Ego, Ambition, and the Wisdom to Know The Difference In Leadership
Happy September, Happy Virgo Season, and Happy Back-to-School.
This time of year always carries a mixed collective energy—some of us with the post-summer sadness, and others excited to reestablish routines and get life back in order. I usually fall squarely into the latter camp. Late August often urges me to brace for what’s typically a jam-packed Fall.
But this August was different. My usual late summer rhythm of planning, projecting, and priming was interrupted by two unexpected events: a surprise (but exciting) move and, in the middle of it, a knee injury that left me on crutches. Suddenly, all of my careful planning was flipped on its head. “When the plan changes, change the plan,” became my daily mantra, and I had no choice but to rethink how to manage an already ambitious to-do list. The answer was immediately clear: I needed to ask for help.
And yet—my stomach twisted at the idea of folding anyone into my plans. Friends and loved ones would call daily, offering to pitch in, and my default response was to wave them off: I’m fine. I’ve got it covered. I can still do it myself. (Spoiler: I wasn’t fine. I didn’t have it covered. And I most definitely couldn’t do it myself… I could barely walk!). That’s when this nagging question surfaced:
Am I allowing my ambition to guide me, or is my ego getting in the way?
What Is Ambition?
At its core, ambition is a strong desire to do or achieve something. There is nothing wrong with having ambition. It's usually the place where we tap into our confidence to overcome challenges and do something meaningful in the world.
Growing up in the U.S. in the 90s, ambition was positioned as the ticket to success. Like many of my millennial peers, I was encouraged to dream big, build self-confidence, and work through my challenges--but specifically in pursuit of going to college, securing the six-figure salary, and climbing the career ladder. My ambition was rewarded so long as I was subscribing to capitalism’s demand to earn more and have more. Layer onto that an emphasis on individualism, and ambition became synonymous with being seen as entrepreneurial, innovative, and indispensable.
I was not (and am not) immune to this conditioning. To complicate things further, as a Black woman, I was forewarned that I would need to work twice as hard to succeed. My ambition then evolved with an added layer of urgency and pressure. I became determined to prove myself—to be seen as intelligent, talented, and capable alongside my non-Black peers. Many professionals share this story in different ways, shaped by other intersecting identities—whether as first-generation immigrants, women in male-dominated fields, or others who have been told their worth rests on outpacing expectations.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve wrestled with ambition, too. It has likely opened doors for you, established your reputation, and earned you recognition as a highly capable person. And yet, you may have faced moments where you asked this question:
Am I allowing my ambition to guide me, or is my ego getting in the way?
Hello, Ego 👋🏽
So, there I was, sitting in my own home with an ice pack on my knee while a dozen of my friends packed up my house. To say I was irritated would be an understatement. Yes, I had found the courage to ask for help, but as I watched my friends graciously and lovingly box up my two-bedroom home, all I could think was: I really wish I was doing this myself.
That voice? That’s my ego. The version of me that was taught ambition = proving that I can do it alone and better than anyone. At that moment, I realized how loud my ego was. It was telling me that if I can’t do it myself, then I’m not really capable, not really strong, and not really ambitious. I also realized how prevalent my ego had become over the years in other areas of my life:
Taking on too much work in my ventures as a social entrepreneur
Feeling desperate for credit, validation, and recognition for my efforts
Wanting to be the first and seen as the most innovative for my ideas
Feeling the unrelenting drive to be the highest performer in every room
The valuable lesson I learned this summer is that ego is often wrapped in ambition’s clothing. My ambition isn’t the problem--and neither is yours. The beauty of ambition is that it drives us to lead boldly and dedicate ourselves to meaningful, life-changing work. The shadow of our egos and the obsession with competency and productivity is what distorts our ambition, turning it into a performance and competition of strength, independence, and control. Ego made me believe that asking for help would diminish me, when in fact, the opposite was true. Asking for help fueled my ambition to achieve something important: pack up my house so I could move.
True ambition is expansive. It allows us to lean on and build with others. It invites us to embrace solidarity, and to pursue goals that are bigger than us alone. Importantly, ambition asks us to look at the opportunities in front of us through glasses that have reasonable prescriptions. It asks us to be self-compassionate and patient with ourselves and our dreams.
As I enter September, these are the deeper questions that have emerged:
1. What if my ambition is actually calling me toward interdependence, not independence?
2. What if the most ambitious thing I could do right now is let go of control and let others carry me?
The Wisdom To Know the Difference
You are likely already inundated with emails from people that are “circling back,” invitations that are asking you to take on more, commitments that you put on the back burner suddenly coming due, and other demands that you want to bring to completion before the year ends. It’s seasons like these that bring us to our default of doing more, proving more, and pushing harder.
My invitation is for you to practice something different this September: learn to distinguish between your Ego and your Ambition. Here are 5 leadership practice to try over the next few weeks:
1. Know the Difference in Voice and Tone
Start paying attention to how you talk to yourself when you’re driven by ambition versus ego. Ambition often sounds confident, hopeful, and encouraging. Ego, on the other hand, can carry tones of shame, aggression, or defensiveness. If you’re not sure how to quite describe these tones, check out this Emotional Wheel to practice some emotional granularity. When you recognize ego is speaking, you don’t have to shut it down. You can pause, ask what it needs, and prevent it from steering you into reactionary leadership.
2. Check Your Self-Worth Engine Light
In these moments of pause, you might also ask yourself if your self-worth is in check. Self-worth is our inherent sense of feeling valuable and good enough. There is so much that can trip up and diminish our sense of self-worth--everything from rejection, to conflict with others, to stressful events. When self-worth dips, our ego can get into the driver’s seat and force us to lead from a place of insecurity, which might manifest as micromanaging or making fear-based decisions. If you feel like your self-worth engine check light is on, that is a cue to embrace some healing practices--like mindfulness or talking with a positive and uplifting loved one.
3. Ask If and How Help Would Make a Difference
One of the clearest ways to tell whether ambition or ego is leading is to explore the idea of asking for help. Ambition recognizes the joy of collaboration and the strength of shared leadership. Ego, in contrast, resists help—out of fear of looking weak or being exposed. Practice this: the next time you’re working toward a goal, pause and ask: Who else could bring value here? Who might even love to support me? As Simon Sinek reminds us, asking for help gives others “the honor of being there to support you.”
4. Rest, Rest, and Rest Some More
If we embrace ambition in its truest essence, then it means we must embrace that our ability to achieve requires time, patience, and care for our bodies and minds. Ego says more production equals more success; ambition trusts that what’s meant for you is already on its way, and that you’ll get there more sustainably if you honor your human capacity. The next time you hear your ego’s drive to push through exhaustion, see if you can invite yourself to do something restful instead.
5. Adopt a Legacy Mindset
The invitation here is to ground your ambition into the lasting impact you want to have. Ego hooks us on wanting to be seen as perfect and polished today; ambition dreams of a leadership legacy that outlives you. Ground your leadership choices in the kind of world you want to leave behind, not in how many boxes you can check before the year ends. Take some time to journal on what your legacy might look like, and how your ambition will take you there… easefully.
Thanks for reading. If you are a highly ambitious social impact leader who is determined to leave this world better than you found it, then please get in touch. I would love to hear your stories of ambition--and when you feel like your ego has gotten in the way. My purpose as a wellbeing-oriented leadership coach is to talk through the messiness of leadership with people just like you. Get In Touch.