Cultivating Passion

In all my readings about innovation, high-impact cultures, lean processes, and all the other things people are finding that lead to an engaged, efficient and effective workforce, very few will make mention of passion.

I don’t think passion is undervalued by any means. Passion is often rewarded and attributed as a major driving factor of success. Have you ever watched a video documenting the success of a company or project? Tell me the way people are talking about the journey they undertook doesn’t have any passion behind it.

But passion isn’t brought up in these books because we don’t treat passion as something you can use as a tool; something you can use to attain success before you have it. We treat it as a byproduct of work, and I have a big problem with that.

You can cultivate passion. You can’t fabricate it from thin air, you can’t force people to have it, but you can cultivate it. Nurture it. Grow it.

How to Cultivate Passion

1. During the hiring process, ask people what they’re passionate about. This is an interview question that I have found gives you a wealth of information. It shows you that if someone knows what they’re passionate about they have a good level of self-awareness. It tells you that they can get engaged, and most of all it tells you how to unlock the best in them.
2. Ask your current employees on a regular on-going basis what they’re passionate about. It’s easy to think that passions are forever, but I don’t really think this is true. While a majority of them might never go away completely, how passionate you are about one thing or another, or new things you learn about can fluctuate greatly and quickly. So keep the pulse on passion. What’s new? What’s exciting?
3. Let people be passionate at work. Passions don’t all align with work, though those who are very interested in their field of industry tend to have some directly related passions. Regardless of that, let people engage in the things they’re passionate about at work as much as you can. Give people goals to complete “passion projects” or just empower them to use 10 or 20 percent of their time towards the things they are interested in. You’re going to fill their engage-o-meter, and it will spill over into the other things they are doing.
4. Ask people what they want to do. If you’re all aligned to what the outcomes you need to generate are, empower people to get there in the way they want to. Ask them if what they’re doing now is what they want to be doing always. Begin to note the things that people are internally driven to do versus the things they feel they have to do.
5. Make passion work. This is the switch. I don’t mean make it work, like make it do something, I mean make it their work. Find each person’s intersection of passion and work and let them live there as much as possible. Again, there might only be a small part or kernel of what someone is passionate about that does intersect with work, and finding this spot may mean redefining roles and the way work is done.

When people are passionate about the work they’re doing, the quality of that work is incredibly elevated. So whether you’re trying to just get yourself engaged, or if you’re a leader needing to drive engagement amongst a team, look to passion as your next tool for success.