Is It Good To Be Ambitious?

3 minute read

“All of my friends have grand plans for their career. I have no idea where I want to be in 20 years time. Is there something wrong with me?” Emma was in her mid 20’s, had graduated from a top notch university and was now working for an international, well respected company in a good job, self supporting and living independently. Yet the social pressure from her equally high achieving peers was making her feel like a bit of a loser. Everyone, it seemed, had a vision for their life. They had direction, expectations of what they would achieve and the rewards they would receive in return.  Emma couldn’t seem to think much further than the job she was in. Overwhelmed with the amount of work she had on her plate, it was all she could do to keep her head above water, scrambling desperately to keep her boss happy and her internal clients satisfied.

Any half way decent self help guru would advise Emma to be more like her friends. You can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going, they might say. And certainly some planning is essential. We need to pick a field, and take courses that will enable us to enter that field. But what about setting goals like “I want to be a people manager by the time I’m 30”? Or, “I want to make enough money to retire at 50”? Or “I want to be a VP by 40”? I’d argue that this much planning of our career can have some real downsides:

Trying to control the uncontrollable. We have full control of what we put into our jobs: how much time and effort we spend on work and what skills we acquire in order to do our work better. But what we get in return is beyond our control. It’s our bosses, partners, customers and the market that determines whether we’re rewarded appropriately. If AI suddenly shrinks opportunities in our field, the chances of a promotion go out the window. If we’re unlucky enough to have a bad manager, or work for an organization that is failing, or live through a financial crisis, our goals are unlikely to be met. And trying to control things that are outside of our control is extremely frustrating. We’ll be angry at whatever or whoever blocked us. It can even make us act in ways that we don’t like, perhaps sabotaging a competitor for a promotion, or burying mistakes we’ve made in the hopes we won’t be found out.

Excessive focus on ourselves. Focusing on our own goals distracts from focusing on the goals of our organization. It’s much easier to find satisfaction in life when we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, subordinating our own needs for the greater good. When every move we make is done with a calculation of how this is going to affect our career and our bonus, with no thought to the needs of others around us, we damage our relationships and our own self image. Our relentless focus on achieving our own goals is visible to others, and organizations tend not to reward individuals who don’t put the organization first.

Excessive focus on a destination. Human beings are notoriously bad at knowing what’s going to make us happy in the future. We set ourselves a goal and assume that once we reach it, we’ll finally be able to relax and be happy. I’m reminded though, of a client who’d set himself a goal of making enough money to retire by 30. When the money from selling his start up hit his bank account all he got was a brief moment of pleasure. Followed by months of aimlessness as he tried to figure out how to live without the motivation of a goal he’d had since childhood.

So what’s the better path to take? I’d suggest that there are three questions we should ask ourselves about our job.

Are we learning, growing and enjoying what we’re doing? If the answer to these questions is yes, then it’s likely we’re positioning ourselves well for a good career. We may not be learning, growing or happy every day, but we want the overall direction to be positive. The more we learn and the more skills we have, the better positioned we’ll be for good jobs. And if we’re enjoying our work, we’re probably working hard and doing well.

Are we contributing? If we’re making a difference in our organization, it’s more likely that our career will take care of itself. Opportunities come to those who make a difference. And when we're interviewing for our next role, we’ll be able to talk confidently about accomplishments.

Are we earning the respect of the people around us? It’s not always easy to win the respect of senior people in an organization who control our promotion and salary prospects. But we have daily contact with teammates, business partners, clients, subordinates, customers or internal customers and we have a good deal of control over what they think of us.

There are of course people who like to set big goals for themselves and find that doing so motivates them enormously. There are many roads to a life well lived, and a goal oriented road suits some people best. Ambition is a great driver.

I’d only suggest to them, and to everyone, that we not lose sight of the lesser goals that are more within our control: learning, growing, enjoying, contributing and earning the respect of others. This, too, is ambition, but of a type that is likely to sustain us as well as drive us.