“If you do what you love,” the saying goes, “you’ll never have to work another day in your life.” Whether that’s true or not, there is good reason that finding your calling at work has become a sort of professional holy grail. People who work to achieve a sense of personal fulfillment and make the world a better place — or what I call calling-oriented employees — have been shown by research to experience stronger work and life satisfaction and feel more successful than those with a job orientation, meaning they work primarily for money. But are they objectively more successful in their careers? Do they receive higher pay and organizational status?
Your Most Passionate Employees May Not Be Your Top Performers
Research finds that managers tend to reward passion — even if it’s not correlated with results.
October 22, 2021
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Summary.
People who work to achieve a sense of personal fulfillment and make the world a better place have been shown to experience stronger work and life satisfaction and feel more successful — but the jury has been out on whether that’s truly the case. The author’s research finds evidence that it’s true, but not because passionate employees are actually better at their jobs or more productive. Instead, it’s because their behaviors — like staying late, or volunteering for projects — signal to managers that they are performing at a high level, even if they aren’t. Managers should watch out for this bias lest they alienate other team members.