The Line Between Leadership & Ego
“Don’t call it manipulation if it’s just superior strategy.”
Meet Alex. Charming, decisive. Alex may even seem like the kind of person you want in a crisis, the kind of person you might even follow. Alex could be any gender. Could be your roommate, partner, or friend, but for today’s topic, let’s say Alex is your highly visible, charismatic work partner.
The Set Up: Your team was tasked with the company's biggest client presentation of the year. You have been meticulously planning every deliverable: colour-coded project timelines, customized deck templates, contingency plans for every stage.
Alex, the designated lead presenter, just watches the chaos build.
Inevitably, hiccups start: A key stakeholder review was cancelled. A critical piece of data was delayed. The junior designer you were counting on quit.
Alex’s strategic move? Inaction.
When you, the dedicated project manager, finally collapsed in silent, exhausted defeat, Alex steps in. Not to fix the underlying issues. No. Instead, Alex makes a high-profile, last-minute pivot: calls in a favour with an executive, books a slick, external meeting space, and flawlessly "leads the room."
Sure, maybe not all the facts were exact, but he was dressed to impress and came equipped with a wit so sharp it could kill.
So, by the time Alex is raising his glass at the celebratory team dinner, the his “project rescue mission” is complete. The executive team is relaxed, impressed, and giving Alex great big pats on the back.
Next comes Alex’s toast, framed as gratitude, delivered with a sneer: "To my meticulous partner—who spent weeks planning every little detail of this project. And thank God they did, because without their spreadsheets we never would’ve known exactly how far everything went wrong.”
You, the partner, are professionally wounded. The win felt hollow because it came at the cost of your professional standing. This isn't just poor team management; it's a calculated move where workplace strategy crosses the line into domination.
The Leader's Guide: Where Alex Went Wrong
In leadership, effectiveness is measured by shared success. In people who think like Alex, it's measured by exclusive control. Alex’s actions perfectly illustrate the ethical boundaries a true leader must never cross.
The Strategic Value of Empathy
Alex operates from the false premise that leadership means being the "most special person in the room." This is ego, not strategy.
The most enduring and successful strategy is always built on empathy and trust. Why?
Empathy Provides Better Data: Leaders who listen and care understand other’s breaking points, preventing burnout and catastrophic failure before it starts. They don't need to wait for a crisis to look competent.
Trust Creates Loyalty: A team that feels acknowledged and safe will perform better, take more risks, and achieve sustainable success. Alex's method leads to burnout, resentment, and eventual breakdown. It is, in fact, inferior long-term strategy.
What Alex calls ‘strategy’ is the erasure of other peoples’ emotional realities. What Alex thinks of as leadership is merely domination. And the quiet, surgical cruelty dressed as humour is a tool of someone prioritizing their ego over the foundation of a stable team or partnership.
| Alex's Action (Domination) | Ethical Leadership (Strategy) | The Difference |
|---|---|---|
| Waits for Chaos to Build | Principle 1: Proactive Risk Mitigation | A competent partner intervenes early to solve operational bottlenecks, viewing project failure as a shared threat. Alex viewed your struggle as a personal career opportunity. |
| Erases the Partner's Effort | Principle 2: Crediting and Psychological Safety | An ethical leader acknowledges and defends a partner's process, even when the results are hampered. Alex made you the public fall guy to clear his path to sole credit. |
| Forces Public Laughter | Principle 3: Empowering the Team | Strategy uses shared humor to unite and lower anxiety. Alex used the team dinner as a stage for self-promotion, demonstrating power over you, not shared power with you. |
Reclaiming Your Own Narrative (The True Strategy)
If you identify with the person whose pain was narrated as someone else's triumph, you must recognize that your efforts were not meaningless; they were sabotaged and re-framed.
The ultimate superior strategy is recognizing the playbook and refusing to be the raw material. Here’s a few ways how you can start doing just that:
Stop Feeding the Chaos: If someone consistently lets things fall apart only to step in and play the hero, stop trying to compensate. Don't exhaust yourself trying to fill gaps they intentionally leave open for their own dramatic entrance.
Name the Erasure: When your feelings are being rewritten ("You're too sensitive," "It was just a joke"), you don't need to debate their motives. State your reality simply: "I recognize you took over, and I didn't appreciate being the subject of the toast." Your feelings are your truth; don't let them be distorted.
Seek Shared Success: Remember that leadership and strategy are meant to build up, not tear down. Don't let someone else's fragile ego be the architecture of your pain. The healthiest systems reward empathy and collaboration, not performance and domination.
Recognizing the "Alex system" is the first win; figuring out how to exit that emotional architecture is the ultimate superior strategy.
Exiting the 'Alex System': Three Steps to Career Protection and Professional Power
In a professional setting, the "Alex" system runs on leveraging visibility and control over information. Exiting this system requires you to become a superior strategist in your own right by shifting from being an emotional partner to a data-driven colleague. Here’s how:
Invest in Documented, Solo Wins (Controlling the Metrics)
Alex's strategy is to make your effort invisible while making their "rescue" highly visible. Your counter-strategy is to meticulously document your contributions outside of Alex's direct influence.
Own the Deliverables: Identify key tasks or projects where you can claim sole ownership and deliver results autonomously. These should be wins that can be quantified and cannot be easily co-opted or re-framed by Alex.
Professional Application: Focus on specific certifications, internal committee work, developing a specialized skill, or leading small, clearly delineated projects. These achievements build a résumé that stands separate from any team dynamic.
The Paper Trail is Your Shield: Every significant contribution you make must be documented. Forward emails, save presentations, and keep a private log of key dates, decisions, and Alex's specific actions or in-actions (e.g., "Alex declined to review the data on 10/15, stating 'it wasn't the main priority yet'").
2. Establish a Professional Constitution (Defining Boundaries)
In any sort of relationship with someone like Alex, the rules constantly shift in their favour. This is by design. It’s their primary focus and its difficult to circumvent because your focus doesn’t take this into account, you just want smooth sailing for everyone and a job well done.
What you have to remember is: Your constitution defines your non-negotiable terms of engagement and replaces reactive chaos with deliberate, superior strategy. So:
Define Professional Boundaries: Outline behaviour you will not tolerate (e.g., public mockery of your work, being cut off in meetings, aggressive communication).
Execute the Consequence: When a boundary is crossed, execute a pre-planned, professional consequence. This is not emotional; it's operational.
Example: If Alex interrupts and dismisses your data in a meeting, you don't argue; you employ a neutral phrase: "Alex, I need to finish presenting the data before we debate the conclusion. [Pause]. As I was saying..."
Example: If Alex mocks your early project timeline: "We can discuss the initial planning structure offline, but right now, let's focus on the go-forward strategy." Then, refuse to engage further on the original timeline.
3. Accept the Truth of the System (Strategic Disengagement)
People like “Alex” operate on an unwavering belief that they are superior, and this means they are highly unlikely to change. Accept this. Your acceptance is not passive surrender; it is the power to redirect your energy to where it will be most productive.
Stop Expecting Empathy: Recognize that the Alexes of the world are fundamentally driven by external validation and control, not genuine partnership or repair. This frees you from the exhausting cycle of trying to make them see your worth or apologize.
Treat Alex as a Vendor, Not a Partner: Shift your mindset. View Alex strictly as someone with a specific set of required deliverables. Focus only on the professional tasks necessary to keep the project moving, and limit all non-essential communication or personal sharing.
The Exit Strategy: I sincerely hope it does not come to this, but the realist in me has to say it: The final superior strategy is acknowledging when the system becomes too toxic for your career growth. Start actively preparing your exit—whether it's a transfer, a job search, or a shift to a new internal team—using the documented solo wins from Step 1 as your highly defensible professional portfolio.
The Real Superior Strategy: Exiting the System
The "Alex system"—whether personal or professional—thrives on your goodwill, emotional exhaustion, and lack of documentation. Alex may view a quick, self-aggrandizing move as "superior strategy, but it’s a short-sighted tactic that erodes trust, burns out partners, and limits long-term growth. It's built on a lack of empathy and a fragile ego, making it inherently unstable.
The true superior strategy is yours: It's the slow, deliberate, data-driven work of reclaiming your professional narrative. It means implementing a Professional Constitution, meticulously gathering documented solo wins, and treating the manipulator as a strategic variable, not a partner you must please.
This strategy protects your career, insulates your reputation, and frees your energy from the draining cycle of performance and public shaming. You stop fighting for validation and start building a portfolio that stands on its own merit. Don't let someone else's fragile ego be the architecture of your career pain. The ultimate win is to build a life and career where Alex's narrative simply has no power.
When a project stalls, communication breaks down, or you feel the structure of your team start to wobble, the impulse is to reinforce, to tighten, to make it rigid again.