Sharad Pawar – Unstoppable Politician: The Hunger That Never Retires
Sharad Pawar has been Chief Minister and Union Minister, yet his hunger for more has never faded. Avinash Chate uses his five-decade career to unpack Achievement Drive, Trait #12 of the Winning Kite framework.
Sharad Pawar has been Chief Minister of Maharashtra, a Union Minister, a party founder, and one of the most durable power-brokers in Indian politics for over five decades. He has already achieved almost everything the system has to offer. And yet, at an age when most people are winding down, his hunger to build one more alliance, win one more seat, negotiate one more deal has not cooled by even a degree. That refusal to plateau is the cleanest real-world picture I know of Achievement Drive — Trait #12 on the Winning Kite, and the subject of this blog.
In short- Achievement Drive is the hunger to keep raising your own bar, even after you've achieved everything you set out to achieve.
- Sharad Pawar — five decades in politics, a former CM and Union Minister — never hit his "saturation point"; that never-stop hunger is Achievement Drive in its purest form.
- Achievement Drive shows up in five testable behaviours: calculated risk-taking, setting challenging goals, supporting others, a permanent hunger for more, and constant information-seeking.
- The psychological engine behind it is flow — the state where challenge and skill are perfectly matched — and you can engineer more of it deliberately.
- Achievement Drive is not about beating other people. It is about beating your own yesterday, every single day.
Where this sits on your Winning Kite
Achievement Drive is Trait #12, sitting inside the Self-Motivation cluster on the EQ — left — side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). EQ is one of the three sides that hold your kite up in the air; without it, even the sharpest RQ (relationships) and PQ (productivity systems) cannot lift you toward sustained Success at the top. Achievement Drive specifically is the fuel tank — the internal hunger that keeps you climbing long after everyone else around you has decided they've "made it."
The politician who never found his saturation point
Every professional, every leader, every achiever eventually hits what I call a saturation point — the point at which you have reached your original goal and become comfortable. You got the promotion you wanted. You bought the house. You hit the number. Most people stop pushing there. They coast.
Sharad Chandra Pawar is the counter-example. He has served as Chief Minister of Maharashtra multiple times. He has held Union Cabinet portfolios including Defence and Agriculture. He founded his own political party and has kept it relevant through coalition after coalition, election after election, for decades. By any reasonable definition, he crossed his saturation point a long time ago.
And yet — his hunger for more success, more influence, more achievement has never diminished. He continues to build alliances, contest elections, negotiate seat-sharing formulas, and stay in the thick of the game at an age when most people would have every excuse to retire into ceremonial roles. That is Achievement Drive in its rawest, most public form: the oath to never stop pursuing excellence, regardless of how much you have already banked.
I don't use this example to make a political statement — I use it because it is instantly recognisable to every Indian audience I have ever trained, from the Army to RBI to BARC to JSW. Everyone knows what "still hungry after everything" looks like when they see it, and Pawar is one of the most visible living examples of it in our country.
Achievement Drive is a hunger, not a skill
Achievement Drive is the drive that motivates a person to set challenging goals, constantly improve, and strive to exceed expectations — even their own past best. It is not about competition with others. It is about personal growth, about refusing to let comfort become the ceiling.
Research on happiness backs this up in an interesting way: beyond a certain point, material possessions stop adding to your happiness. What actually produces lasting satisfaction is being in a state of flow — deep concentration, high creativity, effortless efficiency — where your brain releases dopamine, endorphins, anandamide and serotonin, the chemicals of reward and motivation. Saturation is the danger zone. Achievement Drive is the antidote.
Four more Indian examples of the same hunger
Sharad Pawar is not alone. I have watched this trait up close in very different arenas:
BB Thombare, Chairman of Natural Sugar, Natural Milk & Milk Products and Ellora Seeds, started as an accountant at a sugar factory in Ambajogai. He worked across Godavari, Jai Jawan Jai Kisan, Manjara and Vaijanath sugar factories before starting his own venture, Naturals Sugar & Allied Industries, in 1998. More than two decades later, his hunger for success is still evident. His company's core value says it all: "Doing better than yesterday."
Mr. Karaiadiselvan, Managing Director of CADD Centre Training Services Pvt Ltd, started as a trainee in 1992 and rose to head what is now the largest training institution in engineering design software in Asia. He now manages and motivates more than 500 entrepreneurs a year — and still never settles. He is a voracious reader who says, "Feedback is the breakfast of champions." Whenever I hear the words Achievement Drive, he is the first person who comes to my mind.
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries, came from a wealthy, already-successful family — the easiest possible excuse to coast. Instead, he grew the family business into one of India's largest conglomerates and launched Reliance Jio, which disrupted the entire Indian telecom industry overnight. His hunger extends into sport too, through his ownership of Mumbai Indians in the IPL, which has won multiple championships under his stewardship.
Virat Kohli, as Saurav Ganguly once recounted, was seen by his trainer working out in the gym for hours immediately after scoring 167 runs in an innings. Asked why, Kohli said he wanted to convert scores like 167 into double and triple hundreds — and that would only be possible if his fitness matched the demands of the modern game. That is Achievement Drive: pushing yourself to excel even minutes after a career-best performance.
The five ways to test for Achievement Drive
If you want to check whether you — or someone on your team — genuinely has Achievement Drive, look for these five behaviours:
- Taking calculated risks. People with Achievement Drive constantly challenge themselves and push beyond their comfort zone. Those who lack it prefer to stay with what they already know.
- Setting challenging goals and innovating. They are innovative thinkers who set ambitious goals for themselves and their team and are always striving to improve, rather than resisting change.
- Supporting others. Stars with Achievement Drive don't chase success alone — they believe in teamwork and actively support colleagues, employees and partners.
- Hunger for more. The defining trait. No matter how much they have achieved, they are never satisfied and are constantly seeking new challenges to conquer.
- Constant information-seeking. People without this drive settle for whatever information comes their way easily. Those with high Achievement Drive actively pursue information to reduce uncertainty and find better ways to do things — they are, in effect, information addicts.
The engine room: understanding flow
To build Achievement Drive deliberately, it helps to understand psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow — a light nod here to the wider science of motivation, though the practical framework below is how I teach it in my own sessions. Flow sits at the intersection of two axes: the level of challenge you face, and the level of skill you bring to it.
If the task is too difficult for your current skill, you feel anxiety. If it's too easy, you feel boredom. Flow exists in the narrow, moving channel where challenge and skill are balanced — and as your skill grows, you must keep raising the challenge to stay in that channel.
Most professionals, unfortunately, spend their days neither anxious nor in flow, but in what I call the Area of Apathy — low challenge, low skill, scrolling social media, playing it safe, staying stagnant. There's no growth there and, contrary to what it looks like from the outside, no real happiness either. The way out is simple in principle: identify your goal, and make it a little more challenging every single day. Flow is not a mood — it is a state you engineer by continuously recalibrating challenge against skill.
Seven ways to build Achievement Drive at work
| Practice | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Find your flow | Pick a task that stretches you moderately; raise the difficulty as your skill grows |
| Set your own challenging goals | Don't wait for your manager — if you're hitting monthly targets easily, push yourself 20% higher |
| Seek feedback constantly | Track customer satisfaction, completion rates, skills gained — not just money |
| Surround yourself with driven people | Mentors and colleagues who share your hunger will pull you forward, not let you settle |
| Embrace uncertainty as opportunity | When new technology or a new process arrives, treat it as a chance to grow, not a threat |
| Focus on your yesterday, not on others | Ask daily: "How can I do better than yesterday?" — not "How do I beat my colleague?" |
| Adopt a growth mindset | Treat setbacks as data, not verdicts — a mindset popularised in the West by Carol Dweck's research, and one I see confirmed constantly on Indian shop floors and sales teams |
Why this matters for your career, not just your CV
Technical skill gets you hired. Achievement Drive determines how far you go after that. Organisations aren't only looking for people who can execute their job description — they are looking for people who exceed it without being told to, who take ownership, who take calculated risks, and who keep raising their own bar long after the probation period ends. These are the people who get promoted. These are the people who become leaders. These are the stars at India Inc.
So ask yourself Sharad Pawar's implicit question: what is your saturation point? Was it your first job? Your first house? A certain salary figure? Or have you, like him, quietly taken the oath to never stop pursuing excellence, no matter how much you have already achieved?
If you are building this trait in yourself or your team, it pairs directly with the other EQ traits I train — Emotional Awareness, Optimism and, in the next chapter, Commitment. You can explore how all of them link together on the Winning Kite framework page, or bring the full Self-Motivation module into your organisation through our Signature Programs or the broader corporate training topics we run for teams across India.
Bring These Ideas to Your Team
Avinash Chate turns the traits in Stars at India Inc. into live leadership & emotional-intelligence workshops. TEDx speaker · 11+ yrs training Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW & 1000+ leaders.
✅ Thanks! Avinash team will reach out within 24 hours.'}).catch(function(e){f.outerHTML='Something went wrong. WhatsApp +91 8793630001
'});return false;">Select ServiceKeynote / Motivational SpeakingLeadership Development TrainingTeam Building WorkshopManager DevelopmentEmployee TrainingBook Avinash Now →Or WhatsApp directly: +91 87936 30001
Work with Avinash Chate
- Signature Corporate Training Programs →
- The Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework) →
- All Corporate Training Topics →
Avinash Chate TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc. Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Achievement Drive in the Winning Kite framework?
Achievement Drive is Trait #12 on the EQ (left) side of the Winning Kite, under the Self-Motivation cluster. It is the hunger to keep setting bigger goals and chasing higher standards, even after you have already achieved success — the opposite of settling once you hit a comfortable saturation point.
Why does Avinash Chate use Sharad Pawar as an example of Achievement Drive?
Sharad Pawar has been a Chief Minister of Maharashtra and a Union Minister — he has achieved almost everything possible in Indian politics across five decades. Yet his drive to build, contest, negotiate and stay relevant has never diminished. That refusal to plateau after peak success is the purest expression of Achievement Drive.
How can I build Achievement Drive if I already feel comfortable in my career?
Start by finding your 'flow channel' — deliberately raise the challenge just above your current skill level instead of coasting. Set your own stretch goals rather than waiting for your manager to assign them, seek feedback constantly, surround yourself with achievement-driven people, and ask daily: how can I do better than yesterday?
Is Achievement Drive about competing with others?
No. Avinash Chate is clear that Achievement Drive is not about beating colleagues or competitors — it is about beating your own yesterday. The five diagnostic traits are calculated risk-taking, setting challenging goals, supporting others, a permanent hunger for more, and constantly seeking new information.
Related Articles by Avinash Chate
- Balbir's Realization: One Sentence That Made an Invisible Player Matter
- Networking Skill Every Leader Must Have
- Imran Khan's Ladder: The Step-by-Step Method That Built a World Champion
Avinash Chate services
Corporate Trainer in Maharashtra · Top Corporate Trainers in Maharashtra · Leadership Trainer in Maharashtra · Top Leadership Trainers in Maharashtra · Team Building Trainer in Maharashtra · Top Team Building Trainers in Maharashtra · Motivational Speaker in Maharashtra · Top Motivational Speakers in Maharashtra · All service locations
← Back to all articles · Book Avinash Chate
By Avinash Chate — Maharashtra’s #1 Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker. .