The Shadow-Side of Passion

Posted on 20. Apr, 2011 by Shawn Murphy in 1 Leadership, People & Change

Can your passion be too much for people? I don’t mean this sexually, but in the interests you hold for your work and in your beliefs. I don’t like the answer, but yes. It can be. It can overwhelm. It can divide a team. It can be invasive. Sure, it can also be contagious. There’s a shadow-side to passion, though.

I’ve learned over time the shadow effects of my passion. The associated behaviors, a different post for another time, surface from time to time depending on what’s going on.

The Shadow Effects

Trail of Dead Bodies. The phrase is a bit dramatic. Yet, the passion I have for helping clients unite their employees to cause change has excluded some people. My passion can narrowly focus my perspective. I sometimes don’t see how my actions or inactions are perceived. My drive for results can overwhelm others to the point where I don’t accept delays. The outcome: people have been quietly frustrated, disinterested, or disillusioned with what they thought they were signing up to do. I’ve learned to ask questions to hear my team’s ideas before sharing my thoughts. This is particularly valuable when I get worked-up, positively or not.

Time Loss from Unnecessary Confrontational Interaction. I work with brilliant people. What I love about the brilliant people I work with is they are passionate, too, about their work and beliefs. And when my passion blinds me to their passion, we spar. And the sparing isn’t always helpful. It soaks up valuable time. As the leader, I need to think about the interaction I want to have with my team before the interaction. It helps me to keep in check raging passion.

Hyper-focus on Trivial Things. My passion to grow the business, to support my team, and to create a fantastic customer experience is very important to me. And if something weakens the possibility of any of these things, I become hyper-focused on anything that I perceive interferes with success in these areas. My passion become nitpicky. I become an irritant and not an inspirer. This can lead to the Trail of Dead Bodies or Time Loss from Unnecessary Confrontational Interactions.

I love that I’m passionate for my work and my beliefs. The reality, though, is I have to be observant of how I occur in my interactions with others. I want my passion to be an enabler not a barrier. How I let it guide me is a person-by-person, group-by-group, circumstance-by-circumstance judgment. I’m fallible and don’t always make the right call. I rely on my passion to guide me. And I want the same thing from those with whom I work.

I’d love to hear your perspective and/or experience with the shadowy-side of passion. Please share them below.

Photo by forgottenx

Tags: leadership dysfunction, Passion, Shadow-Side of Passion

10 Responses to “The Shadow-Side of Passion”

Elizabeth

20. Apr, 2011

Passion is such a double-edged sword, to be sure. I encourage my team to hold tight to their beliefs and the passion that comes with them … it’s what makes them exceptional. But, yes, you have to always be sure the passion fuels you to serve the customer and encourage the team … not run over them.

Reply to this comment
- Shawn Murphy
  
  20. Apr, 2011
  
  Hi Elizabeth,
  We need more leaders who hold their team to finding and holding tight their passion. I suspect your team loves to work with you.
  
  Thank you for sharing,
  Shawn
  
  Reply to this comment
@_TeachingMomma

20. Apr, 2011

This is a great thing to acknowledge in oneself. I’ve seen the shadow-side of passion from myself and others. Luckily for me, early on in my career I started to hear from more experienced educators: “Reign in that unbridled enthusiasm, Jennifer! Look before you leap!” Whenever I find myself in a situation where the people in front of me are “being resistant,” I ask myself, “Is it them? Or is my unbridled enthusiasm getting in the way?”

Reply to this comment
- Shawn Murphy
  
  20. Apr, 2011
  
  Jennifer,
  I’ve asked myself the same question. And the answer? It’s usually my passion overwhelming the interaction. Great example, Jennifer.
  
  Shawn
  
  Reply to this comment
Jody urquhart

21. Apr, 2011

Sometimes passion comes off as over the top to un passionate people. So I agree, it’s like they are disillusioned. Ifmyou are passionate your positive energy trumps them anytime, so you may not even notice them! Insightful.

Reply to this comment
- Shawn Murphy
  
  21. Apr, 2011
  
  Hi Jody,
  I’ve been surprised by how my passion has put people off. We often think of passion as positive, and it is, but it can create a blindspot when it comes to how others respond to us passionate people.
  Glad you enjoyed the post.
  
  Shawn
  
  Reply to this comment
Zee

22. Apr, 2011

Thank you for this article. I am dealing with a few team problems where passion most definitely has worked as a culprit to tear people apart. I will forward this article to a few team members and hopefully they can learn something from it, reflect and use their passion to achieve positive results.

Reply to this comment
- Shawn Murphy
  
  23. Apr, 2011
  
  Zee,
  I’m certainly thrilled that you can use the information in this post to potentially help your team through some difficulty. Your team is fortunate to have someone like you who cares enough to seek out possible ways to help them. It’s my hope the information can be used to spark a richer and team-specific conversation. An important insight to remember is to understand where people are coming from and then to understand each other. This requires not placing blame on any one person, but to discuss what needs to be done to move forward.
  I’d love to hear how things progress.
  
  Shawn
  
  Reply to this comment
Lolly Daskal

22. Apr, 2011

Shawn,

I really enjoyed your post. I see passion teaching us what we love and our shadows teaching us what we need to work on.

I believe if we have the right relationship with our shadows we can see the gifts it offers us.

British Jungian analyst and astrologer Liz Green points to the paradoxical nature of the shadow as both the container of darkness and the beacon pointing to the light.

Shawn, in your post you are being too hard on yourself.

Why not be like Shakespeare when he said, “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine”

Because the truth is everything of substance casts a shadow. The ego stands to the shadow as light to shade. This is the quality that makes us human.

So Shawn here is to being human.
I CHERISH you
Lolly

Reply to this comment
- Shawn Murphy
  
  23. Apr, 2011
  
  Lolly,
  You have such a way with words! Indeed I am hard on myself, or too hard, as you point out. I agree 100% that the shadow side is a path to deeper understanding and growth. It’s showing me how best to harness and release my passion in order to be aligned with my works purpose and to support those who have joined the “cause.”
  
  You are a gem, Lolly.
  Shawn
  
  Reply to this comment

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