What is it with the world of work, corporates and organisations? The words passion  and passionate  are slapped on anything from IT models to supermarket products. Emotion or emotional, however, produce a corporate reaction like a scalded cat.

Several things strike me about this.

One: both reactions are emotional ones, thus creating an amusing irony.

Two: passion is being systematically eroded and degraded. It’s about suffering and ecstasy. Christ’s or St Matthew’s Passions were not about keeping thier desks tidy or a new product range. (Try to ignore the religious thing, here. I needed to make a point}

Three: and this, I think, is what it’s about. Passion and  passionate’s conotations and associations (today) are sexy, strong and manly. Emotion and – paticularly emotional’s conotations are sappy, flaky, fluffy – female.

When I’m writing material for organisations, I make a point of substituting ‘enthusiasm’ for passion, if I can. Emotion, though, has to stand, with some sort of qualifying phrase about it’s not being fluffy. Unless you slip in intelligence very quickly afterwards.

Put intelligence after emotional – or , even better, avoid the word completely and call it EI -and you get a more acceptable form. Intelligence has a sharper, cleaner – more manly – edge to it, particularly when it’s combined with some kind of neuroscientific half-knowledge.

I think we need new words to describe that state of connectedness between  the world and the inner man (sic).

PS. I’ve had to add this. Paradoxically, emotion and emotional don’t have the scare-factor to the hardest, most butcho of all constituencies – sales people. They understand that buying decisions are emotional. Hurrah for the sales force!

Filed under: Uncategorized by Melanie