Passion is Required for a Winning Culture

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Passion is Required for a Winning Culture

Tips for making passion a mandatory part of company culture.

By Nathan Jamail

Passion is a word that many people love to use, but very rarely do they actually demonstrate it themselves. It can easily be the reason for almost any person or organization’s success. Passion fuels everything good about a person or an organization, so why is it so hard to find people who are passionate about their jobs or the product or service they sell?

In most organizations, every leader can name a few of their great employees or managers who have immense passion. The leaders will state 100 percent of the time that they wish all of their employees would have that same passion. The same can be said of employees who wish their leader had more passion. Not everyone can be passionate about their job or their business because some people just do not follow their passion. They follow a paycheck instead. As a leader, one should strive to have a team of employees passionate about what they do. This is not an easy concept, but most things that make people and organizations great are not easy—that is why they are great. There are a few things that individuals and leaders can do to make passion a mandatory part of their culture.

Do something you love
There are millions of ways to make a living in this world, so do something you love or love what you do. A person’s passion will create value for customers, resulting in revenue from a customer or organization. In some cases, a person may not be passionate about the actual product or service they sell, but they are passionate about the task of selling, helping customers or having personal success.

Being passionate has very little to do with what a person does and everything to do with why a person does it. Every decision made in life (hiring decisions, buying decisions, career decisions, etc.) can be based on our emotions. Every person and every leader should strive to find the passion in their jobs and careers. People work for money, but when a person has passion for their work, they will gain a lot more than just money.

Make passion a job requirement
Some could argue that passion and attitude are subjective and cannot be measured or fairly managed, which could be true in some cases. Most leaders can look at their team and easily identify the members who are passionate about their career and the organization. In almost every case, those people are the most successful. The leader’s job is to help those without passion find it in their current role or help them find a role within the organization they can be passionate about.

If a leader wants their entire organization to be passionate about their job, they must make it mandatory. How serious should a leader be about making passion mandatory? Should a leader fire their top performer if they lack passion and don’t have a desire to be better regardless of their results? In most cases they won’t, but in time that top performer’s results may decline as the results catch up with their lack of passion.

Encourage passion
Passion is not an emotion that is taught. It is the result of a person doing the right job or having the right career. Leaders don’t necessarily have to mandate passion out of each person like being told to get to work on time, but they should recognize those individuals who lack passion and strive to help them find it in their position. In today’s economy, it is not always enough to do a good job or know your business. A person and organization must have the passion to pass on to others. Passion is the fuel for an organization's success no matter what industry, region or economy one is in.

Nathan Jamail, best-selling author of "The Playbook Series," is also a motivational speaker, entrepreneur and corporate coach. As a former executive for Fortune 500 companies and owner of several small businesses, he travels the country helping individuals and organizations achieve maximum success. A few of his clients include Fidelity, Nationwide Insurance, The Hartford Group, Cisco, Stryker Communications and Army National Guard. To book him, visit www.NathanJamail.com or contact 972-377-0030.