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Am I the only person who feels ill every time I hear the word “passion” at work?

This doesn’t mean I am not committed or do sloppy work. I am a classic Type A overachiever. But to me, passion is personal. It’s what I feel for my husband, for the old schoolhouse we’re restoring, for the sweet peas I’m sprouting, for world peace, and – okay, just a little – for Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama. It is NOT what I feel about work.

I feel a lot of things about work – interested, challenged, even excited – but the best word is probably committed. I am fortunate that I have been paid fairly and given opportunities to do interesting, creative things in my career. I have very high standards for anything that goes through my shop – so much so that veterans on my team warn newbies who join up. I am super dedicated and I really enjoy my job. But I am not passionate about it. To me, that’s a word for a different time and place. 

I think small business owners are different. Most of those I have met ARE passionate about the businesses they’ve started. But for those of us who work for someone else, it doesn’t feel like the right word. At work, I don’t want passion – I want intelligence, creativity, dedication, stamina, and, yes, PLEASE, the ability to proofread. In fact if someone told me in a job interview that their job was their passion, I would question their truthfulness, not to mention their sanity. 

Am I crazy? Am I merely splitting semantic hairs? Or is passion at work overrated?

According to numerous accounts, Americans’ New Years resolutions are fairly predictable. Not necessarily in this order, here are the top ten for 2009:

• Stop smoking
• Get Fit
• Lose Weight
• Enjoy Life More
• Quit Drinking
• Get Organized
• Learn Something New
• Get Out of Debt
• Spend more time with Family/Friends
• Help Others

All worthy goals, to be sure – and as anyone in a leadership role knows, it’s important to have a goal. With that in mind, I’d like to suggest some resolutions for leaders to consider in 2010:

• Listen more than you talk
• Lead by example
• Show you value employees by asking for their ideas and input
• Communicate clearly, in plain language
• Say “thank you”

What else should leaders be thinking about as we look toward a new year?

In September 2001 I skipped a family Labor Day dinner because I had to work. It turned out to be one of the last we’d have with my father, who was diagnosed with cancer shortly thereafter and died the next January. I swore I would never again put work above real life.

I did pretty well for a number of years, but a few weeks ago, I slipped. “I’m sorry,” I told my sister, “I can’t hang out and take my nieces back to school shopping – I have to work.” When evening came around and I looked back on how I’d spent my weekend, did I regret my choice? You bet.

Why is this relevant to leadership and communications? Because we all have good intentions, and we all make promises, and we all slip.”I will communicate more frequently with employees,” we tell ourselves. “I will work harder to make sure they understand the role they play and how they contribute to the company’s success.” “I will spend more time walking around talking to employees and less time in my office or locked up with my executive team.” But then things get busy and people make demands and we revert to our old patterns.

I’m not saying we should beat ourselves up for slipping, but we shouldn’t stop trying either, even if we slip repeatedly. My nieces are coming over this weekend, and I’m not working.

 Last weekend we decamped to the coast for a family gathering – four sisters, two husbands, two teenaged nieces, one baby nephew, and two dogs. My nieces started channel surfing late one afternoon and stumbled across Lethal Weapon, with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. My husband said “Hold on, that was a fun movie.” So we watched for a few minutes – and then looked at the kids, who were looking at us with the half-pitying, half wondering, “What’s wrong with you?” look that only teenaged girls can do effectively. The pacing has changed so much since 1987, when that movie came out, that what we remembered as a fast-paced, shoot-em-up buddy movie moved at the pace of slow molasses. It was painful to watch even for us, and for my nieces – who make their own videos, edit them, and upload them to Facebook – it was incomprehensible that it had EVER been good.

It reminded me of two things.

One is the Charlie Brown specials we watched every year as kids, where adults’ voices are always depicted as remote, incomprehensible sounds (”Mwah MWAH, mwah mwah mwah MWAH…”)

The other was my first year of teaching. I had attended college when a good lecture was as good as it got – hard as it is to believe now, we were not only willing, but happy, to listen to one voice speak for an hour while we took notes. When I started teaching, I realized pretty quickly that for the TV generation I was lecturing to, I wasn’t enough. I began starting every lecture with an appropriate song (for example, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s inspired version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for Race and Equality in WWII; Country Joe and the Fish “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” for Vietnam) and bought myself a copy stand so I could shoot my own slides. It worked wonders.

As leaders, we are used to communicating in certain ways. We need to keep in mind that our audience may be used to a different kind and pace of communication. Leadership is all about storytelling – but keep it short and snappy. For more on this, see Stew Friedman’s “How a 2-Minute Story Can Help You Lead.”

Years ago, I was one of only two female junior faculty members at a large state university in the South, and often the only female at a given meeting. Invariably, one of the middle-aged white men at the table would look over at me and suggest that I take notes. Although at first I said OK – who can say no to anything during their first few weeks on the job? - pretty quickly it began to irate me (as they said in that part of the south). But I didn’t know what to do.

I debated saying, “You know, I’m junior faculty, not a secretary,” or “I took notes at the last three meetings; who else would like to take a turn?” but feared I’d come off as too uppity. Finally I hit on an idea: I left my pen and notebook back in my office. When the request came, I smiled disarmingly and said, “Oh my goodness, silly me – I didn’t bring pen and paper!” In the silence that followed, I could HEAR them chewing over the alternatives: “This is damned awkward.” “If we ask her to go back to her office and get the pen and paper…” “I could offer to lend her pen and paper but that’s almost worse…” Eventually one of them motioned to one of the others: “Morton, you take notes this time.” BINGO. I never, ever brought a pen and paper to another faculty meeting. [And I never regretted it until (fast forward to my next life) my boss, who I adored, laughed and shook his head as he passed me yet another pen and a sheet of paper and said, "Why don’t you ever have a notebook with you like a normal person?" But that’s another story.]

Why am I telling you this? Because in figuring out how to construct communications that drive behavior it’s important to remember that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Higher workloads, fewer benefits, and lower pay are taking a toll on American workers. According to a new survey from Adecco Group North America, 54 percent of employed Americans will look to move when the economy improves. Younger workers are even more ready to jump: a whopping 71 percent of those aged 18 to 29 say they are likely to start looking when the recession ends.

What can employers do now to improve their chances of keeping their best workers once opportunities open up elsewhere?

• Think about what you CAN offer now: if you can’t offer a raise, can you offer the chance to work at home once a week, or the option to work four long days and take a long weekend? Consider asking employees what they’d most value (see June 12 post for ideas).
• Align responsibility with reality: for every furlough day you ask employees to take, you should reduce their workload about 5 percent. Similarly, if you ask an employee to take on more responsibility without a commensurate raise, offer an incentive. (How? See “Question Everything” below.
• Be clear about your priorities: what do you want employees to do? Communicating clearly to employees what you want them to do and why can go a long way toward reducing frustration.
• Question everything: In a previous life I took over management of a group whose purpose was to produce reports on a variety of metrics. Between the daily, weekly, and monthly reports, the group produced about thirty separate reports. They were overworked, constantly scrambling, and consequently morale was terrible. When I asked why they did all these reports, they didn’t have a clear answer – somewhere between “I don’t know,” “A previous manager asked us to,” and “We always have.” The first thing I did was work with them to query management about which reports they actually found useful and which piled up unread. With that information we reduced the number of reports to about half a dozen – which could be done, and done well, by the group even if someone was out sick or on vacation.
• Say thank you: feeling underappreciated is a huge morale killer.

From my new favorite blog, employment attorney Jay Shepherd’s “gruntled employees,” a twitterable twitter policy that not only fits within the 140-character limit but HITS that limit straight on, thereby earning the sobriquet, a “twoosh”:

Be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. Represent us well. Remember that you can’t control it once you hit “update.”

Shepherd’s post is a well-deserved, if not entirely welcome, bucket of cold water in the face for all of us who have heard – and, mea culpa, may have said – “We can’t do it in {one sentence, one paragraph, one page].”

Life is short. People are busy. Wouldn’t you rather your employees were out there twittering about your products than slogging through a long policy (no matter how well-conceived, -intentioned, and -written)? As communicators, we need to not just practice what we preach, but also model it.

More Shepherd gems: check out “A two-word corporate blogging policy” and “The world’s shortest employee handbook.”

At Ogilvy, we are big believers in research as an important first step in just about every project, and I recently came across a survey I thought was pretty cool. 

A company called OfficeTeam sponsored a survey asking employees what benefits they’d find most valuable during the summer. Flexible schedules (38%) and leaving work early on Fridays (32%) far outstripped additional activities such as picnics and a more relaxed dress code.

Why is this survey a cool idea? 

A survey lets you solicit input – always a good thing in an era where the two-way conversation is paramount – while limiting the input to what’s possible (notice that higher salaries, full retirement medical benefits, and free child care were not choices offered on the survey). This can be particularly important in a recession, when you may not have a lot of money to throw around. Instead of apologizing for what you can’t offer, get employees focused on what you can offer – and get their input about what’s most valuable to them.

You’d never launch an expensive PR or advertising campaign without some research to inform your strategy. Why would you approach employee communications any differently?

Years ago, I worked for a credit card company that almost died. A reputation crisis followed by financial mismanagement led to a dramatic fall in the stock price and a near shutdown by regulators.

During that fall, every day brought a new crisis, and each crisis seemed to demand extensive communication to employees, because (the conventional wisdom went) employees would be upset and fearful and would need context and reassurance quickly. Except I didn’t care.

That fall, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He was given three to six months, fought valiantly, and made it through four. Each day, as I got to work and was given the latest news, I had my own news in mind. “The regulators are setting up onsite.” “We just got a stage four diagnosis.” “Our stock price has fallen another 20 percent.” “We’re stopping chemo.” “The regulators are demanding a capital plan.” “We’re giving up on radiation.” The two stories formed a point-counterpoint in my mind all fall, and although I loved my job and was committed to it, I had no doubt about which story was more important, and which outcome would have a bigger effect on my life.

I’m not saying that communicating with employees isn’t important – it is. But it’s important for us to remember that employees have lives outside of work, and often we don’t know much about them. When communications don’t have the desired effect, we may want to take a step back, and see if there’s something else we should be factoring into the picture.