Personal Glory and Agendas

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” (Philippians 2:3, English Standard Version)

Personal agendas and seeking one’s own glory is something I’ve felt strongly about over the years. I don’t consider myself as someone who’s out for his own glory. I’m not looking to make a ton of money or climb to some senior title; that’s never been my thing. I acknowledge that people have different ambitions and drives, and that’s fine. But for me, that’s not my primary motivation.

What grabs me most about this topic is motives—the “why” behind what people do. That’s where I’ve had challenges with coworkers over time, and I think most people see this in their own workplaces. When an employee has a personal agenda—something that’s more about advancing themselves than advancing the team’s mission—it eventually shows up in how they work.

You can feel it. The energy changes. Instead of focusing on the shared goal, their decisions and priorities start to serve their own interests. And in product management, that’s dangerous. We already have so many competing inputs—customer needs, leadership priorities, deadlines. When personal motives get added to that mix, it distorts the picture even more.

The tricky part is, it’s rarely obvious. Nobody says, “I’m here for my own glory.” It shows up in smaller ways—wanting ownership of a feature because it’ll look good on a résumé, pushing an initiative just to prove a point, or needing to be the person who was “right” in the meeting. Those things sound minor, but over time they erode trust.

I’ve seen this happen where someone’s ideas weren’t bad at all—but the way they pushed them came from the wrong place. It stopped being about solving the right problem and became about being seen as the one who solved it. And when that happens, it’s hard to collaborate. The conversations get defensive. People start talking around each other instead of to each other.

I’ve always believed the best teams are the ones where people care more about the outcome than the credit. When everyone’s motives are aligned—when it’s about the product, the customer, the shared mission—you can debate, you can disagree, and it still feels healthy. Because it’s all in service of the same goal.

That’s what I try to hold myself to as well. I ask, “Why am I pushing for this? Is it because it’s the right thing to do, or because I want to be the one who got it done?” That kind of self-check keeps me honest. It’s not about pretending ego doesn’t exist—it’s about making sure it doesn’t drive the work.

So, yeah—personal glory and agendas. They’re real, and they’re hard to see sometimes, even in ourselves. But the more we can recognize them and bring things back to a shared purpose, the better the work gets. That’s when teams move together cleanly, decisions make sense, and the outcomes actually reflect what we set out to do.

That’s the kind of work I want to be part of—not about personal recognition, but about building something that matters with people who care about doing it for the right reasons.

This article has been lightly copyedited by AI from an audio transcript.