Today’s featured blogger is William Powell. His post fits the category of commitment to success. As you seek to grow as a leader, you have a chance to impact others. Your expectations will shape your ability to make a difference. In this post, William challenges us to expect that we can make the world a better place.
I have a number of things about which I’m just crazy passionate. If you begin talking about one of these things with me, you best be prepared for some long and involved discourse chock full of passion, ideas and vigor. Obviously, I’m passionate about leadership, culture development and employee engagement, but there are things that hit me on a conviction level that may not seem so directly related to what I do for work. Those things that when I drift in the general vicinity of them I can physically feel my heart beating faster.
Some of my passions are: masculinity instead of machoism, social justice/equality, ending poverty. These things get me all ramped up and I want to do anything and everything I can every chance I get to help further these things along. I’m one for being creative and strategic as opposed to the work your guts out approach. I’m not afraid of some hard work, but I’ll work smart before I work hard any day. My passions are about what I want to see different in my world. I would be a filthy little liar if I said this didn’t enter into my work world. It’s not by chance that it’s in my work world; I invite it to regularly reside there.
I’m passionate about honoring people and giving them value, simply because they’re breathing. Period. That can take the form of helping men understand healthy masculinity, working on a social justice project or helping to end poverty in some way. This desire influences how I interact with my clients and advise them. Pay close attention, I’m putting my ulterior motive for being in business on the internet.
I am a firm believer that quality leadership can remedy a large number of our social maladies. It would take God telling me I was a complete nutter for me to change my mind on this. People spend a significant majority of their lives at work and no matter the person, they are influenced by the environment the experience while working. It affects their health, how they interact with their spouse/partner, their kids, their friends and their team mates at work. That pretty much covers most of their lives.
With that kind of influence, the workplace takes on a much more important role than just a place to go and earn a paycheck. What kind of world do you want your kids to grow up in? What changes do you want to see in society? What are your passions? I’m not talking about gripes, but genuine passions. How can that be integrated into how you treat those in your organization? How can you incorporate that into your culture?
You will be amazed at the positive impact you can have on the communities your organization touches simply by providing a culture that embraces positive values within the workplace. Your employees will be much more engaged, it opens the door for community initiatives that strengthen your brand and most importantly, it’s the right thing to do. You are giving practical ways for your values to be communicated. People align themselves with values. You will create an entire movement of evangelists.
If the global standard is leading from a place of what stirs your passion for positively impacting the lives of humanity, then business becomes the global force that drives social change on a very practical level. I don’t know about you, but I love business and I’m tired of people having good reason to bash business in general because it’s about money. WE have the power to make this paradigm shift and I’m challenging everyone reading this to begin finding your passions and figuring out a way to bring them into your organization. Your business can change the world!
William works internationally with organizations to bring about quality leadership development, powerful organizational culture and effective people engagement. His mission is to change the global conversation on leadership. He blogs at The Leadership Advisor and Lead Swag. You can follow him on Twitter, join him on Facebook, or connect on LinkedIn.
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