One thing I would do if I were you is to find places of work that are pro-active about career development. Places like this typically reward managers for their

One thing I would do if I were you is to find places of work that are pro-active about career development. Places like this typically reward managers for their underlings' success and career progression. In those type of companies you don't, necessarily, have to be competitive/ambitious to move ahead, because the incentive programs would make it so that your managers would push you forward. You'd still need to be able to express how you'd like to progress and to then take steps to make sure you could achieve it (learn new skills, work on your weaknesses, etc.), but you wouldn't need to drive it forward entirely on your own. In my personal experience managers who do this well are extremely rare, however.