Can You Expect Employees to be Passionate?
How passionate are you about your work?

After almost 30 years with Integro I am still as passionate as I was when I joined the company. I can't imagine doing a job that I do not have at least some passion for, so I started thinking about the subject of employee passion, assuming there must be other people like me, but can we as leaders realistically expect employees to be passionate? During these years as a consultant I have met many employees, managers and executives who are not at all passionate about what they do; in fact many seem to be bored to tears. Certainly many people who serve me in restaurants, in airplanes and in retail stores appear that way.

The Gallup Organization's research on employee engagement would seem to indicate that less than one in three employees have any passion for their work, with just 29% of the American workforce scoring as engaged. And yet Curt Coffman was quoted in the Gallup Management Journal in June 2002 as saying: "almost everyone joins an organization as an engaged employee."

Okay, so what is the difference between engagement and passion? The difference I see is that there are mentally engaged employees who are switched on to the extent that they are conscientious about their work, do everything that is expected of them and they comply with the policies and procedures required of them.

Then there are emotionally engaged employees. They don't just stick to the policies and procedures...they do whatever it takes to delight their customer, whether it is an external customer or someone inside the organization they are responsible for providing service to - an internal customer.

In his best selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins described these employees as disciplined people who "go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities." These emotionally engaged employees are passionate about their work, and the organization they work for.

You Get What You Expect
What do you expect from your employees? Do you expect them to be totally task oriented, work hard, and produce great results without complaining about their workload or their compensation? Or, do you have a more cynical view of people and believe they want to do the least amount of work they can get away with?

Or, do you expect your employees to be passionate about their work and your organization and perform at their best, because they want to?

There is a lot of cynicism about engagement, and even more about passion in the workplace. There are many managers and journalists, it seems, who believe it is an impossible dream - even a waste of time to attempt to achieve it. Here is a quote from an article in a local California newspaper that expresses that sentiment.

"How did we get so darned amorous about what used to be called the rat race? Blame Tom Peters. In 1985 he published 'A Passion for Excellence,' and since then he's tirelessly trod the globe, trying to keep the office fires burning. If he had a slogan, it would doubtless be 'My Passion Is Passion.' Personally, although some people I know derive occasional satisfaction from their work, I know no one who approaches the daily grind with passion, unless it's in the original Latin sense of 'suffering'."

Thank you Tom Peters. Despite the cynicism of this journalist and the evidence that confronts me every day that many employees and managers are not passionate about their work, I continue to meet those who are. The United Airlines flight attendant who told me she was really passionate about her work because she loved to serve people and she worked with a great group of people...even though her pay and benefits have been reduced in recent years. The waiter who has not only memorized the specials, but describes them in mouth-watering detail because he believes he works for the best restaurant in the area.

You know what I am talking about, because you have experienced it yourself. You gravitate back to the organizations that have passionate employees. You know who the passionate employees are in your organization. The most significant factor that determines whether employees are passionate or not is the leadership they experience.

The hard thing to do is to trust your employees...to believe in them and know that if you do they will perform at their best for you. It is hard for a leader to create a work environment where every employee wants to perform at their best. So hard in fact, that very few managers have been able to achieve it. And those who are least skillful at getting the best out of their employees have the gall to call leadership a soft skill! Most managers understand that the people side of their job is the hardest, so isn't it time we stopped dismissing it as the soft skill and recognize leadership as the toughest part of a manager's job?

Do You Want Your Employees to be Passionate?
There is no short cut to getting employees to be passionate about their work and your organization. You cannot achieve it by increasing compensation, improving working conditions, or offering incentives such as share options. Golden handcuffs may prevent people from leaving, but they do not buy passion. The only way to getting the best performance out of every employee is through providing them with great leadership...leadership that creates a work environment in which everyone wants to and can perform at their best.

My recently published book, Engagement is Not Enough: You Need Passionate Employees to Achieve Your Dream outlines the skills and tools leaders at every level of your organization need to create a work environment that will ignite the fire of passion in all employees. In the back of the book you will find a questionnaire, The Passion Index, which will help you determine just how passionate you are. To learn more about the book, download a free chapter or purchase the book, contact Dave and Laura Hauser, our West Coast distributors of the Integro Leadership Institute products and processes.

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