Passion | Hard Lessons

Finding Your Passion

Passion—where do you find it? There is not a pat answer to that question. I have Googled ten pages deep looking for a Passion Roadmap. It doesn’t exist. I have, to no avail, exhausted “Bible Search” looking for God’s Five Steps For Finding Your Passion. I couldn’t even find a one step formula. Why? Because passion is not something you find, rather it finds you, or catches you, or calls out to you—take your pick.

The heart is where passion resides, catches fire, burns hot and leads to action. There is a phrase we often use to encourage people to greater effort: “Put your heart into it!” I’ve heard it a thousand times from coaches, teachers, bosses and preachers. However, where there is passion, it’s not necessary because the heart is already into it.

Although there is no formula for finding passion, there are some things that will help you recognize your passion—that thing you must do:

More than it can be done, or would be good to do, passion is something you intensely feel should be done and must be done. Your passion will really matter to you and you won’t be able to escape it.
True passion, when in action, will fill your tank, not drain it. You may become physically exhausted, but emotionally and spiritually you will be energized.
Do you have a sense that if you don’t act on your passion, you will have deep regrets later in life?
The embers of emotion go cold quickly, but the embers of passion stay warm for a long time. One squeeze of the bellows is all it takes to stoke up the fire. How long has this thing you must do had a grip on you?
The people who know you the best and love you the most—what are they saying?

I have passion for leadership. How do I know?

First, a leadership vacuum drives me crazy. I do not have to be in charge, but put me in a setting where no one is in charge, I can’t stand it, I’ll step in.
Second, abusive, self-centered, ineffective leadership drives me up the wall. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” my heart screams.
Third, I believe that in organizations, leadership trumps everything. No organization ever rises above the level of its leadership. If leadership is that important—and it is—then leaders better have passion for it.
Finally, I love to help a group of people pull it off. It doesn’t much matter to me what the it If they have a mission and a vision, I want to help them get to the finish line.

One thing is certain, if you are in leadership, you better have passion for it. It’s too hard to lead without it.

What’s your passion? If you don’t know, I hope you’ll discover it soon.

[The above is an excerpt from chapter 2 of 16 Stones. 16 Stones Book ]

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You Can’t Lead Without…

Unlike emotion, which can be here today and gone tomorrow, and unlike sentiment or nostalgia, which invoke warm fuzzies and not much else, passion creates dissatisfaction with the status quo and fuels an enduring desire to do something. Passion will not rest easy; passion must act. Passion is essential for effective leadership. Why? Because leaders are defined by what they do, not by who they are. Passion will lead to doing! Management expert E. M. Forster makes the point clear: “One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”

Now, before you get too upset, I’m not saying that who you are (personality, character, etc.) is unimportant. It is important—very important. Who you are has a lot to do with your potential to lead. However, potential to do something and actually doing it are not the same. Integrity is essential for leaders, but people will not follow you just because you are honest. If you are a visionary, that’s great. But people will not follow you just because you dream great dreams. There are a lot of honest visionaries who never accomplish their dreams because they fail at the task of leading.

I know this may sound harsh, but there aren’t any books written about men and women who accomplished little or nothing, no matter how honest they were or how great their vision was. So, I’ll say it clearly: leaders are defined by what they do, and passion is essential for action, for doing.

It is not your position—CEO, manager, owner, senior pastor—that makes you a leader. What makes you a leader is that people choose to follow you on a journey of change. Before they’ll voluntarily go with you, though, one of the main things they look for is your passion for the journey. They want to know that you really care and that the fire in your soul will endure when the journey together gets tough (because at some point it will get tough, or tiresome, or scary). They want to know their leader’s flame will keep burning even when drenched by discouragement, delayed by detours, or set back by defeats.

So if you want to lead, you’ll need passion for leading or you’ll burn out before reaching the finish line. In The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, John Maxwell puts it this way: “A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.”

Excerpt from 16 Stones, chapter 2. Order info on hard-lessons.com.

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The RIO Is Closed

The only sign of life was a mangy dog fearlessly ambling down the middle of the road. There wasn’t a single car—parked or moving—anywhere on Main Street. The dog was perfectly safe and seemed to know it. Looking to the west, every building was boarded up, gutted or torn down; looking east…the same thing. There were no grocery stores, banks, dime stores or drug stores; no place for a boy to buy an ice cream cone or a nickel coke. Saddest of all, the RIO was closed! No more Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy or Gene Autry 15¢ cowboy movies on Saturday mornings. The nearest theatre is now 30 miles away; too far to walk and too far to ride a bike. Saturday mornings must be boring now.

It had been more than thirty years since I last visited my childhood home—a small, no-stop-light town on the Red River in southwest Oklahoma. It was a town of about 1000 farmers, refinery workers, teachers and preachers, shop keepers, one policeman and…well, that was about it. But it was a great place to grow up. There was swimming in stock tanks, pick-up baseball games in the park (no Little League), “quicksand chicken” in the river and playing Tarzan on the rafter rope in the seed room of the cotton gin. There were horses, real cowboys and real Indians, and donkey basketball games. It doesn’t get any better than that.

It wasn’t prosperous when I lived there and I didn’t expect it to be prosperous now, but I didn’t expect it to be nearly deserted. My boyhood friends have been long gone to pursue careers in Texas or Oklahoma City. People make the drive through the wheat fields and pastures to Lawton or Wichita Falls to shop and work. Except when the wheat is young and green in the spring, the drive always looks the same: flat, dry, hot and brown. Instead of the refinery (which is closed), some people now work in the casinos that are east of town. Some don’t work at all because there is nothing for them to do. There are still some teachers, part-time preachers and a lot of retired folks. The town has a handful of workers at the Farmer’s Co-op and cotton gin, and there are a few at the one and only café/gas station/grocery/convenience store; an insurance office…some city employees…a post office…utility workers…that’s about it.

In spite of the decline, my love for the town and the people is still strong. They are great people. They love God, love America, love each other and don’t expect Washington D.C. to take care of them. It is part—an important part—of my identity, and always will be. As I drove away, I was sad and had thoughts of returning to start a small factory to provide employment for 20-30 people. But I didn’t have passion to do it and I wasn’t willing to leave my comfortable life in Tennessee to do it.

There is a big difference between sentiment or emotion, and passion. You can drive away from sentimental and emotional things, but you can’t drive away from passionate things. Your heart won’t let you—you have to do something.

What are you truly passionate about? If you are a leader, I hope it is people. You don’t lead buildings, machines, computers, products, stores, etc.—you lead people. If you aren’t passionate about leading people, they will know it and follow you only because they have to, not because they want to.

Do you have passion for people? I hope so. My suggestion: don’t try to lead without it; it’s too hard.

[If this post was interesting and useful to you, please forward it to a friend. Thanks.]

Finding Your Passion

Although there is no formula for finding passion, there are some things that will help you recognize your passion—that thing you must do:

More than it can be done, or would be good to do, passion is something you intensely feel should be done and must be done. Your passion will really matter to you and you won’t be able to escape it.
True passion, when in action, will fill your tank, not drain it. You may become physically exhausted, but emotionally and spiritually you will be energized.
Do you have a sense that if you don’t act on your passion, you will have deep regrets later in life?
The embers of emotion go cold quickly, but the embers of passion stay warm for a long time. One squeeze of the bellows is all it takes to stoke up the fire. How long has this thing you must do had a grip on you?
The people who know you the best and love you the most—what are they saying?

I have passion for leadership. How do I know?

First, a leadership vacuum drives me crazy. I do not have to be in charge, but put me in a setting where no one is in charge, I can’t stand it, I’ll step in.
Second, abusive, self-centered, ineffective leadership drives me up the wall. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” my heart screams.
Third, I believe that in organizations, leadership trumps everything. No organization ever rises above the level of its leadership. If leadership is that important—and it is—then leaders better have passion for it.
Finally, I love to help a group of people pull it off. It doesn’t much matter to me what the it is. If they have a mission and a vision, I want to help them get to the finish line.

One thing is certain, if you are in leadership, you better have passion for it. It’s too hard to lead without it.

What’s your passion? If you don’t know, I hope you’ll discover it soon.

[If this post was interesting and useful to you, please forward it to a friend. Thanks.]

The Leader's Soul On Fire (#3)

In last week’s post, I wrote about the five dimensions of passion you need to lead a group of followers on a long and difficult journey of significant change. You need passion for the mission (the journey and destination), passion for change, passion for people, passion for personal excellence, and if you are a person of faith, passion for honoring God.

Today, let me mention a few faux passions that aren’t necessary for leadership and in some cases make it harder or impossible to lead.

Faux Passion #1: Sentiment. When you were a little boy or girl, there was always, “When I grow up I’m going to be a….” My boyhood dream was to be a cowboy. (Duh! I grew up in Oklahoma.) Or a baseball player. (Duh! Mickey Mantle was from Oklahoma.) I have a daughter who wanted to be a missionary or a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader—she’s an actress. Neither one of us have regrets that our childhood dreams were not realized as adults. So in spite of what your therapist may say, childhood dreams are not always the answer to adult fulfillment or passion for leading.

Faux Passion #2: Loving The Task. It is great if you love the product or program, but you don’t have to love it to lead it, and often you won’t. Louis Gerstner, Jr., left RJR Nabisco (cigarettes and Oreos) in 1993 to become CEO of IBM (mainframe computers). Do you think he loved computers more than Oreos? I suspect he didn’t love either one. But he did have passion for leading—for “trying to build organizations that allow for hierarchy but at the same time bring people together for problem solving, regardless of where they are positioned in the organization.” Now that’s passion for the mission and leaders have to have it! (Quote from Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Gerstner; a great read for leaders.)

Faux Passion #3: Emotion. I am sick and tired of people rationalizing angry, emotional, people-hurting outbursts with, “I’m just so passionate.” Emotions and passions are not the same thing.
     Emotions explode; passion burns steadily.
     Emotions are here today, gone tomorrow; passion sticks around.
     Emotions can turn and walk away; passion has to do something.
     Emotions are about self; passion is about something important apart from self.
     Emotions rage; passion reasons.

It may be a convenient excuse to explain bad emotional behavior as passion, but it’s not true and it will hurt your ability to lead—every time.

I would be interested in your ideas on Faux Passions you’ve observed. Also, don’t forget to register for the November 5^th Hard Lessons Workshop on the homepage. I look forward to seeing you there!

The Leader's Soul On Fire (#2)

In his now classic book, Good To Great, Jim Collins identifies what he calls “Level 5” leaders as having the “personal humility” and “fierce resolve” needed to transform their companies from good to great. “Fierce resolve” is another way of describing “passion.” Passion is essential if you want people to follow you on a difficult journey of change. [Read last week’s post: The Leader’s Soul On Fire (#1).]

So when a leader has passion that will attract followers, what does it look like?

First, followers will see passion for the mission—the purpose—of the organization. I’m not talking about passion for profit or for being the biggest. Passion for the mission endures through the ups and downs of the economy. Purpose is more important than profit or the Sunday headcount.

“We try never to forget that medicine is for people. It is not for profits. The profits follow….”
George W. Merck (from The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem)

Do you have passion for the mission of your organization? Or are you just trying to make a buck?

Second, as a leader you must have passion for change. Kouzes & Posner in The Leadership Challenge emphasize that “…the work of leaders is change.” So, if nothing is changing, you aren’t leading. If you by nature don’t like change, you can’t lead because leading is all about change. You can supervise; you can manage; you can contribute; but you can’t lead.

Third, a leader must have passion for people. You don’t lead machines; you don’t lead software; you don’t lead buildings; you lead people. Leading is always about people. I have a friend who once said to me, ”I would love my job if it weren’t for people.” My response was, “You need to get a different job.” (By the way, passion for people doesn’t mean that you are a soft leader who shies away from difficult people problems.) If you don’t really care much about the people you are trying to lead, they’ll know and will only follow you kicking and screaming.

A fourth passion leaders must have is passion for personal excellence. No organization ever rises above the level of its leadership. The leader is the lid—always! So if you want an excellent organization, you have to be an excellent leader. Whatever level you lead at now, you can raise it, and you need to.

Finally, for faith-based leaders, you must have a passion for honoring God in your work whether in business or ministry.

“And whatever you do…in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus….”
Colossians 3:17 (NIV)

Wouldn’t “do it all” include your job?

Are you trying to lead but it seems like a never-ending trek up a steep hill? Ask yourself if you really have passion for leading. Do you have fire in your soul for the mission? For change? For people? For personal excellence? For honoring God? If not, get out your match and light the fire of leadership passion in your soul. Do it today!

[In The Leader’s Soul On Fire (#3), I will discuss faux passions—passions that really aren’t.]