Five years ago, I had a job I was extremely passionate about. I completely bought into the mission and vision of the organization. I spoke with fervor and energy to motivate people inside and outside of the organization towards achieving our vision. I was energized, and I loved every long, exhausting minute of it.
And then I lost it.
Both the job and the passion. Passion is a powerful force in leadership. It can motivate us to do great things and to push ourselves all the way to our limits to break through them. In comparison, the absence of passion can make a leader feel lifeless and an organization seem empty. Where can leaders go to regain the passion they have lost, and where can leaders find new passion?
To answer that question, we need to understand that passion has to do with feelings. When we are navigating the world of emotions, or feelings, there are few road maps. But I’d like to share three signposts that have helped me on my own leadership journey to find and lead with passion.
Feel What You Feel
Maybe you can remember a time when you were passionate about something, but you don’t feel that way anymore. Or maybe you can’t remember ever having felt passionately about anything in your leadership before. In either case, the absence of passion may indicate a lack of connection to your own feelings.
Our English word, passion, is connected with strong emotions, but the original Latin root meant “to suffer.” Sometimes leaders can lose their passion because of experiences of suffering or losing something in the past. It could be a promotion lost, a job lost, a relationship lost, or just the dream of how you thought things would be.
Because suffering produces intense feelings, leaders can sometimes compartmentalize those feelings and experiences in order to maintain their effectiveness at work. Ironically, when leaders shut themselves off from negative feelings, they often find they have lost the capacity to feel strongly about positive things, like their vision or purpose.
So, the first signpost on the road to discovering passion is to feel what you feel. Open yourself up to all emotions – even ones we may label as negative. On my own leadership journey, I had to acknowledge the negative feelings that came from my experience in order to stay connected to the positive emotions. This became the source of my passion for new things.
Connect With What You Care About
I have rarely met a leader who didn’t care about anyone or anything. In fact, some of the leaders I've met who seemed most dispassionate were actually people of strong feeling. They cared deeply about their employees, customers, vendors, suppliers, and the work they were doing.
Since passion resides in the world of emotions, I encourage leaders to connect with things they truly care about. Reflect on things that are meaningful – relationships, people, results your work produces, and how those results impact the lives of others. The absence of passion in your leadership may be the result of focusing too much on the task and not spending time thinking about the people and results that matter.
In my own journey, I had to rediscover how much I loved watching leaders expand, develop, and grow. When I reconnected with the impact of my work, I discovered a wellspring of new passion to do what I do.
Share The Stories
The third signpost through the uncharted territory of passion is to share the stories – the truly important ones. Stories almost always carry emotional content with them. They are powerful vehicles for conveying deep feelings that are common in many cultures.
When we hear stories, we listen not only with the head, but with the heart, searching for points of connection with our world experience. Ironically, when leaders tell stories about things that really matter, they find their own passions rising as they stir the emotions of others.
Passion is contagious.
When one person has it, it quickly spreads to others. When leaders share important stories that stir up the passion of people in the organization, they generate a wave of energy that can rebound back to them.
My work with individual leaders is highly confidential, but I am always looking for ways to share stories of success and breakthrough. With their permission, sharing stories of leaders demonstrating the courage to dig deeper and climb higher is a powerful way to generate passion for leadership development.
Passion: The Courage To Feel Strongly
Passion is often associated with youth. Maybe this is because more veteran leaders may be wary of the powers of passion and how it can make us feel out of control or do things without thinking.
The sun is also a powerful force. It burns at thousands to millions of degrees and is completely out of our control, but we have found ways to harness its energy.
Passion is a much too important energy source to leave on the shelves of our teams and organizations.
Instead of neglecting it, leaders should cultivate passion, and exercise the courage to feel strongly.
Three signposts have helped me navigate back to my own source of passion. I encourage you to find your own path to leadership passion by feeling what you feel, connecting with what you care about, and sharing the truly important stories. Your leadership is too important to go without it.
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