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Would Your Employees Pass the Passion Test?
November 14, 2008
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| Photo by A. Feldmann, stock.xchng |
By Arupa Tesolin
Not enough passion in your organization? It's costing you. Gallup estimated that the 22 million workers who consider themselves either actively disengaged or extremely negative in their workplace costs North American organizations $300 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. This excludes related absences, illness and other factors which would make the number far higher.
Think most of your people would stay in your organization? Think again. Monster.com estimates that 70%, or nearly three out of every four workers, would leave their job if something better came up, and that includes people who aren't actively looking for new employment. On the loyalty front, there's more disconcerting news. That one employee out of four who is content to stay is not likely to be the most talented or productive.
There may be a more enlightened way to go forward. Enter Chris Atwood, a former software training and consulting executive, and Janet Atwood, his business partner, are co-authors of a new best-selling book, The Passion Test.
The Need for Passion in the Workplace
Incentive caught up with Chris Atwood to find out more about how The Passion Test might be useful in organizations:
Atwood sees The Passion Test as an opportunity to bring attention to the fact that 80 percent of the population is not passionate about the work that they do. Recognizing this has great implications for personal development, talent development and performance management in all kinds of organizations and businesses, as well as the prospect of having more fulfilled lives.
For CEO's, managers and human resources leaders, the message is also part of a new competitive reality. As Larry Bossidey, CEO of Honeywell starkly states in Success Built to Last, by Jerry Porra, Mark Thompson and Stuart Emery, "It's a competitive imperative. Only by loving what you do will you actually do more and do it better than the person sitting next to you. If you don't, well then, we'll find someone who does."
Atwood says that most people think they can't follow their passions for two main reasons: either they think they can't afford to—or that they won't be able to—support themselves, or they think they need to be "realistic" or put off dreams until they have the money to follow them. These thoughts prevent people from following their passions and being able to express their own unique contribution in their life, work and world.
Atwood also points out how our beliefs impact our behavior. "What stops people from living their dreams is the belief that they think they can't. So they create a lot of self-evidence to support it," he says. But the truth is, as articulated by Born to Believe authors and neuroscientists Dr. Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, that we create a belief when a new neural pathway is formed. Through repeated use of that pathway, we affirm it. We also have the possibility to live the dream and create new neural pathways that enrich our experience and move us forward.
Most people are aware that we live in a mainly intellect-centered mental world in organizations. The next order of change is to become both more heart-centered and more action-oriented. With the pace of the global market, we can't afford continue to over-think things as we have been. We need to do more. And The Passion Test takes us that step further, with a more alluring, invigorating and inspiring approach to decisions.
The Passion Difference
Passion is now a differentiator that works both ways, for individuals and for organizations and businesses. Atwood elaborates: "We're living in a time where we are competing for our jobs or for our business with people throughout the world. In the past, I might have had some skill or ability that would outperform the capabilities of others in my area. Even though I wasn't passionate about it, I was able to do it well enough to get by."
"Today companies can find accountants or marketers or salespeople with particular skills anywhere in the world, through technology. What that means is, if I'm not passionate about something and not excited about it, then I'm not going to do the same quality of work as someone who has the skill and is more passionate about it and they're going to outshine me," Atwood says. "When I'm passionate the quality of my work and my ability to have a competitive presence has increased."
So, it seems that the new gold standard for human capital might just be "passion capital." If a business or organization is staffed with people who are passionate about their work, it will have a greater competitive advantage. Passionate people working together create a synergistic effect that collectively yields a great deal more that the sum of its parts. United by a common vision, and their particular contribution, outcomes can be created that wouldn’t have been possible before.
As Atwood puts it, "People today can't afford to not follow their passions. Companies today can't afford to have people who don't." Companies at the cutting edge, like Google, do whatever they can to support the passion of their employees. This is the kind of radical thinking that flips goal setting and competency planning on its head to where the opportunities for success and innovation far outweigh the risks. That's when the greatest risks result from maintaining the status quo and doing nothing.
A company will be most successful to the extent that it can place people in the position where they can share the most gifts. "Each of us have unique, skills, talents and contributions that only we can make," Atwood says. "The way to be most effective is to do something that enables each of us to share these contributions."
Atwood explains how this might work from a basis of passion: "The task of placement is to find the people that have the passions and unique gifts to make them ideally suited to do that work. For example, an employee's core passion is gardening. That might lead to the questions: 'What is it about gardening that I love? Is it being able to work with my hands, or working with the environment or growing beautiful things?' From [those answers, the] employer would identify positions for career development paths."
The result? A happier more enthusiastic employee doing something that is aligned with the business vision and purpose, which is also aligned with that person's sense of fulfillment and purpose.
What's Your Passion Score?
So go ahead and take The Passion Test for yourself. Encourage your employees to do the same. You'll learn a lot and you might set the stage to achieve the next generation of optimal performance. (With all the economic turmoil North American companies and workers have experienced this might be the beginning of a return to sanity.)
Buy The Passion Test.
Arupa Tesolin is a speaker, innovation trainer and owner of the training company Intuita who is passionate about using intuition and creative power to fuel innovation. Author of two recent books, the international phenomenon Ting! A Surprising Way to Listen to Intuition & Do Business Better and Spark—Raise Your Mind to the Power of Infinity & Create Anything. Arupa is also the Canadian Partner for Learning Paths International. www.intuita.com. Contact Arupa at arupa@intuita.com or 905.271.7272.
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