What's your passion?

Here's the second article that I promised I'd write about. From the HBR series on Finding and Retaining the Best People. By James Waldroop and Timothy Butler again. Here, the authors write about 8 key innate passions that people tend to have and how organizations can work on job sculpting and match these passions, thus keeping employees happy and in good spirits apart from leveraging on their inherent skills. The 8 innate passions that the authors believe people would normally have are:

- Application of Technology
- Quantitative Analysis
- Theory and Conceptual Thinking
- Creative Production
- Enterprise Control
- Coaching and Mentoring
- Managing People and Relationships
- Influence through Language and Ideas

If people could be put in roles that match one or more of their inherent passions as per the classification above, there is bound to be 'good'. Moreover, the authors say that even already-assigned jobs can be sculpted and tailored to cater to the innate passion(s). I am able to relate very well to these categories. I really think anyone who loves his/her profession ought to fall under one or more of these categories. How useful it would be for managers to understand where their team members are in this spectrum and then do some things that would keep them happy...and get them to realize their full potential. Realizing one's potential, after all, is about tapping into one's natural talents, eh?

I, personally, would be thrilled with Theory and Conceptual Thinking, Creative Production and Influence through Language and Ideas. A day with opportunities in these three areas, for example, would seem like a perfect day to me! Bliss! :) :D

Think about it.....I like this categorization and think many people would be able to understand their strengths and what kind of jobs they would fit into based on this research....