Ten top tips to help your people find their inner ‘passion’
If you, as a manager, coach or a trainer, want to help people to find their passion what should you do? Here are our top ten tips to help you start thinking.
- Explore what has to be in place - we can all choose to live passionately. But certain conditions can foster passion. So explore with your team or coachee what has to be in place for them to be able to express their passion and ask them what they could do differently to have more passion flowing in their life.
- Encourage creativity - people who develop creativity are more likely to be passionate. But what does creativity involve? In this context it means feeling free to take calculated risks, it means being encouraged to be innovative, it means taking time to solve problems and making continuous learning a priority. At its base creativity means that people feel they are making a contribution that is fresh and original.
- Find the noble purpose - at the root of passion is ‘meaning’ and ‘progress’, so what is the vision that the leader holds which draws people and has them want to contribute more at work? One thing to note is that the vision must be worth believing in, following and working towards.
- Engage others in your dream - you then need to engage people in their teams. You need to be confident in sharing your inspiration with colleagues and direct reports.
- Design your culture - to sustain such passion then requires people to develop a way of working together that supports the future they are trying to create? There are no set scripts here but leaders, managers and teams need to be encouraged to design, own and live the culture that works for them.
- Get interested in what matters - when it comes to passion, people have to work at the things that matter to them. It may be necessary to do specific work with individuals to identify what it is that they think is worthwhile, what it is that inspires them and what it is that they think makes the most difference.
- Getting feedback - the most useful way of helping people to make progress towards their goals is to give them feedback. You need to encourage the solicitation of feedback from bosses and colleagues around their progress and around the difference they are making.
- Checking in on values - it’s impossible for people to be passionate if what they are doing isn’t aligned with their personal values. But it is also so easy to get sidetracked and for people to start doing work that doesn’t really matter to them.
- Get people to be infectious - passionate people light up when they talk about their work. They believe in it, they know why their work matters and they are committed to being excellent at it. It’s important for you to encourage people to talk to others in just this way to further sustain their own beliefs and ignite passion in others.
- Help people be goal orientated - finally your job is to help passionate people to stay in touch with what they are up to even when times are tough. Indeed bringing your energy to them in times of difficulty may be the most important work you can do.
Engaged, inspired and motivated employees achieve objectives because they feel fulfilled when they do so.
Our range of courses and workshops deal with the factors that impact engagement, motivation and well-being. They provide practical solutions to understand what motivates, how to increase motivation and engagement, deal positively with stress, maintain work-life balance, build emotional intelligence and promote well-being. We show you how to develop creative and constructive methods of thinking to aid motivation and achievement. Find out more about our Motivate courses and workshops at www.illumine.co.uk/motivate