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We’ve interviewed, and hired, a lot of people since Sundog’s inception 15 years ago. Fortunately, most of those turned out to be very successful and long-term team members. Unfortunately, a few didn’t go as well – to be expected I guess – but they always left me thinking. In literally hundreds of interviews, I’ve always tried to determine whether or not an interviewee’s core values are aligned with our own. More importantly, I hope to find out what drives or motivates each applicant. In other words, where are his or her passions? No easy task, but critically important in determining the applicant’s eventual success within the organization.

In a recent issue of Sports Illustrated, David Epstein discusses the science behind the athlete, and how DNA testing can determine the athletic ability of an individual and if, one day, the perfect athlete can be genetically engineered. DNA testing, we now know, can determine strength, speed, quickness and a variety of athletic traits required for an athlete to excel in sports. As more testing is done, more information about how to train, how to recover from injury and what sports might best fit certain DNA strands best are becoming available. So as testing advances, we can begin to see how the future of sports will be uniquely influenced through science.

An interesting comparison is a recent article in Harvard Business Review by Rakesh Khurana that reviews the newly published “Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice”, which as Khurana writes, “attempts to give the topic its intellectual due”. Khurana states “vexing problems we experience in business and society may be due in part to the neglect of leadership studies in the academy for many years”. My assumption is that Khurana wants to further research what attributes make a great leader and whether those attributes can be pre-determined.

Studying the common DNA patterns that make great athletes, and conducting more research on the characteristics and attributes of great leadership are indeed important and worthwhile endeavors. In the end, however, while an individual may be blessed with the perfect DNA for athletic prowess, or the intellectual capacity for effective leadership, neither does much good without one simple, inextricable characteristic of any great athlete or leader – passion.

Wayne Gretzky, arguably the best hockey player to have ever played the game said it best: “Maybe it wasn’t talent the Lord gave me, maybe it was the passion.” When I look at building a great team, on the field or in the office, I’ll leave the science behind and take passion over perfect DNA and a 4.0 any day of the week.