Bob Williams

When does process remove your passion?

April 15th, 2010 | Leave a comment | Tags: ,

I’ve heard it said of teachers before that they lose their ability to do what they are passionate about because of all the paper work required for their job.  As organizations or groups mature typically the processes within each group will tend to expand. So my question is, when does following the process remove people from their passions and what they love to do (i.e. serve a customer, teach a student, write software code, advise patients, etc.)? I see people making decisions because that’s what the process says or they are looking to check-off on a process step. At some point they lose site of the real need they are …Continue reading >>

Bob Williams

Passion and emotion leadership primer

December 26th, 2009 | One comment | Tags: , ,

Organizational leaders use the terms ‘passion’ and ‘emotion’ in their communication to try to frame desired and undesired behavior. Passion is typically used in the positive context. You might hear things like “We want our people to be passionate about their jobs” or “We promote passionate employees in the workplace”. On the contrary emotion, is typically used in a negative context. We hear things like “Don’t be emotional” or “We are looking for employees to react without emotion”.

So what’s really the difference between these two nouns and what’s the leadership principal we should follow? Webster defines passion as a strong liking or desire for an activity or thing and Wikipedia …Continue reading >>