Can You Accurately Name Your Work Passions and Talents?

This is one of those "Aha's" that leads one to ask, "Why didn't this dawn on me before?"

I think it has, but not with such clarity. Here's what I'm talking about:

This weeks' engagements included a number of one-on-one sessions with people who are wrestling with how best to focus their professional talents. Some think they should make a major change, others hope to move within their current organization. All are filled with animated enthusiasm about something.

So what's the problem?

Translating passion into language that employers can associate with performance.

You have to take what's in your heart and use it to touch someone else's head.

Other people can feel your enthusiasm but need to know how to channel it. Saying things like "I really love working with people" or "I live to solve problems" doesn't accurately capture your specific talents. More importantly, they don't help an interviewer or a boss know how to use them--or help you do the same.

Let's spend some time this week looking at more effective ways to identify your talents and guide your passion.

If this topic holds interest for you, here are three articles that led up to this week's series:

 

• How Do You Uncover the Passion Factor?

• Passion, Guided Passion, and Engagement at Work

• Getting Passionate About Responsibility for Passion
  

 

Comments

[Karin H.]

Hi Steve

In this regard: identifying and naming talents in such a way everyone uses the same descriptions I would highly recommend the work of the Gallup Organisation. Books and tests like the Strength-finder etc do exactly that.

It's been a great help for me.

Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specailly in business)

[Joe Raasch]

Hi Steve,

This is a tough one for interviewers to crack. I've taken at times to following non-verbal queues - the brightness in someone eyes or their posture change when they discuss a topic.

One's passions could be summed up in a line from the TV series "The West Wing" - when under serious stress, one of the characters says, "this is where I eat."

The analogy is simple: we all have comfort foods: garlic mashed potatoes, chocolate cake, a diet Coke, dinner at a favorite restaurant, whatever. There are strong emotions connected to that food experience. What work brings you the most comfort, the most exhilaration, the best feeling? That's where you eat - and where the passion is.

Great topic!

[Ed Brenegar]

Steve,
For many of us our hearts (passion) get ahead of our heads (logic), so that we don't think very clearly or specifically about outcomes. Bringing the two together is essential. That's what Galba's series pointed to, and my Four Questions intends to do as well.
Great post that will give me a focus for my meetings today.
Thanks very much.
Ed

[Michelle Malay Carter]

Hi Steve,

Nice series. Passion enables sustainability.

Blogging is a great example of something that appears to be something "anyone could do", and I believe they can - for a month.

I'd love to know the ratio of existing blogs to active blogs. You cannot sustain a blog unless you are passionate about your subject AND you are passionate about expressing yourself in written word. If you care to be a business blogger, you must also be wired to enjoy reading and research.

Those who start a blog only because "everybody who is anybody" has to be in the social media game will fail.

Fakers are boring, and in the end, they bore themselves more than anyone else!

Regards,

Michelle Malay Carter

[Wally Bock]

Let me lob a wrench into this one. The discussion so far seems to take as given that if you have a passion for something you will be good at it. Anyone who has ever heard me sing would know that's not always the case.

The challenge in the workplace is utilizing talent. Passion can be a booster for talent it can't substitute.

[Joe Raasch]

Hi Wally,

Indeed - as Jim Collins states, it is the "intersection of what you love to do, what you are born to do and what someone will pay you to do" - I say that is where one should eat.

Joe

[Lisa Gates]

Steve, thanks for this post.

Here are a few questions we can ask ourselves...and I think managers and HR folks could benefit with a few open-ended questions to get at the deeper gold:

What about this is important to you? (Uncovers values.)

If you were able to engage your passion, what would be different about your work? (Uncovers vision.)

What one thing would help you align with that passion and give it shape? (Identify actions, support, requests.)

2 cents

[Steve Roesler]

Hi, Karin,

I'm pretty keen on the work that the Gallup organization has done. It's very good for helping individuals get clearer about general categories of talents.

But here's where there is some difficulty based upon my observation inside of large organizations: the categories are too general for many--if not most--managers and HR screeners.

Here's a quite personal example. My own results show that my five key strengths are Learner, Responsibility, Relator, Intellection, and Empathy. I've been around long enough:-) to know that those are, indeed, accurate. Yet if I used the descriptions that accompany those titles with prospective clients or a prospective employer, they would have a difficult time translating them into something operable. So the responsibility still lies with the individual to accurately describe--in business terms--how these talents will tie into specific business results.

Please don't take this as a knock at the Gallup stuff. In fact, I credit them with raising the level of career conversation to "Talent" vs. "Skills" or "Interests."

Thanks, Karin. I know I can always count on you to jump in when the topic turns to talents, strengths, and passion!

[Steve Roesler]

Hey, Joe, you've added some great lines to the discipline (or lack) of discerning talent.

Interestingly, one of the things that jumps out at me is your own sense of discernment. You've taken your numerous experiences and arrived at a place of humble--yet confident--wisdom and discernment.

I'm going to have an opportunity to use your food analogy tomorrow. I promise I will give attribution:-)

With thanks,

Steve

[Steve Roesler]

Terrific, Ed. It's satisfying to know that the discussion here will get additional life from an experienced consultant.

I think this conversation may go on for a while; getting the head and heart in sync is something that I'm passionate about.

Let's see where it goes. . .

[Steve Roesler]

Hi there, Michelle,

Well put. I hadn't thought about the relationship between genuine passion and active vs. inactive blogging. Maybe this is another one of those arenas where "fake it 'til you make it" is just pure nonsense.

Let's hope we can continue doing "the real deal" through the conversations here!

[Steve Roesler]

Wally, lob away.

You say, "The challenge in the workplace is utilizing talent. Passion can be a booster for talent (but)it can't substitute."

That's exactly where the discussion is headed. I hope that, in an era of alleged low attention span, people read closely enough to "get it."

[Steve Roesler]

Lisa, thanks for each one of those--they're worth a lot more than 2 cents.

I especially like the last two for interviewers in the workplace. They put the responsibility back on the individual to demonstrate the link between passion and work.

[Jim Stroup]

Steve, I just have a problem with this passion stuff. I wonder what we are really doing here: are we promoting passion as a character trait that people should have, or should bring to work? It just seems to me that we would be better off medicating people who do that, rather than employing them.

But finding ways to allow people to do what they have an interest in - what you seem to be calling "guided passion" - that's getting closer for me. Michelle seems to be pointing to a key lesson here on this point. I'm sure a lot of those dormant blogs were started by people with large, inchoate dreams gushing about how passionate they were - perhaps they convinced some people for a while. But the ones who seem to really have it are the ones who stayed the course. Could we have predicted which those would be at the starting line?

That's why I like the direction suggested by "guided passion" (although I still have concerns about the term), and the idea that managers and employees have to be engaged in the particular way that allows this to happen. The problem is that it can create unrealistic expectations that simply can't be met, with the attendant negative consequences on morale and - passion.

On the other hand, there are companies that seem to successfully use interviews to determine - not so much passion as cultural fit. Their hiring processes typically include two to four times as many interviews intended to assess that as to evaluate technical competence.

I love this discussion, though, and am following it with interest, an open mind, and finding it rewarding and challenging. - Thanks, as always!

[Galba Bright of Tune up your EQ]

Passion: what you love to do. Something that moves you deeply, makes you feel whole, fulfilled.

Talent: what you're good at doing.

The priority for businesses is to identify the talents that they need to be superior performers and to find people who either possess them or have the capacity for developing them. Paradoxically the quest for exploring passions could become a diversion, a bit like leaning a ladder against the wrong wall.

As Wally Bock says, a person can feel passion for a pursuit that they aren't particularly good at. As an Emotional Intelligence practitioner, I'm a bit surprised at my train of thought as I followed this excellent thread. Thank you, Ed Brenegar for helping me to think again about my recent article series. Your insight reminds me of how nuanced the challenge of aligning one's talents and passions with what the marketplace needs can become.

[Steve Roesler]

Hi there, Jim,

Well, I got started down this path as a result of what I saw as unbridled passion for the word passion. While I am all for "congruency" with one's work, I'm seeing passion tossed around as some sort of end in itself. And I am, indeed, passionate about what I have chosen to (hopefully) contribute in my working life.

My concern is with the term's alignment with a pop culture notion that life exists solely for one's total self-satisfaction. If that theme is projected and accepted as legitimate, then "taking your passion into the workplace" could morph into a movement of self-fulfillment rather than a legitimate, mutually beneficial employee/employer relationship. Instead of having conversations about "I'm good at____ and even excited about it--how can I contribute," there is the risk that people will begin to think that workplaces exist to satisfy their "passions."

Jim, this is just the kind of discussion and questioning that I was hoping for, and I am thankful. As trite as it may sound, I trust that the readers and commenters will bring their experience and sensibilities to mold this topic in a way that will put it in a useful and meaningful perspective.

Thanks, Jim. . .

[Steve Roesler]

Greetings, Galba,

This is the kind of conversation that I enjoy the most--the one where people start talking to each other and I can watch and reflect. There sure is a lot of passion for the topic and a lot of experienced souls giving it proper refinement.

Let's see where this leads. . .