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A fine balance: A leader’s guide to ambition

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ESSENTIALS FOR LEADERS AND THOSE THEY LEAD

Brought to you by Liz Hilton Segel, chief client officer and managing partner, global industry practices, & Homayoun Hatami, managing partner, global client capabilities

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “vaulting ambition” takes the protagonist down a dangerous path and ultimately to a tragic end. History and literature illustrate the perils of overreaching all too clearly: high achievers don’t always succeed in balancing professional success with happier or healthier lives. Yet if leaders can achieve that balance, ambition can fuel outstanding personal and organizational accomplishments. This week, let’s explore some strategies that may help you reach your own goals with integrity—without neglecting those of the people you lead, your family, and society.

AN IDEA

Digital illustration of a figure walking up a mountainside

Motivations matter

You’re a senior executive who aspires to be CEO. But are you sure you really want the role? Leaders who desire the top job should do some intense soul-searching first, according to McKinsey senior partners Carolyn Dewar , Scott Keller , Vikram Malhotra , and Kurt Strovink . “Take a gut check of your motivations and expectations,” they advise. “If it’s all about you, or if you’re doing it out of a sense of obligation, know that the top will be a hostile, extreme place where no one will rescue you during times of trouble.” For example, if your idea of acting like a CEO is to run the place any way you like, that’s an unsustainable motivation; a sustainable one would be to respond to all stakeholders and be accountable for everything. Without such shifts in mindset , “not only will you find that the effort required to be CEO outweighs any personal gain, but you will also be less likely to succeed,” the authors say.

A BIG NUMBER

40%

That’s the percentage of women who feel that their managers showed an interest in their career, says McKinsey senior partner Lareina Yee in this podcast. “What we see is that women have very high ambitions, as they always have, and they are not seeing the ability to fulfill those ambitions in the places where they work,” she points out. Our Women in the Workplace 2022 study shows that women are still dramatically underrepresented in leadership roles. Leaders can help remedy this with a mix of “tactics and practical things,” says Yee. “A practical question is, who do you sponsor in your team, and what percentage of them are women and what percentage of them are people of color? And when you are a sponsor, how often do you check in?”

A QUOTE

“Whatever your ambitions, you’ll not only be remembered for what you achieve, your greatest legacy just might be how you achieve it.”

That’s former IBM chair and CEO Ginni Rometty in a conversation with McKinsey. Recounting her journey from childhood poverty to the C-suite, Rometty describes how she achieved her goals by learning to do “meaningful things in a positive way.” That meant living with discomfort, asking for help as needed, committing to service and purpose, and developing resilience. “This is the way I think about everything I do, that there is a way forward,” she says. “We each have to accept the responsibility that if we’re blessed with moving on in these roles, we have to be a role model and embrace it to a large degree.”

A SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW

Ambition can be defined as “a powerful yearning and drive to attain a future state that is different from today’s and challenging to reach,” says author and leadership coach Nicolai Tillisch in this interview with McKinsey. But it has its limitations, he warns: the very qualities of ambition that enable high achievement—such as perseverance, boldness, and flexibility—can create major imbalances in life. To achieve both success at work and personal fulfillment, people should nurture achievement, growth, and well-being on an ongoing basis, says Tillisch. “If you compromise on one of the three for a long period of time, then you will hurt the two others.”

THIS NEEDS TO STOP

Digital illustration of a man opening his shirt, like Superman, to reveal comic strips about business life

Ambition is about new beginnings—and endings. A CEO of a global company achieved major success early in his tenure by terminating millions of dollars’ worth of technology projects and marketing campaigns that were not core to the business. Aspiring leaders may need to avoid dead-end jobs and focus instead on “career catapults” that help them make an outsize impact , as noted in this Harvard Business Review article. One CEO “didn’t wait for the big mess to find her,” say the authors. “She sought it out.” By taking on the disorganized projects that no one else wanted, this executive proved that she could deliver positive outcomes for the business—and ended up leading the company as a result.

Lead with healthy ambition.

— Edited by Rama Ramaswami, senior editor, New York

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by "McKinsey Leading Off" <publishing@email.mckinsey.com> - 02:29 - 20 Mar 2023

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A fine balance: A leader’s guide to ambition

Motivations matter

“Whatever your ambitions, you’ll not only be remembered for what you achieve, your greatest legacy just might be how you achieve it.”