I was ambitious and worked hard to advance my career at Amazon and then Facebook. I thought the way to get ahead was to deliver results, then push for more responsibility and position myself for promotion. I later came to realize I had it totally backwards. Here's my story:

Ambition can be a good thing when it's channeled productively. Ambitious people push forward. For example, my litmus test for whether I should stay in a job or make a change was always to ask myself whether I was still on a vertical learning curve. If not, find a new challenge.

But early on I was nakedly ambitious. After one year at Amazon I thought I deserved to be Director. When my manager didn't promote me, I moved to another team who offered to promote me as part of the move. The promotion was later rescinded because my new manager lacked authority.

I finally got promoted to Director, but it took longer than if I had just been patient. My impatience also held me back from getting promoted to Vice President. 7 years into my career at Amazon I was told my performance was at the level of a VP but my leadership wasn't there yet.

I was working on the team that was incubating the Kindle when something remarkable happened. My manager Bill Carr approached his manager and said "Dan should report directly to you, he's working on stuff that you're closer to than me, and he's operating at my level as a peer."

It never occurred to me that someone would volunteer to make their job smaller. But Bill wasn't demoting himself, he was promoting me. And in that act of generosity, I started to see that career development wasn't as black and white as I had thought.

Facebook offered me a job in 2006 as Director of Biz Dev. I almost didn't take it because I didn't like the title. I expected to be promoted to VP in the upcoming cycle at Amazon, and FB was a much smaller company where I would be managing a smaller team. I wanted that VP title.

Turning down that job at FB would have been the biggest mistake of my career. The role was perfect for me, and the title didn't matter. Within a year I was promoted to VP of Partnerships, a title I held for the following 12 years. I never again argued or cared about my title.

I had many responsibilities over the years at FB. I raised my hand when we needed someone to lead M&A. Sheryl then asked me to also lead monetization strategy. As the scope of my role grew, I was finally getting the advancement and recognition I had sought for so long.

But as our advertising business grew, I was getting pulled into a lot of sales meetings. One day I told Sheryl "you should hire someone to lead sales and monetization, and it shouldn't be me. I don't have the right skill set for this, and it's too important to the company." Whoa!

We hired David Fischer to run our advertising business and worldwide operations. David did a much better job as head of ads than I would have done, and our business benefited greatly from this change in leadership. My role shrunk back to partnerships and M&A. But not for long.

A year later David went to Sheryl and said "I think Dan should take over worldwide operations. I have too much on my plate trying to grow our ads business, and Dan would be a better leader for that team." I had no experience in Ops, but I was back on the vertical learning curve.

I promoted Justin Osofsky to run operations under me, and we worked together on it for many years. Then one day I went to Sheryl and said "Justin should report directly to you running Ops. It's a big enough job that it should report straight into COO." I understood the game now.

Sheryl once told me I was on a short list of potential successors. I went back to her a few days later and asked to be removed from that list. I would take on any new responsibility she and Mark needed from me, but I didn't aspire to be COO. My ambition had come full circle.

Over the years I've had many hard conversations with nakedly ambitious people. I always quote Sting: "If you love someone, set them free." In this case, you have to set free your own attachment to advancing your career. Put your head down and do a great job, let it come to you.

It's easy to spot people who are nakedly ambitious, they do transparent things like change departments to chase a promotion. You can get away with that behavior for a while and advance your career in small steps, but you'll never be a senior leader at a great organization.

Leadership requires followership, and people follow leaders they admire. We all know a great leader when we see one. Focus on the best interests of the organization over your own self interest. Make courageous choices. Be vulnerable. Play the long game. Set your ambition free.