When it comes to ambition, I increasingly see two camps at war with each other. I encounter both in the executive world.
They tell themselves very different stories, and each seems convinced the other has got it badly wrong. I find both of them rather strange.
One treats striving almost as a psychological defect. Slow down. Let go. Stop chasing. Be present.
The other never seems to know when enough is enough. Bigger role. Bigger company. Bigger number. Bigger impact.
Both miss the point.
The question is not whether ambition is good or bad.
The question is what our ambition is ultimately for.
Ambition loses me when its ultimate reference point remains me.
My career, my visibility, my influence, my compensation, my reputation, my legacy. Even the desire to “make an impact” can sometimes be ego with better vocabulary.
I have watched this kind of ambition take executives remarkably far. Organizations reward it, sometimes for decades. But I have also watched what happens when nothing beyond the self ever takes its place.
Research gives us reason to question that narrow understanding of ambition. Studies show that when people experience more directly who benefits from their work, persistence and performance can increase. A 2026 meta-analysis of 192 workplace studies points in the same direction: high-quality motivation isn’t just about competence and autonomy. Relatedness matters too.
Contribution isn’t the soft alternative to achievement. It can become part of what drives it.
Maturity doesn’t require us to abandon ambition. It requires ambition to change what it serves.
Contemplative traditions point in a similar direction. They challenge our attachment to a self that constantly needs to be built, defended and enlarged. Achievement can remain, while its center of gravity shifts.
For leadership, this is anything but soft.
Keep the drive, the standards, the hunger to build exceptional businesses. But enlarge what all that energy is for.
At 35, ambition may be about proving yourself. At 45, about building something significant. At 55, if it is still predominantly about you, you have missed something.
The strongest leaders I know haven’t lost their edge. Their ambition has widened. It includes the people they develop, the organization they leave behind, the customers they serve and consequences they may never personally benefit from.
That is not less ambition. It is ambition in service of more.
The anti-achievement crowd risks throwing away one of the great engines of human progress. But the ambition-obsessed have some growing up to do as well.
A bigger title, bigger bonus and bigger legacy don’t automatically add up to a bigger life.