Sustaining Passion In Business – It’s All About SDT

Check out the originally published article on LinkedIn.

Let’s face it – most people work for companies where the product line is pretty darn hard to feel passionate about. The reality is while most businesses provide products and services that support our economy and are critical for the health of it, you rarely see people leaving their company at the end of the working day kicking up their heels, excited about their job, and eager to get back the next day.  I always think about one of the classic Anchorman scenes where the channel 4 news team jumps up when they start discussing buying new suits. How most feel about their jobs is almost a complete antithesis of that iconic image.

But, don’t despair. While you may not be able to get everyone on your team or in your company to jump for joy when they think of their job, you can take steps to make it better for most. And, the higher the overall passion, the more productive they will be, and the better results you will have. Additionally, it makes your job leading people a little easier, and couldn’t every leader, including you, benefit from that?

Recently, I listened to an excellent podcast that featured the authors of “The Passion Paradox”. In that podcast they referenced the importance of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) in sustaining motivation, passion, creativity and feeling satisfied about one’s work. SDT is not some new idea – it has been around quite awhile. And, as a leader understanding it and incorporating it into your culture can pay huge dividends. There are three components of SDT: Competency, Autonomy and Relatedness. Let’s take them one at a time.

What they are:

• Competency – One has to feel they are good at something and/or getting better at something.
• Autonomy – one has to feel they have a fair amount of control and influence.
• Relatedness – one has to feel connected to either the people they work with and the shared experience they have together or one has to feel connected to the mission or overriding cause of the organization. If you can have both, even better. But you have to have one for sure.

As an employer/leader, here is what you need to do for each:

Developing greater competency – Carefully evaluate your current employee development approach from training resources to how effectively you and your team coach and develop your people – can they be improved? Can they be better implemented? Regardless of what you are currently doing, commit to making it better. Competency development never ends, so commit to doing what is necessary to help your people get better at their jobs.

Increasing autonomy – Could you be providing employees more autonomy? Good things happen when you do, and not just happier employees. More creativity is applied, innovation increases, and employees figure out better ways of doing things.   As leaders, we tend to rely on overly-detailed processes, or forcing too many decisions to be approved by leadership before being made, and in general putting in barriers that while we think are helpful to the organization or the employees, they actually are negatively impacting growth and ideation. Find ways to give people more autonomy and you will see the benefits.

Increasing relatedness – Of the three, this one is more important today than it ever was. Employees want to their work to have more meaning. If you already have a compelling mission (ending hunger, world peace, transforming education, etc.), then work primarily on number two. If you don’t have a compelling mission, you need to do both one and two.

1. Create a compelling mission for your organization. It doesn’t matter if you are selling shower curtain rings, you can create a more compelling vision than the one you have today.  In previous work I have done with leadership teams from different companies, we have either created or improved their vision and mission to make it mean something to everyone. 
2. Invest heavily in bringing your team together by creating more shared experiences. There are three types of shared experiences that leaders should invest in. These include social (dinner and lunches together offsite, spontaneous trips to the local coffee shop), hobby (bowling team, golf, book club) and formative (working together on large problems, doing external team events that build trust). Basically, build the chemistry by creating team-based social and work experiences and ensure you impact all three types on a regular basis. Make it a priority to be doing these every quarter to build team chemistry.

As 2020 begins, it is a great time to review and invest in improving the three components of sustained passion. Small improvements will lead to happier, healthier and more invested employees. In today’s hyper-competitive environment you and your company need every advantage they can get, and ongoing investments in SDT can make a significant impact. Plus, having more passion just makes work more fun. Maybe not as fun as suit shopping with Ron Burgundy and his team, but for sure more fun then you are having today.