Feel Your Passion
Passion goes hand in hand with attention. People don’t see possibili- ties when they don’t feel any passion. Envisioning the future requires you to stay in touch with your deepest feelings. You have to find something that’s so important that you’re willing to put in the time, suffer the inevitable setbacks, and make the necessary sacrifices. Everyone has concerns, desires, questions, propositions, arguments, hopes, and dreams—core issues that can help organize aspirations and actions. And every individual has a few things that are much more important than other things. Whatever yours are, you need to be able to name them so that you can talk about them with others. You have to step back and ask yourself, “What is my burning passion? What gets me up in the morning? What’s grabbed hold of me and won’t let go?”
Leaders want to do something significant, accomplish some- thing that no one else has yet achieved. What that something is— your sense of meaning and purpose—has to come from within. No one can impose a self-motivating vision on you. That’s why, just as we said about values, you must first clarify your own vision of the future before you can expect to enlist others in a shared vision.
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G E Researchers in human motivation have long talked about two
kinds of motivation—extrinsic and intrinsic.12 People do things either because of external controls—the possibility of a tangible reward if they succeed or punishment if they don’t—or because of an internal desire. People do something because they feel forced or because they want to. People do something to please others or to please themselves. No surprises when it comes to predicting which condition is more likely to produce extraordinary results.
The research is very clear: external motivation is more likely to create conditions of compliance or defiance; self-motivation pro- duces far superior results. There’s even an added bonus. People who are self-motivated will keep working toward a result even if there’s no reward.13 In contrast, people who are externally controlled are likely to stop trying once the rewards or punishments are removed— or, as so aptly put by psychologist and motivational expert Edward Deci, “Stop the pay, and stop the play.”14
Exemplary leaders have a passion for something other than their own fame and fortune. They care about making a difference. If you don’t care deeply for and about something, how can you expect others to feel any sense of conviction? How can you expect others to feel passion if you’re not energized and excited? How can you expect others to suffer through the long hours, hard work, absences from home, and personal sacrifices if you’re not similarly committed? This is exactly what Andrew Rzepa discovered as part of his own personal-best leadership experience.
About a month after Andrew became chairman of a committee of trainee solicitors (lawyers) from across Manchester, England, the national Trainee Solicitors Group arranged a conference for all the trainees in the United Kingdom to take place in his city. Although not his event per se, given the close affiliation of their local with the
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national organization, Andrew decided that he would do all he could to make the event a success. He got his colleagues together and publicly declared that he was going to do everything in his power to ensure that there would be at least three hundred delegates at the event. (With three weeks to go, the enrollment was only at seventy- five.) “I spoke passionately about how good it would feel to be there at a packed event and to look around thinking that we had achieved that.”
After sharing his own feelings, Andrew invited the committee members to indicate whether “they were willing to personally commit themselves to the realization of this goal.” Andrew acknowledged that because this event was neither part of the committee’s goals nor the reason members had volunteered for the committee, he wouldn’t have been surprised had the majority said no. “To my pure joy,” Andrew exclaimed, “sixteen out of the twenty said yes, they were willing to do all they could to make the event a success.” And the fact that there were some “doubters” actually energized everyone involved. “The committee members were more passionate than I had ever seen them before,” Andrew said. In the end, after a solid com- bined effort from all quarters, they succeeded in getting 316 attend- ees to the event. Andrew’s passion not only fueled his own drive but also was contagious in getting others to work as hard as they could to realize a future possibility.
When you feel your passion, as Andrew did, you know you are on to something very important. Your enthusiasm and drive spread to others. Finding something you truly believe in is the key to articulating a vision in the first place. Once you’re in touch with this inner feeling, you can look and think beyond the constraints of your current position and view the possibilities available in the future.
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