve Jobs’ ego:

Steve’s gone through a metamorphosis in how he works. He’s always been exceptionally gifted as a creator and designer, but he used those gifts in a way that drove people away from his company and minimized the talent and creative IQ of the people around him. Once he was kicked out of Apple, life began to humble him through his own health challenges, his reputation, losing what he created, etc. Interestingly, Steve came out of that time of his life with a healthier ego, because life had humbled him and he accepted the lessons.

At his commencement speech at Stanford a couple of years ago he said, I’m pretty sure none of this [NeXT, Pixar, his return to Apple, the iPod and iTunes] would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Humility is a powerful antidote to unhealthy ego, and we can either humble ourselves, or wait for life to humble us. There was a Fortune cover about one year ago that had Steve on the cover, but the two-page spread inside had six or seven people sitting next to him. We thought that picture said it all; he’s no longer in this by himself, and it appears that he recognizes that. As a result, he’s a much better leader.

Healthy ego keeps us from thinking to highly or too little of ourselves

Mr. Smith echoes a biblical theme when he says, “Healthy ego keeps us from thinking to highly or too little of ourselves” In his letter to followers of Jesus in Rome — urging them to offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God — the apostle Paul wrote:

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. — Romans 12:3

What have have you done in last 60 days to see yourself as you truly are?

How intentional would you say you are about that as a leadership discipline?

What can you do in the next 30 days as an exercise in sober self-assessment?

Marcum + Smith identify four early warning signs of bad ego. They might be summarized as:

• too much comparing and competitiveness
• defensiveness
• showing off
• trying too hard

Steve Smith says, “Humility is a powerful antidote to unhealthy ego, and we can either humble ourselves, or wait for life to humble us.” The apostle Peter expressed a clear preference:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. — 1 Peter 5:6-7

Would you rather wait for life to humble you or humble yourself proactively?

What are the greatest impediments to leading from humility for you?

What can you do with God’s help in the next 30 days to confront those challenges?