Hope Full Leadership: Becoming a Leader Who Inspires

Leadership

Mar 1

4 minute read

Hope is a word we often use without thinking. “I hope the weather is nice” or “I hope I get better soon”. Here, hope sounds wishful. People can see it as just sitting around waiting for good things to happen. This sounds more like blind optimism - a sunny disposition or a nice point of view.

“As a leader, hope is your secret weapon.”

Hope is about linking thoughts to actions and behaviours. Hope recognises there are challenges and opportunities ahead and holds onto the belief that you can take control of your actions, steer onto the correct path, and secure a brighter future.

Hope is powerful. As a leader, hope is your secret weapon. Trying to bring hopefulness into your leadership of a team sounds vague, or even false, particularly when working under challenging circumstances. So, what does it mean to adopt a leadership framework which uses hope to empower people to achieve their goals?

At FiveAndCo, we believe that hope is so much more than just having a positive attitude. Hope is anchored in a clear sense of purpose for our lives and the success of our teams. We think intentionally bringing hope to your leadership comes down to three key factors: self-awareness, integrity, and agility.

Hope Full leaders are self-aware. Self-awareness is about understanding and intentionally deploying your strengths. It's also about knowing your likely blind spots. Self-awareness helps us understand where hope may be diminished in our leadership. For example, do you tend to move too quickly without thinking things through? Do you over think, or worry about others’ feelings too much before making decisions? Hope is about behaviours and action, so understanding how your tendencies might help or hinder appropriate behaviours or actions is key to delivering hope that lasts.

Hope Full leaders have integrity. Essentially, we need to be ‘real’ with ourselves and others if our hope is going to ‘stick’. Our behaviours and actions need to be aligned and reflect the situation we are in so that our hope is genuine and not just naive optimism or unwarranted cynicism. We need to be bold and tell the truth about the situation we are in – whether that’s about calling out the opportunity or the challenge. Hope Full leaders are allowed to acknowledge – in fact, it is crucial that they acknowledge – that not everything is 100% perfect, every single day. They should be unafraid to tell their team about the good that they see in each of them. Failing to do this can have a profound effect on people. Team members can feel disillusioned about working in an environment where they do not trust reality or where they only hear about the setbacks.

A leader with integrity is easily identifiable to their team and the wider world: they hold opportunity and challenge in an open hand, and there is no conflict between what they say and what they do. This creates a culture of trust and respect, as well as hope, in those we lead.

Finally, Hope Full leaders are agile. They are comfortable calling the team to action and are just as comfortable in waiting patiently for the right time or information. Hope is action orientated, and sometimes the best action is to be patient! Patience isn’t passive; it can be active too. What we mean is that when the opportunities are not clear, the hopeful leader works continuously on maintaining focus for themselves and for their team without losing commitment to the big picture.

Agility is also about seeking possibilities and being ready to move. Snyder wrote extensively on the psychology of hope and suggests ‘High-hope’ leaders are effective at producing alternative routes to success. They do this by generating multiple pathways to success and so increase the likelihood of achieving the desired future. Instilling ‘a sense of the possible’ in the team fuels hope for a better outcome and invites them to see different routes for success.

With the cornerstones of self-awareness, integrity, and agility in place, a leader can begin to bring an intentional sense of hope to their leadership of themselves and others. This doesn’t mean the “fake it ‘til you make it” attitude often espoused in self-help culture. Being Hope Full in your leadership is an intentional set of actions and behaviours that can transform teams.

As John Maxwell recently put it “We need leaders of hope. We need men and women who aren’t optimistic about the future—passively longing for a better to eventually reveal itself—we need men and women who are hopeful about the future and actively seeking ways to bring it to pass”.