Your passion - Leadership is key to career path
Whether you are the rookie of a company, a project manager, or looking for a job promotion into the supervisor rank, at some point, you will have to lead - facilitating brainstorming sessions, being the point person for a small event, or developing new products, etc.
Leadership quality is what separates being stuck with eternal grunt work or a career path with potential.
Leadership - People follow passion, not titles
Chief of, Director of, Head of...job titles are merely a person's responsibilities, that's all. As your career progresses, the focus of personal development should be on the ability to foster collaboration, cooperation, and cohesion. In short, it's leadership.
Think of a time when you truly felt motivated and excited to pursue a goal. Someone very likely lit a fire in you. That person most definitely exuded an aura of "passion". He or she clearly demonstrated that he loved and cared about what he does and, in turn, inspired you to do the same. The true meaning of passion "Just follow your passion, and everything will fall into place."
Although we hear this type of advice so often that it's now cliched, there is still truth in it. The real issue is that the definition of passion is misunderstood. The word gets thrown around so much nowadays that most people forget that it came from the Latin word "passio", which means suffering.
Passion is not a hobby or an interest. Passion is something that you are willing to suffer for, yet you find fulfillment through the hardships.
Personal growth - Are you sure you know your passion?
If you say your passion is music, then are you willing to pull all-nighters to perfect the chorus of a new song or swallow humiliating rejections after rejections from producers and record labels? If your passion is fashion, what kind of pain are you willing to endure?
If all you want to do is mess around with a guitar an hour a day or read a couple of fashion magazines on the weekend, then you have not discovered a passion. And it's unlikely that you have done anything passionately or inspired someone to follow your lead.
Traits of passionate people = Leadership quality
Of course, certain leadership skill sets will only come with knowledge gained over time. If you are a university student or young professional, it's natural to still be on the search for what stokes the internal fire.
However, it's never too early to begin cultivating the right leadership disposition. And here's a pro tip. HR officers, who are good at what they do, invite you to in-person job interviews mainly to see if you possess the following traits of passionate people.
Here's another tip: When you demonstrate passion, the same HR officers will try their hardest to retain talent such as yourself and satisfy your job expectation.
Open-minded: Be curious. Give new and different ideas a chance. Proactively step out of the comfort zone to expand your horizon.
Thoughtful: Don't be the loudmouth that talks for the sake of talking. "Quiet people have the loudest minds," so make sure you have something meaningful to say before you open your mouth.
Walk your talk: And remember to back up your promises and claims. Integrity, reliability, credibility, they are fundamental to genuinely passionate leaders.
Diligence: When you think you've fulfilled your responsibility, try to go a step farther. Find another option to the solution, help out a colleague in need, do one more proofread...give extra now, and you will gain back so much more.
Today, begin cultivating the right attitude and transform yourself into a leadership talent that can galvanize people for a common mission. Become a sought-after applicant via effective personal development, and kick down doors to the right kind of jobs and job promotions.
