Where is your professional passion; you see nobody likes robot colleagues at work, do they?
Sure they may be efficient and they don’t talk back or chuck a duvet day to watch the world cup or whatever sporting event is happening that week, but they are just machines.
All a machine can do is what it’s programmed for and once a better machine comes along, it will be replaced. Machines cannot improve themselves (at least not yet). Every leader needs to look at himself once in while and see if he has become a machine – one that does a great job and stops there; with no ability to develop and grow. If you, on objective analysis, find that is happening to you, something is missing in your life. And that is passion.
Doing Well Versus Growth?
Let’s not confuse doing well with success.
Doing well is meeting expectations and success is growth.
To grow you need passion to go beyond what is expected of you. An executive without a passion for his job comes across as dull, no matter how efficient he may be. And this concept of being dull is reflected back to you and feeds upon itself until the dullness becomes part of your personality; oh dear…This personality will then impact how well you perform, and worse, it will become part of how others treat you.
The truth is you don’t work in isolation. How you are perceived by others is a critical part of how successful you are. Not only will you not receive the respect you are due from your peers, you will become an uninspiring leader.
The words boring and leader cannot coexist.
The Power Of Passion
A manager needs to inspire others to follow and work with him or her. If you are not inspired yourself, how do you expect to inspire others?
No matter how boring and uninspiring your work is, your passion can turn that around, and the way you do it will be an example to others, allowing them to enable their passion too. This will then lead to you earning their respect.
Every job has it boring and frustrating moments – its when these aspects get to be a major part of the job that passion dies. Do not accept boredom. Focus on the big picture.
If you know where you are going, the boredom and frustration become only hurdles to overcome, and not the race itself. If your target is not something that inspires you, your target is too easy and surprise surprise you might have become a tad lazy!
Here is the thing, like a muscle, if your ambition is not exercised and pushed to do more, it will become weak. In fact, it may become so weak that you become incapable of even doing today’s job. If you are 40 today, you will not have the energy you had when you were 20. But that’s not important if your passion for your job pushes you to keep doing better.
Fact: The passion in the mind and heart will more than compensate for the slowing of the body. If you allow your passion to carry your forward, you will be respected and once you have respect, you will have opportunities to do more, contribute more and continue on your path.
What Next?
What do you want in life? Once you know that, focus on how you will achieve your goal. Not if, but how. The “if” will be taken care of by your passion.
Thanks,
Ruth
About blue pea POD
Time is a precious commodity, and you don’t want to waste it or any other resources trialling various programmes to see what might have content and insights that work for you. Leadership can feel like a lonely role especially in times of high change and uncertainty, and it’s good to have a sounding board and someone with experience of leadership and business.
Maybe there are challenges you want to resolve and goals you want to achieve right now?
Our VIP ½ day or 1 day coaching and mentoring package is designed to give you the confidence, clarity and action plan you need to get the desired results you want.
Spend ½ – 1 day with Ruth (either in person or on the phone) and move from chaos to clarity. To discover if this is the right investment for you at this moment in your leadership journey contact us and we’ll arrange a conversation.
