Passion in the workplace — what do you do?
As the self-proclaimed Anti-Business Consultant, I need to make my thoughts on this clear and emphatic from the start.
I’ve heard no end of experts telling us that there is no room for anger in the workplace, no room for intimate relationships to form in the workplace and yet the same people will say we have to have teams that are passionately and devotedly engaged in their work.
It doesn’t make sense to me now and it never has. Whenever people come together to achieve something great, there are going to be a few things that are always present. Passionate people who feel great ownership over the project and many different views on the best way to implement them. This stimulates competitive thinking and competition doesn’t occur in a bloodless vacuum. It occurs because people authentically believe in their own perspective and will fight to the bitter end to see it acknowledged and adopted. That is a good thing because it drives the kind of emotional engagement that is critical to high performance.
What isn’t ok is when those passions become out of control and are all about ego and patch protection. There needs to be someone in every group whose role it is to keep the minds fired up and productive but steer them away from getting off track, out of line and dangerous to the result.
There must be the freedom to celebrate success fully and proudly, but not to the level of shame and embarrassment. Similarly, relationships tend to form at work because there is more time spent at work than anywhere else and the opportunity to get to know someone in the work environment is greater than anywhere else in life. It has the added benefit that you can observe how people behave and react and treat others before embarking on the often risky business of starting something.
I know that there are the risks of workplace romances blowing up and creating wreckage and drama, but the truth us, it is seldom worse than the damage done when an outside relationship breaks down and your affected team member becomes all the erratic and heartbroken things that come with a breakup.
When people are operating at a high performance level, they will generally be performing at that level because there is a thread of communication, mutual respect and understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses and role in the group. In that environment there is trust and an understanding that passions will run high. It is part of the excitement of getting things done.
I fully believe that expression of passion in the workplace is a really good thing. Hot, cold, joyous, despairing, intimate, angry, sad — the full gamut of human emotions on display. All I ask is that responsibility comes with those precious rights. If you have the right to express yourself fully, you have a genuine responsibility to ensure that you do no harm to others in that self-expression. Abuse, physical or mental is totally unacceptable. Treat everyone with grace and dignity and your rowdy emanations will be taken for what they are.
I am the anti Business Consultant and I say, let those feelings out and let them serve to build trust, engagement, relatedness and high performance. Being human requires us to be alive and look like it. Stop suppressing who you really are. Let’s go.
If this prospect scares or repels you at all, call me on 0275 665 682 or email me at john.luxton@regenerationhq.co.nz and we can talk about how to embark on this journey in your business.
