Do you want your staff to be proactive, accountable and happy so that they serve clients in the best way possible? As a senior-level business motivational speaker, I can show how passionate leadership can impact your employees and business positively. It not only encourages employees but also motivates them. Passion is about rousing powerful emotions that give everybody the juice to move closer to where they want to be.
Why Does Leading With Passion Matter?
Leading with passion is important because passion elevates productivity and ensures employees’ commitment to the vision that leads you to success. People who are in love with what they do are deeply invested and willing to work with passion. That kind of energy will reflect in your products, your services and the people you touch.
The consequences of leaders who do not care for or connect with their people is that they inspire apathy, which creates an environment where any vision for the future becomes unachievable. But people who really care about what they do are deeply invested and willing to dive head first in all their endeavors.
This is where a display of commitment comes into play. It won’t just make things better than ever before. It’ll turn them into something truly special. When people see the proof, they’ll be more willing to go above and beyond for customers and coworkers.
The Importance of Passion in Leadership
Abraham Lincoln was famous for his style of leading with love. “Honest Abe” was a selfless leader that genuinely cared about the people he served, even when it meant sacrificing personal gain for the sake of justice. The keys to his success were honesty, sincerity and respect. He clearly enjoyed serving others and felt that it was his calling in life.
Giving and receiving love in the workplace is a smart way to build networks of people you trust. The practice of giving and receiving love will naturally inspire passion in the workplace and spread happiness. Virtues like love, respect and honesty are what turn work relationship into vibrant networks!
When you have a unit of people who work with passion, it naturally spreads positivity throughout the organization. And when people love their work and feel valued, they are more likely to talk about how much they love their job, which will attract more talent, customers and vendors.
Build Company Culture Through Clear Communication
Change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be scary. Whether people feel positively or negatively about change is often decided by how it’s communicated to them. Communicate it, communicate it and communicate it again; but always in a way that makes sense to different types of people, in different situations and at different times.
Any working professional knows there never seems to be enough time in the day or enough energy to go around. Many people close to us desperately want to be passionate about something but have given up. At some point, we’ve all forgotten why we love what we do. And if you aren’t a passionate leader, you can’t have a passionate employee. If your heart isn’t invested in it anymore, there’s no better time than now to find out what you really want.
Any successful business motivational speaker uses psychological science to help people generate the energy they need, because they know that passion is a slippery word. It doesn’t mean pursuing unbridled desires without a plan or any focus. Extreme Leadership means getting everyone excited about anything you feel strongly about while providing direction and guidance.
During my motivational keynote speaker events, I discuss how leading with passion is common, but commitment is rare. People want to know how the company’s goals align with their own destiny. Whether it’s taking care of their family or deep-sea diving, we all have a certain level of affection for something.
It’s that deep, intense love affair with your goals and what you’re committed to achieving in life—even if it takes years before seeing results or achieving success! It’s not a passive process. It takes audacity to generate, and sometimes it takes years to find what’s been missing in your life.
Think about it. If your passion is something that you do daily, this feeling is so powerful because when we hold onto our goals over time, no matter how difficult they may seem at first, we experience progress: step by steady step forward toward the prize.
Thank You for the Feedback: The Value of Trust
Those in leadership roles can show how much they care by asking questions like, “Can I get more information?” Or even better, they offer help when needed without hesitation or ask their employees for feedback.
The first response to any employee feedback, whether it’s constructive or not, should always be, “Thank you.”
Why?
Because the only reason you are leading is to serve, and if anyone has suggestions on how best you can serve them, they should share it with open arms! If your team knows they can come to you with anything, you’ll learn more about your people’s expectations and motivations.
One extreme display of passionate leadership is when the CEO of Gravity Payments raised his company’s minimum wage to 70K a year. Why? Because he responded to feedback in a big way. When one employee told him he’s not making enough money to “live a decent life,” he took it to heart.
His strategy raised expenses and he took a 90% pay cut. Yet, six months after he announced the initiative, profits doubled, retention rates went up, people had more babies and, as a result, Gravity Payments was getting all kinds of positive PR.
After COVID hit, the company was close to going under, but employees en masse voluntarily took pay cuts to help the company bounce forward because they loved working there so much. This was a crazy experiment that almost put the company out of business, but it’s one of the most extreme examples of leading with love.
For most managers, it’s challenging to get honest feedback. Here are some survey questions similar to how a motivational keynote speaker anonymously collects candid feedback. This passion in the workplace survey should take less than 5 minutes to fill out!
- How do you think things are going? Is there anything that could be improved?
- Do you feel like you are growing, learning and doing meaningful work?
- Do you feel excited to come to work?
- Do your supervisors know what they want from you?
- How well are management communicating with employees? Do they behave appropriately and listen to feedback from everyone on the team or just those who agree with them?
After collecting the data, follow up on the survey with a transparent response. Share the results and make a high-profile action plan focused on the feedback.
Passionate Leadership Through Reward and Recognition
Studies show reward systems positively affect performance, productivity and teamwork. One of the best ways to acknowledge employees is to offer them opportunities to grow by giving them a stake in the company. Development training, collective bargaining and other reward systems provide interesting opportunities for motivation.
Recognition of skills and interests is another way to spread the love and build stronger teams. Talent markets are becoming more popular among successful companies. By creating talent markets, your company will be able to deploy workers more effectively and give them career advancement opportunities.
Other options for self-development include inviting a business motivational speaker or holding events. One of the most successful events aimed at professional Gen Z and Millennials was C2 Montreal. It not only offered attendees the chance for personal development, it also focused on giving back to causes they cared about, which aligned with their ideals.
Build Company Culture by Investing in People’s Potential
50 years ago, it was common for people to work for the same company their entire lives. That’s almost unheard of in most industries today. With such a high turnover rate, employees always strive to stay relevant in a rapidly shifting global job market.
So what does it take to generate passion in the workplace? The key to creating a culture that values and rewards employees involves giving people decision-making power and the freedom of autonomy. If a passionate employee knows they have other options and stays, you’ll know you are doing the right thing because they want to be there.
One way to start is to grow relationships with the community and leverage online education. For example, provide nano certifications and offer learning badges. You could also offer learning programs that provide skills training for coding or networking.
How Can a Keynote Motivational Speaker Unite Your Teams?
Most people are looking for more than monetary security; they also want personal and professional support. The Extreme Leadership Institute truly believes that joint ventures and love in the workplace are essential. The importance of passion in leadership is an often overlooked ingredient in long-term profitability.
For more than 25 years, my leadership development strategy has been a critical factor in several companies’ reputations as the “Best Place to Work” in their industries. My Radical LEAP framework (Love, Energy, Audacity, Proof) gives practical, actionable ways for you to build more dynamic, cohesive company cultures.
Why shouldn’t your workplace be a close-knit family of supportive loved ones? RSVP today for a leadership keynote event that builds a culture capable of loyal, engaged, productive teams.
