Today I’m speaking from my heart to your heart. Because we’re all more focused and productive when we bring our heart into our work.

But we struggle to describe how that works. We tend to more strongly relate to the logical, unemotional part of business: income, job tasks, and so on. And that’s fine, but terribly incomplete.

The part which draws you in, and keeps you engaged, is mostly emotional.

In my experience, there are two concepts to understand. Love is the general feeling of attraction and interest. A safer word might be Respect, which sounds more professional. But the fact is that a strong contributor needs that kind of positive feeling toward the people they work with and for.

In contrast, Passion has a direction and Purpose to it. You’re motivated to go on a particular route and achieve a specific goal.

Both are great, but usually in the organizational context you’re trying to accomplish something. So helping your people develop a Passion for their work will probably get you further. But don’t ignore the importance of Love and Respect when it’s about how you treat people.

Because I can find great work to do in many places, but rarely do I find the people I want to work with and work for.