- Don't underestimate the power of passion at work
to engage and motivate people.
As the novelist E.M. Forster once said,
"I'd rather have one person who is passionate
than 40 people who are merely interested."
We've all been swept up by somebody's passion, I think,
excitement about an idea, a new project at work,
and they're just so passionate about it
that it's infectious.
You wanna help out.
You wanna get involved because they are so excited.
They're so passionate about it.
So we have to remember the importance again
of just telling our faces that we're excited
about our projects, that we're excited about work,
that we're happy to be there,
the importance of our body language and our tone of voice
in conveying a certain level of passion.
Now, if the word passion scares you,
then consider for a moment what passion really just means.
To be passionate about something just means
you care deeply about something.
And your employees need to know
that you, as a culture leader, care about your organization,
that you care about your customers,
that you care about what's best for them,
that you care about their well-being.
A 2017 survey by the American Psychological Association
found that employees who felt supported
and cared for by their managers
were twice as satisfied with their jobs,
twice as satisfied with their jobs.
At Google, they have found
that that's one of the most important keys
to effective leadership within their Google company:
that those leaders who actively demonstrated
they were passionate about their employees' lives;
that they understood that their employees have a life
outside of work;
that they showed that they cared
about the entire 24-hour person showing up at work,
those were the most effective leaders.
So if you're going to engage your employees
at a deep, meaningful level,
they need to know that you care about them,
that you support them, that you have their back,
that you care about them
as a human being first and foremost.
You need to show that you care
about their families, their dreams,
their hopes, their fears.
You need to show that you know their dogs' names.
And if you're a really inspiring leader, some I've met,
they know their dog's birthdays.
And you need to tap into your employees' passions.
You need to understand what they are.
You need to have that conversation.
You know, what makes you passionate?
What are you passionate about at work?
What fuels your passion?
What gets you really, really excited?
Some companies allot a certain percentage of employees' time
to work on their own passion projects,
to work on their sort of side projects
that they're really excited about.
Because very often, those projects lead
to incredible new products or innovations or breakthroughs.
Now, obviously, with a lot of your employees,
you can't do that because it's not appropriate to the job.
But can you, in some way, again, craft their job
in such a way that they get a little more passion
out of their work?
Or is there some creative way
that they could bring one of their personal passions
into your workplace?
And I've seen all sorts of creative examples of this.
For example, one of my clients
where they have an employee who's a passionate pianist
so they invested in a piano for their workplace.
So now during coffee breaks, during lunch,
during special events, she has an opportunity to shine
and to play the piano and demonstrate her passion
and just do something throughout the work day
that she feels really passionate about.
How cool is that?
So is there a creative way you could tap
into the external passions as well
that your employees are excited about?
Pixar Studios and other companies provide an opportunity
for their employees to teach fellow employees
something that they're passionate about
in their personal life,
either through a lunch and learn
or sometimes through a longer learning day.
You might hold this once or twice a year,
as some of my clients do,
where employees just teach something to their coworkers
that they're really passionate about:
Italian cooking, fly fishing.
It doesn't matter what it is.
It's just a very cool way to engage your employees
and help them bring something they're passionate about
in their personal life into your workplace.