Being too ambitious in life and being not ambitious enough is clearly a no-no for many organizations. And when it comes to leadership, one has to be ambitious enough to rise to the challenges. So, how can a leader balance their ambition and help their team grow? This blog is dedicated to balancing ambitions with leadership and how instrumental it can be in rising to the challenges that show up.

Nurturing and Expressing Ambitions

It is noteworthy that a majority of leaders fail to view ambition as a vital catalyst for growth. They either end up suppressing it under the name of teamwork spirit or overindulge in it setting unrealistic goals. Guess what, each of these is earmarked by a consequence.

When in excess, ambition can sabotage your reputation, and relationships and can yield to failure. On the other hand, not being ambitious enough can portray you as an unmotivated fellow. This can culminate in not performing to the best of one’s emotions. Therefore mindset development is crucial to nurture and express a healthy level of ambition. 

When the level of your ambition is healthy, you can work more innovatively, can garner job satisfaction, and can even give better results.

How to Strike a Healthy Degree of Ambition?

Performance, Growth, and Achievement are three dimensions that can be developed to strike a healthy degree of ambition. Along with this, one is expected to recognize the desires, tensions, and their underlying causes.  

Performance 

Realizing the potential your performance carries can help ambitious women mentors and their teams understand the aspirations of their organization in a better manner. This very understanding can culminate in the right level of difficulty and discomfort via habits and routine. And this will ultimately define your desired outcomes. Leaders should always make sure that the objectives they wish to meet by the end of, say a year, should be in alignment with where the team stands currently. If the challenge is too great, you risk giving up or becoming discouraged when you fall short. If the challenge isn’t great enough, you risk becoming bored or never realizing the full potential of your efforts. Make a mental note that both your desires and discontent can emerge as guiding lights in your life. Your desire and discontent could raise the bar in both situations. Perhaps you are dissatisfied with your team’s inability to beat a rival competitor but know that with the right service levels, you could handsomely outperform them. Perhaps you are unhappy with your team’s work ethic, but now with a change of attitude, they could reach their goals. Discontent fuels our convictions that things can and should be improved while desire creates the energy to move toward that improvement. 

Growth

Ambitious leadership shouldn’t be just focussed on the desired outcomes but on growth as well. The very realization of where things are today and where you want them to be can reveal learning gaps that you may need to close in order to realize your aspirations. 

Achievement

Whether it’s a deeper sense of purpose and contribution, a higher salary, promotion, or recognition for their expertise, leaders are driven, in part, by the rewards they stand to gain for success. When the performance and growth elements of ambition take a back seat to achievement, you start to appear propelled by greed and self-indulgence. Having the “pause button” hit — as it has been in most of our lives — makes this a wonderful time to step back and reflect on our professional aspirations.

At LadiesWhoLead, we help leaders cultivate an ambitious women network. Gauge and cultivate your level of ambition with us. Join us now.