Ambition is a gift until it becomes a liability.
In the work I do with the Leadership Circle Profile, Ambition is one of the most common reactive tendencies I see on the leadership assessment.
It makes sense: Ambition gets people promoted. It drives results. It’s often the reason someone earned a seat at the executive table in the first place.
Ambition is a strength, but any strength overused becomes a barrier to effectiveness. And that’s just when it’s showing up in one leader on a team.
Now put six highly ambitious leaders on the same team. What do you get?
Competition instead of collaboration. Information hoarded instead of shared. Decisions optimized for individual wins rather than collective ones. A subtle (or not so subtle) jockeying for position that everyone can feel but no one names.
The very thing that made each leader successful becomes the thing that makes the team dysfunctional.
And you can’t fix it by telling ambitious people to “be more collaborative.” That’s like telling someone to stop being who they are. It doesn’t work … and it misses the point.
The work isn’t to eliminate ambition. It’s to help each leader see how their ambition shows up — the reactive patterns underneath it, the impact on others, the moments when it serves them and the moments when it doesn’t.
And then (and this is the part most people skip) you have to give the team the shared language and norms to channel that ambition productively. Individual awareness without team structure just creates self-conscious competition.
You have to work both levels, the individual and the team. The leader who sees their pattern clearly. The team that can hold each other accountable to something different.
That’s how ambition stops being a liability and starts being an asset again.
Hey there! I’m a leadership team whisperer, executive coach, and speaker. I guide leadership teams in high-growth companies to achieve rapid growth in a healthy, sustainable way. I coach senior leaders to discover the path to lead with ease.
Like this post? Want to see more? Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Recent Comments