PASSION

Passion

“The ability to instill passion, enthusiasm and vehemence into a team, organization or individual is the ability to make real magic”

Mel Rappleyea, SPHR, CSP

I have coached little league basketball, volleyball, football, wing chun kung fu and soccer for many years. Coaching kids its very rewarding and honestly I think I got more out of it then they did. It is where I learned about PASSION.

Little League

I had moved to North Carolina where I received my Masters at Duke University. Now coaching kids in Basketball, in Durham , is serious business . Great Passion for the sport of Basketball in North Carolina. When I moved there and attended my first Coaches meeting it became crystal clear that these guys lived for this. I coached a 10 year old that first year. I learned that the rules said a coach could keep his team and not have to draft. That meant (since they started at 5 years old) my team would go up against kids that had been together as a team for five years! Also you could claim a kid that was in your carpool. One coach drove 25 miles away to pick up a kid (this is kind of the dirty side of little league) Now this was a big well established league. Many former Duke, UNC and NC State players had kids, nephews, nieces, neighbors and grand kids on these teams. The day before the draft we watched the kids that were not already on teams try out. Hundreds of them. Most were new to the area, their parents worked in the Research Triangle. So the kids were dealing with a new school , new friends, stressed parents all the joys of moving. These were some nervous little dudes.

I went to the equipment person to get my bag of balls, clipboard and so on..I looked up at a huge board behind the equipment Manager ..I stammered “Are those scores??” 60-10,45-3 and 70 to 1??? Yep was the answer. Those were from last year.

To get you non little league rs up to speed, little kids under 12 years of age, spend most of the game throwing the ball out of bounds, double dribbling and moving in a big mass around the ball. Scores are usually 30 to 25 or 22 to 20. Most of my kids I ended up with had not played before. Could not pass, dribble and so on.  Our first game was against last years champions . Two ex Duke player relatives on their team. The first half of the game, we could not get the ball even past  half court. They have a rule that if a team goes up over 20 points the other team cannot press and has to stay inside the key (close to the basket). My kids were humiliated, but the parents..oh the parents . My phone rang off the hook with angry calls. I did some research and found out that the league had an incredible turnover for first year players. 70% of players that tried the league did not return a second year. So, I fought for a lottery , no returning teams  and players living more than 40 miles away could not join. Uhh.... I was really unpopular after that, but the next year games went into overtime,scores were 30-28 . It was exciting for the kids and parents again. What kid wants to be humiliated 70 -0 or what parent wants to see their child humiliated and I am not talking about everyone gets a hug and a participation medal. I’m talking about taking out the fix and making it competitive. The Parents that were preparing their son's to be the next Lebron James or daughters to be the next Sheryl Swoopes moved to the competitive world of AAU sports. We were an instructional league/fun league. Membership boomed in the league. So on to Passion and Jessie:

Enter Jessie

Chess Team, Math team the kid was a genius. Basketball talent..hmmmm not his strength. He had passion. In practice he hustled after every ball,he was positive , he helped the other players . I never saw anyone play better defense. Hands up ,high energy and never gave up. A kid stole the ball and bolted like the wind from our basket to his our guys just threw down their hands and gave up..heck the kid was twenty steps ahead and they basically acknowledged he was going to score. Not Jessie! He had passion . Jessie bolted after the kid. The kid had an easy layup but caught a passionate high energy Jessie out of the corner of his eye and blew an easy layup . Jessie got the rebound,that kid that was killing us with steals and easy layups got into a funk and just couldn’t recover the whole game. We, a team with an 0-8 record just beat a championship team. The passion of Jessie was infectious.

I had one kid in that game who had never scored a goal all year. Let’s call him Everett . League rules said each player had to play at least 6 minutes. Everett would come to me and say “Coach, you don’t need to put me in , I know I suck .” He would often walk with the ball or get excited and throw it to the other team. After Jessie showed his passion. My team , not me, called a time out. The Captain of the team said hey they know Jake and I will score most the points  and we are getting double and triple teamed so Jake and I will move left and the guys that don’t shoot can shoot ! Everett wasn’t keen on the idea. “What if I shoot the ball over the backboard again or dribble off my foot?” Jake said “Dude we are 0-8 ,what difference does it make. Lets have fun !” The top two players split to the left with 5 of the defenders following . Jake throws the ball over to Everett. Everett's mom, who would often console a very sad and dejected Everett after each  game, sat in the stands looking at her cell phone. My bench players stood up and screamed (scared the stuffing’s out of the other team ) Mrs Doe !!!!!!!!!!!!!. She looked up suddenly as Everett made the shot and got fouled as a defender ran across court knocking him down. Mrs Doe screeched “ Oh MY GOD !!” dropped her phone through the bleachers and broke it (said it was the happiest she ever was breaking a phone) as the happiest kid you ever saw bounced up with the biggest grin on his face. Referee had to kind of work with Everett on where to stand to do the free throw, as he never shot the ball before. Everett made the free throw. PASSION…

Now I know there are a lot of outhouses to penthouse sports stories but these kids learned that passion can often beat talent, beat the odds and level the playing field. Why do you think it is always a theme in Rocky, Karate Kid, Invincible, Screaming and Kicking and so many other movies.

Human Resources

I learned that if you are going to do anything, do it with passion.

 I have seen HR people that feint passion. I have always cross trained my staff. No one trick pony.  I have asked the staff “are you passionate about what you do?” I cannot give you passion , I can instill the training necessary to know Safety, Payroll, Benefits, Compensation, Labor Laws, Compliance, Recruitment, HRIS every discipline of HR to use your passion. Like kids playing ball(themselves)and  parents that want you to succeed  but may sometimes have unrealistic expectations (Upper Management) you need to have PASSION for your job. Without it ,the employees see it,vendors see it heck everyone sees it . It just takes that one Jessie to show you that passion can overcome almost anything.

Family

My family is probably the most competitive I have ever seen. My father plays ping pong like Forrest Gump because my brother in law beat him once (once) so he practiced. He does Scrabble like an Oxford Scholar because my mother would do 30 plus word scores as a regular play. No matter what the score, he played to win. He fell out of a palm tree breaking his back in two places when he was 73 years old at the time Now age 90 he still gets on the ladder to pull the dead fronds off because he has PASSION about his yards beauty.

I can take your passion, amplify it, increase your enthusiasm but passion has to be in you. Maybe it is buried deep inside but find a job or mentor that can appreciate it and nurture it.

Long hours do not equal passion

I had an Employee Relations Staffer come to me and complain. “Misty does the same job I do and she got a bigger raise than me! I come in at 6am she comes in at 9am. Misty leaves at 5:00pm like clockwork I stay till 7 pm or 9PM . I come in on weekends . Misty goes out to eat lunch and I eat in the employee cafeteria. This is BS !” He said (we will call him Tim) with a bright red face.

I said okay “We are one of the nation’s largest retailers. We open at 10 am in the field. Most of our employees show up at 9:30 am. According to my metrics ,our  greatest percentage of ER calls from the field come in between 11 am and 4:00 pm EST and since you are both east coast ER that works well around the 9-5 schedule. The west coast team comes in at noon and works to 7 pm . Looking at the work load, Misty is handing the same number of calls in a shorter period, the quality survey (I publish them for competitiveness)  I send to our internal clients in Operations, IT, Accounting, Marketing and so on give Misty a 94% approval rating. Your approval rating is an 83%..Tim interjects” Well I have a much tougher group in the Northeast than Misty has in the Southeast  so if we are using  the internal surveys that is not a fair comparison” . I said “ I agree if that was the only metric we used, but we also use ..number of cases closed, follow up, internal customer confidence , percentage of calls returned in a 24 hour period and many more”.

"If we dig deeper you are asserting that Misty is barely putting in 40 hours and you are putting in 65 plus hours on average, yet her output and results exceed yours which brings me to a subject I was going to meet with you about. The IT department shows that you are on social media an average of 2.5 hours a day. Shopping sites 5 hours a week. Personal emails another 2 hours a day. Your phone log shows that between 7 am and 9 am less than 3% of your calls are accomplished at that time. After 5 pm less than 5% of calls . Yet your time to follow up on missed calls despite the GEO code is 38% slower than Misty. In this state as you know the fine for picking up your kids late from Child Care is quite high, plus a repeat of being late to child care automatically gets a Social Services interaction. Misty as many others here , must leave on time to pick up her child. That aside Tim, are you passionate about your work and your contribution to the organization? The feedback from the field is that they can feel Misty's passion her desire to help them. The feedback I am getting on you is that its status quo, a paycheck no energy, no passion. Working a lot of hours is great if you can see the added value and results but I think its more of a inability to organize your time” I can have you work with the training department on one of the “time organization modules?”.

Tim was basically calling it in. Passion can be felt, heard and inspires others.  

If you are not passionate about what you do, be it basketball ,work or life it will show.

Oh what happened to Tim?

He found out about the differences in raises by going into our payroll system which shows me who entered the system,when and what they looked at . Searching for non issue related salary changes and especially of a peer is a big no no in our policy manual. So I fired him, with passion.

Passion is infectious. Lack of Passion is also infectious, a cancer that must be eradicated before it infects the host (organization).

Be PASSIONATE!