Your most ambitious staff will leave if you can't consistently win in your marketplace

As a startup leader, one of the best ways to build loyalty amongst your most ambitious staff is pretty simple: win in your marketplace.

If you're not yet winning, then demonstrate a trend towards winning.

Perks like generous vacation policies, catered lunches, half-days and pet-friendly offices are great.

But at the end of the day, ambitious people want to get ahead with their careers - and success in their current work is what they use to trade up to better opportunities (whether at your company or somewhere else).

It's also not enough to simply be the "nice" or "kind" boss.

Yes, they still want to feel valued and listened to because they're human too.

But being in an environment where they're treated well, but consistently losing kind of...well, sucks.

At the end of the day, the ambitious personality-type wants to win.

And to do that, the entire team has to win - which means you as the team's leader need to make decisions (and take actions) that lead to wins for the company.

At the very least, you need to show a path towards success.

After all, that's the main reason why they're here for the ride along with you.

It's not primarily because you're a "great person" or because you're "so understanding".

They're here to win with you so that they can win personally too.

So if they can't win with you, they'll go find someone else they can win with.

Many ambitious performers don't see company-life as a family with unconditional acceptance.

For them, it's more like a sports team where performance is measured, factored into personnel decisions and where winning (or at least a dedication to achieving it) matters. A lot.

And there's nothing wrong with that.