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Intentional Leadership — D1, W3, M5 — Passion

How are you doing this month, with clarifying your passion?

I want to tell you a story. One you may already be familiar with, perhaps…but maybe not some of the details.

I daresay we are all familiar with Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook. He had a passion for connecting people, and his passion carried him down an unknown road, many years ago. He was studying at Harvard, but decided to end his college education to pursue his dream…a budding on-line social network. He moved to California, lived in dingy apartments with his friends/co-founders, and worked at engineering Facebook, essentially penniless!

As you know, the web site took off at full throttle and grew by leaps and bounds. Zuckerberg and his friends worked hard to keep up with its growth.

As Facebook blossomed, it began to attract attention; a lot of attention! In fact, Yahoo! offered Zuckerberg $1 Billion (yes, that’s a “B” not an “M”!) to buy his site, he said, “No.” To many of us, that response might seem inexplicable. What could he possibly be thinking? A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money; more than most people ever even dream of, let alone possess. So, why would he turn down the offer?

Simple…Passion. Mark Zuckerberg is passionate about connecting people; he believes when people connect something powerful happens and he wanted to continue to help facilitate those connections.

While one may argue over how Facebook is designed and operated, some in favor and some against, it’s hard to argue that the company hasn’t been successful. And it’s beyond reason, at least to me, that something could be that successful without some passionate person (or persons) driving it forward.

Passion is the driving force behind life’s fulfillment. Thus, passion must be exercised and nurtured. During the course of your leadership journey, will be tempted along the way — and probably more than once — to sell out for comfort or security (or a number of other reasons). I urge you to not settle for less than the full extent of your dreams.

Take a few minutes today to reflect on a time when you were tempted to give up on your dreams. What happened? What did you do to keep your dreams alive?

You see, I believe you did not succumb to the temptation; if you had, you wouldn’t be here, today, reading my blog or other blogs exploring similar topics.

Who supports you and cheers you on as you chase after the desires of your heart?

What else do you need to keep your passion alive?

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Intentional Leadership — D4, W2, M5 — Passion

Spend some time with your journal today and write about the power of passion and how it could lead to trouble if it is not guided by principles.

What are the dangers?

How could something near to your heart hurt you and others?

How can you prevent this from happening?

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Differences in Passion

I spent some time reflecting on today’s blog post about a time when someone disagreed with something I am passionate about. I can say this has actually happened to me many times throughout the course of my career.

As you will have figured out by reading anything on my web site, any blog post, I am passionate about developing myself and others. I typically think of the impacts on people when I’m working with change, decision making, etc. And over the course of my career, working in the corporate world including many manufacturing companies, I was usually in the minority with respect to my focus and perspective. It put me in the position of often presenting an opposing view in an arena full of financial people, manufacturing/operations people, engineers, and production workers.

You see, I believe if we invest in people — take good care of them — they will take great care of our businesses. Engaged employees are more productive, more reliable, more creative, more loyal. But often times, companies don’t devise good measures for those attributes, can’t see how it impacts the bottom line.

In addition, I consider that in any endeavor, I am exchanging my time and life energy for something else, as are all the other people on this planet. For me, that exchange better be fulfilling, better be worth it. I know I make some people uncomfortable when I talk about it this way. A lot of people I am in contact with in work situations are just there for the paycheck, putting in their time, wanting to get out to get to their “real life.” I don’t want to live that way. I want meaning in my life, deep connections, the opportunity to add value and make a difference; I want my time and energy to matter.

I was once working with a group of people (not a “team” by my definition) who demonstrated a lot of behaviors I would consider unproductive, unhealthy, and in direct conflict with what they said they were there to do, which was work as a team. Communication was not flowing smoothly. Trust issues were evident and talked about frequently inside and outside the group — but never between the specific individuals involved in the situations being discussed. Processes weren’t followed consistently. They didn’t have a “lessons learned” process for evaluating job evolutions so they could learn from what went well and what didn’t and apply it to future work.

I offered to facilitate some team building for them; as my passion would direct me to, I wanted them to have a healthier environment to work in, better relationships with each other, the ability to have those uncomfortable, difficult, but necessary conversations, to perform at a higher level. I could envision a better culture, actual team work…They weren’t interested. Thought what I had to offer was fluff! In fact, they believed they had a healthy functional team and everything was fine.

I didn’t take it personally. I understand not everyone shares my perspective and my passion. Can I say it didn’t affect our working relationship? I don’t think so. Although, I will say I was less tolerant of listening to some of the issues they wanted to discuss about how others on their “team” were behaving. You see, if there’s an issue that’s disruptive enough to cause you to spend time thinking and talking (complaining) about it but you choose to not do anything to change it, that’s your choice.

My choice is to focus on what I can influence and effect positive change when I need it in my life, my team, my environment.

What about you?

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