What every business leader should learn about ambition – and Lady Macbeth

Successful people are often unhealthily obsessed by status, writes Chris Blackhurst. But teaching children the right way to be ambitious is a wonderful gift

David Tennant and Cush Jumbo in Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse (Marc Brenner)

Whenever I’ve given talks to state school sixth forms, I’ve asked the head what they would like me to talk about.

Invariably, back will come pretty much the same answer: ambition. Please, try and instil in the pupils some ambition. It’s not the same in private schools. There, they have aspiration and self-belief coming out of their ears.

Yet ambition has long been regarded as, well, as something of a dirty word. Why? Perhaps it’s this, from Lady Macbeth in Macbeth:

‘Thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it

Certainly, we’ve become used to the notion that unattractive types can have too much ambition or not enough. Those that are driven, trampling all in their path, behaving in a self-serving, greedy manner, are often held up as having it to excess. Those who are slackers and slouches, idle good-for-nothings – they are deemed to be lacking.

A new book, Fair or Foul – The Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition is a fascinating, entertaining but also seriously thought-provoking attempt at rehabilitation – not just of the word but of Lady Macbeth herself.

Author Stefan Stern chooses as his starting point those words of hers to a weak, indecisive Macbeth. Why? Because most of us reach a crossroads where we must choose – to plough ahead at the risk of damaging friendships and relationships in a quest for status and with it, possibly, higher pay, or to reject that idea and opt for a quieter and probably financially poorer life.

Ever since he was a student and putting on plays, Stern has been obsessed about the greatest Shakespearean drama of all and at its heart, one of his most compelling characters. Down the centuries, we’ve come to hold up Lady Macbeth as everything that is wrong where ambition is concerned. She’s scheming and power-mad, to the extent that she is prepared to manipulate people and engineer terrible acts to fulfil her crazy quest.

As a result, an ambitious woman is denigrated, usually unfairly, as a “Lady Macbeth”. Men have no equivalent. We’re allowed to get away with all sorts, and the worst that can be levelled at us is that we’re somehow “testosterone-filled”. After that, there’s another level, which is “mad” or comparisons are made with Napoleon Bonaparte (if they’re short of stature) or Adolf Hitler.

In fact, Stern says we should view her ladyship as realising the danger that can accompany ambition, that she displayed a rare appreciation of human nature and its failings. Lady Macbeth is as relevant to men as she is to women.

When those school heads refer to ambition, they are asking for their pupils to be encouraged and enthused. Unfortunately, someone who wants to get on qualifications-wise and go to university and have a successful career can be deemed, mistakenly by their peers in the classroom and relatives, as being too ambitious, of working too hard, of being a “swot”.

This link must be broken. We must teach our children there is no harm in having ambition. They must be taught, though, to recognise signs of “the illness” that Lady Macbeth described.

With some business folk, there is a burning desire to earn tonnes of money. They want the top job with the massive pay package. In fact, it’s not about that at all. In many cases, they’ve long since passed the level of having everything they need or want.

They’ve got millions safely banked away, they’ve got several properties, their partner and children are catered for. There are only a few weeks in the year when they have a holiday and they can’t even get around all their homes, not for any meaningful length of time. But these people don’t take vacations anyway, they don’t rest. If they do get an hour or two on the sun lounger, they’re skimming the latest management “how to” book or scrolling through messages on their phone.

They’re not in it for the money as such. Not anymore. The size of the wage packet goes with the title, it’s contributing to their self-esteem. That’s what drives them, where they stand, in relation to others in their sector, their friends, family and the wider society.

Once, over a brandy after a late-night dinner, a retail chief asked if he could ask me something? It seemed odd, loaded. Naturally, I said. Fire away. “How will history judge me?”

There he was, hugely successful in most people’s terms, the head of a well-known chain, loads of money, three homes that I knew of, a splendid yacht, and a title (the giveaway with a knighthood or better still, a peerage, is that they will say, “it’s not for me, you understand, it’s for my wife”. Yeah, right).

Back to my reflective companion. I was lost for words, momentarily. I wanted to say was that he wouldn’t be compared with Alexander the Great or come to that, Stephen Hawking or Abraham Lincoln. Instead I said that in what he did, the area in which he operated, he would be right up there. He nodded, but there was no hiding his disappointment.

He had achieved a great deal, but at this stage of life a greater level of attainment was beyond him. There was no doubting his ambition in his rise to the top. Sadly, it wasn’t enough.