Selling With Noble Purpose, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 4Where Passion Falls Short

Purpose is the reason for your journey; passion is the fire that lights the way.

—Unknown

The words passion and purpose are often used somewhat interchangeably. I've used both in this book. Now it's time to do a deeper dive. Passion and purpose are actually two distinctly different things. And one is significantly more effective than the other for driving revenue and engagement.

Let's start by clarifying the differences. Passion is when you feel excited about your work. Purpose is when you believe your work is contributing to others.

Is his groundbreaking five‐year study of more than 5,000 employees and managers, Berkeley Professor Morten Hansen explored the distinction between passion and purpose to determine which has a greater impact on job performance.

In his book Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More, Hansen reveals the links between passion, purpose, and performance. In Hansen's study, people who were low on both passion and purpose were in the bottom 10% of performers. It's hardly surprising. When you're not excited about your job and you don't feel it has any meaning, you're not likely to be an overachiever. It's also not surprising to discover that people who had both passion and purpose, those who were excited about their job and felt it had meaning, were in the top 80th percentile of performers.

Here's where things get interesting. What do you think happens when you isolate the two elements? ...