True leaders are ambitious - but their ambitions are in service to something greater than themselves. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Barack Obama - each had ambition, but they harnessed their personal ambition to a larger cause. Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant, describes it as a singular focus on defining what the organization needs.

When Louis Gerstner took over at IBM, he saw the need for far greater customer focus. When Jack Welch took over at General Electric, he saw the need to divest the company of any business that wasn't number one or two in its marketplace. When Darwin Smith took over at Kimberly-Clark, he saw the need to sell the mills and focus on the paper products business. Let it not be said that these were not men of ambition. But more importantly, each believed they knew what it was that the organization needed from them. No one told Gerstner or Welch or Smith to do these things. Each man had the drive and focus to meet their goal. Nevertheless, these were the essentials.

Leaders master the fine line between self-serving ambition and selfless ambition. In the end, it boils down to the fact that effective leaders are willing to do the things that are right for the organization - even though it will challenge the organization and cause some people pain. So when faced with the ambition paradox, ask yourself: "Am I willing to suffer some personal loss - even up to losing my comfortable way of life or my job - in order to do what's right?" If the answer is yes, then you've found the path through the ambition paradox.