Four Necessary Building Blocks For Communicating Real Leadership Hope
Photo by Ronak Valobobhai on Unsplash
Hope is in short supply right now. Maybe it's the 24-hour news cycle at our fingertips. Maybe it's life after Covid with a side dish of inflation (and lurking recession). Maybe it's the great resignation or workplace reset. Maybe it's the polarization of our culture bent on being correct at any cost. Or it's simply the malaise of it all combined with our own unique personal disturbances and tribulations. According to the APM Research Lab, 55% of all Americans are extremely worried about where the country is headed. [1] This troubling statistic has been rather consistent since 2016. Furthermore, this statistic has also been consistent across the political spectrum. Only one-fifth of Americans are extremely hopeful about the future of our country. And one-fourth of Americans stated that "nothing made them hopeful" about the future of the U.S. Those most hopeful indicated that they were placing their hope primarily in politics. This placement of hope is likely ill-advised, but it reflects a longing to be optimistic about our leaders. Leaders should be able to infuse real hope. I see this as part of any leadership mandate.
As a leader, are you hopeful? Are you personally hopeful about the direction of what you lead? Are you hopeful at a personal level about how you are leading and your contribution? As you lead, are you communicating hope to those you lead? Do you consider hope a primary resource for those you lead to contribute well and be effective? Leaders must be dealers in hope.
Hope, as a verb, is the confident expectation of something good. A sense of hope includes anticipation and trust. The most common Hebrew word for hope in the Old Testament describes a cord that binds--that is twisted together--that is attached to something--providing a lifeline of confident expectation. As a noun, hope necessarily includes something on which expectations are centered. The greater the center, the greater the characteristics of trust and reliance, which fuel hope. When the center is weak, hope loses believability. Nowadays, it grieves me that so few public leaders can offer real hope. It's not because it is impossible or there is nothing to be hopeful about. It's because, as leaders, we have lost the ability to communicate genuine hope.
For hope to be received well, it must have an air of authenticity and believability. It can't be pie-in-the-sky hope. Or it ends up feeling like "hope against hope." So, what elements of leadership communication help make up valid hope?
Necessary Building Blocks for Communicating Real Hope
1. A Desirable and Feasible Vision. Vision is a picture or mental image of a desired future reality. Leaders must become good at communicating a desired future reality of what they hope to accomplish. The vision must include a grand picture of the whole organization and individual snapshots of how every person's contribution makes a difference. The vision must be dosed in big and small ways, through presentations from the front and a thousand daily conversations. Every dose of vision communication must pass the desirability and feasibility test. Does your vision inspire others and pull them forward? Does this picture for the future sound reasonable? Does it sound plausible? Hope is always future-oriented. You must verbally and in written form point your people consistently toward a desirable and feasible future reality--and communicate often how their part matters along the way.
2. Consistent Uplifting Communication. A leader cannot only communicate vision once but must continually communicate vision, including notable progress along the way. No leader has absolute control over the future. And yet, every day, a leader must make good use of the resources allotted to them and apply them so that the desired future takes a step closer to reality. Every leader is in the business of change. If change is not required, then leadership is not required. Many are qualified to manage the status quo at an acceptable level. Leadership requires influence at a different level.
The currency of change leadership primarily consists of your voice and presence. A leader's ability to manifest and multiply their voice and presence is critical to instilling hope. Voice includes the words and the mediums one uses to communicate vision and infuse hope. I recently read that no encounter is truly neutral--either you affirm or deprive someone or something within that opportunity. This is true of every email and voicemail a leader sends. This is true of every platform of communication. This is also true of every casual encounter in the hallways or over a meal. A leader's words are always leveraged because of their title and position. Therefore, one must steward their words well. Are you bringing words of encouragement (literally infusing courage)? Are you affirming that team or person for their part in making the vision a reality? Even when you are making corrections, are you doing so in ways that help people see a pathway forward? Are you laying a foundation of trust and confident expectation? Are you dispensing hope through your words?
A leader always carries a sense of presence with them and around them. A leader's presence comprises the space they take up and the space they create. Again, a leader has presence because of their natural authority. People pay attention when the leader enters a room. Are you aware of the natural space you take up when encountering an individual, your team, or any other group of stakeholders? Will you use your natural authority to create space for others? To allow them to communicate their needs? To speak into the reality of the vision today and where they may feel stuck? Does your presence communicate warmth, approachability, genuine interest, and curiosity? Or do others experience you as detached, distracted, and uninterested? Use your voice and presence to remind each person and team that they matter and that what they do is vitally important to accomplishing the vision. And tell them stories along the way that demonstrate steps of progress toward the fulfillment of the vision—and bring hope.
3. Capacity Promises Delivered. For hope to feel real and plausible, a leader must make incremental promises and deliver on them. Again, no leader can guarantee the fulfillment of the stated vision. But every leader can deliver on those things that help fuel the vision and make it feasible. Almost always, these deliverables will revolve around building capacity. The two most important capacity promises a leader can execute toward fulfilling the vision are people development and resource acquisition. Every person under a leader's watch desires to see a pathway for becoming better at what they do and the possibility for advancement. Capacity is a person's potential, suitability, and ability to execute and move things forward. While I believe that every person has a built-in limit to their capacity to lead at different levels of influence and scope, you can grow an individual's potential, suitability, and ability to execute their best contribution. When people experience personal growth, their motivation, ownership, and goodwill increase. This adds real power toward fulfilling the organizational mission and vision. When you think of delivering on a promise of adequate resources, you think about tools, processes, and funding. These are daily necessities for accomplishing the vision. It is up to every leader to determine those resource needs for what they lead and to do all they can to acquire those resources so that the people can do their jobs well. Delivering regularly on people development and resources builds the capacity to realize the vision. It also fuels and sustains real hope.
4. A Sure and Steady Center. I mentioned earlier that hope relies on a strong center. Trust is necessary for hope to be communicated, built, and sustained. The daily actions of leaders are core to this hope building process. But what keeps this leadership process from being empty, meaningless, or manipulative? It is the leader's governing center. That governing center reveals the leader's motives. Why does a leader lead? What do they see as the primary purpose and outcome of their leadership? What is the governing bridge between their beliefs, words, and actions? People see right through leaders over time. Every leader has personal gaps. But what do leaders do when the gaps become exposed? Followers are gracious. They always want to give a leader a second chance. How a leader handles their leadership gaps is critical to a follower's ability to extend trust and maintain hope in the direction a leader espouses. Remember that trust is the resource a follower extends to you. It is painstakingly and intentionally built--and easily lost. Character and personal convictions are the building blocks of trust. The apostle Paul has much to say about hope and its growth and source. In Romans 5:3-5, Paul tells us plainly that suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which yields hope. In the same passage, he also reminds us that we can be secure in the love of Christ for us revealed through the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. In 2 Corinthians 1:7, Paul illustrates what dealing in hope looks like. Once again, the context is suffering and affliction. As Paul addresses this audience, he declares that his hope in the Corinthians is unshaken. He is stating for their benefit that he is confident and expectant that they will continue in their followership of Jesus. He is dispensing hope to them about their future. Finally, Paul states an eloquent truth as he writes to the church at Colossae. The context is one of affliction and suffering again. Paul points them to the reality of the relationship the Colossians have in Christ himself, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col. 1:27)
P.S. The best pathway for a leader to grow in their sense of hope is gratitude. It isn't easy not to be hopeful about things you are thankful for, even if by faith!
[1] APM Research Lab, "Mood of the Nation: Majority of Americans are 'Extremely Worried; About the Country in 2022’", https://www.apmresearchlab.org/motn/hope-worry-2022.
Thank you for stopping by!
I hope this content was helpful and encouraged you in your daily practice of leadership. If you would enjoy receiving more content like this on a regular basis please subscribe by clicking the button below.
