Bridging the Trust Gap
Ambitious Leadership
Trust is in increasingly short supply.
We hear it from the participants and teams that we’ve worked with over the last year.
We feel it ourselves – at work, in the news, on our media channels – and global research corroborates our experience*.
Throughout the year, we’ll be looking in more detail at some of the factors that we think are driving the fall in trust, and exploring, along with our clients and alumni, ways that trusting connections can be rebuilt and strengthened through positive influence and purposeful human behaviour.
This time we’ll be looking at ambitious leadership and asking: what sort of leaders do we want to be and what sort of leaders do we want to be led by?
Leaders with high ambition are currently at the forefront of our consciousness. Some characteristic traits: single-mindedness; an appetite for risk; relentless drive and determination; and the holding of others to one’s own standards, are unquestionably impacting the world right now, often with significant controversy. These behaviours are not, in themselves, negative, but when they are experienced without the balance of empathy, human connection and transparency, they are divisive and trust-eroding.
*2025 Edelman Trust Barometer.
There are other behaviours that we associate with ambitious leadership that have a more unequivocally positive impact.
Ambitious leaders build and articulate compelling visions that others share and contribute to. They are resilient in the face of challenges and inspire confidence in others. They empower their teams because they are a part of them and they channel their own ambition into opportunities for all. They listen, they foster innovation, they lead by example and with integrity and they are personally accountable. Used positively, these behaviours provide fertile ground for growing trust.
We believe ambitious leadership means focusing on bold objectives and prioritising people at the same time. It means striving for personal success and celebrating the success of others, being decisive whilst listening to alternative ideas and perspectives, and pursuing goals without compromising personal, team, or organisational values.
And we believe this can be achieved through the conscious application of human behaviours.
What does ambitious leadership mean to you?
Let’s start a much-needed conversation.