Crucial characteristics

Crucial Conversations provides some useful guidelines for communication in difficult situations. You can enjoyably read the book in about an hour or two, so that makes it easy to recommend.

This comment struck me:

The more you care about an issue, the less likely you are to be on your best behavior... When it comes to our strongest views, passion can be our enemy. Of course, feeling strongly about something isn't bad in and of itself. It's okay to have strong opinions. The problem comes when we try to express them.

People want to hire only passionate people these days. And for projects with a very clear destination and fairly well understood obstacles, passionate people will drive it to completion exactly as you'd want. Nothing will stop their forward push.

But what if the goals are vague, or constantly shifting? What if you expect numerous detours and re-starts along the way? What if the challenges can't be driven through, but have to be innovated around?

Projects like that might very well be better served by good listeners, or by people who can step back and let things simmer a bit, away from the fire. Of course, passionate people can be excellent listeners, and can be wise enough to be able to let things develop in due time. But, in terms of priority -- what leading characteristics you particularly seek for the project -- passion might rank pretty low.

As the author points out, passion often acts as a source of ineffectiveness, when everyone else is not "on board". And you would most expect to see this variety of opinion on projects with vague goals and unforeseen detours.

The thing is, don't most projects fall in this category?