The narrative surrounding the so-called “Great Resignation” holds that people are willing, and able, to move jobs in search of something better. Sometimes this can be a search for better pay and conditions, but it can also be a search for more meaningful work.
This is usually portrayed in a universally positive light, with passion for our job linked with greater happiness, productivity, engagement levels, and therefore lower employee turnover, and so on. A classic example is Harvard Business School academic Ranjay Gulati’s latest book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, which argues that when we tap into our passions and purpose we’re able to achieve things that might otherwise have completely overwhelmed us.
As such, leaders have to find a way to align us with our purpose if our organizations are to succeed. It’s the kind of narrative that has been popular in recent years, at least since Simon Sinek urged us to “start with why”. Research from University College Dublin reminds us, however, that passion for the job may not be always universally positive.
When passion goes wrong
Psychologists have identified a couple of different forms of work-related passion, with each form having a very different impact on our wellbeing.
For instance, when we have what’s known as “harmonious” passion for our work, we’re said to not only enjoy our work but also have a high degree of control over our relationship with it. For instance, we might have chosen our career because it’s an area of great interest to us and it, therefore, gives us great pleasure to be doing something we so enjoy for a living. What’s more, our job doesn’t interfere too much with other vital aspects of our life.
The flip side of this is something referred to as “obsessive” passion, which is when we don’t have much control over our relationship with our work. Such obsessive passion results in us finding our work central to our lives, as well as the pay and status it affords us.
Spilling over
A person with an obsessive passion can struggle to disengage from their work, which can lead to significant problems, even if that person is seemingly successful at their job and largely gaining great satisfaction from it. For instance, burnout and exhaustion are much more likely when we have an obsessive passion for our work. Indeed, in extreme cases, people with an obsessive passion for their work can feel trapped.
The Dublin researchers found that the culprit for us slipping into an obsessive passion for our work is both ourselves and the job itself. They set out to examine the link between our work, our personality, and the type of passion that often emerges.
They measured the personality of over 800 volunteers according to the “big five” personality traits of agreeableness, openness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. They also analyzed the attitude to work of each volunteer, before categorizing their jobs via a system that scored various types of work along six measures: social, investigative, enterprising, realistic, artistic, and conventional.
The test, which is available online if you wish to take it yourself, found that more neurotic personality traits tend to trigger particular types of passion, with neurotic personalities far more likely to develop obsessive passion, especially if they work in a job that can be categorized as “enterprising”. The researchers explain that these kinds of jobs are ones in which our powers of persuasion play a major role, with a great emphasis placed on things such as reputation and status.
For instance, a person with more neurotic character traits is much more likely to suffer from burnout and obsession if they work as a lawyer or a broker than if they were to work as a nurse or engineer. As such, it’s important not to assume that passion is universally beneficial to all people in all circumstances, and perhaps the narrative around us finding our passion needs to contain this important nuance to ensure that we’re not encouraging people to follow the path towards obsession and burnout.
If we’re assessing our own career, we might like to consider just what kind of passion we have for our work by asking questions such as whether we feel in control or whether we enjoy our successes. If the answer is no then it might suggest that we have a more obsessive relationship with our work than is healthy for us.
Getting out of this trap might mean that try and find roles that are more artistic or social and contain less enterprising elements. While our personalities are less prone to change, our jobs are certainly something we can actively control. So if we are looking to make a change as part of the “Great Resignation”, make sure you consider whether you’re getting the right kind of passion from your work.
