Let ambition drive you: a good CEO is someone who dares!
There are a lot of things that a CEO has to be able to do; one of the most important is to be brave enough to make the tough decisions that will affect the future of the company. This is not something that most people would dare to do but the CEO has to do it. He has to have enough ambition to be willing to take risks when necessary to help the company grow.
It is important that a CEO have ambition and that he be willing to take risks but you do have to be careful about this. The risks that you take have to be smart risks, the last thing that you want to do is put the future of the company at risk by making a bad decision. That means that you have to really analyze the risks that you are taking and that the payoff for them is worth the risks that you take. In general you will find that a more cautious approach is usually the best way to go.
There will be times of course when bold action is necessary; this is what makes the job of the CEO so difficult. For the most part you are going to want to be fairly cautious and move fairly slowly. However there will be times when you have to make decisions quickly, the real challenge is that you have to know when to be bold and when not to be. This is something that takes a lot of experience and judgment to learn how to do properly.
Where a CEO really needs to be daring is when it comes to making decisions. Most people will go out of their way to avoid being the person who makes important decisions; they would rather let somebody else do it. The reason for this is pretty obvious; they don't want to be blamed if things go wrong. As a CEO this is not something that you can do, you are going to have to make decisions. If you ultimately want to become a CEO you have to demonstrate that you are willing to take responsibility for making decisions and that you are comfortable making them.
In many cases you will find that as the CEO you have to make decisions without complete information. This is where you really have to be brave. It is hard enough to make decisions when you have all the facts but things get much more difficult when you have to do it without full information. These are however the kinds of things that successful CEO's have to be able to do. A lot of times you will have to just make an educated guess that will affect the future of the entire company. If you are not prepared to do this when necessary you really have no business being CEO.