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Offense: Steve Jobs is a perfect example of how ego can work both for and against you. Jobs is a creative genius. And yet he has an "amazing ability to alienate some people and drive them away from his organization."

Classic Wins and Stumbles: Early in his career, Jobs was described as someone who "[ruled] by force of personality, making numerous enemies with his ridiculing of the ideas of others, his unwillingness to hear views contrary to his own, and his outbursts of bad temper."

But why expect Jobs to be inclusive or respectful when his business genius grew Apple from a startup in his parents' garage into a $2 billion organization by the time he was 30?

Because what he accomplished up to that point is a narrow view of what he was capable of achieving. When we're too narrow in our development of traits, it limits what we accomplish.

As it turns out, humility had a lesson in store for Jobs when he was fired in 1985 by the same company he started.

"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," said Jobs in a commencement speech to Stanford University. "I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -- that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me."

Stunned at the turn of events, Jobs started a computer company appropriately named NeXT, which didn't come close to producing the success of Apple. Seven years later, Jobs closed the factory, laid off half the employees and shifted the company's direction to software development. Not until 1995 did NeXT turn a profit.

Soon after, Apple bought the company for $400 million, and the story gets more interesting. In 1997, Jobs was named "interim" CEO of Apple, which was in near free fall. One of his first moves was to drop NeXT's operating system that Apple had purchased from him.

Such a move wasn't the Steve Jobs of old. "Every year he's mellowed and matured," said Susan Kelly Barnes, NeXT's former chief financial officer, in an interview.

Although he was still certain that his vision for Apple was the only right one, Jobs' management style had radically changed from what it had been in 1985. He seemed to relish other people's ideas; perhaps his work at Pixar had improved his ability to work with the creative people at Apple.

"I'm pretty sure none of this [NeXT, Pixar, his return to Apple, the iPod and iTunes] would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple," said Jobs. "It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."

Recovery: You can learn by conscience, or by consequence. To educate your conscience, ask people for feedback about what it's like to work with you. Don't let your ego work against you, trying to "protect" you from the honest assessment of other people. Your potential is waiting to hear what they have to say.