The pitfalls of passion: How it can backfire at work—and what managers can do about it

When plotting their career trajectories, young professionals are often encouraged to follow their passion. And in the entrepreneurial world, passion is often seen as a key ingredient for success. But figures such as Elon Musk, known for his passion as well as arrogance, show that this drive is not without its perils—including what researchers call “performance overconfidence.”

So how can the passionate drive in the workplace be harnessed without backfiring? The answer may lie in understanding the connection between passion and overconfidence—and how managers can use that understanding, according to new research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

“Overconfidence is a really pernicious form of bias,” says Erica Bailey, assistant professor in the Management of Organizations group at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. Bailey and a team of researchers conducted a series of studies with more than 1,000 participants. “We wanted to explain some of passion’s goods and ills by exploring how passion may relate to overconfidence,” she says.

For example, if you’re an entrepreneur, the chances that your business succeeds are low. “So maybe in those cases you really need passion to overcome the barriers to entry,” she says. “But there are other careers where you really need to be cautious about passion, and you need to manage it.”

PERFORMANCE INFLATION

To demonstrate the link between passion and performance overconfidence, Bailey and her team of researchers first asked more than 800 employees at a Chinese engineering company to rate their own passion and performance as well as the performance of their teammates. They logged their ratings every morning and afternoon for 20 consecutive workdays.

Employees who reported high levels of passion were rated higher on performance by their coworkers. At the same time, the more passionate they were, the more likely they were to rate their own performance even higher than their coworkers did.

These findings underscore studies showing that passionate people inflate their performance beyond their actual improvement. “Something that didn’t make it into the paper is that we also saw some interpersonal costs associated with this,” Bailey adds. “When you see yourself as a higher performer than your colleagues see you, it can rub people the wrong way.”

EASY TO TRIGGER

In the next study, the researchers asked nearly 400 full-time U.S. workers to imagine they were either highly passionate or highly punctual in a hypothetical job. All were told that their performance had been rated “average” by colleagues and were then asked to rate how well they thought they performed.

Despite knowing their performance was only middling, participants who were led to think of themselves as highly passionate predicted that their future performance would improve more than those who were told to imagine themselves as highly punctual. The “passionate” employees also expected they would be more engaged at work, would work longer and harder, and that their performance would improve—even though they knew their performance had been rated only so-so.

“That was surprising to us, and to our reviewers too,” Bailey says. “But this association between passion and superior performance exists and is pretty easy to trigger in people’s minds—even just by telling people they were passionate about their jobs.”

MANAGING PASSION

When it comes to managing for passion, Bailey says it’s important to consider the employee’s role. For example, entrepreneurs, consultants, and salespeople may benefit from passion overconfidence. But it must be tempered in roles that require people to have an accurate view of their abilities, like surgeons, pilots, or financial traders.

The challenge here is that many managers encourage and even cultivate fervor in their team members. “There are lots of benefits to having passionate employees. They’re eager, they’re fun to talk to and fun to manage. They’re going to bring energy to the meetings. They’re going to move things forward,” Bailey says. “But you have to think carefully about how to manage the risks that could come about from your own biases towards passionate employees.”

Not only must managers police their own bias, but also the biases of their passionate employees, who are less likely to delegate, see blind spots, or be team players. “Managers have to think about how the passionate person is perceived by their horizontal coworkers and how to help them manage that reputation so that these groups can work together effectively.”