Anyone who has ever worked with me already knows this, but I'm full of passion for what I do. I try to choose roles, assignments, and companies that help me develop and maintain that passion and I consider my passion one of my strongest personal assets. I like to find meaning in my work and to share this with others: both team members that I work with and lead but also partners, customers, and others in the Industry that I interface with. I really hope that my passion shines through and is visible to almost everyone whom I engage with, but more than that I think it's a strong sales and leadership trait, and here's why:
- Passion engages others: Passion is contagious - The leader who rolls out a new initiative with a passionate pitch to the team makes it more believable and drives more engagement with the team. In my opinion, it's a key step in turning Vision into reality (not the only one, mind you, but a critical one!). if you and your teammates are passionate about what you are doing together, the chances of you mastering it automatically go up. The contagious nature is also true with partners and customers - ask yourself - Who is more believable the salesperson who explains the product/market fit for their new release with passion or the one who is reading a prepared deck from the marketing team?
- Inspiring Passion brings things to the next level: Having passion yourself is one thing and there are significant benefits just from this, but to truly get a team to excel you need to share and inspire your passion with the rest of the team. This isn't created through an organized program: "The Passion Club meets on Tuesdays at 3:00 pm" but rather by having meaningful interactions with the team members one-on-one and sharing the why that drives your passion, then exploring what the employee is passionate about. You need to find the connection between the company's greater mission or purpose, your passion, and the things the individual employee is passionate about. It's not always easy to find these connections: But by working to find them and sharing what you and your company really stand for you will build passion within the team that will help you excel!
- Drive change and make a difference with your passion: If you have passion for your company's purpose and are leading your team with this, you can use this as a North Star to guide the change that is aligned with the organization's greater purpose. This lets you truly make a difference with your passion because you are impacting the world and those around you with your actions.
- At the end of the day, this all works best when it's aligned: A company that offers a purpose beyond the bottom line, you as a passionate leader that has alignment with the company its goals, and its products, and attracting and retaining talent in your team that shares this passion! There are always going to be some team members who hate their jobs and feel bored and trapped, but as more and more of the team shares the direction and passion it will be easier to coach those without passion either up or out of the organization.
All of the above is why I believe that passion is 80% of success - of course, there are other elements, but they all become easier with a Passionate team: Have a team member who shares the passion but needs help technically - 1) They'll work really hard to come up to speed because of that passion and 2) Others in the organization will assist in coaching them up because of their shared passion. The opposite is a lot harder to deal with: someone who is technically competent but lacks passion will operate in autopilot mode, "phoning it in" so to speak and their technical competence will go to waste. I have passion for everything I choose to do and I look for it in my teams an coworkers and I think you should too!
