They know they're good but are they good enough? Watching an experienced and highly accomplished manager at work, chairing a meeting with relaxed authority, inspiring a sceptical audience, painting a vision of how things should be and could be, gaining the trust of partner agencies with their refreshing openness and obvious integrity, demonstrating the type of energy and confidence that makes you believe anything is possible and yet simultaneously recognising they will never make it to the very top. 

To make it as a chief executive or director you have to be talented as described, work excessively long hours, be prepared to drag your family around the country to further your career and seize every opportunity as it arises. And still it may not be enough. You have to be more than just a very good manager.

 

If success requires such levels of dedication, determination and ambition what happens if you don't make it? Does the drive that took you into senior management mean that you will consider anything less than joining that elite group of chief executives and directors as failure?