Passion in a leader isn’t about volume, it’s about depth. Some leaders are loud, and they can stir up a crowd with their rhetoric: they know how to hook people’s emotions.
But truly passionate leaders can be quiet: passion in a leader is a deep and abiding commitment to a cause, a vision, an enterprise.
Last week I talked about far-sightedness as a leadership quality; this week I’m focusing on passion. It’s the second of the essential qualities we look for in a leader. We want to know that he or she won’t wander off, distracted, in the midst of the journey, or give up when the going gets rough.
It makes sense that we would sort for this quality in our leaders. Choosing an effective leader was, until the last couple of hundred years, a matter of survival, and having a leader who was passionately committed to the welfare of the group and its ultimate success would be a huge advantage.
But true passion in a leader isn’t just unwavering single-mindedness. We need to see that a leader invites dialogue about his or her passion, and acts according to his or her principles and beliefs, as well. Then we’re more likely to trust that our leader’s passion won’t devolve into obsession and take us along with it.
Mother Teresa comes to mind as a passionate leader: quiet, tiny, humble: she spent 50 years working among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta and founded an order, the Missionaries of Charity, that is now active in 133 countries, and describes its mission “to give Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest of the poor."
Henry Ford provides another great “passionate leader” example: he just kept going, despite business failure (the
Are you a passionate leader? Do you have this quality of perseverance through adversity? Can you stay focused and moving toward success even when things are tough? I’d love to hear how you or others have demonstrated passion and the impact it had on your life or your business.
