Two faces of the coin

By watedroplet
Life has its own way of teaching things. I was lucky enough to secure a good job. This job gave me power over many things. Now, power means to command. This sounds very good, but in actuality, getting work done by your juniors is the real skill of leadership power. Within a few months of my posting, I understood this. So, rather than being bossy, I chose to be participative with them and sweetly make them all work with me. This worked well. This was my first lesson of life—the two sides of power and how to balance both of them and how to make your leadership most meaningful to everyone. The darker side of power, which wants to rule and ruins everything, is always overwhelming. We need to be careful with it; otherwise, it will overpower us and ruin things beyond repair. I am glad that I was in a situation where I had to choose the humble power aspect, which tries to work with everyone without hurting them. 
Similar to this lesson is my introduction to the passion hypothesis. I still remember the early years of my career when I landed in a place where I never wanted to be. My mind always said, "You are in the wrong place. "You are not meant to be here." I believed it and remained sad and preoccupied. The problem was that I could not leave that place and run away. This constraint actually showed me the truth of the passion hypothesis. Today, I am reading this book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You_Why Skills Trump Passion," and I can see the enlightenment I gained 20 years back is well documented. Yes, I did not have passion for that job, but over time my attachment with the profession deepened, and the situation now is such that I feel I am incomplete without it. I changed my profession, but still I find ways where I can draw much of the knowledge from my previous professional skills and incorporate them in my present professional skills, and I enjoy doing this. 
In this book, it presented the two sides of mindset towards work. The first one is the craftsman mindset, which I will be discussing first. The second one is the Passion Mindset.

CRAFTSMAN MINDSET

As I was exploring this mindset, the description in the book compelled me to accept this mindset. I will begin with my experience and then will carry it to other populations I know to explain this mindset. I remember those days when I started my first job. The first few months were full of fear as I was slowly getting exposed to every work independently, and I was responsible for them all. It took me some time to acquaint myself with the routine and the way people want the work to be done. I had knowledge; I knew to do things, but what I didn't know was how to incorporate all these that yield the best possible results for the benefit of all. Over time, I mastered this skill of presenting my knowledge and skill that yields the best results. This took time, but I was able to master it, and the outcome was mind-blowing. Once I learned this, the way people saw me and the respect they gave me were totally different. I can see and feel the difference in how people can no longer ignore me. I still remember one night when a young sailor came with a fever. He was in a very bad state, and the treating physician was trying to figure out the right cause. The physician asked me to monitor his BP, even though it was monitored by another person. We found the BP was on the lower side, signaling some serious illness. The physician took prompt action, and the young sailor was rightly diagnosed and got the right treatment on time, which saved his life. This is how we develop our skills that cannot be ignored. I could have been negative here when the physician asked me to monitor the BP, as it was the job of another person, but I felt that this was the need of the hour for this client. I gave up my ego clash and focused on the skill set that needs to be served to the client for his betterment. This choice and discernment made me stand out amongst my team that contributed towards the better service to my client. This made me fall in the crowd the physicians could rely on. This description of one incident recollected all such moments in my service that made me stand out. 
The book studied the musicians and performing arts people to understand the craftsman mindset. I will try to make you understand it with different examples. In my school life I came across many teachers; how many of them do I remember now? I think two of them have made the most lasting impression in my psych. One was my vice principal, who used to teach mathematics in our senior secondary classes, and the other one was our biology teacher in class 10, who cleared her UPSC exams and became a district collector. Why do I remember them only? I was not a very good mathematics student in my 10th class, but when I came into 11th, the way our mathematics teacher taught those concepts of mathematics still lived in me to date. Even after being cut off from this subject, I still have confidence in applying and solving problems of those kinds. How is this possible? This is because of my math teacher, who took all efforts to clear our concepts in this field and help us use them wherever we need them. Now, my vice principal has many years of experience, which he applied to improve his teaching skills so that today he was able to pave a strong base for mathematics in our lives. This was not there when I was taking math classes from other math teachers in our school. I only remember Das Sir, who also gave me a similar strong base in mathematics in my high school days. 
Similar was the story with our biology teacher. She was not a trained teacher, but the way she put the biology subject to us in 9th standard actually helped me a lot to take biology in my senior secondary classes. She was not a trained teacher, but she used her knowledge and analyzed the way we learn things and incorporated it into her teachings. Since she herself was preparing for competitive exams, her teaching always had a streak of competitive exam preparation standards. This was the element that boosted our morale to excel in the subject that was missing with other trained biology faculties. 
They both made their teaching stand out, polishing various segments of teaching that suited our needs and actually were planned to benefit us the best. This personalized kind of alignment made it such that we cannot ignore their teachings. They were so good that we can't ignore them. This output-centric approach to work is the Craftsman Mindset. In this mindset, you are focused on being good, which means improvement and betterment. In the Craftsman Mindset, one focuses on "what they can offer to the world."

PASSION MINDSET

The above mindset is one way of approaching life and profession. A passion mindset is another approach to life and professionalism. In this mindset one questions as "Who are they really?" and then connects this to the work they truly love. In contrast to the Craftsman Mindset, the Passion Mindset focuses on "what the world can offer them." This one is the most preferred way of approaching and viewing working life. We all stick to a job that offers us something. We never talk about what we are contributing to the world. The argument the author produced hereafter actually made me dig deep into my own understanding of passion. The author says that when you question, "Who am I? "What answer do you get? The answer we get is not at all clear. We never know who we really are unless and until we accomplish the work we are assigned and see the quality with which we finished it. This means that we are able to know one virtue at a time, and that too after the completion of the work. So, trying new works is essential. The passion hypothesis says that you know what you like. How would you know if you haven't tried yet? In other words, with a passion mindset, we continuously live in unhappiness and stress. This insight has been an eye-opener. I myself kept seeking the thing I love to do, and with age and maturity, my way of looking towards work kept changing. So, stabilizing myself at one place and focusing on giving my best to that job seemed dark. If I don't stabilize and if I don't contribute, how will I self-actualize? And if I do not self-actualize, happiness and satisfaction seem like an impossible events in my life. 

Hence, over time, I realized that I should stop seeking people's validation over the things I am good at. That is the point where I turned away from a passion mindset towards a craftsman mindset and started training myself in every skill that would contribute something to the world. This transformation was essential for my peace of mind, the element that makes me more creative and contributable. When I finally wore the coat of a craftsman mindset and presented myself, the places where people failed to accept me as a competent person for the job regretted their decisions and wanted me to take the positions I was once rejected for. 

#WriteAPageADay #Blogchatter #adolescents #Skill development

Comments

  1. Pradeep Nair19 February 2026 at 17:42

    Interesting concepts about passion. Thank you for sharing them.

    The work that we do has many aspects to it. One obviously is money. The other is 'job satisfaction'; and a third one is our contribution to the larger world through the work that we do.

    We might not be always be happy with the proportion of each of these three. I mean, sometimes the 'job satisfaction' might be more, but the money might be less; or our contribution to the society through the work we do, might be a lot, but we might not be getting a lot of satisfaction from the actual work we do. One also should not make judgements about the the type of work that they do.

    There is no one-size-fits-all template. Each to their own, since every person is different in their own ways. So, finally, what job one finally does is a personal choice depending on the priority of each individual at that point of time.

    There are people who go for a job they don't really like but only because it gives them a lot of money. Because at that point of time, money was more important than anything else. Once, they have made some money, they shift to a job, they really like, but it not be well paying.

    Similarly, there are selfless workers who contribute a lot to the society, but they might not be being paid a lot. They do what they are doing because they get a tremendous amount of satisfaction for their work. In this case, money might not be a big factor at all.

    So, finally, it's all about what works for each person at a point of time.

    My latest post: India and Denmark: A tale of two very different postal systems

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