Passion Sundays

How To Make The Most Of The Tight Connection Between Performance And Passion

Todd Hutchison, known as ‘The Corporate Mechanic’, says we should incorporate our goals and passions into our work in order to be effective.

Can you reach excellency if you dislike what you do? No, integrating passion is the secret to maximize the performance.
Known as ‘The Corporate Mechanic’, Todd Hutchison knows that harmony at the workplace boosts performance. His engineering background sparked his passion for troubleshooting. Yet his psychology studies convinced him that the people side matters too.
He realized that putting passion in the job is essential. Also, Todd emphasizes the importance of information flow and focusing on the tasks at hand.
He uses behavioral profiling to find out a person’s natural style. ‘The Corporate Mechanic’ advises people to link the outside activities they enjoy to their professional schedule. In this way, their behavior style will be aligned with their job.
He shares the four complexities of the human being: behavior, communication style, job expertise and values system. Whether you are an employer or an employee, you need to check all the boxes in the hiring process.
No idea how to align your passion with your job? Learn more. Share this with your friends and spread the passion.

Live Passionately

Moustafa Hamwi
Passionpreneur & Chief Energy Officer
Award Winning Author & Speaker

TRANSCRIPT:

Moustafa:       Hello everyone and welcome back to Passion Sundays – the best way to end a week and start another! Our guest today has been called ‘The Corporate Mechanic’. He’s working on his PhD in Behavioral Sciences and he’s going to tell us how that impacts passion in organizations – Todd Hutchison! How are you?
Todd:              Great, thanks for having me here!
Moustafa:       Thank you very much for being with us. I’m really excited. How did you get that ‘The Corporate Mechanic’ title?
Todd:              Actually as a troubleshooter, I’ve always gone into organizations and worked out what the barriers are. I’ve called it the garage door that is slowing them up, which is really a big barrier for what’s causing them not to grow.
Moustafa:       Alright. Then you’ve slowly started troubleshooting and then the whole thing came up. When did the passion for troubleshooting start?
Todd:              I come from an engineering background. So I was all… started as technical, but then I went into a organization and working internationally, I realized it wasn’t about the technical side, it was really about the people side. So I started spending a lot more time developing myself, looking at the people in psychology… what’s causing things to work and what’s causing them not to work from a team perspective.
Moustafa:       Ok. That must have been a tough journey as you’re doing that. The more you troubleshoot, the more you start seeing troubles. And then you start seeing more difficulties and issues. Didn’t that bring you down?
Todd:              I think I realized some things go hand in hand. So process and behavior so I could still focus on process, what was missing in that technical, engineering side and realizing, giving an impact on how performance was and putting passion in the job itself.
Moustafa:       So how does people’s passion relate to the behavior in the organization?
Todd:              It stands for what I call flow. It makes people more efficient, more effective. It actually comes back in what I’ve found in my studies, the actual behavior style. So if you look at a person’s goals and passions and align them to their natural behavior style, I think that’s the path where they should be on. It helps me dictate what job they should be in, how they plan their job. Because of that, that’s when people talk about. Have you got the right person in the right job, I often find that you could be in the right job but you just don’t know how to bring that talent to that job.
Moustafa:       How do you bring the talent of somebody who likes what they’re doing but are frustrated from the organizational situation? It might be the management, it might be the system, might be the colleagues, might be the economical situation.
Todd:              Yeah.
Moustafa:       How do you bring back that passion?
Todd:              I think it comes down to… The most common thing I hear about it as an issue is communication. ‘We have communication issues’. And I don’t want to go that route where in absence of communication people make up stories and very rarely they are positive. So often the issue with management is the information flow, the right information getting in the right time to the right people. And when there’s not, people are making up stories and here’s the basis of rumors. So a lot of this is getting them to be more accountable for what they’re doing so even if you are in a highly political environment, just focus on what you’re supposed to be doing and what your job is and brining accountability for that so you can decrease the stress you have in terms of politics and everything that sits around you.
Moustafa:       Ok and what if it’s the total opposite situation where you come into a company and you find somebody who is really not passionate about what they are doing? What’s the solution for that?
Todd:              What I often look at is… I use behavioral profiling to start, to figure out what their natural style is. And the tools have got to a point now, you can finally find out not only what their natural style is but what they are doing, which is called adaptive behavior and obviously from a coaching perspective, you align these back together. But one of the keys, the little tips you can do is looking at your life outside: in your hobbies and private time and working how to incorporate that. For example, if I come across a person who really likes reading, loves writing, then there are a lot of times people want someone to review documents, to write reports. So you are trying to link what they are doing outside because that’s totally aligned typically with the natural behavior style. Yet people might not see it so you got to actually have that conversation, find what they are doing and bring it into the work place.
Moustafa:       So from what I’m gathering… Your flow comes from finding what you already like and then merging that with what you’re already doing.
Todd:              I use the term ‘flow’ really based on your behavior style. Actually there are four complexities of the human being. Behavior is the core one, what you are born with but you can adapt based on environment you’re in, the jobs that you’ve been taking out so you got to align that back and that’s why we use things like behavior profiling. The second one is of course our communication style, whether the person is more visual, auditory or kinesthetic. That tells us how we click with people and that’s a key part. The other two layers are your personal knowledge and expertise in your job. But the most important one, which is the hardest to identify when you’re bringing someone into your organization is their values and beliefs system. And that’s why inside, you can hide them but you see their behavior style, you see their knowledge and expertise, but you let them go because there is a misalignment with values.
Moustafa:       I love it. I can see your eyes shining when you are talking about it. So I know why you’ve earned ‘The Corporate Mechanic’ title. So, Todd, thank you very much for being with us today! I really love your passion for what you do.
Todd:              Thanks a lot. Thank you very much!
Moustafa:       Thank you very much. Awesome.
Moustafa and Todd: Passion!
Moustafa:       What do you think? I would really love to hear your opinion. If you found this useful, leave your comments on the blog below and do share it with your friends. And if you’d like more tools, tips, techniques and exclusive interviews that I only share on my blog – go to Moustafa.com. And until next episode – live passionately!

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Hi, I’m Moustafa

Dubai’s real-life “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.” On a one-way ticket to India, I’ve gone from meeting a Swami out of 13 years in caves, to natural healing from a disease to become the Passionpreneur. I’m an international speaker and coach helping people find and pursue passion.

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