When employees are always trying to be right, trying to prove their point, or trying to show why a customer is wrong, nobody wins, including the company.  Employee ego must be left at the door because customer service means successfully servicing customers’ needs, not the employee’s own needs.  Your employees get paid to fulfill job requirements that entail providing service and satisfaction to every customer.  The consequences of an ego driven employee can be detrimental to your business.  Not only does the customer suffer, but also other employees suffer as well.  Here are some conditions that can occur with an ego driven employee:

• Conflict.  Since this employee has to defend their point, a collaborative effort to resolve a problem will be difficult.  This employee resists customer or coworker participation because it may infringe upon their thinking.
• Only thinking about personal interests.  An ego driven employee does not care about the team or team results.  The only result this person is concerned about is how the decision will affect him or her.  This employee makes selfish decisions that benefit their own interests which deters a team from achieving goals.
• Hard to work with.  An employee who is not open minded and who does not see a situation from everyone’s perspective will be hard to coach and hard to manage.  Fellow coworkers will find working with this person to be quite tedious.
• Little dedication to the team.  How much dedication can you get out of an employee who is always thinking about themselves?  Not much.  An ego driven employee only sees the risk and reward for themselves.  This could pose a problem if a team goal requires a little risk and this employee is not willing to commit 100% to the project or the team.
• Trust.  An ego driven employee has a hard time trusting the employees around him or her that do not agree with their views.  Trust is the fundamental part of team work.  Without trust you are left with tentative contributions and unproductive results.
• No regard for team results.  Team results come second to personal results for an ego driven employee.  If they are involved with a team project that does really well but they made a few mistakes then they will be angry, conversely, if a team project fails but the ego driven employee did exceptionally well they will be happy.  Results are only deemed a success to the ego driven employee if they personally succeeded in the assignment.

Do you have any ego driven employees?  It is time to seek out those individuals and make sure they are redirected and focused on team results.  Such employees can damage your company in more ways than one and should be dealt with immediately.  An ego driven employee is not the worst employee in the world because they do carry some good qualities such as attention to detail, hardworking mentality, committed to their own tasks, and most likely looking for ways to further their career.  Those all point to personal gratification and a bit of selfishness but with the proper leadership this employee can be reprogrammed to become a valuable team member.  If you have members that are unwilling to change for the greater good, it might be time to rethink who the best employees are in order for your company to succeed.