Edith Head dressed just about every star you can think of over her 50 year career designing costumes for more than 1,100 films. A large part of that success came down to being the ultimate team player.
“Inside I was a Prima Donna who insisted that a costume be made my way or not at all. Outside I was the model employee, easy to get along with and always on time.”
For Head to succeed she needed to win the confidence and trust of the stars she dressed, including incredibly demanding performers like Marlene Dietrich. Doing that required her to dampen down her own ego in order to serve the people she worked with.
Had she behaved like the prima donna she wanted to be, she would never had been able to design and deliver costumes for 30-40 films a year.
Had she not enabled herself to work on so many films, she would never have been nominated for 45 Oscars.
She may have won some, but maybe not the eight she eventually had on her mantlepiece.
Ego is important (we have to believe in ourselves) but we have to be able to recognise when our ego becomes the enemy (hat tip to Ryan Holliday) and our behaviour needs to change.
Being able to keep our ego in check is a vital part of leadership. Sometimes we need to allow others to shine if we want to achieve our goals.
This post first appeared on my Linkedin profile.