What is Passion in the Workplace and Leadership?

Choose a job you are passionate about.

This is a great opportunity but also a challenge for young people nowadays. As the conservative view of work as a necessary action to acquire resources, like money for a living, has shifted towards work as an instrument to pursue one’s passion and find self-fulfilment, young generations face the (often) heavy burden of career choices.

What is the best career choice for me? Should I focus on status, money or interest?

When I asked myself those questions, my father said: “Go with your heart. If you only become a lawyer because it pays well, you will end up as a mediocre lawyer who is forcefully competing with peers who love what they do. Hence, you will never be happy as you won’t find fulfilment in your job, only struggle.”

He was absolutely right. But what if I don’t have any passions at the age of 19? At that time, I planned to be a professional athlete. I loved playing volleyball and was quite good at it. But I missed something; I didn’t know what exactly; I only knew that being an athlete was not fulfilling enough.

So let me tell you right at the beginning: if you are passionate about something, that is awesome. But if not, do not drive yourself crazy over it – it doesn’t mean that you will never be able to find passion along the way. Therefore, this article aims to explain what passion is and how to develop it.

What is passion?

Passion is neither an emotion nor a synonym for motivation. Instead, it is a separately studied psychological construct, defined by Robert J. Vallerand as “a strong inclination toward a specific object, activity, concept or person that one loves (or at least strongly likes), highly values, invests time and energy in on a regular basis, and that it is part of one’s identity”.

As you see, passion is not exclusively linked to a particular activity. You can be passionate about learning new skills, interacting with people or exploring different cultures. You can be passionate about self-growth, helping others or getting your to-do list done. Passion is also a matter of perception and framing.

My favourite way to describe it is that passion is when the things you do become part of your personality. The moment you turn "I work as a teacher" into "I am a teacher". Share on X

Passion is also a process, not a state of being. If you think about it, it takes time to fall in love with your job: we get more and more passionate about our jobs as we get better at them. No one is passionate about struggling as a newbie, but we love to be good at something.

Remember that good things in life take time, such as love, relationships and passion. Passion often starts with enjoying an activity and having fun. And as we repeatedly lose ourselves in those activities and internalise them, they become passions.

Remember that good things in life take time, such as love, relationships and passion. Passion often starts with enjoying an activity and having fun. And as we repeatedly lose ourselves in those activities and internalise them, they… Share on X

Passion is linked to the following personal and social determinants:

• self-efficacy,
• self-awareness,
• emotional intelligence,
• valuing highly enjoyable activities,
• autonomous personality orientation,
• and significant adults, like our parents, teachers, coaches, bosses and other role models.

Self-efficacy is the belief in our ability to achieve certain things. It’s the product of engaging in activities with positive outcomes, generating positive emotions, and finally leading to passion. This fact supports the argument above that being passionate about your job needs time and some positive results.

Self-awareness is the ability of deep introspection – to examine one’s thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behaviours and understand how they affect oneself and others. It’s a crucial component of emotional intelligence and personal development. Why is self-awareness connected to passion? Because passion is rarely stable and obvious. We discover and shape our passions as we do with our mental representations and personalities over life. Passion lies within us; therefore, it is up to us whether we find it.

Valuing highly enjoyable activities is also linked to passion. However, this indicates that passion needs a positive attitude and optimism. If we tend to see only the bad things in our job, we are unlikely to develop a passion. Therefore, passion is also about how we perceive ourselves and our environment, a matter of framing and mental representations.

Let’s continue with the next determinant: autonomous personality orientation. According to self-determination theory in psychology, individuals with an autonomous personality orientation tend to experience greater well-being, and satisfaction as their behaviours and goals align more with their internal needs and desires. This means they stay true to their values and needs rather than conform to others.

Last but not least, there are also social determinants that influence passion: role models. These people influence whether and for what things we develop passion in our lives. So, for example, if your dad is a passionate football player, he will more likely introduce you to the beauties of sports than to acting or arts. Therefore, trying out new activities regularly and gathering new knowledge from different areas throughout your youth and overall life is essential.

Passion in Leadership and Workplace

Perrewe, Hochwarter, Ferris, McAllister, and Harris (2013) state that passion has become a “highly sought-after, yet poorly understood (and cultivated), worker attribute”.

Early leadership research merely focused on managers’ traits, roles and effectiveness to elicit optimal performance from workers, whereas today, we know the importance of desires, emotions, satisfaction and passion.

But as mentioned before, passion grows within a person through engagement, self-awareness and interest. Therefore, a company itself can not create passion in their workers.

However, there are different ways how you can support your employees in being passionate about their job.

Zigarmi, Houson, and Witt (2009) conducted an analysis where workers identified eight statistically significant factors as effective for supporting passion:

• Meaningful work: perceiving the organisation’s larger purpose and therefore considering their work as worthwhile,
• Collaboration: enhanced collaboration, cooperation, and encouragement between all organisational members,
• Fairness: fair and balanced salary, benefits, resources, and workload and an environment where people and leaders treat each other with respect,
• Autonomy: having the tools, training, support, and authority to make decisions,
• Recognition: being recognised and appreciated by colleagues and leaders for accomplishments,
• Growth: opportunities to learn, grow and develop skills,
• Connectedness with leader: trust in leaders who make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with employees,
• Connectedness with colleagues: trust in colleagues who try to form an interpersonal connection.

Therefore, as a leader and entrepreneur, you should focus on creating a psychologically safe, positive error culture where the company’s culture and values align with your employees’ values and personalities. Help your employees to understand the purpose and meaningfulness of their work and let them contribute to it. Encourage your managers to trust their employees and treat them respectfully and openly. Provide your employees with the opportunity to grow and learn new skills.

For this, you will need the following:

• regular training, workshops, coaching and professional development opportunities,
• team buildings,
• incentives.

How to find a passion?

Well, shortly said, think about those activities and things that bring you joy, interest you, or you loved as a teenager. If nothing comes to mind, start the other way around and note things you don’t like. Get clear on values and topics that matter to you.

Practice self-awareness: the clearer you are about yourself, the easier you will be able to identify your interests. Share on X

After discovering your interests, start to practice them. Try new things and give yourself time to dive deeper into those activities. Do not hold on to high expectations: passion takes repetition, time and effort.

Summing up on the topic

Passion is a still little-researched psychological construct strongly related to interest, motivation, self-efficacy and awareness.

But passion is not a sudden discovery, a cinematic life-changing moment; instead, it is a process of collecting interest-stimulating experiences that turn into passion.

Therefore, detaching ourselves from too high expectations is essential: passion takes time and requires sticking with an activity.

And last but not least: remember that you can be passionate about anything. People, activities, places, arts, sports, outcomes etc. Therefore, it somewhat depends on your attitude and framing.