How the Process Works

Understandably, people don’t like to admit that they’ve let go of their ambition for fear that their supervisor will assume they’ve lost their drive and desire to achieve goals. In fact, they often don’t like to admit it to themselves. After years of continuous striving, it feels odd not to be driven to move on to the next big assignment. As a result, some people never experience this passage because they believe, almost obsessively, that they must keep seeking the next job or title, even though their heart is not in it. They are the ones who sometimes receive a promotion but look wistfully back at their previous job.

Letting go of ambition doesn’t happen overnight. It is the result of years of experience and feedback. You realize that what everyone had told you about success isn’t necessarily true. You discover that it is not a black-or-white proposition, that it’s not just about winning and losing. Many of us grow up wanting to be CEOs or have some other highly ambitious career goal such as winning a Nobel Prize, being on the cover of Fortune magazine, or receiving a prestigious scientific award. Such goals are important, but sooner or later almost everyone comes to terms with the fact that they’re not going to happen. In this passage, you come to terms with your aspirations. You accept that success is not just moving up but it is moving in place. You can achieve great things doing exactly what you’ve been doing and doing it better.

Learning to Love Being Second: Malcolm

Malcolm, for instance, has had a stellar career. An engineer by training, he ran a few smaller software companies and is now the chief technology officer for a large corporation. Earlier in his career, Malcolm had a “conqueror” mentality. He was highly ambitious and started two software firms with an eye toward challenging the giants of the industry. By the time he started up a third firm, however, Malcolm had learned that although he loved the product development process, he did not like the operational responsibilities of running a business. He was not interested in selection, management meetings, or operational reviews. The financial details of the business bored him. He sold his last firm to his present employer, and during the first few months as part of the new company, he realized that he never again wanted to have his own company, nor did he aspire to head the one he was in. As the company’s chief technologist, he was more content than he had ever been.

I became less and less happy with my work, and I realized that I was spending all my time and energy in numbers and no real time working with people, working with customers, motivating employees, developing innovative new products—all the things I love to do. I was on the track to be CEO at Honeywell, and there were others, too. I thought about that, and I said if I get to be CEO, it’s going to be five to seven years to get the company back to where it was, not to where I wanted it to be.

One day I was driving home after work, and I had this vision of being very unhappy at Honeywell and deciding to move on. I realized that this was all about chasing my ego to be CEO of this large corporation. When I faced myself in the mirror, I realized that Honeywell was changing me more than I was changing Honeywell.

Bill George, former chairman and CEO, Medtronic

The large company was enormously challenging to Malcolm, and he delighted in finding ways to improve the company’s existing products, as well as coming up with ideas for new ones. He also enjoyed coaching other people through their technological problems. Because he was so knowledgeable and innovative and so quickly contributed to the business, the company gave Malcolm free rein to create his job description. He told them he didn’t want to supervise people, and he wanted to report to the CEO. Malcolm also said that he would like to attend every one of his son’s football games; he served as the team’s assistant coach. Certainly, Malcolm could have demanded more from his organization, and his acumen made him a potential candidate to succeed the CEO. Instead, Malcolm recognized that he had everything he wanted in his current job, and he was clear with both himself and others that this was the case.

Gradually Losing Focus: Marissa

Contrast Malcolm with Marissa, who had done consistently well in marketing positions over the course of a thirty-year career. She had always brought a good mixture of marketing savvy and managerial skill to these positions, and on top of that she was empathic and trusted by her direct reports. We were called in to coach Marissa, though, because in her most recent position as vice president of marketing for a major airline, she was struggling. Given the intense competition and financial uncertainties, potential bankruptcies, and price wars all airlines have been going through, the position was a challenge. Marissa, however, seemed ideally suited to the job and, given her history, it was surprising that she wasn’t doing better.

The information we were given suggested that she seemed to have lost her focus. Direct reports complained that Marissa wasn’t available to them, didn’t offer clear directions, and wasn’t willing to take the time to provide them with much useful feedback. What was confusing to both direct reports and her supervisor was that, at times, Marissa was her old self; she still worked well with the company’s outside advertising and public relations agencies and provided them with strong direction. In other instances, Marissa did not seem to be a strong leader, have a clear vision, or bring as much energy to this senior role as it required.

If you weren’t aware of what the passages entail, you might think that Marissa was in a slump, either dealing with a personal issue or just being unable to function well at the top. In reality, she was going through the letting-go-of-ambition passage. She eventually told us that she had promised herself that she would work for the airline for five years and then retire (she had been with them for two years when we started working with her). Though she was pleased with her retirement timeframe, she was finding it difficult to come to terms with her new persona.

As a female marketing executive who had encountered bias because of her gender, she had always fought hard for her promotions. Marissa had put in a great deal of time and effort to master organizational politics and had made a number of savvy career moves. For the first time, however, she had no desire to be political. She wasn’t scanning the organization or the outside for better opportunities, or competing in meetings, or trying to influence her boss to obtain more real estate or treasure. As much as she liked her current job and was perfectly content to do it for the next three years, she was unconsciously reducing her impact because she was oblivious to this passage. Marissa had assumed that her ambition was the reason she worked so hard and so well. Having let go of her ambition, she had lost some of her energy and vitality. Only when she became aware of this letting-go process and talked about it was she able to focus on something else of importance—doing outstanding work, developing people, and leaving a legacy. She realized that she had a great job, that she liked the company and the industry and needed to direct her considerable talent to doing the job as well as she possibly could. She was entering the “mastery” stage of her career, in which constant progression is replaced by constant improvement.