The Power of Ambition

Thank you for this privilege to share a few reflections at the 2025 Solaris Leadership Annual Conference.

You have given me a big topic – “The Power of Ambition”. It prompts the question:

What is ambition?

“A strong desire to do or achieve something”. “A strong wish to be successful, to be significant, to be recognised”. “An overpowering motivation to be seen, to be heard – to make a difference”.

Fired up by that ambition, it has created in you an energy to act – to study, to build networks, to get healthy, to look good, to be seen with the right people, to have the right connections, to build a strong career, to progress up the corporate ladder, to build your own business, to have yourself and your family flourish.

That is ambition, and it is powerful.

However, it is not always easy to get ambition right.

The writer Alen Raine wrote: “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall”.

For female leaders, ambition may be even more complex.

A McKinsey article on women CEO’s out just last week reflects on a recent large study of media references to business leaders, noting that women are 2.1 times more likely than men to be described as overly ambitious. Yet they are equally as likely to be seen as lacking ambition. You are “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.

I would like to challenge you today to think about ambition differently as you look to the Black Futures, and to the future of flourishing for all, that we want to achieve.

I would like to share my own personal journey with ambition.

Then I would like to share with you the story of the person who mentored me when I came to the UK, and what that taught me about ambition.

And then finally, I would like to share my personal reflections as to the key components of what embodies ambition that is powerful.

You would have read a bit of my career story. I like to define my life in terms of 5 B’s. I was born in the Bahamas. I grew up in Barbados. I am now British. I was a Banker. I am Black.

I view my self as someone who was and is ambitious. Yet, I have failed at nearly all the early ambitions I thought I had. Being an OK cricketer when I was young, having represented Barbados at the junior level at cricket, my ambition was to play cricket for the West Indies. A second ambition was to do law as my undergraduate degree, win a Rhodes Scholarship to do my masters, return to Barbados and, after a successful career, go into politics and become Prime Minister!

Life turned out very differently. I never progressed beyond that level in cricket although a few of my friends and contemporaries went on to be international cricketers. I found out I hated the law. I was unsuccessful when I applied for the Rhodes Scholarship. I never did return to Barbados – my wife of 35 years, Penny – we met as undergraduates at the University of the West Indies in Barbados – still quarrels with me and said that I fooled her in not keeping to the plan! I did not become Prime Minister. Two good friends and contemporaries have – but not me. And, after a career in accounting and banking, I am now a glorified Church worker!

None of the things that I thought I was ambitious for played out how I had planned. Yet, where I stand in 2025, I do not think I have hoped for a more fascinating set of life experiences.

What has that taught me about the power of ambition? It has taught me that it is important to have ambition about what I want to be – my values, my character, my relationships - rather than ambition about what I want to do – a title, a role, a material acquisition. So many of my early ambitions were fired by what I wanted to do.

I found out that the right ambitions, those that are most powerful, as those focus on what you want to be – fulfilled, interested and interesting, getting a buzz because you are following a passion.

For those of us with different journeys – women, people of colour, the white working class, people with Disabilities – in so many situations, we are working out our careers and ambitions with no paths in front of us.

Ambition, powerful ambition, needs mentoring. To be ambitious, you need an ambition mentor. You need someone to help you understand and properly channel your ambition.

In choosing that mentor, choose wisely. Do not go with the crowd.

My mentor when I came to this country was a man named Errold Lashley.

Mr Lashley was of the Windrush Generation. He came here in the 1950s. He worked on London Transport. He loved his cars and became a mechanic. He then went to the Barbados High Commission. He started as a chauffeur and ultimately became the Head of Security. It was in interacting with the Barbados High Commission, that I interacted with him and he became my mentor for nearly 40 years. He never went to university, he never worked for a big corporation, he lived a modest life, had a modest job. Yet, I have never come across a more powerful and influential person. He counselled from the lowest, to government ministers. He mentored me. Throughout my career, I have been sponsored and counselled on occasion by some of the most senior captains of British industry and British society. Yet, as valuable as their counsel was, none of them came close to Mr Lashley in terms of how he helped to understand and channel my own ambition.

When he died a few years ago, at his funeral we could not get into the Church. There were nearly 1000 people there. He taught me how to navigate England. He taught me how to be ambitious for good.

There is another story which I would like to tell - about one of your Solaris alumnae, who has had an excellent, resilient career, who has grown and progressed considerably. In the face of significant challenge, she has been clear about her ambitions from the outset, has been clear about the opportunities she was seeking, of who she wanted to be in her career. I have had the privilege to be a mentor that individual for nearly a decade or more now. I cannot take credit for her success. I am like a coach to an elite sportswoman in my interactions with her over the years.

But I will tell you the story of how she got in contact with me. Her first mentor, someone who she communicated with initially in terms of respectful conversation, was one of the security guards at HSBC. On occasion, she would relate stories about her career. Then, one day, she told the security – “I am thinking about pursuing a professional accounting qualification, that is my ambition”. As it so happened, that HSBC security guard also happened to be one of my best friends at HSBC. We had played cricket for the same cricket team and ended up with different careers at HSBC. The moment she mentioned that ambition to my friend, the security guard, he said to her – I have a friend who is senior in the Bank, who works in Risk, and is also an accountant, if you are happy, I can introduce you to him and he may be able to help you in shaping your ambition.

The rest is history. A ten-year history. How many of us would choose a security guard at our firm to be part of how we make our ambitions real?

Ambition to be powerful needs mentors. Choose them wisely.

Having reflected on my life’s journey with ambition, and what my experiences with as mentee and mentor about ambition, what have I learned about what embodies ambition that is powerful? I believe that there are 7 characteristics of ambition that is powerful, of ambition that will make a difference and last:

1. Be ambitious to be humble, be ambitious for humility. To make a difference, you must value others as much as yourself. To lead these days, if not always, is to realise that you will not know everything; people who work for you will know more than you on several matters. One of the most valuable leadership development experiences that I ever had at HSBC when I was in a very senior position, was being reverse mentored by a group of executives who were young enough to be my children. One of them is a Solaris alumna. The power of your example is so much stronger than the example of your power. Be ambitious to be humble. There was a book published a few years ago – “Humble leadership – The power of relationships, openness and Trust” by Edgar and Peter Schein, which explores humility in leadership well.
2. Be ambitious for things you are passionate about, that you are interested in, or can get interested in. You cannot compete with people who are interesting or interested.
3. Be ambitious about things internal and things eternal. By this I mean be ambitious for the things that feed your soul, that nurture you, and ambitious for things that will last. That may mean that you may have to be ambitious for a road less travelled. Robert Frost in his poem “The Road Not Taken” has pointers for where our ambitions and the choices they inform should focus:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference”.

If I reflect on my career journey, very early in my career journey at HSBC, I had to consider options of either going to Hong Kong, the Group’s engine room, or New York, the world’s most consequential financial centre, or Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. I chose Riyadh. That decision made all the difference in my career, and in my life.

4. Be ambitious about Ubuntu – “I am because we are, because you are”; we exist and thrive in community and relationship. So many of the elites who talk about rugged individualism are profoundly tribal but then convince everyone else to be individual to our own detriment and weakness. Be ambitious about building strong relationships.
5. Be ambitious to be resilient – to live, love and lead is to embark on a journey that is wonderful but one which is bumpy, no-linear. It is one with many challenges. We need to be ambitious to be like what the US President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his talk entitled “Citizenship in a Republic”. There is a part referred to as “The Man in the Arena”. I have taken the liberty to refine the title and bits of the text to “The Woman in the Area”:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong woman stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

6. Be ambitious to be excellent – always seek to be the best that you can be, not the best that somebody else is, or someone tells you that you should be.
7. Be ambitious to be hopeful and be ambitious to be moral - for things you cannot see, and may never see, and be ambitious for things that do good, that leave those who you interact with, and those who you impact, and will impact who you do not see, will be better off. People talk about the 7^th Generation Principle, that is common in many Indigenous Communities across the world – The concept holds that you are responsible not only for yourself or your immediate family, but for carrying the knowledge and responsibility of past generations into seven generations ahead. I am very conscious of that in my role as First Church Estates Commissioner. It has existed since 1850. I am the 13^th person to hold the office. Eleven men, and one woman, my predecessor Loretta Minghella, have done it before me. I am part of a long chain, and there will be a long chain in front of me, unless God comes back soon! The largest single investment asset holding in our endowment portfolio today is one that was put on the books in 1868, during the tenure of the first person who held my office. You are also part of a long chain. Be ambitious to impact those you do not see. There is a recent book – “Moral Ambition – Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference” by Rutger Bregman, which I would commend to you.

In 2025, as we seek to celebrate a flourishing Black Futures, and indeed flourishing futures for all people - whatever ethnicity, gender, class, sexual-orientation, belief or ability - our ambition must embody these things for it to be powerful.

As the Solaris family, I am very hopeful for you, especially in these times we find ourselves in.

You have what it takes to choose the right, powerful ambition.

Thank you very much.