KnoxNews.com

March 13, 2005

 

Skills, challenges and passion toward work.

by Mildred L. Culp

A survey of 7,718 Americans, 18 years and older and working 21-hour weeks or more, finds that a mere 20 percent feel passionate toward their work. The survey encompassed people with salaries of $15,000 into the millions of dollars. It was conducted by Harris Interactive for Age Wave, which markets to the baby boom generation and its predecessors, and The Concours Group, a global consultancy.

These findings might well set off alarm bells. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of "Good Business: Leadership Flow and the Making of Meaning" (Penguin, $14), distinguishes between job satisfaction, which can emerge "for reasons related more to the quality of (a person's) peers, colleagues, boss, or work arrangements. The job itself may be a small part of that. Passion has to do with focusing upon what you're doing, the task." Csikszentmihalyi is Davidson Professor of Management at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, in southern California.

If 80 percent of working Americans don't experience passion in relation to their work, this enormous group must be feeling left out in the cold. What has happened? Csikszentmihalyi maintains that the rapidity of change causes some occupations to be fleeting, and work to be detached not just from permanence but a feeling of divine providence. "You can't feel attached" when there's no tradition behind your work, he says.

"Everything has become so abstract," Csikszentmihalyi comments, "that work is a hazy notion. A Sloan Foundation survey of 1,000 college-bound high school students . . . (disclosed that they're) ill-informed and unrealistic, with expectation of $250,000 average income and with 12 percent thinking that they'll be lawyers. Almost no one expects to do routine jobs, even from the inner city, where students expect to be models or basketball players. The notion of craft or skilled labor is not on the(ir) radar screen, even though eventually they'll do something like that. They have little exposure to work and are isolated from adult jobs.

"Sitting in front of a computer, with data," he continues, "doesn't mean much to a kid. Everything made sense when running a farm, because people knew what they were doing, and why. If they didn't milk the cows, the cows would bellow. People saw cause and effect."

'FLOW'

The author has built his long-standing reputation on his concept of flow, a positive, subjective experience that can transpire in the workplace. It occurs when you merge with the process of an "intrinsically rewarding" task - not its outcome. Not every task leads to flow. It must be one that creates the "subjective experience of full involvement with life." Success occurs when this happens, because you're "contributing to something beyond yourself." Flow makes you feel "being carried away by an outside force, moving effortlessly with a current of energy, at the moments of highest enjoyment."

"Flow occurs when both challenges and skills are high and equal to each other," and when you focus intently. It creates and awareness of spirituality in the workplace and makes you aware of soul, or "the energy a person or organization devotes to purposes beyond itself."

PASSION

What comes first in your experience, passion or flow? They can take turns being the chicken and the egg, but, generally, flow comes first, Csikszentmihalyi indicates.

Where does organization fit in? Csikszentmihalyi maintains that passion is by its very nature personal, but that "organizations and ideas outside of the person" can stimulate it. He reflects that it may not be possible to have it in large organizations, but you can "if your division, department or group nourishes that passion." A study of World War II soldiers, for example, found that soldiers were willing to give up their lives for members of their platoon, the people with whom they shared meals, ideas and a commitment to protecting each other. Today, well- formed work teams can nurture passion.

Age Wave's founder and CEO, Ken Dychtwald, based in San Francisco, would agree that passion is achievable for an individual who works alone or in a company: "Work is designed to have some level of success in a competitive world," he states. "One's a solo game and one's team sport. There's room for both types."

Wherever you are, and whatever your work arrangements, throw yourself into challenging tasks. Welcome flow; and watch your passion develop.