life

The fashion for passion

Matthew S. Dillon1 Comment
It’s “lightning in a bottle” but is passion your everyday inspiration?

Yes, yes, we get that you’re super dedicated to your hobby, team, music or wine, even your job. But are you actually passionate about it, or do you simply have a limited vocabulary?

You hear a lot about passion these days. Passion is an obligatory characteristic for those competing on TV talent quests. Passionate sports fans never miss a game their club plays, their heads full of obscure team-related lore.

For others, their ardour is reserved for a pastime that has become so much more than a hobby: succulents, pottery, mid-century design, travel, or collecting knick-knacks.

Various libations such as coffee, cocktails or craft beer inspire intense devotion and – you guessed it – the p-word.

The professional realm is another site for the expression of passion. Whether it’s an obscure area within a profession (“I’m passionate about antivirus software”) or the crux of a job (“My passion is customer service”), passion is seemingly ubiquitous at the workplace. It would appear there is a surfeit of it out there. An epidemic.

“We live in a passion-fetishising society, where people are constantly being given this very often-unhelpful piece of advice, which is ‘Follow your passion, follow your passion, follow your passion’,” says writer Elizabeth Gilbert.

No one is saying that passion is bad. Of course it isn’t. But it may not always be available to tap into. Passion is energising but also energy-intensive. Enlightening but consuming.

The Shorter Oxford Dictionary lists nine definitions of the word “passion”, the first of which is “the suffering of pain”, as in “the passion of Christ”. In fact, the word derives from the Latin pati, which simply means “pain”. The first four listed meanings all have a connection with pain in some sense, including a now-obsolete definition of “a painful disorder, an affliction of a specified part of the body”, or “a violent attack of disease”.

Other definitions include a “strong barely controllable emotion”, a “strong sexual feeling”, an “outburst of anger or rage” or “a strong enthusiasm for a (specified) thing; an aim or object pursued with strong enthusiasm”.

Under this definition it is certainly possible to be passionate about Excel spreadsheets, your local footy team or the novels of Lee Child.

In my mind, however, those earlier definitions of the word are inextricably tied up with the more contemporary understandings such that something that evokes passion must also spur discomfort. You love something so much that it hurts; or your dedication to it is such that other parts of your life start to suffer. That’s passion.

And because it causes pain, passion cannot be long-lasting or sustainable; it’s an outburst, as per definition #7. An explosion. A brilliant spark. Passion is immersion, emotion and immolation.

As Dr Tyrell told replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner, “The light that burns twice as brightly burns half as long. And you have burned oh so brightly, Roy.”

It’s true: there are those who really are deeply dedicated to their daily dose of caffeine, or whose predilection for keyboard shortcuts borders on mania.

My problem with the word is its blanket application. From keen interest to ardent devotion and lots of things in between all are filed under “passion”.

Perhaps other terms from the dedication spectrum might better be applied. You do not, after all, have to be a train spotter to drive the 7.30am express to the city and get it there safely and according to schedule. You can be competent and do that. Competence is acceptable. Competence gets the job done. What it lacks in panache it more than compensates with efficiency. So, let’s place it at one end of the spectrum.

Next along on this hypothetical rating scheme is professionalism. A professional is beyond competent – their tasks are completed with efficiency and aplomb, if not savoir-faire. Professionals make for pleasant colleagues because they are usually not overly chatty, and their reliability and efficiency are sources of comfort. Their actions are polished and executed with confidence and dexterity. They do not cut corners.

Beyond professionalism exists the realm of the enthusiast. Those embracing enthusiasm show “intense and eager enjoyment, interest or approval” for a subject or pursuit. There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm, and a lot right. Enthusiasm is attractive and appealing, positive and energetic. Enthusiasts emit good karma. Their vibe is contagious, their work often bodacious. An enthusiast will take you a long way simply on mindset and energy.

Is there another trait capable of enhancing quality of life and perhaps productivity? Consider curiosity. Gilbert says curiosity is more important to a creative individual’s output than passion.

“Passion is the big tower of flame on the hill,” she says. “It’s lightning in a bottle. It’s the voice of God. It’s all very exciting if you should happen to run into it. But it’s not always there. Every single day you can be curious, because every single day, curiosity approaches you and taps on your shoulder almost to the point where you can’t even feel it, and whispers in your ear, ‘Hey, what’s that?!’”

I know what you’re thinking: What kind of cynical bastard can be critical in any way of passion?

To be clear, I admire the passionate, as I do the curious and enthusiastic (among whose number I’d like to think I belong). Passion combined with intention can create an unstoppable force.

Yet somehow passion has become one of those words – like journey, curated, iconic, purpose and humble – whose ubiquity has blunted its impact, blurred its meaning. Passion is almost a cliché. Even your spellcheck doesn’t like it very much.

It’s on trend to be passionate, but fashions come and go. They are ephemeral. A flash in the pan. Professionalism, enthusiasm and curiosity – especially when combined with a soupcon of nonchalance  – well, these are as accessible as your daily single-origin double-ristretto.

If your reading journey has seen you reach this far, you may be able to tell from this humble screed that on occasion I enjoy messing around with words and expressing a loosely held opinion. In fact, you could say it’s one of my passions.

Laughing stock

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Have you heard the one about the CEO who proposed that funny business is actually good for business?

When newly minted Commonwealth Bank CEO Ralph Norris made his first public address, he claimed there was an accurate index a company could use to determine its health. Norris wasn’t referring to the bottom line, or even the triple bottom line. He was not talking about revenue, expenses or growth.

What Norris had in mind was a company’s humour quotient.

“You can always work out how an organisation is going if there is humour in the workplace,” Norris said. “If you don’t have that, there’s problems. Around the Commonwealth Bank, I want to see a lot more fun.”

To some present that day, Norris’ suggestion must have seemed eccentric. The corporate world, especially banking, is not synonymous with fun and laughter. Indeed, white-collar life is often depicted as a place of sombre, earnest work.

Nowhere is this more excruciatingly portrayed than in the BBC mockumentary The Office. This fake documentary follows the life and times of staff at Wernham Hogg, a drab fictional paper merchant in the drab, real-life English town of Slough. The Office focuses on the antics of manager David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais, who with his co-writer Stephen Merchant based the series on their middle-management experiences.

While Brent imagines himself a “chilled-out entertainer”, his colleagues and the audience see a crass, pathetic, bullying presence, whose antics and gags can be as agonising as they are offensive.

The Office works as a guide in how not to use humour in the workplace. Typical of Brent’s off-colour jokes is: “What’s the difference between a fox and a dog? About eight pints.”

His misfiring humour either offends, wastes time or sometimes even astonishes, as was the case during his short-lived career as a motivational speaker.

“Laughter is the best medicine,” explained a backwards-cap-attired Brent to his agog audience, and then attempted to get them to join him in a giggling session.

Pete Crofts, the founder of the world’s first Humourversity, based in suburban Melbourne, says inappropriately employing humour only to serves to underline that those wishing to employ it productively must first receive some guidance. It is, he says, a science as well as an art.

“Using humour and not knowing what you’re doing is like using a shotgun,” he explains. “Anyone can get hurt and get hit.”

Jack Levi, aka Elliot Goblet, performs most of his comedy work in the corporate arena.

“When you make people laugh you are taking control of their minds,” he says. “So, you’ve got to be very careful about what you say and the target you direct that towards.”

There are plenty of examples of real-life jokes gone wrong. Former US President Ronald Reagan employed full-time gag writers during his White House tenure, mostly to defray concerns about his age.

Sometimes, though, Reagan’s timing was way off.

“My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever,” he joked while testing a microphone during a 1984 sound check. “We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Not surprisingly this appalled his fellow Americans.

Then there was Alexander Downer’s gag about the “things that batter” that went down like a Japanese submarine.

Crofts’ Humourversity is a combination of library and training centre for stand-up comics, corporates and those keen to use humour more effectively.

“I’m for any humour that will release any anxiety, any fear, any frustration, any aggression,” he says. “But it can be used negatively. It can be used to develop stereotypes.”

That’s probably why when corporates do try use humour, it’s through the agency of an interloper, an expert such as Crofts, Levi or stand-up comic Rachel Berger who can offer her perspective on an issue without leaving collateral damage.

As well as performing in one-woman shows, Berger plays extensively in the corporate world, either as an MC at events, or introducing tailored material (such as the QUIT campaign) for workplaces.

Corporate sponsors such as WorkSafe also sponsor her live shows.

Berger says humour can be an exceptionally potent tool in the workplace. At corporate gigs, she sees her job as filtering a company’s issues through the lens of comedy.

Her modus operandi is to gather research about workplaces – “not dirt”, she insists – and then incorporate this into a personalised routine.

“I don’t ascribe to taking the piss out of people, because in the workplace that’s a form of bullying,” she says. “If I’m at a corporate gig and someone says, ‘We’d really like it of you took the piss out of the boss’. I won’t do it. Because what for? I’m not there to take the piss out of the boss. I’m there to give everybody a good time.

“If there are tensions in an organisation, I can talk to people and find out where the tensions lie, and then work that into a routine without the main culprits even knowing I’m talking about them … I don’t have to name names. What it does is give a voice to the people involved.”

Another advocate for using humour in the workplace is Levi, whose schtick is to present a character in Elliot Goblet who is so colourless as to be hilarious.

“As long as it doesn’t overtake and negatively affect the workings of an organisation, you can use humour to positively emotionally impact but also effect change,” Levi says. “For example, if someone is a persistent long lunch taker, and it’s a bit awkward actually articulating that to the person, you could get it across with humour by one day having huge welcome back signs all over his office when he returns.”

Of course, most of us spend a good deal of our lives at toil.

“We spend 41 per cent of waking hours at work,” writes David Firth in his book How to Work Make Fun. “Since we are asleep for 35 per cent [of our lives], it seems crazy to consign life, and with it, any hope of fun, to the remaining 24 per cent.”

Levi suggests “soft” humour, perhaps in newsletters and training videos, is an acceptable way to bring some mirth to a workplace. Practical jokes, he says, are out.

Crofts, who offers a range of courses about using humour in the workplace, believes that not enough of us take humour seriously.

“The reality is that the jokes that have been told at negotiating tables have possibly prevented nuclear war more than any other means,” Crofts says. “The fact is that if you’re standing around shouting and somebody cracks a joke, it releases the tension and that allows you to come back to some normality and to be able to look at something from a different perspective.”

Not all comics are born funny. Crofts insists it’s a competency that can and should be taught.

“If a sense of humour is taught in the classroom the way a sense of politics is taught and a sense of religion is taught, the kids are going to come out of school with common sense,” explains Crofts, who tackled the subject in his book How to Use Humour in Business & Life. “It’s a skill, like any other skill – you don’t have to have a talent for it. It’s a series of processes, techniques, formulas and devices.”

Humour is a panacea that can be used as an escape from when things aren’t going so well, but also as a means of wealth generation.

Crofts believes you can use humour to solve problems in a more creative way, make more creative decisions in your life and find more creative opportunities to do business.

Finding a place for humour in the professional domain is certainly not a new phenomenon. US corporate giants Kodak and IBM have employed humour consultants in the past, because they believe in the workplace it can play a transformative role.

“The thing about laughter and humour is it can actually shift you from being reactive to proactive,” Berger says. “Think about it: the reason people laugh is because they get something they’re not expecting.”

Berger believes most workers are powerless but when they are laughing, they actually feel they have a degree of power.

“That moment when you laugh, there’s a little tear in the fabric of the world that lets you see, ‘Well there is some sunshine. Maybe not now, but out there, there is’. And so it just makes you feel a lot lighter,” she says.

“It’s like somebody coming in the middle of the night when you’re having a nightmare and turning the light on and saying, ‘It’s OK darling, it’s just a nightmare’. So, of all the places in the world, humour should be in the workplace.”

That’s one issue at least, on which she and the CBA’s Norris can concur.

This article was first published in the August 2006 edition of INTHEBLACK magazine.