Passion For People Differentiates Truly Great Leaders.

Leadership

Jan 19

And is the hardest leadership mindset to master!

All the best leaders I have worked with have this one thing in common:

Passion for people.

And for these leaders it’s not an empty mantra; these leaders lived this every day, in every interaction. These leaders all evidence high self-awareness, high self-regulation and have translated this into how they work with others.

These are the leaders who inspire their teams to do great things.

This core mindset is often not articulated when leadership skills are discussed. Previously called soft skills, now being referenced as power skills, we know that these skills are what differentiates exceptional leaders. And these power skills are based on one key mindset: passion for people.

What Is Passion For People Really?

Many people would say that they have this passion, but in reality it’s a rare skill.

Passion for people isn’t about liking people.

It’s about a mindset that limits preconceptions and enables deep curiosity to build self-awareness and working to understand others. It is based on some key beliefs:

Every person has value to add
No judgement based on my beliefs
Engage to truly understand the other person’s perspective
Every person’s perspective is real and true to them
Every person has more potential than they show

This mindset is probably the most difficult for any leader to master and is one of the drivers of leadership success.

Why This Mindset Matters in Leadership

Truly embodying this leadership mindset means that we to move past our natural or learned interactional norms. It means that we actively change our mindsets from judgement to curiosity.

Businesses exists because someone had an idea, a vision and put that into action. But the business persists because of the people in the business who continue to act. The business is a legal entity that exists in an organisational structure, and it is the people who give it life daily.

Without passionately embracing the importance of people within your business you are missing out on the key opportunities to see growth and success for your business.

Why is This Passion Hard To Attain and Maintain?

The short answer here is: how our brain operates.

Our brains create themes and patterns from which to decode the world. We see how someone behaves, we assume an intention based on our own beliefs and values, and we keep finding “evidence” of this “truth”.

For example, if I think it’s rude to not greet people, if someone else doesn’t greet me or return my greeting, I may think “how rude!”. If this happens a few times, I will start thinking “here comes Sue, she is always so rude” and I will subconsciously gather evidence that supports this belief. I might stop greeting her and her not greeting me is more evidence of how rude she is.

Every interaction I have with Sue is now coloured by this belief and I will keep subconsciously collecting evidence to support my belief. Any evidence that goes against this belief is discarded by my brain as “not true”.

A New Kind of Thinking

Breaking these ingrained patterns of thinking requires self-reflection, self-regulation and challenging our own beliefs and replacing these with new beliefs.

What if in the situation described above:

I know that Sue is a complete introvert and has low self-confidence. What if her not greeting me is because she is scared that I will reject her and not acknowledge her?

Or, what if:

I know that Sue’s partner has a terminal illness and it’s all she can do every day to just keep things together and not fall apart, so she literally is walking around blinded by grief and stress?

How would I feel about Sue’s actions then?

Probably a little differently. I might be kinder in my appraisal of her behaviour. I might offer her more support.

The truth is, I may never know what drives another’s behaviour, but understanding my interpretation of that behaviour will help me be a better person and a better leader.

This is what exceptional leaders do.

They come from a place of high self-awareness, understanding themselves to better understand the world around them.

These leaders don’t assume and try to judge based not on beliefs but facts. They check the “evidence” they have about a situation or a person.

Why else do we find this mindset so challenging?

There are a few reasons:

We are trained to think in absolute terms, like “good” and “bad”.
We are in competition for resources, be they financial or time, energy, and focus.
We are used to being ranked in our work based on performance appraisal systems and tools, and this ranking determines our remuneration. Our worth is then tied up to how we are ranked, hopefully it is a “good” ranking and not a “bad” one.

This is the hardest mindset to master because it requires deep personal reflection and understanding. It requires a daily commitment and re-commitment. It requires that we embody the belief in our people, regardless of the situation. And it requires that we monitor our own intentions, actions, and impact.