When Ego Sabotages Success: A Story of Missed Opportunities for Psychological Safety

Discover how ego derailed a critical project and led to the failure of a product, highlighting the importance of psychological safety and collaboration. Learn what could have been done differently to foster a more supportive and successful environment.

There are moments in our careers where we learn the hard way how personal dynamics—such as ego, fear of failure, and a desire for control—can disrupt team collaboration, hinder progress, and ultimately lead to the failure of even the most promising projects. These moments often happen subtly, without a clear sense of how things will go wrong, but when we reflect on them, the lessons are undeniable.

In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share a personal story about a project I worked on as a consultant, and how ego, combined with a lack of psychological safety, led to disastrous outcomes for a team, a product, and the entire client relationship.

This story highlights how essential it is to create environments of trust, openness, and vulnerability in order to avoid these negative outcomes. When ego overrides collaboration, psychological safety vanishes, and the consequences are far-reaching.