Mind&Body@Work

Well-being and the Quiet Ego

Timm Esque Episode 11

To learn more about addressing well-being on your team, visit (https://www.evleaderlab.com/well-being). 

Our guest, Heidi Wayment is a Regents’ Professor at Northern Arizona University. She earned her PhD in social psychology at UCLA and joined the faculty at Northern Arizona University in 1996. A successful teacher and scholar, she is named Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the Association of Psychological Science and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.

Heidi and her colleague, _____, coined the term Quiet Ego to describe the leadership stance of living from your values for the benefit of yourself AND others.  To paraphrase, it is not about holding back, but simply supporting and making room for those around you to thrive as well. 

One of their key findings has been that most people understand and have the capacity to take action from this stance, but that it seems we could all also help from reminders - cues to interrupt the tendency to fall back into egotistical or self-protecting thoughts and behaviors (why me, this isn’t fair, etc.).

The conversation also dips into many related topics such as how we can measure the physiological benefits of a quiet ego and where does wisdom come from?

To learn more about the Quiet Ego, Heidi recommends this article https://bit.ly/3W5b7LP or simply Googling the Quiet Ego, also her book collection of articles on the topic - Transcending Self-Interest:Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego, co-edited with Jack J. Bauer.

#mind&body@work, #embodiedleadership, #wellbeingatwork, #quietego