Passion: Part 3
(This is the third post in a series about passion. You may want to read Passion: Part 1 and Passion: Part 2 if you haven’t already.)
Listen to the five-minute Passion: Part 3 audio program from Coach’s Corner.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
Today’s post is the third in a series on passion and the very important role it plays for anyone, but especially Christian leaders. Today’s post is about what to do if your job doesn’t align well with any of your passions.
I’ve run into this many times with the organizational leaders I’ve worked with. Of those people, many were able, with some coaching, to connect their work to one of their passions after some exploration and creativity. But 10 or 15 percent of these leaders came to realize that their current vocations just didn’t align well enough with their passions, or their beliefs, values, or gifts. So they chose to pursue something else that might.
This happened with me when I moved from the world of automotive engineering into the world of people development, then leadership development, and now Christian leadership development with most of my efforts focused on pastors.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Before considering a significant change in vocation, you should look at some less obvious ways you can connect your job to one of your passions.
Three ways come to mind for how to connect your current work to one of your areas of passion:
First, it’s not uncommon for a leader to already be working in an area of passion, but not realize it. The challenges and tasks of everyday performance can cloud one’s vision of the bigger picture.
Sometimes it’s as simple as getting a “wake up and smell the roses” call. Several things can prompt this, including a good coaching session, but whatever it is, it turns out to be pretty simple. Just a different perspective to see that you are already in a great job—a great fit for who you are—and all you needed was to be able to see that.
The second way you might connect your current role to a passion is to look for creative ways you could integrate one of your passions into your work. Here are a few examples of this
- Maybe extreme goal setting is a passion for you, like it seems to be for Jim Dryer. So set some crazy goals for yourself and work harder than “anybody in their right mind” and do whatever it takes to reach those goals. Of course you can run into life-balance issues with this one but it’s at least worth considering.
- Maybe helping people who are in tough situations is a passion for you. If so, I’m guessing that you work with people—maybe people who work for you—that right now are dealing with a tough situation. Because you see them regularly you might have a better chance of making a difference to them than anyone else in their life. You just need to recognize the opportunity and realize you can integrate your passion for helping people into your regular day.
A lot of the sage advice from Karen Mulder in her Wisdom of the Wounded radio show can be carried out right within your own job.
- Ask someone who’s struggling to go to lunch with you and then let that person share. Just listen, don’t try to fix anything.
- Drop a note on that person’s desk saying you believe in him or her and that you’re praying for that person.
There are many possibilities if this is one of your passions, and you probably have a job that puts you in just the right place to act on this passion.
The third way to connect a passion to your job is to see your job as the vehicle for making a living, which allows you to pursue your passion outside your work.
Passion for family might be the most common example of this. Many leaders work very hard to provide a good life for their families. They may not love the work they do, but they love what it allows them to do for their family and for God.
Basketball is one of my earliest passions in life; this unfolded for me when I was ten. I used to work for a company that had it’s own fitness center, and I would play basketball every morning with my colleagues. Every morning! My job had nothing to do with basketball, but my job made it possible to experience this great passion every day. I loved that job largely because of this.
I remember during this season in my life telling people, “You could offer me double the money to work somewhere else where I wouldn’t be able to play ball each morning and I wouldn’t take it.” Life was great then! Still is, but for different reasons now.
There’s a great story called The Dream Manager written by Matthew Kelly, which exhibits this third way of connecting your work to your passion. It’s a leadership fable about how people gained some passion for their mundane cleaning jobs because they came to see them as a way to realize a dream, like being the first in their family to own a home or to graduate from college.
So maybe your vocation doesn’t naturally align with your passions. This might mean you should pursue another line of work. But maybe you could try one of the three options I mentioned:
- Wake up and smell the roses.
- Creatively integrate your passion into your job.
- Realize your job allows you to make a living so you have the resources to pursue your passion outside your work.
I hope this series on the importance of passion and how to manage it has been helpful. If you can align your work—your leadership—with some true passions, you will have an unfair advantage over others who aren’t aligned with a passion. It will fuel you to do better, go harder, and go longer than those that have less passion.
Think about these things this week. And as I often suggest, discuss this with a friend or family member to see what they think.
Until next time, I pray that you experience God’s rich blessings.
Post by Rodger.
Image by iStockPhoto.
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