Passion

"And it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

As with every creative endeavour, the leader who assembles the team seeks dedicated driven talent. This dedication is often characterized as "passion." The unique spin on this is the middle part of of the first sentence, "... who assembles the team..." Every team I have participated in is based on something that can turn any hot-blooded skinner cold - compromise. Compromise is disguised in many clever ways like collaboration ("I want you two to collaborate on that texture."), direction ("I think that idea needs a little more direction."), and brainstorming ("Let's all get together and brainstorm your idea."). Depending on how this compromise is characterized can make or break the level of passion your team has.

Collaboration, direction, and brainstorming are all valuable tools in the leadership toolkit, but like any tool they can be used for good or evil. The trick is to embrace the creative spirit and encourage the same with your team. What is this creative spirit? An article I read once on unleashing your creativity describes several techniques to enhance your creative thinking. These techniques centre around a return to an almost child-like innocence. Easy to conceive but challenging to do for many.

In my experience, as we grow from child to adult we learn about our environment. Part of that learning includes experiencing pain. Pain causes protective instincts and develops inhibitions. Being teased about your silly dancing. Being advised by a parent that you can't get a job by drawing. These events help us avoid further pain. This can also have the opposite effect for some. The pain is what drives them to excel. They have an axe to grind and something to prove to the world. Both of these can result in a person making their talents a protected and exclusive entity. The challenge is that these talents are now not available for a team. Team passion is all about "play."

I define passion as an ability to sustain an intense enthusiasm. Passion is about the will to suffer the challenges of failures to celebrates the successes. Passion is about approaching each new obstacle with the same enthusiasm and strength of will as the first. Not the previous obstacle, but the very first when you went in with fresh eyes and immense enthusiasm.

Not many people can do this. Not many can look at this kind of activity and maintain that level of innocence. Conventional wisdom says learn from your failures and avoid making them in the future. We are naturally wired to avoid pain. Failure is often painful. But it doesn't need to be. Depending on what you are doing, failure is vital to success. NASA would never have made it to the moon without umpteen failures. The point of failure is to learn.

A fool fails twice at the same thing. A fool punishes first-time failure. It takes a wise leader to understand the power of first-time failure and use it as fuel to drive the passion of the team.

What kills passion? Fear of pain. If failure is punished, failure equals pain. Let's contrast this for a moment. Some say pain means gain. My fitness coach used to drill me with that mantra. PAIN MEANS GAIN! Fair enough, but here the pain is being used as a motivator not as a hinderance. Pain that defeats comes in the form of comments like, "I knew that idea wouldn't work" or "Why did you waste so much time on that?" We all do it. We do it to ourselves and each other. The second a team starts to attack itself, you are dead.

Why do teams attack themselves? Ego. If the team is a group of egoes, it's not long for this world. Even if it is a group of individuals, it is vital that the team think as a single entity where the ego of the team is the shared ego of everyone. One person's idea is not owned by them. This takes a humility and willingness to share that I have not often found. On those rare occasions that I have been privileged to be part of a team that behaves this way, we were unstoppable. In the process we sacrificed our individuality.

Passion is rooted in the Latin "pati" which means "to suffer." Team-based passion is created through the ability to suffer the loss of your individual ego. The trick here is that EVERY MEMBER of the team must do this or all is lost. I sound melo-dramatic, but trust me, the second one individual ego shows up, two things can happen. EIther the team dissipates and you are left leading a group of individuals, or the team ejects that ego and is now incomplete and must go through a process to rebuild and recreate itself. Fact is, the phoenix that rises from the ashes is not the same bird that was consumed by the destructive fire.

Think hard about your willingness to be passionate and your ability to "leave your ego at the door."

OB