Monday September 3, 2007

Prepared to do anything to get the job you want? Stop sharpening those knives - being over-ambitious can be just as dangerous as drifting aimlessly, reports Mira Katbamna

Bob Diamond, Barclays: £23m. Bart Becht, Reckitt Benckiser: £22m. Giles Thorley, Punch Taverns: £11m. Mira Katbamna, journalist: has just realised she's in the wrong job. Last week's announcement that the average UK CEO trousered almost £2.9m came as a shock. Even if I had several lifetimes at my disposal, I never, ever going to earn as much as the aptly monikered Bob Diamond did this year.

I don't think it's just that Diamond and pals are better at mental arithmetic than I am. Nor that they are more adept at assimilating complex financial instruments. I would wager (though, given my pay packet, not very much, obviously) that Diamond isn't even particularly greedy. It's just that where I am happy to pootle along in life's slow lane, Diamond has ambition. Proper, multiple-noughts ambition.

According to Professor Ivan Robertson, business psychologist at Robertson Cooper, ambition is critical to success. "Some people are just more ambitious than others - the need to achieve and progress is one of the fundamental personality traits, and is pretty fixed from your early 20s onwards," he says. "And with the very rich, it's almost certainly not about the money, it's about the drive to achieve. You'd probably find that if they were just focused on making money, rather than achieving in their particular context, they wouldn't be quite as successful."

Read the full article at http://jobsadvice.guardian.co.uk/officehours/story/0,,2161030,00.html