Passion is often cited as a desirable quality in leaders, but what happens when it clouds your ability to work with those around you?

For much of my life, one of the reasons I did not get the results I desired was that I was engrossed in what I was passionate about. This usually prevented me from engaging with the other person and understanding what they wanted. In sales, which was a big part of my role, this is problematic. Then, through training, I learned the techniques of consultative selling by asking open questions. However, this to me was just another approach to get them to buy into what I was selling. At the time I believed the problem was with how I was explaining my idea or selling the benefits or not asking the right questions. I was still only focused on my needs and what was going on in my life which meant the other person’s needs did not enter the equation.

Learning the hard way

To compensate, I connected with enough people who were open to buying what I was selling to keep me in business. On reflection it meant having to work extra hard to get around to meet more people who might buy into what I was proposing. Yet I am still happy with that aspect of my journey as I realise the best lessons in life sometimes come from learning the hard way. It’s what is often termed ‘experience’.

Not alone

Over the past year, I have realised that this is a problem that most people experience including many very successful leaders. Just how common this challenge is was brought home to me at a number of our peer-to-peer leadership coaching discussions. To illustrate the issue, and the ensuing wisdom that emerged, I will present the discussion around a particular challenge. It involved the merger of two successful businesses. Both business leaders decided that their respective companies would do even better if they combined their strengths and talents. One was growing fast because it was seeing the benefits of new IT systems and technologies. The other business was a more established brand and well respected in the marketplace. Over the course of the first year the new combined business harvested many of the synergies the merger brought about. It grew its turnover and profits, vindicating the decision of both owners to work together.

After the honeymoon

However, during the second year, the more tech savvy of the owners, who had joined one of my peer groups, became very frustrated with what he saw as resistance from the other owner and some senior managers to further system changes. He knew these changes would consolidate the gains they had made as well as further the growing reputation of the new business in the marketplace.

He believed he had tried everything possible to demonstrate the benefits of the changes he wanted to make and was at his wit’s end. He did not think his peers at the forum could help but decided he had nothing to lose by presenting the challenge.

In fact he was delighted and surprised with the response he got, as all of those present could identify with his frustrations in trying to implement change. All his peers had and were still encountering resistance to improvements they knew would benefit everyone else in their companies.

The other’s point of view

But the real breakthrough for the group happened when a few members decided to see the challenge from the other owner’s perspective. Some of you are probably familiar with the technique of role play that we sometimes use in the forums to unpack issues. The interplay between the parties can be extremely revealing. In this case, several members jumped in at different times to pick up the role of the other owner. The tech savvy owner ‘played’ himself.

As a result of hearing the ‘voice’ of the other business owner, the one who was resisting the change, the following insights emerged for the participants.

· You don’t have a monopoly on passion. The other person has invested a lifetime of passion in his/her way of doing things and perceives that this is being threatened.

· In pushing for change, we are often invalidating someone else’s views of how things should be. Because values represent how we see ourselves, we can appear to invalidate the core of who they are.

· When we try a new way of doing things we can feel incompetent in front of others. New skills take a while to get used to, so change can put the other person under pressure until they get used to it.

· The greater the level of involvement in discussing the changes and how these will work, the better the commitment from everybody to making it work.

· Change is as much an emotional journey as it is a logical and rational exchange of ideas. So we need to pay more attention to the relationship than we might otherwise think.

· When there is a deep appreciation of why it may be difficult for the other person to change plus an understanding of what he or she has learned to get them to where they are, that person is more open to trying something new. Hence the expression ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.’

The journey is the outcome

At our next session, the participant who presented the challenge said he had had a breakthrough with his new business partner. They had both sat down and discussed their individual visions for the business and realised they both wanted the same thing. Their differences arose around how to achieve the outcomes.

They agreed to continue to implement the type of continuous improvement that had helped so much over the past year. However, they decided to go at a pace that suited the majority of employees. This came from the realisation that building a culture of greater involvement would yield as good a result as the actual changes that would eventually be agreed.

This conversation was made possible by the acknowledgement of our tech-passionate owner that his business partner has his own passion – a counter passion if you will. Interpreting his behaviour as a consequence of his passion or values being threatened was the beginning of solving this problem of locked horns.