What's the Big Deal About Passion?
February 21, 2007

Why is "passion" such a buzzword with businesspeople today?

Maybe it's because we are increasingly getting our business ideas from professional sports, where playing with passion is supposed to be a good thing. (I don't think it is, but you'd be hard put to find a coach who agrees with me.) Still, many of the best players play without passion. I'm thinking of Dwayne Wade as opposed to, say, Alonzo Mourning.

They are both favorites of mine, but it's easy to see that Dwayne has taken his game to a much higher level than Alonzo has, because Dwayne plays without passion. (When I say "higher level," I'm speaking relatively ... relative to each player's personal potential.) He is never stressed, never angry. He is almost always calm and happy and in the groove ... even if he is temporarily off his game.

I'd like to draw a distinction between passion and enthusiasm. Passion includes enthusiasm, but is combined with emotional attachment.

Enthusiasm is good, because it can be a source of motivation and inspiration, both for the person who feels it and for those who are affected by it. But when you combine enthusiasm with emotional attachment, you end up with an irrational passion. And that, as Max Weber pointed out, is a dangerous thing. "Passion without responsibility," he said, "can lead to ... fervor and crime. Passion without judgment can lead to ineffective or dangerous decisions."

Because most people don't recognize this distinction, they are prone to giving imprecise or even incorrect advice. For example, when Jack Welch said that "people in leadership have to have passion (in order to) impassion people around them," he wasn't talking about the kind of passion that fanatics have. More likely, he was thinking of the kind of passion he provided as CEO of General Electric, which was rational enthusiasm.

Likewise, when Martin Luther King Jr. said that human progress requires the "passionate concern of dedicated individuals," he was talking, I think, about a deep commitment, the kind you need to carry you through adversity.

What I am saying is this: If you want the best chance of living a happy, accomplished, and well-balanced life, you need to learn how to set goals and pursue them with commitment and enthusiasm ... but to do so without emotional attachment. That way, you can maintain an open mind, act with responsibility and good judgment, and not be crestfallen if things don't go your way.

It may not seem possible to set a goal and pursue it with commitment and enthusiasm without getting emotionally connected to the end result, but it can be done.

And if you learn to do it, everything will get better, including your ability to achieve your goals.

posted by M. Masterson @ 4:55 PM,

1 Comments:

At 1:34 PM, Anonymous Frank said...

Nice post Michael. I agree passion is an overused, and overly abused term that requires clarification. In political rhetoric, the first thing I do when I hear a politican drone on about how passionate they are on a given issue, is change the channel. Such is the fate of perfectly good and once meaningful terms that unfortunately become "buzzwords".

 

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