WEW 28 - Hiring and Championing Passion

Passion is what drives leaders toward visions of a company’s future.

Passion is what gets an employee into the office and ready to do great work beyond the paycheck.

And in both cases it's contagious.

Passionate leaders inspire passion in employees and employees inspire passion and excitement in others. Too often we talk about the downside of building team culture and removing toxic personalities but what about fostering and hiring for the opposite?

What is Passion?

Passion in engineering is often seen as caring about code. This is one form it can take but this view is too shallow.

Employees can be engaged for any number of reasons. They can be friends with their coworkers, believe in the mission of the business, align deeply with company values, have a genuine connection to the business’s users, or yes, just love working.

When coaching other leaders and peers on building passionate teams I start with this:

"It matters less what someone on your team is passionate about and more that they can find something to be passionate about."

I'll take someone who IS passionate about making tons of money (this is ambition) over someone who just wants the paycheck that we agreed on. But I would take someone who is passionate about the particular business domain over money any day.

It matters LESS what motivates and impassions someone, but not all "whats” are equal in weight and value.

As long as an employee is passionate however they will work harder, generally be more positive, and help create positive cultures. As a leader, you will be able to collaborate with them and motivate them on areas that the employee cares about.

How To Recruit For Passion

Building a passionate team starts with who you are recruiting. How do you source and how do you interview?

During this process, you are a detective trying to get to the truth about what people care about which can be really tough. (Protip: It's easiest to do this if you or your recruiter deeply care about recruiting engaged employees).

During the interview process and in writing resumes there are strong incentives for someone to feign interest or passion. As homework, ask the next 5 people you interview these two questions:

1. What are you passionate about?
2. Why would you be passionate about working for this company?

Ask the 5 candidates after that those two questions in the opposite order and you'll be shocked at the results.

Someone can always give an answer for #2, but it's up to you to gauge if that's pandering or genuine. I subscribe to the cliche that actions speak louder than words. Do this person's previous roles and achievements show they really care about the reasons they have for #2?

For #1, if asked first you can be more generous. Can the passion they mentioned help motivate them in the role you are looking to hire for?

Uncovering Passion

You can not create passion.
You can uncover what someone is passionate about.
You can relate to that passion.
You can find ways to support someone's passion.

This is how leaders motivate individuals. It's never about giving orders but is always about finding something deeper and relatable. The passions I've talked about are surface passions. The things we do and work towards shift, grow, and evolve. We find new things we care about all the time. As a leader, you can help others do the same.

There are also core passions. The things we care about that are deep to who we are, abstract, and often shared by a much larger cohort. Finding and tapping into these is how countries (or parties) are galvanized, wars are won, and markets are taken over. But let's get into that in another newsletter.