Do you ever feel like you’re stuck, as if something is keeping you from achieving your full potential? This can be really frustrating, especially when you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is that’s keeping you from leveling up.

In looking for the answer you might examine factors like your training, experience, current work environment, even your boss or peers. But, have you looked at your ego? It may surprise you to know that ego, whether overinflated or underdeveloped, is a symptom of a fixed mindset. In the stories below you’ll see how it held back two very different people:

I was part of a team coaching effort for a healthcare organization, conducting one-on-one meetings to walk through 360 feedback with individuals. Raul, one of the leaders I worked with, was incredibly arrogant. He had given himself fives, the top score, on every one of more than 100 questions.

In all my years of practice I’d never seen that before and said so when Raul sat down with me. He replied that he believed he was at the top of his game and that justified his top scores. I remarked that his manager had given him some fours and Raul said he noticed that, too. I pushed a little further and said, “It seems he doesn’t think you’re doing as well as you think you are in some important areas.” Raul agreed that was true but then shrugged it off and said, “He needs to improve his understanding of my value.”

Rather than acknowledging his deficits and making the effort to work on them, Raul was choosing to cover them with a thick veneer of arrogance. He clearly was not fooling anyone but himself and, in the process, was missing an opportunity to make changes that would help his career. Now let’s look at someone on the opposite end of the “ego spectrum:”

Anita was a technical leader for an international company and all her peers said the sky was the limit for her. Unfortunately, Anita did not believe that to be true. In fact, when I walked through the 360 feedback with her, she had ranked herself much lower than her peers had, and even teared up when she was how much people value her. Anita didn’t like to speak her mind and dodged conflict whenever possible.

This was a problem because she had several fairly aggressive, dominant peer and Anita did not advocate for herself when interacting with these individuals. Through role playing I imitated the peer and gave her a safe space to practice new phrasings, tone of voice and body language. By doing this, and reminding her of the positive peer feedback she’d received, Anita moved out of her comfort zone and into more of a growth mindset.

Before we started working together, Anita was like Raul in that she was not working to change what she dismissed as simply being “who she is”. Whether it manifests itself as arrogance or self-deprecation, a fixed mindset is often at the root of what keeps us from excelling.

Think about where you are on the ego spectrum. Then ask if a growth mindset might help you re-frame some of the beliefs you have about yourself so you can become your best self.

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