Dr. Jeff Doolittle
6 min
Updated: Mar 26
"Everything that is done in the world is done by hope." Martin Luther
Evidence is clear that being hopeful translates to business results.
Numerous studies have linked hope with many individual, team, and organizational benefits fundamental to growth:
Increased revenue and decreased operating costs
Improved employee retention
Enhanced ability to deal with ambiguity
Job satisfaction and organizational commitment
Sustaining innovation during significant changes such as mergers and acquisitions
Lower levels of stress
Improved employee and team performance
Increased organization citizenship behaviors
Positive relationships
In the following Tedx, Dr. Hellman explains the science and power of hope.
Hope is often considered an emotion and can be challenging to define. However, hope is both an emotion and a way of thinking.
Hope Theory suggests that hopefulness is a human strength comprised of three distinct, interrelated components:
Goals Thinking – identification of valuable goals
Pathways Thinking –specific strategies to reach those goals
Agency Thinking – motivation to apply strategies
Concerning leadership, hope is a positive state that contributes to leaders and followers pursuing, expecting, and achieving organizational goals.
Hope is not optimism. It is related but distinctly different.
Hope emphasizes setting goals and following through on them to attain a positive future outcome. It is not self-esteem or self-efficacy thinking. Hope involves a belief that a goal is possible and the willpower to pursue it continuously.
Hope plays a vital role in employees' well-being and facilitates change. Measuring hope can be especially beneficial as a pre-post measure for large-scale change initiatives.
Levels of hope can vary dramatically depending on the person and the situation. People generally considered hopeful can still experience low levels of hope when facing significant stressors.
The Adult State Hope Scale is a valid short survey that takes less than two minutes to complete and measures the degree of hope at the moment. Higher scores correlate to a more significant state of hopefulness.
Respondents use an eight-point Likert agreement scale where one is definitely false, and eight is definitely true for each of the following six questions:
If I should find myself in a jam, I could think of many ways to get out of it.
At present, I am energetically pursuing my goals.
There are lots of ways around any problem that I am facing now.
Right now, I see myself as being pretty successful.
I can think of many ways to reach my current goals.
At this time, I am meeting the goals that I have set for myself.
Effective leaders are organizational hope dealers. In a crisis-driven workplace, influential leaders engage followers in hopeful thinking to account for increased goal difficulty and effort.
Although hope can not be taught, the following are four proven strategies leaders can use to build hope in the workplace:
Articulating a compelling vision clarifies direction, inspires confidence and action, and coordinates efforts. Evidence suggests that a compelling vision is directly and positively related to creative performance. To be considered compelling, a vision needs to be desired, beneficial to others, challenging, and visual. Stories and metaphors are powerful ways to connect with others. How well followers can visualize the future is fundamental to hopefulness.
"Developing a vision is an exercise of both the head and the heart, it takes some time, it always involves a group of people, and it is tough to do well." Kotter
Make recognition a leadership habit. What happens to employees after doing their work has the most significant impact on influencing future behavior. Leaders can build hope by reinforcing the value of organizational goals to the employee and the organization through reward and recognition.
Effective reward and recognition systems have five characteristics:
Targeted toward specific behaviors
Applied immediately or frequently
Customized to what the individual values
Focused on what is achieved and how it is achieved
Present everyone with the same opportunity to receive a reward or recognition.
"Bringing out the best in followers requires purposeful performance reinforcement rather than management of poor performance." Doolittle
In a crisis, leaders can build hope by working with followers to identify alternative paths to achieve goals and reset priorities. Change imposed is change opposed. Leaders support collaboration with employees by active listening, providing frequent and open communication, and creating access to information.
"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." Henry Ford.
Coaching is partnering with followers in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. High-quality trust-based leader-follower coaching relationships build hope by creating new possibilities.
Evidence suggests that 80% of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence. Over 70% of coaching relationships result in improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills. 86% of companies that provide coaching for employees report that they recouped their investment in coaching and more.
Hope is more than a wishful way of thinking; it is a leadership habit.
Although hope can not be explicitly taught, evidence suggests leaders can build hopefulness through a compelling vision, positive reinforcement, collaboration, and coaching.
How can you actively build hope within others today?
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