According to Jon Jachimowicz, assistant professor in the Organisational Behaviour Unit at Harvard Business School, the use of the word “passion” in job postings has increased 10-fold in the last 20 years. He says that while professional passion can be a powerful source of energy and meaning, it’s often misunderstood as a stable trait and treated as a proxy for commitment. In reality, Jachimowicz’s research shows, passion fluctuates. It can also drain people faster than they realise, and is shaped by systems: leadership norms, power dynamics, gender, resources, and the mismatch between company purpose and individual motivation.
What is passion?
We talk about passion as if it’s one simple thing, but it isn’t. One reason the “follow your passion” narrative goes wrong is that it treats passion as a fixed trait: something you either have or don’t. Jachimowicz argues that it helps to separate passion into two meanings:
- Passion as a noun is the object of your passion: the field, cause, craft or role you care about. It’s what people mean when they say, “I’m passionate about this.” It can resemble an intense interest or even a calling.
- Passion as a verb (or lived experience) is what happens inside you in the moment: a strong surge of feeling and energy that makes you want to engage. Jachimowicz describes this as an intense emotional state with a motivational pull, a sense that passion is “percolating” within you and drawing you toward action. This is not necessarily always positive (desire, anger, anguish, excitement, and hope can all co-exist and be part of “passion”).
This distinction matters because the lived experience of passion is not stable. Even when someone cares deeply about their work, their felt passion can wax and wane from day to day. And just because someone doesn’t feel passionate on a given day, it doesn’t mean they aren’t passionate about their work.
Conflating passion and purpose
According to Dr. Sarah Babb, adjunct faculty member at GIBS and a leadership specialist with three decades’ experience in culture change, inclusion, and purpose-driven organisational development, in many firms, passion becomes entangled with purpose-driven leadership.
Babb suggests distinguishing between three related but distinct ideas: values, purpose, and passion. Values shape our everyday decisions and reactions. Purpose is the longer-term question of meaning and contribution. Passion, by contrast, is more temporal. What energises us changes across life stages and circumstances.
Problems arise when organisations conflate these concepts. When passion is fused with corporate purpose, it can become what Babb describes as a kind of “job tax”: an expectation that employees should always be motivated, aligned, and emotionally invested. Individuals are then judged on whether they appear sufficiently driven or resilient, even as the constant demand to be “on” increases the risk of burnout.
There is also an identity risk. “When someone becomes known as 'the sustainability person' or 'the inclusion champion', their passion can harden into an obligation,” Babb says. They may feel responsible for driving change without the authority, networks, or structural backing required to succeed. In that sense, passion alone is never enough. Sustainable impact depends on alignment, support, and systems, not just personal drive.
Entrepreneurs and the passion trap
Passion is often positioned as a non-negotiable for entrepreneurs, but Jachimowicz suggests that while it’s helpful, what’s more helpful is learning how to sustain it over time, citing Melissa Cardon’s research that differentiates between passion for founding and passion for growing/developing.
Babb agrees, suggesting that entrepreneurship will require passion, sacrifice, and dedication, but entrepreneurs also need to balance this with looking after their well-being. “Again, it’s about keeping long-term purpose in mind,” she says. “Yes, you’re passionate about your business right now, but how does that intersect with your purpose? That might be long-term impact in a field, financial profitability, or even being able to sell your business. Connecting with the long-term purpose helps manage the temporal passion around a phase.”
Babb adds that entrepreneurs also tend to struggle to find anyone who can match their passion. Her advice is to avoid hiring “mini-mes”. “Rather hire for complementary skills and capacities than looking for someone who can match your passion,” she says.
Passion requires effort
One of the biggest misconceptions about passion, says Jachimowicz, is the belief that it is static. “Once I have it, I always have it.” In reality, sustaining passion requires effort.
In his research, Jachimowicz finds that on days when people feel more passionate, they work longer hours and invest more energy. It may feel easier in the moment, but people are typically more exhausted after high-passion days. “People’s need for recovery following a day when they were really passionate is higher,” he explains.
The danger lies in misunderstanding this cost. When people believe passion should make work effortless, they may override their need for rest. They assume, says Jachimowicz, that if they were energised today, they should be able to “wake up tomorrow morning and continue setting the world on fire”. Over time, that can drive burnout.
Jachimowicz challenges the common assumption that burnout signals indifference. “Burnout really can also come because people have burned all of the logs of wood that they had,” he says. “They’ve burned so brightly that they are now burned out.” Burnout can be the result of caring too much, not too little.
This misunderstanding also shapes how organisations respond. If we assume passion makes work easy, we may pile more onto those who seem most energised. Yet Jachimowicz says the data suggests the opposite: when someone is highly passionate, “it probably means that they need our help more to recognise what they should say no to. The moments we burn brightest are also the ones in which we’re most likely to overestimate ourselves”.
Passion does not eliminate vulnerability. It can intensify it. The leadership implication is that the people who look most “on fire” may be most at risk.
Weighing up pros and cons
Jennifer Tosti-Kharas, professor of organisational behaviour at Babson College, and philosopher Christopher Wong co-authored Is Your Work Worth It? They suggest that passion can increase vulnerability to burnout, exploitation, and identity entanglement. It can make people tolerate poor boundaries or unfair expectations because the work feels like “who I am”. Other research has found that attributions of passion serve to legitimise the poor treatment of workers.
“What we see in the data is that passion has both positive and negative effects, that these happen at the same time, and that on average, they typically manifest in people experiencing somewhat more positive outcomes. But there’s a large degree of variation, meaning that some people sometimes reap large rewards from passion, and at other times, some people may reap no rewards, or may even incur costs from their passion,” says Jachimowicz.
He says the positive effects of passion are more likely to emerge when people can look after it deliberately, feel supported in sustaining it, and experience a sense of agency over their work.
Passion thrives when other psychological needs are met – when people feel respected, competent, and connected. In environments where individuals feel undermined, pressured, or socially isolated, passion is less likely to translate into strong performance.
There is also such a thing as too much passion. When it becomes excessive or unbalanced, it can backfire. The challenge for leaders is not to maximise passion at all costs, but to understand what level of passion is healthy and sustainable in each role, team, or moment.
Jachimowicz’s also research shows that passion is not rewarded equally. In high-potential contexts, for example, passion can become a subjective signal that disadvantages some and elevates others (often rewarding men and penalising women).
Babb cites the “glass cliff” phenomenon, where women are often more likely to volunteer for change work, and also to be given high-risk projects. She says these “passion projects” often lack resources, authority, or networks required to succeed.
Finally, Babb adds an uncomfortable truth: the assumption is that passion is for good, whereas it can be for bad too. “It’s important not to lose sight of that,” she says. “People can have passion for self-interest or power, which can lead to building personal empires or gaining wealth at any cost, including corruption.”
How to approach passion
Jachimowicz suggests that we need to move past the “worn-out trope” of “follow your passion”, instead thinking about cultivating passion. “It’s about learning how to maintain your passion for yourself and for others,” he says. “This is a key perspective that I think we’re missing.”
This goes beyond individuals. Organisations are quick to demand passion, but slow to sustain it. Recruitment materials, interview guidelines, and selection criteria frequently emphasise the need for “passionate” candidates. Yet once those employees are hired, there is often little deliberate effort to help them cultivate or maintain that passion over time.
Organisations should see sustaining passion as part of their responsibility, Jachimowicz argues. It is not enough to select for people with the potential to be passionate. Leaders must also create the conditions in which that passion can be maintained sustainably, so that its benefits are realised without tipping into burnout.
Babb frames this as leaders creating space, belonging, and psychological safety, even when a person’s passion sits outside their job.
“We know that belonging is so key for people to thrive and sustain,” she says. “Leaders need to think about things like whether they’re allowing individuals to change their passions, to be flexible, to be adaptive, to be learning.”
If passion is to remain a source of energy rather than exhaustion, it cannot be demanded as proof of commitment. It must be cultivated deliberately, supported structurally, and allowed to evolve.
Practical pointers for cultivating passion
- Make recovery normal, especially after intense pushes. Resist the urge to reward constant visibility – separate commitment from constant availability.
- Track load, not just enthusiasm. High passion can mask impending burnout.
- Resource passion projects properly, including budget and authority, or don’t greenlight them.
- Create flexibility for changing passions, i.e., development pathways that evolve.
