The Disease of Me Inoculation
Protect teams and organizations from the ego that follows success.
Pat Riley observed that winning teams follow a predictable trajectory: an innocent climb built on collective effort, followed by the Disease of Me as individual egos emerge with success. Players calculate their own importance, chests swell, and the bonds that created success begin to fray. The inoculation is modeling selfless leadership, maintaining balanced relationships with status and recognition, and being magnanimous even when you have the power not to be. General George Marshall exemplified this by repeatedly turning down honors and letting credit go to others, not out of weakness but from the confidence that real results matter more than recognition.
- Success predictably produces the ego inflation that erodes the collective effort that created the success in the first place.
- Modeling selfless leadership inoculates teams against the status-seeking that fractures winning cultures.
- Magnanimity when you have the power to be otherwise signals institutional strength rather than weakness.
- Turning down honors and letting credit go to others builds the kind of trust that sustains performance over multiple cycles.
- The team members who calculate their own indispensability most loudly are usually the ones most at risk of making the team worse.
- Model selfless behavior from the topAs a leader, deliberately let others take credit for wins. Turn down honors that would elevate you at the expense of team cohesion. When you have the power to take revenge on someone who wronged you, choose magnanimity instead -- if they are still useful, use them; if not, simply move on.
- Watch for early symptoms of the DiseaseMonitor for signs: team members calculating their individual importance, frustration about relative recognition, chest-swelling after wins, political maneuvering, leaks to outside parties. These are early indicators that collective bonds are fraying and egos are taking over.
- Reconnect the team to shared purposeWhen symptoms appear, redirect attention from individual recognition back to collective mission. Remind the team what brought them together before success. Create structures that reward collaboration over individual heroics. Make it clear through your own behavior that the cause is bigger than any one person.
- Maintain a balanced relationship with statusInsist on the respect you've earned (Marshall required the president to call him General Marshall), but actively decline honors that would feed ego at the expense of mission. Know the difference between appropriate dignity and status-seeking.
When Roosevelt offered Marshall the most coveted military command in history -- leading the D-Day invasion -- Marshall refused to advocate for himself, saying 'The decision is yours, Mr. President; my wishes have nothing to do with the matter.' The role went to Eisenhower. Marshall also declined efforts to award him the rank of field marshal, partly because it would outrank his dying mentor General Pershing.
Pat Riley observed that winning teams follow a predictable trajectory: an innocent climb built on collective effort, followed by the Disease of Me as individual egos emerge with success. Players calculate their own importance, chests swell, and the bonds that created success begin to fray. The inoculation is modeling selfless leadership, maintaining balanced relationships with status and recognition, and being magnanimous even when you have the power not to be. General George Marshall exemplifie