Passionate Leadership

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This is the 3^rd blog in the leadership series I have been writing on for the past few days. My two previous blogs were “EmotionalCourage” and “Emotional Intelligence”. Leaders need to have many qualities to be successful, but none-is more important than passion.

At the risk of sounding too kumbaya, passion isn’t just a wild, loud, take-no-prisoners sort of quality.  True passion requires honest commitment to something, which you feel strongly about, and staying committed through difficult times. When a leader is passionate, people feel a deep sense of being led in a worthy direction by someone who is committed to something more important than his or her own individual glory.

In the HBR Blog by Joel Stein called Boringness: The Secret to Great Leadership,  Joel talks about how his images of great leaders “were based mainly on movies and sports. I figured great leaders did a lot of alpha-male yelling and inspirational speechmaking.” In doing research for a book, though, he discovered that most really effective leaders aren’t the loud, pizz-azzy kind.  He found, instead, depth of commitment and a quiet attention to the details that allow that commitment to bear fruit.

What qualities of leaders result in people to accept another’s leadership? According to Erika Andersen, Forbes contributor and author of “Leading So People Will Follow”, there are six qualities that people most want to see in their leaders.

• Farsightedness
• Passion
• Courage
• Wisdom
• Generosity
• Trustworthiness

Authors Robert Kriegel and Louis Patler cite a study of 1,500 people over 20 years showing the value of finding your passions within your life:

“At the outset of the study, the group was divided into Group A, 83 percent of the sample, who were embarking on a career chosen for the prospect of making money now in order to do what they want later, and Group B, the other 17 percent of the sample, who had chosen their career path for the reverse reason, they were going to pursue (their passions) what they want to do now and worry about money later. The data showed some startling revelations:

At the end of the 20 years, 101 of the 1,500 had become millionaires.

Of the millionaires, all but one-100 out of 101- were from Group B, the group that had chosen to pursue what they loved (their passions)!”

I wanted to underscore using an example based on my personal experience on how following your passion can lead to success. By 2006, I had already spent 5 years at Verizon and worked/led innumerous products like iView, Golden Source, DSL, Design Services (high speed network provisioning system), Home Networking, and was ready to call it a day.  I had 3 offers on hand from investment banks in New York and also had a MBA admission at IIMC (Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta), one of the best business schools in India. I was invited to lead BAAIS Video product. BAAIS Video was part of the Verizon’s FiOS initiative (a 32 billion dollar investment) and handled the video aspect of the triple-play (voice, data and video). This product was started in 2005 and two leaders had already failed at delivering the product on time. I wrote a deeper technical blog covering my experience on this project in the blog “Global Software Development using SCRUM”.

I had a choice to make. I said to myself “ONE LAST TIME”

By the time, I was invited to look into the product; the Engineering Manager was already fired, 2/3^rd of the team had quit, and the Senior Engineering Manager and Director of Engineering were desperate to turn around the product and had no clue on how to fix the issues and business (which funded the product) had lost all faith in the engineering team to deliver this product.

Once I made the decision to stay and lead this project, the first thing I did was talk to the remaining team (which was no more than 10 people by that time). I told them that I am honestly committed to turning around this product. I discussed my previous experiences with turning around products at Verizon and tried to show genuine passion. I heard everyone’s point of view and presented my thought process and invited everyone in the dialogue to challenge me. Passion balanced with openness goes a long way. As a leader, I rolled up my sleeves and jumped into the architecture and code. I directed all the communication to business through me, to protect the team from any external fire. It was going to be my failure if we failed and teams success if we succeeded (the buck stops at me).

8 of those 10 people ended up staying and committing to the product. We hired more people and by Sept of 2008, we were a 100+ development team. This team was the most sought after team at Verizon, in that everyone wanted to be part of it. We were the most funded product at Verizon, and the youngest team with many of my leads under 23 years of age, and the most successful product of that year. We were a turn-around success story and won awards.

It was the best team that I had the privilege to work with and I still miss working with such high caliber people. I was happy to have led them to success. I succeeded because this was my passion, which helped me rally my team, and my honest commitment to turning around this ship was contagious enough to help me recruit new blood in the team.

A person’s passions can ignite other people’s passions and bring energy into their lives. Real passion provides inspiration that’s much deeper than cheerleading  or a temporary emotional high. When leaders are truly passionate, people feel included in the leader’s commitment to making important things happen.  That’s satisfying on a deep level, and it lasts. If you want to raise your influence, then you need to be a passionate leader..