Do You Have Passion? (Moving from Good to Great)

Our experience has shown that people with passion achieve far more than people without passion. Cases in point: Lance Armstrong and his passion for cycling and Mohammed Ali and his passion for boxing. While each man possesses above average physical and mental strength enabling them to succeed, it is their passion for their respective sport that allows them to be the best at what they do—at all costs.Are you convinced that passion makes all the difference?In order to understand why having passion is important, you first have to understand what true “passion” is. Webster’s Dictionary defines “passion” as “ intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction.” By our definition, passion is a powerful belief that may cause a person to act out favorably on behalf of that belief.Imagine a scenario in which each and every employee in your company, every member of your group and all your vendors had passion about your mission and vision. What if they all worked with the same degree of commitment that Lance Armstrong and Mohammed Ali had in their fields. What would this mean for your company? How would your balance sheet look today, how would it feel to be an employee or member of your organization, if passion led each and every employee or member to succeed unconditionally?So, the question is, how do you create passion in your organization? Unfortunately, passion does NOT come by wishing, dreaming, hoping or even telling people to be passionate. Nor does it come by allowing your employees and members to read your mission and vision statements. Passion also does not come by virtue of time, i.e. just because you been around a long time. The fact is that passion doesn't COME at all. Passion is EARNED and passion is CREATED.How? You ask. Passion is created by empowerment, engagement and collaboration, which come by enabling your employees and members to truly FEEL as if their presence and work matter. At their core, they want to be involved, to be part of a team and to have a sense of ownership in the process and results.Inspiring passion is what Ingage Consulting does. We help organizational leaders to help their people become engaged in the organization so that they can become passionate. The first step is to better understand your organization’s current state: where are you now? In order to get to the desired or future state where your employees and members are engaged and PASSIONATE.Here are some simple questions you can first ask yourself (hopefully you know the answers), then ask employees, members and vendors (or other key constituents) to assess how passionate your organization is:

1. In your own words, what is the mission of our company?
2. In your own words, what is the vision of our company?
3. Why does it matter that our company exists?
4. Who do we serve best?
5. What do we do better than anyone else?

Hopefully your sample will be able to answer these questions correctly. Are the responses consistent? What is the tone of your interviewees’ voices? Can you HEAR the passion in their voices? In exceptional companies (We estimate this be a mere 1% of all organizations!) the answers will be correct, consistent, thoughtful, and spoken with passion. The remaining 99% of all organizations suffer from unengaged and indifferent employees or members, and as a result, are not living up to their potential. If you are disappointed with your results, think about what it would take to build and/or bring back passion to your organization.As we discussed, passion brought Lance Armstrong’s and Mohammed Ali’s inherent greatness to exceptional levels. Passion is the result of empowerment and engagement and will bring better productivity, morale, profitability — success to your organization. You owe it to your organization to inspire passion in your employees, members, customers and vendors. And they owe it to you to be inspired.So, how did your group respond to the questions?