Are you “Humbitious” enough to lead?

As a business culture, we’ve made the lure of executive leadership hard to resist—and the job of leadership virtually impossible to do. An Atlantic essay sums up the dilemma of the contemporary business leader this way: “The more CEOs work and the more responsibilities they take on, the more isolated they become. Their entourages shield them from workaday headaches. Their spot at the top cuts them off from the people lower down on the corporate totem pole, and thus from reliable, ‘un-spun’ information. Everyone reporting to them has his own ambitions; everyone wants to look good; everyone wants a promotion. So what’s a CEO to do?”

The not-so-simple answer is to rewrite an awful job description that has been obsolete and counterproductive for an awfully long time. In an era of nonstop pressure and deep-seated change, the way to succeed as a leader without losing your mind is to change the prevailing and long-standing mind-set about what it means to lead. Today, the best way to deliver on an ambitious agenda for your organization is to embrace a sense of “humbition” in your personal style and as part of your leadership repertoire.