Lawyer’s Lantern
AMBITION: WOMEN POWERING UP
BY THOMAS L. SAGER AND DEBORAH EPSTEIN HENRY
Webster’s Dictionary defines ambition as “an ardent desire for rank, fame, and power.”
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That is not what senior executives and managing partners should be looking for in identifying future successors. Those who embrace this definition and use it as the lens through which to evaluate potential leaders are limiting, to an employer’s disadvantage, its talent pool and leadership pipeline. However, if ambition is defined as “an ardent desire to lead and influence the actions of others,” the pipeline opens, especially for women.
W DIVERSITY & THE BAR® JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
e recently participated in a conference that featured four executive women discuss- ing women and leadership. During the 90-minute panel discussion, there was no mention
of ambition or power. When we raised these subjects at the end of the program, the panel and audience were silent. How could these subjects not be addressed when the des-
ignated topic was women and leadership? In a comparable program discussing male leadership, would it be possible not to talk about ambition and power? What else would the men have discussed? Once the women panelists pondered how ambition
and power factored into their roles as leaders, their conclusions were simple: Tese pursuits were not relevant. When pressed, they attributed most of their success to good luck and happenstance. Tese explanations are consistent with the research. According to Anna Fels, a psychiatrist who has written broadly about women in the workplace, ambition is essen-
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