How Do We Incite Passion at Work?

Executive Summary:

Intuitively, a passionate workforce is a driven and productive workforce.  I hypothesize that we can tap into our teammates’ passions by tapping into business and personal values.  I invite you to test my hypothesis and share your results.

The Rest of the Story:

I play a small role in a leadership committee for a local Cub Scout Pack.  (Bear with me; I believe this is relevant.)  Yes, it’s a leadership committee with all that such implies.  Still, we function fairly well.  I have noticed, however, that we tend to have more, shall we say, energetic discussions than I typically experience in the work place and I have been trying to conclude why.

I tried to decide what is different between our Cub Scout leadership committee and other business committees and teams that I have worked with.  My first thought was that perhaps a different level of professionalism is a factor.  No.  Everyone on the committee is an experienced working professional of one form or another, and our discussions, though sometimes excited, never become unprofessional.

After much consideration and reflection, I have concluded that the level of passion invested in the focus of the team is the difference.  You see, our Cub Scout leadership committee is made up entirely of volunteers who invest their time, some of them a great deal of time, to ensure that our children have a wonderful and value-based experience from their participation in the Cub Scout pack. 

Then I wondered, how potent would a professional working team be if it were as impassioned as our Cub Scout committee?  Wow!  So my reflection began all over again with a new question.  What stirs so much passion in our committee, and how do I create that same phenomenon at work?

I reflected upon all of the topics and events where these impassioned discussions took place, and in every case, the root of the debate was how we as a leadership team should set guidelines, or organize events, or make decisions that best reflected the values we want our scouts to observe, learn, and understand.

Here is a quick example.  We had a rather excited discussion about what to do to about several scouts’ achievement tokens, which weren’t awarded because the information was entered in the database incorrectly.  The topic of the awards and a solution to get them to the scouts is an easy thing to solve and doesn’t really warrant a debate, on the surface.  Yet we had a heated debate.  We debated because we had differing opinions about how the scouts should learn to deal with these problems (in life) when they come up.  In short, we didn’t really discuss the awarding of tokens; we discussed how to represent our values.

So, here is my hypothesis and my challenge.  My hypothesis is that if we can migrate our own focus and that of our team members to how our decisions, our actions, and our output or products reflect our values, we might stir up some passion among our business teams.  As much as passionate debates can take time to reconcile, passionate work can be a significant game changer.  I challenge you to test this hypothesis with me.

The next time you meet with your team, see if you can challenge the decision on the table from a value perspective.  I’m not suggesting that you start a philosophical debate on the meaning of Truth.  I’m suggesting that you pose a question like, “If we do X or Y, which one will best reflect our business value of (pick one, integrity, quality, innovation, whatever you have on the poster on the meeting room wall)?”  First, if you can pose the question and get past the strange looks, see if a debate doesn’t start.  I suspect one will if the less costly decision conflicts with a value. 

What if the question drives the final decision?  What if the questions of value become a commonplace consideration, or even a habit among every person on your team?  If every action and decision becomes a matter of value instead of just task for everyone on your team, will you achieve an impassioned team with an impassioned work ethic?  That’s my hypothesis and I challenge you to try it with me.

If you decide to test my values-drive-passionate-behavior hypothesis with me, write in and share with us what you discover.  I’ll periodically do the same.  Use the comment function, or access my e-mail from my profile on this site.

Intuitively, a passionate workforce is a driven and productive workforce.  I hypothesize that we can tap into our teammates’ passions by tapping into business and personal values.  I invite you to test my hypothesis and share your results.

Stay wise, friends.