We are delighted to welcome Professor Francis Flynn, Stanford Graduate School of Business, to host a research seminar discussing ‘A Legend in One’s Own Mind: The (Missing) Link between Ambition and Leadership Effectiveness’.

 

We expect that individuals who are more ambitious—those with a persistent striving for success and accomplishment—are more likely to emerge as leaders. But does their ambition also make them more effective leaders? Across a combination of four archival, longitudinal, and experimental studies, we uncover a discrepancy: while ambitious individuals think they may be better leaders, others disagree. In a longitudinal study of over 500,000 freshmen in the United States, more ambitious students were more likely to become leaders and hold positive views of their own leadership ability (Study 1). However, ambitious individuals were judged as no more effective in a leadership role than their less-ambitious peers (Studies 2-4). This finding held for MBA students judged by experts in a leadership skills competition (Study 2); a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults leading a small team in an experimental leadership task (Study 3); and a field sample of executives who were rated by themselves, their peers, their subordinates, and their managers (Study 4). We consider the implications of these findings for scholars and practitioners interested in leadership selection.