Leadership Paradox Of Ambition
Posted on 28. Jul, 2010 by Guest in Entrepreneurialism
Leadership Workshop (10 of 12) – Start with Yourself
Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 specific ways an organization must act and behave to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.
The Ambition Paradox is a concept in Leading at Light Speed described in Chapter 9 along with three other Leadership Paradoxes. Buy the book to read about the other three.
True leaders are ambitious – but their ambitions are in service to something greater than themselves. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Barack Obama – these were ambitious men who knew what to sacrifice for the good of the cause. Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant, describes it as a singular focus on defining what the organization needs. When Louis Gerstner took over at IBM, he saw the need for far greater customer focus. Jack Welch, when he took the reins at General Electric, saw that the company needed to narrow its focus to businesses that were at the very top of its marketplace. When Darwin Smith took over at Kimberly-Clark, he saw the need to sell the mills and focus on the paper products business. Let it not be said that these were not men of ambition. But more importantly, each believed they knew what it was that the organization needed from them. No one told Gerstner or Welch or Smith to do these things. Each had the ambition to get it done. At the same time, these were the things that needed to be done.
Leaders master the fine line between self-serving ambition and selfless ambition. The simple fact is that successful leadership comes when effective business decisions are made despite ensuing challenges and some personal upset. So when faced with the ambition paradox, ask yourself: “Am I willing to suffer some personal loss – even up to losing my comfortable way of life or my job – in order to do what’s right?” If the answer is yes, then you’ve found the path through the ambition paradox.
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