Hugh O’Doherty

Passion in the workplace depends on either, or both, of two sources of motivation – extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic motivators have to do with factors such as salary and conditions of work. Intrinsic motivators have to so with opportunities for personal growth, experiencing community and a sense that one is contributing towards the common good.

Research de­mon­­strates that people will be most passionate and creative when they feel motivated by the work itself. When people are engaged because of their own natural interest and satisfaction in their work, they will be challenged to be creative through their own intrinsic motivation.

External pressures or rewards are never as effective as internal motivation. For example, in an experiment with schoolchildren, psychologists played mathematical games, which the children enjoyed. Later, they started giving rewards for success. When they took away the rewards, the children quickly gave up playing the games. It seems that the children had decided that they were playing for the reward, not for the fun.

The search for meaning appears to be part of a fundamental human need to feel important and to make a difference. So employees need a sense of purpose for their work. They need jobs that stretch their talents and strengths, uncover hidden talents, and provide opportunities for growth and advancement. They also need opportunities to experiment. As an example of the latter, the chief executive officer of an architecture company taps into his employees’ passions by inviting them to submit to the firm business plans that identify and leverage their professional "passions," or areas of interest. Depending on the venture, those with promising and relevant plans, which are consistent with the firm’s vision, are supported with up to 20 percent of their billable time reallocated to develop their ideas. The employees, in a sense, become entrepreneurs who enjoy many of the benefits of a start-up, without most of the associated risks. These ventures become the firm's investment in research and development and improve the process.

Most people lose passion in the workplace because they are dependent on extrinsic motivation. However, you can’t “make” employees passionate about work – passions cannot be imposed externally. Instead, great leadership creates environments where employees embrace the corporate purpose, and have numerous opportunities to discover how their individual passions support it.

Great leadership matches employees to jobs that tap into underlying values that motivate and excite them. For example, the CEO of Granite Rock, Bruce Woolpert, initiated what he called the "Try-a-Job" program. This program allows any company worker to try his/her hand at a different company job for a day. Three employees have even shadowed Woolpert in his role as company head. Another program gives employees promoted into new positions a 30-day trial period. During that time, if they don’t like their new job, they can go back to their old one, no questions asked. So far, no one has.

So, there is much that organizations can do to ignite and maintain the passion of their employees. In particular, they can: find out what is meaningful to each person and then try to match the work to that meaning. This can then become part of each person's annual business planning or performance review; create an environment where people come to know and understand their unique strengths; allow employees to screw up and if they do, give them a pat on their back for having the courage to take risks; give employees a “creativity allowance” to expand their horizons; bring teams together from time-to-time to share experiences and to create opportunities that enable employees to take part in cross-functional networks; reward employees profusely whose passions results in great performance; provide opportunities for employees to think out of the box; •provide a strong sense of community and support, a sense that one is part of the whole; or provide role models that employees respect and can learn from

However, there is only so much that organizations can provide by way of extrinsic motivators and to harness intrinsic motivation. In the final analysis, employees need to take responsible for passion in the workplace. If they remain childishly dependent on the organization to instill and maintain passion, they collude, with management, in staying trapped in a system that maintains them in a victim role. As a result, they will eventually begin to scapegoat the organization’s authority structure for unhappiness experienced in the workplace.

It helps if employees understand the natural cycle of work life and are hence prepared for the ebb and flow of passion. Most of us usually start out fired up in the work place, the normal emotion in beginning any venture, only to hit up against the normal obstacles that the natural cycle of organizational life brings. For example, the original creative impulse has to be disciplined by the need for organization and structure. As a result, work life can begin to feel routinized and dull. This is the moment when many new start-ups collapse, because the passionate entrepreneurial spirit required to launch the new venture is not sufficient for the next stage of development – the stage when organization, systems and standard operating procedures are required. After a time, new employees collapse for the same reason.

Passion is also lost when employees start to hit up against the day-to-day politics of organizational life with its factional conflict, competition for resources and deadly turf battles. This dark underbelly can overwhelm, squash enthusiasm and deaden creativity. People start to feel unacknowledged and taken for granted.

A more hidden reason why employees allow passion to die is that most of us are unconsciously afraid of passion. From childhood, most of us are taught to fear passion, to view it as unpredictable, irrational, and hence, dangerous. So, even though organizations may espouse the expression of passion, they may actually support a culture that unawarely sabotages passion.

One key to keeping passion alive therefore, is to understand the natural cycle of life in organizations, and to be aware of the unconscious ways the expression of passion may be undermined by an organization’s culture that in reality fears strong emotion.

In the final analysis, it is a matter of responsibility for attention. In the Hindu tradition, it is said that “you are what you meditate on.” It is important therefore to stay focused on one’s purpose. This requires a will strong enough to stay centered on “true North” in the face of every distraction. It means noticing when one’s attention begins to get drawn to the negative so we can break the spell and remember the larger vision. In our leadership programs, my colleagues and I at Cambridge Leadership Associates emphasize the need to have confidants who will help us separate “self” from “role” so that we can understand that most of the resistance we experience in organizations has to do not with us personally, but with the fear of loss that many associate with change. Confidants hold us steady through the tough moments – the times when we lose hope; when we despair because we can’s see immediate results, or the accomplishment of our purpose seems more complicated than when we set out. Confidants stitch us together when we feel beaten down, re-connect us to purpose, and remind us to celebrate small victories on the way.

Keeping passion alive is a matter of point of view. In “Man's Search for Meaning,” Victor Frankl says this: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Hugh O’Doherty is a senior associate at consulting firm Cambridge Leadership Associates in Cambridge, Mass., and a faculty member at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He can be reached at hodoherty@cambrige-leadership.com.