The Toxic Team: Abusive passion

"I'm just passionate!" is a very common excuse of a toxic behavior known as the Brilliant Asshole.

While it's encouraged to feel strongly about one's work, and feeling emotionally attached to the company, there's a border between being passionate, and being abusive.

If one's passion for work stops being only their motivation, and source of pride, and becomes a trigger for diminishing, abusing, and humiliating their team, it leads to a very toxic situation.

It's very hard to tackle abusive passion, because it's generally encouraged to be passionate about work (nobody wants to hire people who don't care), a clear line between positive and negative aspects of passion needs to be drawn. Passion can be inspiring, and motivating, and it's most welcome. It can also lead to abuse, humiliation, and cut-throat competition, and it's not welcome in the team.

If you're passionate, be also kind, because then you will infect your team with your positive attitude, but let everyone grow at their own pace!