Why Getting Into Harvard Is Overrated: The Ego Trap
Do you know the difference between mastery and ego goals?
When my son Charlie was nine years old, he started making fast progress in Tae Kwon Do. He’d been learning since he was four and was now practicing several hours a week at a good school in Maryland. The Master invited him to be part of a team representing the state in his age group at a competition in New York City.
That was a big mistake.
When we arrived in New York, I realized this competition was for gifted kids. The best in the world. Charlie ranked last in every event: form, sparring, and board-breaking. Not just last, but he got “destroyed,” as he later described it.
What went wrong
Charlie’s goals at Tae Kwon Do were ego-driven: get the next belt and do well relative to others. His sense of self-worth was shattered that day. If only he had had a mastery orientation, which seems critical in martial arts, maybe he would still be involved in Tae Kwon Do.
He pushed hard to get his black belt (an ego-driven goal) and quit immediately after.
Now, thankfully, he seems to be enjoying weightlifting, with more of a mastery orientation.
In his book David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell explains that high-achieving, but not genius-level, students who attend prestigious Ivy League universities tend to give up on their ambitions more than other students. They face their version of Charlie’s Tae Known Do competition when they get on campus. They may have been at the top of their local high school academically, but when they compete with the Mozarts of their fields, their egos shatter. Gladwell suggests that if they attend less competitive universities, these students are more likely to achieve their goals, such as becoming doctors or engineers.
Mastery in business
Mastery in business leadership is all about process. It means obsessing over HOW you do things. Mastery means improving your technology, operations, culture, supply chain management, recruiting capabilities, strategic planning, ability to engage in mergers and acquisitions, and so much more.
It’s about sharpening the organization’s saw so it can chop down more trees. Often, it feels counterintuitive to prioritize process improvement over short-term financial results.
You will rarely see the impact of process improvement in your next quarterly earnings. You may even have to take a step back in profitability to invest in the organization’s future. Yet if you lead your organization with a mastery mindset, and everyone gets excited about doing things better, faster, and cheaper, then over time, you’ll deliver extraordinary results.
Mastery is a commitment to process, not a chase for validation. Ego-driven goals might get you quick wins, but they rarely lead to long-term success.
Seb
Watch this fun video below I made (with some help ;-). Sometimes, the pursuit of goals turns into an obsession. Don’t lose sight of life itself while chasing what’s ahead.
When he decided to write a book on leadership and self-improvement, Sébastien Page was rejected by over 200 literary agents.
He was asked, “Why would a finance expert write about leadership?” He was told to stay in his lane.
Sébastien has more than two decades of leadership experience. As an author, he believes breakthroughs often happen when experts venture outside their field. That is why, in "The Psychology of Leadership," he went beyond finance and economics to study research in psychology.
He is currently Head of Global Multi-Asset and Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price. He oversees a team of investment professionals actively managing over $500 billion in assets under management.
Sébastien won research paper awards from The Journal of Portfolio Management in 2003, 2010, 2011, and 2022 and the Financial Analysts Journal in 2010 and 2014. In addition to The Psychology of Leadership, he is the author of Beyond Diversification: What Every Investor Needs to Know About Asset Allocation (McGraw Hill, 2020) and the coauthor of Factor Investing and Asset Allocation (CFA Institute Research Foundation, 2016).
Sébastien is also a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal, and the Board of Directors of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (Q Group). He regularly appears in the media, including Bloomberg TV and CNBC, and was recently named amongst the 15 Top Voices in Finance by LinkedIn.
Hey Seb- I enjoyed the Substack post today and the story of Charlie’s Tae Keon Do experience. I loved Olivia’s sassy intro too. The post reminded me of my running experience, chasing PRs. I think seeking PRs gave me good motivation to keep running and training to get better. I didn’t start running until age 60 and I had some success with a big marathon PR at 65 and then PRs in 5K and mile at 72. But five years later comparing past performance with current reality is self-defeating. I think I’m done with ego-driven goals now and ready for mastery now with health as my goal.
Tim