How to Make Passion Convincing
Vision creates emotional passion. Passion, on the other hand, doesn’t create vision.
Expressing emotional passion with those who don’t share your vision creates skeptics not followers.
Emotional passion won’t get people on board:
I just landed in Philadelphia Airport from Williamsport, PA. The commuter flight takes about fifty minutes. I watched the pilot walk through the terminal and board the plane. I’m not boarding the plane if the pilot shows emotional passion.
I hope he’s passionate about flying, safety, and customer service. But I don’t want to see passion expressed by emotion, that’s scary.
Getting people on board:
I don’t want emotional passion; I want steady focus. Express passion with focus. Cool, steady focus gets me on board. Emotional passion makes me run.
Emotional passion without focus won’t convince. Steadiness makes you trustworthy; emotion isn’t steady. Persistent focus establishes steadiness.
Your focus convinces others:
- Focus on problems. Coolly and confidently identify harsh realities. You can’t be trusted if you can’t state the brutal facts.
- Focus on opportunities and solutions. Terrible problems present terrific opportunities.
- Focus on developing people; they create and execute solutions. Problems become opportunities when people get on board. Determine the skills, beliefs and attitudes your team needs to solve your perplexing problem.
- Focus on getting people to do the next best thing, not the perfect thing.
- Focus on learning while you go. Once you emotionally invest in strategies and methods you start justifying rather than learning. Learning occurs when things fail or fall short. You can’t learn if you can’t fail.
Your passion is an unconvincing day-dream until it inspires focus. You don’t need more passion; you need more focus. Passion is fun. Focus is work.
What key points of focus help leaders and followers pursue and sustain vision?
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Hi Dan,
OK, I rolled with this for a while. I thought about it so more. Here’s what I think (and these are only my thoughts, not trying to convince, but evince):
Sounds to me like the passion you are talking about is that hollow kind of enthusiasm based on accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment alone… the kind that wants to “make something happen.”
True passion is felt by others, and doesn’t require expressive enthusiasm, though it very often can include it. True passion is connected to a person’s “who”—self-awareness has helped them find a passion that connected to who they are.
True passion and focus are NOT mutually exclusive, both can prove fun, and passion often INTENSIFIES focus.
Fun and work are not mutually exclusive, but creating the former is always influenced by thoughts about that latter.
Give me true passion, born of someone’s highest joy, any day of the week—surgeon or pilot, athlete or speaker… true passion is connected to spirit, and I can handle it.
I’ll avoid passion based on achievement or agenda alone, unconnected to heart or soul—there’s risk there, for sure.
I believe ALL of us can tell the difference between hollow soulless passion (or hollow enthusiasm), and true passion, if we’re paying attention.
Last but not least, I really like your focus list, though I would replace the word “convince” with “influence”—just a preference.
Happy Sunday!
Always a pleasure.
We’ll have to define passion before we go much further.
The term influence is acceptable but doesn’t fit the theme of this post. Trying to convince someone through passion is unconvincing. Hence the term convince. 🙂
I chose the image of a pointer intentionally. They are filled with passion to hunt… they quiver with excitement… Yet they bring all that passion into clear, focus.
I enjoy your comments. Thank you and Happy Sunday to you as well. 🙂
Thanks, Dan–Great post. I needed to hear this. I have been wondering why I could never sustain my passion for long. Not enough focus. I intend to start working on this today!
You have my best wishes… we should chat sometime… cheers
Oh, Dan… I was so focused on the thoughts that you inspired on passion, focus, etc., that I forgot to answer your question.
“What key points of focus help leaders and followers pursue and sustain vision?”
I’m going to take a funny angle here, and suggest that we **allow** focus when we eliminate distraction. So I would encourage acute awareness of what constitutes distraction in meetings, projects, vision, etc.
This is not as easy as it sounds, because, for example, it’s often challenging, in the early going, to evaluate what is a distraction vs. what might prove out as a new perspective or influence—one that could result in previously unforeseen possibility for improvement.
Brilliant… love the idea of the power of eliminating distractions. I believe failure to eliminate is the main reason we achieve so little.
Hi Dan, what i understand about the post is people tend to see weakness when you show your emotional passion. But when you’re convincing and focus it send a passionate note to people.
What i love about you Dan, is the clearity of your heart!
Merci
lolade
Hi Lolade, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your participation. I think focus is passionate.
Focus matched with passion allows people to accomplish specific goals. Whereas passion without purpose is nothing more than a perpetual idea without accomplishment.
Thank you Jacob sir. I’m glad you jumped in on this one.
Hi Dan. I have a slightly different take on passion and focus and I agree with the earlier comment that they are not mutually exclusive. I believe passion as Seidman explains in his book “How” is one of the newly minted coins that are the “hard new currency of business.” The other coins include trustworthiness, honesty, courage, and humility to just name a few that are needed in the new business paradigm of the new “conceptual age.” Focus is more process oriented while passion lives within us. I can teach someone how to focus while I need to inspire someone’s passion. The “why” we do something drives vision while passion is the fuel that creates a certain level of intensity. When we do things with passion we do them because we feel emotionally compelled to do them not for the CEO or the organization but for ourselves. Focus generates results; passion unleashes the unknown to discover possibilities. Focus is bent on execution; passion runs wild with creativity. Focus is structure based; passion has no boundaries and is accountable only to ourselves. Focus is necessary to achieve results but is not synonymous with joy of work; passion engenders love in our work with which truly great outcomes can be attained. I will always take passion over focus. We are looking for more than “what” we are looking for our “why” and that leads to passion.
Al, I enjoyed reading your reply, and feel similarly (as you could probably see in my earlier reply).
BTW, the hyperlink behind your name confused my proxy server, but I cleaned it up on my end to go where it was intended. Just letting you know, there is a “the” at the end of the url that is messing up the destination.
Sorry Dan for the partially OT note!
Hi Al,
You elevated this conversation. Thank you.
I like your statement focus is more process oriented while passion lives within us… I agree that passion is an internal thing. I can see that focus within an old manufacturing orientation is a process activity. Focus as concentration may not be so process centered.
Your insights expand my thinking.
Cheers,
Dan
Al is a featured contributor on Leadership Freak. Read his bio at: http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/al-diaz
Dear Dan,
I have finally got what I was missing in Sales Skills…Thanks for everything…………
Thanks & Regards,
Dev
Dear Dan,
I agree that you need to fail first, to learn. The people who claim that they do not fail, do not actually learn. Failing is the essential part of learning. But failing is not enough. You need to bounce back from failure to more success. I always believe that alignment of interest is primary elements that connect leaders with followers. Leaders need to see goals and opportunities that others can not see. They need to arouse interest and capabilities to connect others with goal. Leaders should create a vision where other see their goal more than leader itself.
I think, passion is integrated with emotion. When we are passionate for anything, our desire to achieve becomes dominant. Passion comes from intense interest and emotion towards things, people, relationship etc. Passion has great power to energies and put best possible effort.
I’ve enjoyed this article, and the comments.
For me, the passion/focus thing can have a both/and relationship.
For example: I love to watch people do things that they are passionate about and skilled at doing, for example good musicians.
One thing I note as I watch them is that their focus is clearly visible. I also note that I can see an emotional passion in them too. This isn’t an overwhelming passion, but an authentic expression showing their love for what they’re doing.
Great conversation!
If I could offer another metaphor, because I think (like some others) that (real) passion and focus are inextricably linked.
Passion is like the flare of tall flames when you first start a campfire. It’s wild, dances unpredictably and provides a lot of light and gets hot quickly. But it’s not going to last unless you use that “passion” to ignite larger pieces of wood. All you’ll get is flame-out.
Focus is like the long-burning heat you get from thick campfire logs. They are often ignited from the flames of passion, but the logs are what provide the real, sustainable heat. This heat can burn for a long time, but it must also be tended, and occasionally stoked back up.
That’s the fire in your belly. It’s ok to have an occasional flare up of chaotic emotional flames as you throw some fuel on your internal fire, but the real work is in the long-burning focus that gets work done and ships valuable work out the door. (BTW, I like both “Poke the Box” and “Do the Work” from Set Godin’s Domino project for a 1-2 combo on getting and keeping focus.)
I’ve heard it said that passion is 80% of a good presentation. But it’s not enough for passion to birth passion. Passion must birth focus to give passion a real playing field. Passion without focus is unharnessed energy. Passion with focus is the funnel that concentrates passion into pointed impact. People who are at the top of their fields have amazing focus skills. Their proficiency in focusing passion becomes like blinders on a horse that easily can become detrimental to other normal areas of life. Passion is always the best fuel in an achievers engine. Passion or Focus? It takes both.