What is Passion for Today’s Business Leaders?

What is passion? Recently after a presentation at a Leadership Conference of executive coaches, training and development practitioners, small business and leadership consultants, I was once again thanked for my passion. The compliment was genuinely given, as was my returned thank you.

However, as the day progressed, my thoughts kept returning to the question of: What really is passion? For the next several days as I attempted to ponder the answer to this question, another question surfaced. What does it mean when one has passion? Then additional questions bubbled up. What separates people with passion and those without passion? Is passion always positive? Could passion be negative? Is there a relationship between passion and purpose? And finally, How does all of this fit me?

Sometimes the best place to begin to define a word is with my trusted friend, Mr. Webster. Webster’s dictionary states that passion is an emotional response.

Being an intellectual conceptualizer or more simply stated a heurist, I wrote down three words – passion, purpose and performance. I then started putting these words into some sort of visual so that I could have better understanding of these three powerful words.

Consider the following: imagine a leader standing with out stretched arms and open hands with one hand holding the word passion and the other holding the word purpose. There are high levels of energy flowing between the hands as well as around the individual.

What I would like you to contemplate is that passion is the present where others as well as ourselves see and feel our emotional responses. Purpose is the future, our true north, where we constantly strive towards to reach our vision and attain the emotional desires of our past and present dreams. And performance is the individual with the outstretched hands. Performance is the collection of all past experiences and current actions where we continually apply knowledge as we hold and share our passion and purpose. When all are connected, energy is visible.

Now take a few moments to think about a recent leader that you heard and enjoyed.

Did this individual seem to ignite the room upon his or her entrance?

Did you have a thought about where was the source for all that boundless and endless energy?

Did you wish that you had one-tenth of that energy?

Did you feel a little slighted or even cheated?

I believe that leaders who have such energy have probably already connected their passion to their purpose to enhance their performance. NOTE: This does not necessarily mean that their passion is positive or negative, but rather that they have made sense of all three and have all three working together.

To live without passion suggests that our life is void of emotion, an empty vessle or person just existing, moving from one meaningless action to another and never achieving the next great step. Passion is the critical partner to purpose and performance. All three are necessary to achieve the present and the future dreams or results that we desire for our businesses, our families, our friends, our communities and ourselves.

So the questions to you are now three-fold:

What is Your Passion?

How Are You Using Your Passion as a Leader?

Does Your Current Leadership Coaching, Leadership Development or Executive Leadership Training Invoke The Passion Necessary to Achieve Your Current and Future Goals?


What is Passion for Today’s Business Leaders? - To learn more about this author, visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website.

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