Positive Leadership: No Regrets!

Positive Leadership: No Regrets!

Positive Leadership: Women Should be as Ambitious as Men

Tory Burch says women entrepreneurs should find their passion and be just as ambitious as men. She founded the Tory Burch fashion label in 2004. Her clothing line is now carried in more than 800 stores worldwide. She also heads the Tory Burch Foundation, which offers mentorship opportunities to women entrepreneurs and provides micro-loans to women-owned businesses.

Positive Leadership: Women Should be as Ambitious as Men

Positive Leadership: The Role of Business Education in 2013

The Wall Street Journal sounded the death-knoll for business schools back in 1985. Applications were dropping. Mass closures were on the cards. The same headlines have appeared periodically since. Eight years later the New York Times headlined with “Business Schools Hit Hard Times Amid Doubt Over Value of MBA”. Last year it was Forbes asking “Is the MBA Obsolete?” 

If you scan the latest stories on business sites and in magazines, it seems to be in fashion to give the impression that innovation and talent trumps education. But is it true?

What is true is that the nature of business has changed. Lines of communication have evolved. Globalisation has opened up new markets and competition is fierce. Innovation is now a global catch-cry and anyone with a half-baked idea is trying to sell it. Yet we are still short of quality business managers.

In reality, it isn’t a competition between natural talent and formal education. We need both. What is important is that business schools adapt their style of teaching. They must ensure our next generation of leaders are learning techniques relevant to today. In America alone, 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. These are the people who have been our business leaders for the past 30 years and we are struggling to replace them.

Business schools know this. They also know the demands on modern managers are unique in the information age. Yale rewrote its curriculum back in 2006 and continues to regularly review it. Wharton rolled out a whole new plan last year. We are seeing a shift to customised courses tailored for 21st century enterprise. There is a greater focus (particularly in North America) on leadership, trouble-shooting, problem solving and communication skills.

Business isn’t just about brilliant product, it’s about people (ideally, both brilliant). Success will come from ensuring that young people who have chosen business as their career have the right knowledge, skills and attitudes to lead.

Positive Leadership: The Role of Business Education in 2013

Positive Leadership: Women Should be as Ambitious as Men

Tory Burch says women entrepreneurs should find their passion and be just as ambitious as men. She founded the Tory Burch fashion label in 2004. Her clothing line is now carried in more than 800 stores worldwide. She also heads the Tory Burch Foundation, which offers mentorship opportunities to women entrepreneurs and provides micro-loans to women-owned businesses. 

Positive Leadership: Women Should be as Ambitious as Men

Positive Leadership: Is Ambition Good For You?

People who are considered ambitious attend the best colleges and universities, have prestigious careers and earn high salaries, but they don't necessarily lead more successful lives, according to new research by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

The lead author of "On the Value of Aiming High: The Causes and Consequences of Ambition" forthcoming from the Journal of Applied Psychology, Judge seeks to create a better understanding of ambition--a commonly mentioned but poorly understood concept in social science research-- and its consequences.

Is it a virtue, or is it a vice? Both, says Judge.

"If ambition has its positive effects, and in terms of career success it certainly seems that it does, our study also suggests that it carries with it some cost," Judge says. "Despite their many accomplishments, ambitious people are only slightly happier than their less- ambitious counterparts, and they actually live somewhat shorter lives."

Tracking 717 high-ability individuals over seven decades, Judge uses multiple criteria to measure ambition during periods of participants' lives ranging from childhood to young adults just beginning their careers. Their education ranged from attending some of the world's best universities -- Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Berkeley, Oxford, and Notre Dame. – to more modest educations, including high school diplomas and community college degrees.

"Ambitious kids had higher educational attainment, attended highly esteemed universities, worked in more prestigious occupations, and earned more," Judge says. "So, it would seem that they are poised to 'have it all.' However, we determined that ambition has a much weaker effect on life satisfaction and actually a slightly negative impact on longevity (how long people lived). So, yes, ambitious people do achieve more successful careers, but that doesn't seem to translate into leading happier or healthier lives."

Judge's new ambition study tracks individuals born in the early part of the last century and continued to follow them throughout their lives, which is how the mortality measure was derived, however it doesn't address the underlying reasons for the higher mortality of ambitious people.

"Perhaps the investments they make in their careers come at the expense of the things we know affect longevity: healthy behaviours, stable relationships and deep social networks."

Most parents want their kids to be ambitious, attend the best schools and eventually have successful careers, and while it certainly isn't wrong to have those parental hopes and dreams, Judge cautions that we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking they will make our kids happier.

"If your biggest wish for your children is that they lead happy and healthy lives, you might not want to overemphasise professional success. There are limits to what our ambitions bring us- or our children." 

Positive Leadership: Is Ambition Good For You?