Gallagher [NYSE: AJG]

Are you getting the contribution and commitment from your organization needed for your business to be resilient and thrive in today’s marketplace?

What we know is that when employees are passionate about their company vision, values, strategies, AND their own activities, we see results of 27 percent  better performance, 32 percent  more commitment and 53 percent  faster career progression according to research recorded in the book, Leading Organizations, Ten Timeless Truths. Organizations with a passionate and committed workforce will not only survive, but will thrive due to ability to move at same velocity of market changes.

Achievement of the sustained passion of your organization requires specific conditions to exist in the organization’s environment and be experienced by the people in the company.

Conditions for tapping into the passion of your organization:

Inspiration – positive activities which enlighten and activate employees to be enthusiastic and focus on their work. Inspiration initiates and sustains passion Inspiration comes in many forms,

• Seeing success in action by like-minded people with similar valuespersevering and successfully making a difference.

• Transformational leaders increase passion through inspirational motivation in the form of a vision, a sense of mission, optimism and enthusiasm.

• A great leader builds a strong culture which includes inspiration plus empowerment, goal alignment, connections across the organization where people feel alive, energized, and connected to their work.

Values congruence – the values of the company, organization and leaders resonate with the values of the individuals

• People have an innate sense of belonging and commitment.

• An organization with a culture and environment in which the individual’s values are congruent with the impacts of their actions activates passion.

• Values congruence within your organization provides the foundation for people to take risks and jump on opportunities to successfully execute their jobs,innovate the solutions, and collaborate with colleagues to achieve the vision!

People’s strengths are aligned to role responsibilities – people do what they are confident in doing and good at doing, using their personal strengths to succeed at doing their jobs.

• A person’s conviction and confidence about their abilities to accomplish their tasks paves the way for the person to visualize success, promote persistence in challenging situations and perform difficult goals. 

• What’s important here, is that people are empowered to define ‘how’ they get it done – using their strengths, people deliver results.

Sense of purpose – people in your organization are compelled to execute their activities and thrive due to having a role where the synergies of others in the organization results in ‘making a difference’ – giving them a sense of purpose.

• Individuals with a line of site between their role and the strategic business objectives, reinforces their purpose, connects them to the mission of the organization. 

• Balance between purpose of one’s work and one’s life, contributes to being passionate, innovative and creative with dedication and high performance.

  I believe companies with a fertile environment to grow a passionate workforce have a competitive advantage.Passion inspires people to work harder with greater effect, and become higher performers than those individuals without passion. 

Motivation – people feel a magnetic pull towards performing their duties, going above and beyond expectations of the job – they are ‘moved to take action’.

• People are more productive and creative when they are intrinsically motivated primarily by passion, interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself – not by external pressures or rewards.

• Sustaining motivation is critical to sustaining passion across your organization and requires the rest of these conditions to be continuously part of your recipe to keep the passion in your organization – just as gardens require water, sunlight, and fertile soil to continue to grow!

Social connectedness – through communications and working together, people feel a sense of community, unity, belonging, common focus, and camaraderie within the organization.

• Transparent communications with your organization about priorities, issues, and connecting the dots on road map to achieve your vision instills a sense of belonging to an organization.

• Provide the space, activitiesand communication channels for people to connect and share their voices.

• Socially connecting like-minded people through activities they are passionate about can create a kinetic type of connection, a connection with the souls of others, a sense of collaboration with those people focused on the same goals, or a sense of compassion for those people impacted by their actions.

Performance - the fundamental human quality of passion and acting upon it, has served as an active agent in the generation of energy, action, and ultimately high performance.

• Experiences at work influence the direction, intensity, and persistence of employee behavior to positively drive great performance.

• Positive emotions from actions can enhance creativity, which can increase identification of new ideas and lead to innovation…and ultimately high performing organizations.

Positive feedback loop – communicate the positive impacts of actionsto the organization in ways individuals can understand.  Yes – I’ll state it - communicate, communicate, communicate!

• Share how people’s work is making a difference with your organization

• When people know they are impacting positive change, it leads to higher levels of passion, and subsequently higher performance and retention.  

• The positive inspirational communications to the workforce, sharing the success due to their contributions, fuels the passionate organization to deliver results.

According to research by Tom Rath (2007), only 26 percent of the U.S. working population is actively engaged in their work, while 55 percent are not engaged in their work and less than 20 percent of U.S. adults flourish in their jobs. Your organization can be part of the 20 percent by including the conditions for a passionate organizations listed above in your leadership actions for your organization.

Awareness of the conditions which lead to a passionate organization is the first step.   Establishing and sustaining an organization’s environment with the conditions for the workforce to be passionate,is critical to effective leadership of our workforce. The opportunities are great for innovation, joy at work and organization agility. Passion, change, and performance are critical components of the workplace and establishing them is not an event, but a process. Leaders can choose to strive to provide a rich culture to address the conditions that propagate a passionate organization. These conditions are  as important to the organization’s existence as finance, technology or supply chain functions. Ultimately, your company benefits tremendously from establishing a passionate organization!