Passion

I’m always on the lookout for content directly from inspiring leaders. I’ve rarely listened to an interview with a successful founder - that is, I’ve heard of their company and they’ve achieved some level of commercial success - and not been inspired. Perhaps they’re all charismatic and I’m a sucker. Or, perhaps as Glenn Kelman, founder and CEO of RedFin, explains it: who could possibly be more passionate that the founder? He posits that she would is more passionate about RedFin should supplant him as CEO.

Listen to the entire interview on Marketplace here.

It’s an interesting point and it explains why a strong founder or leader is critical to the success of a business. She sets the vision, the mission, and the ambition. All of those responsibilities require passion. Not just an interest in the industry or a strong skillset in the underlying technology, but a true passion for what the business is building.

“How are we as shareholders and employees to measure our leadership’s passion? How are we as founders to develop our own passion? Can it be nurtured or is passion binary?”

If you’re up for more listening, Tim Ferriss solicited advice from a handful of commercially successful authors, business leaders, and visionaries regarding when to persist and when to quit. TL;DL: it all comes down to the level of passion in your gut. So, maybe passion at any given moment is binary. Passion supersedes success. Passion is behind decisions both rational and irrational. We stick with something because we’re so damn passionate, when an objective observer sees that we should have stopped years ago.

Listen to their advice here.

If passion makes for the best leadership in a company, how do we make sure her passion isn’t blind? Can we cultivate rational passion?