Passion is Not a Fruit: It’s Not Seasonal

I get it - there are days when you go to work that you don’t want to be there.  

Welcome to the 67%.  

According to a Gallup Poll, only 33 percent of the workforce is engaged, meaning 51 percent are unengaged, and 16 percent are actively disengaged.

We all have “one of those days,” but when “those days” turn into weeks and months, there’s a problem. It’s called a lack of passion.  Lack of passion leads to apathy - which leads to missed opportunities, poor customer service, a call out sick, and ultimately - termination. Terminating an employee means that the HR team has to start the sourcing and recruiting process again, select new hires, and initiate training.  

And if there isn’t a clear plan for instilling or reinforcing passion for your team, the outcome is simply that the new hires will be at risk of falling victim to the same vicious cycle of lost passion. And - a team without passion is no team at all.

Passion isn’t something that just evolves; you must consistently work on it. It’s not seasonal; it’s a year-round process. 

Here are five key elements to create and sustain passion within your workforce.

1. Passion requires seeing the bigger picture.

The lawn care team at a university can think they just cut grass and trim hedges.  The bigger picture is they create the first impression of the campus where a mom is sending her precious child. Bright colored work shirts that say First Impression Team helps remind these hard-working people the critical role they play in “selling” their university. Seeing how you fit into the big picture creates passion. 

2. Passion requires One Good Thing (OGT). 

One Good Thing is a tool that DREAM4 uses to help build teams. We begin our training and workshops asking the participants to say “One Good Thing” about someone else in the room. We encourage them to continue this practice in their workplace. OGT focuses on the positive attributes of your team members.  This is important because building a positive relationship within the team is imperative to creating passion in the workplace.  

3. Passion requires communication.

A lack of communication is one of the fastest ways to discourage a team. If your team is asking, “Does anyone know what’s going on?” it can be an indicator of frustration with the current level, means, or clarity of the information communicated.   Keeping the lines of communication open, both down and up, creates a healthier team environment. It’s about getting on the same page and working together. Remember, “Knowing is half the battle.” Passion is sharing the information and not hoarding it. 

4. Passion requires knowing each other.

I had an Engineer friend tell me DREAM4 should explore working with engineers.  Why? Because, from his perspective, engineers feel like they are just cogs in the machine. When companies invest in their team members, getting to know them as people, providing incentives and services to help them mature in their personal lives, it builds a passion for their company. If we’re honest, it would be impossible to be passionate if you were known as  “the guy in cubical three,” right? That’s why passion is building relationships, friendships, and community. 

5. Passion requires working on the culture.

Every business has a culture. If you’re not working on it, it’s not getting better. In a 2017 Forbes article, Why Corporate Culture is Becoming Even More Important, Larry Alton writes, “Millennials desire a strong company culture (in one dimension or another) more than anything else when deciding who to work for.”  Yes, Millennials decide who THEY want to work for, and if you’re not working on a strong, passionate culture, they will decide not to work for you. Passion is finding a purpose and a reason to invest in something. 

For more ways to introduce passion into the workplace, read last week’s blog!

Creating a passionate environment where your team members can thrive, where they feel invested, where they embrace a sense of pride in their workplace, takes work. DREAM4 can partner with you by creating a Culture Assessment to attain where to begin and then designing a continuous plan to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.