The Ego in the Room

This Week's Big Theme

"Simple advice for CEOs: make results the most important measure of personal success or step down from the job. The future of the company you lead is too important for customers, employees and stockholders to hold it hostage to your ego." — Patrick Lencioni, The Five Temptations of a CEO

Strong. But here's the thing — most leaders aren't losing to arrogance. They're losing to comfort.

Ego doesn't always look like a big personality in the room. More often, it looks like a leader who won't have the hard conversation because they want to be liked. An agent who trusts their gut over their own process — and pays for it when a deal falls apart. A team that built everything around one lead source because it was easy, and never developed the muscles to generate their own.

This week, I watched all three play out in real time.

One leader openly acknowledged they'd been playing the 'nice guy' — keeping the peace, softening the standard. They're making the shift. Another client lost three consecutive deals by skipping their own vetting process — different situation each time, same root cause. A larger team is now rebuilding from the ground up after years of lead-receiving left them with no lead-generating culture when that source dried up.

None of these people are arrogant. They're human. But the result — in each case — is a business held hostage to comfort.

Make results the measure. Not comfort. Not harmony. Not ease.

3 Levels, One Lesson

Comfort is not a strategy. Results are.

Solo Agent: Where are you trusting instinct instead of your process? Gut feel has a place. But if you've lost deals, stalled your pipeline, or avoided conversations your numbers are telling you to have — your ego might be running the meeting.

Mid-Level Team: The hard conversation you keep not having? That's not kindness — it's self-protection. The standard you've been softening? Your team knows. Holding people accountable to results is an act of respect, not control.

Large Team: If your business model only works when conditions are favorable, comfort built it. True leaders build organizations that generate what they need. The question isn't 'are we hitting goals when everything works?' It's 'can we produce when it doesn't?'

From the Field

One client lost three deals in a row. Different situations — same cause. They had stopped running their vetting process. Trusted their read of the room over the system. Each time, an undisclosed decision-maker or an unconfirmed agreement derailed the close. The debrief wasn't about tactics. It was about humility.

One Question for the Week

Where in your business are you letting comfort run the show — and what result is that costing you?

Quick Hits

Hitting your activity numbers doesn't mean you're hitting your results. Check both.

Hiring from desperation is a tell. Candidates sense it. Make the hire before you need it.

Cutting a marketing spend with zero ROI after a year isn't giving up — it's a results-first decision.

AI Tip

After a tough call or a failed deal, paste your notes in and use this prompt: "Based on this situation, where did I prioritize comfort or relationship over process or results? What would a results-first decision have looked like at each key moment?" Use it as a debrief tool — not just a summary tool.

Worth Your Attention

The Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick Lencioni. It's a short read — written as a fable — but the framework is sharp. Lencioni lays out five ways leaders quietly sabotage their own effectiveness, starting with one: choosing personal status over results. If you lead anything — a solo business, a team, or a company — this one is worth your time.