A Nova Guide to Executive Presence: Passion
One of the biggest barriers facing women leaders today is a perceived lack of “executive presence.” This phrase is often used – and often misunderstood, even by the people using it! Intelligent, capable and talented women are being held back in their careers because they don’t meet an ambiguous standard for what an executive should look like. Over the course of our nine week executive presence series, Kathleen, Lisa and Priscilla will be sharing nine traits that every woman can develop to improve her executive presence and bring value to the organization.
“You can do anything you want to do!”
“Follow your heart!”
“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life!”
I heard these sentiments regularly as a kid, as a student, and as a young woman beginning my career. Go ahead - try French, soccer, and violin – how else will you know if you love it? Pick a major you enjoy, find a job you love going to every day, find your passion in life. Carefully choose your career, and you’ll love working every day of your life.
But…when what you love becomes your career, it changes the way you interact with it. All of the sudden, it becomes WORK. And if you’re a dreamer, an optimist, and have the mentality that you picked your ideal passion and so every day should be peachy, then your day to day tasks can make you feel like you took the wrong path. And work and play ARE different things – I love my job, but I would still rather be laying out at the beach with a sci-fi book in my hand.
If you decide that your happiness is based on loving every part of your job, you’ll likely never find that happiness.
“Love what you do” sounds like something that should miraculously happen, not something you have to develop. Cultivating passion makes it sound like, well, work. But cultivating passion is exactly what you have to do to develop the consistency, commitment, motivation, and drive to live the life you want.
So how do you cultivate passion? Figure out exactly what work means to you, and be passionate and intentional about your life and the choices you make. It takes a bit of soul searching – identifying your values, your priorities, your talents. Consider what you want out of your career mentally, physically, socially, spiritually – and lest we forget – financially.
Values, talents, and priorities identified, mastery is then the key to cultivating passion. Once you know yourself and what your intentions in your working life are, dedicate yourself to mastery over the daily tasks and responsibilities that build your role. Mastery gives you the drive and motivation to move forward. “Whatever you are, be a good one” is the takeaway here.
For me, I know that I really enjoy working independently with a project or task with a clear completion. I like the opportunity to be creative in my work and projects. I value the feeling of accomplishment: knowing that I’m really good at something. And I value serving others: my work matters to them, and makes their lives easier.
I value creativity, and have found a way to bring that into even some of the more mundane aspects of my role. I may not be ecstatic about merging spreadsheets or filing taxes, but I can be intentional about my attitude towards it. And I can focus on mastering this task so that I can excel at it. Knowing my talents and values allows me to find passion in all kinds of things.
Really taking the time to know yourself and what makes you happy may mean that you may follow your heart into a different life than you imagined as a child. Consciously cultivating passion allows you to be happy and successful – living an authentic life and following your own path.
