Yesterday I went to the football. And I don’t like football. Well, I didn’t.
My family asked me to. An Atlético de Madrid match. And I went with all the conviction of someone going to the dentist, knowing nothing serious was going to happen to me, but with zero desire to be there.
I walked into the stadium with my mental headphones on, calculating how many minutes it would take before I’d start looking at my phone. And then something I hadn’t anticipated happened: the people around me started to vibrate.
It’s not a metaphor. They really were vibrating. Shouts, tension, hugs with strangers, faces that had been waiting all week for that moment. There was an older lady next to me who, every time the team touched the ball near the box, made a noise I’m not quite sure how to describe, but that put me on maximum alert.
And without realising it… I got hooked.
I started wanting the team that was now ours to win. Hard. Without really knowing why. And at the end of the match, the finishing touch: Griezmann’s farewell, his last game, struck me as one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time. A whole stadium saying goodbye to someone who had given them something you can’t buy in any shop.
And there was the lesson. Passion can’t be bought. But it can be caught.
Nobody sold me football. Nobody gave me a presentation or sent me a value proposition. I was simply surrounded by people who truly believed in something, who lived it with authenticity, and that, without me making any conscious decision, was transmitted to me.
In companies exactly the same thing happens.
The most powerful teams aren’t the ones with the best sales arguments. They’re the ones with a conviction so real that it spreads by itself. To customers. To collaborators. To the market.
Strategy matters. The product matters. But the energy behind all of that is what really moves people. Yesterday I saw it on a football pitch. I see it every day in projects: when someone truly understands their value proposition and lives it with conviction, they don’t need to convince. They infect.
And you, when was the last time you caught someone’s passion? Have you had moments, inside or outside of work, that changed your perspective without you seeing it coming?