Hope is an active, learned conviction in one’s ability to influence outcomes, sharing personal experiences and insights.
Hope is essential in leadership and impacts team performance. Hope is not just a personality trait, but a skill that can be developed through practice. There is scientific basis to hope. Neuroplasticity can be harnessed through various practices to cultivate resilience and courage in the face of adversity.
Cultivating Hope
Albert Bandura said that hope is an active, learned conviction in one’s ability to influence outcomes rather than passive wishing. Hopeful people don’t give up when faced with obstacles, but instead seek alternative routes.
Stirring Up Hope Through Leadership
Having hope, setting goals, and maintaining self-belief lead to success. Hope is an active verb, not a passive feeling. You can develop hope through learned habits and multiply it with leadership.
Hope as a Strategic Tool
Hope is a tool for leaders and individuals facing complexity. It’s not optimism or positive thinking, but the belief in one’s ability to shape a future and the creativity to find pathways to achieve goals. When hope is lost, people stop taking purposeful action and become less adaptable. You can learn to recognize and nurture hope as a fundamental force for navigating uncertainty.
Join us at 10 a.m. Eastern on sandcastleradio.org to explore how to stir up hope in your own life.
Listen to Human Being with Dr. Susan every Saturday at 10 am ET on Sandcastle Radio, America’s Hottest Online Variety and Music Station. Follow Susan at / @susanhendrich
Explore the Human Being with Dr. Susan podcast: 13 episodes
People experience different emotions when faced with change. Change can be viewed as a grieving process of sorts. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described five stages of grief in her seminal work, ‘On Death and Dying’ in 1969.
The five stages include:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance (+ Moving On)
Kubler-Ross described the experiences of terminally ill patients and the psychological stages they go through when coming to terms with their condition. Her work on grieving process can be adapted to help us understand that individuals go through these same stages when faced with any big change, including changes at work.
Different Faces – Different Paces
Different people move through the stages at different speeds, and there may be some overlap between the stages. It is important for leaders to recognize this individual process. A person’s history, the organization’s history, the type of change and the consequence of change also impact an individual’s response to change and movement through the stages.
How Can Leaders Help Throughout The Stages?
Shock / Denial
Start communicating that there is a change early on. This minimizes the ‘Shock/Denial’ phase, as people will have begun to see that there is a need for change, even if they are unaware of the form that it will take.
When the change initiative is announced, give reasons that reduce complacency and highlight a need for change. Communicate in a way that is clear and touches people emotionally, not just with loads of data. Fully communicate the end vision of the change and what your intentions are.
Don’t try too hard to sell people on the idea that things are better for them; they are not ready to hear this.
Anger
Practice patience and empathy, and don’t try to suppress conflict. Provide a verbal outlet for people to vent their upset feelings. When leaders provide opportunities for grievances and frustrations to be aired constructively, bitterness and frustration can be diminished.
Although people will be angry that doesn’t mean that what they say has no value, they may have legitimate concerns that could affect the success of the change initiative.
Remember that most likely, people are not attacking you personally. Remain calm and patient.
Often leaders have been made aware of a change initiative long before their teams, so although they may be at later stages (eg, be at “Acceptance/Moving on” while general staff are still at “Shock/Denial”). Exercise patience.
Bargaining
When people start trying to bargain, ask them to give the new dispensation a chance. A lot of bargaining is done while people are still angry. Once the anger dissipates, so does much of the bargaining.
Acceptance
Help people acknowledge that it is the end of an era, support them in their new roles and encourage them to take responsibility. Set goals with them of which they can take ownership.
Continue your role as a sounding board for complaints and questions. Ask ‘How do you feel about this?’ to understand individuals’ emotional state.
Begin to stress the benefits of the new situation and how it can work for the individual.
If new teams were formed, provide help with group dynamics. People are generally less concerned with the tasks they are given than how they fit into a new group.
Plan for some early successes for the change initiative and then communicate them loudly. Once people can see that it is working then they will be less skeptical and more positive about the change.
Make sure the necessary resources are available for them to succeed, be it equipment or training or just coaching and guidance.
Moving On
Empower individuals to take the ball and run with it. Let them find ways of using the new set up to create stretch goals and encourage them to push performance.
Let employees innovate and take risks within the new set-up. Let them not only see ways of making the new system work in their favor but put those into practice.
For the individuals who really are taking the ball and running with it, reward them and promote them. Use them to show others what is possible. Having a fellow colleague really driving performance forward using the changes is worth far more than managers telling people things are/will be better. Once people can see it working for a colleague they will be far more receptive to the change.
_______________________________________
Your turn:
What “stage” of change are you leading through right now?
“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” — General Colin Powell
At the end of each workday when I walk out of the office building, I hear the same words while heading toward the door, “All right, Susan, you have a great night!”
Christie, our company’s steward of the campus front entrance, is always ready with a smile and a kind wish to cap off the day.
Christie Melchiore, April 2023
I treasure this tiny ritual. And I know I’m not alone. Christie freely shares her genuine joy with all who pass her way.
Her daily message reminds me that everything is, indeed, “All right.”
For me, Christie has come to represent the hope and possibility of renewal. No matter how the day went upstairs, you can count on a kind smile when you walk out the door. She’s a bright light. And her light helps me cascade a light forward onto the path of those I encounter.
Are all of Christie’s days easy? I’m sure they aren’t. Are all of her moments bright? Can’t possibly be. But still she chooses to shine that light. As a wise colleague once said, “Choice is a superpower.” I am lucky to be in the path of this every-day superhero.
I’m sharing this moment with you, because I wonder if there is someone in your life whose simple acts of kindness makes a difference? Let’s call it out.
Please take a moment to share your thoughts, or even an example of someone whose optimism is a force multiplier for you.
Is it possible to be more beautiful in the broken places?
Recently, I sent a message to my friend who was struggling, in hopes of lifting her spirits.
My friend had been feeling down. Defeated. Convinced that she wasn’t capable or deserving of success. I knew better, of course. I’ve known her more than half my life. I’ve watched her rise from an aspiring writer to international best selling author. Countless reasons, I could offer, as to why she’s more than capable and perfectly deserving of success. With indignance, I wanted to shout at her, “You’re already successful! Do you know how many people would dream to live your life for even just one day?”
I had really good intentions that day. It was a thrill, in fact, to think that I could be of help to a hero. Here was little old regular me, being asked to Help…Fix…Repair…Heal…this amazing role model of mine, who happened to be struggling. Being able to nurture and support this person who has served as a model of excellence for me for decades. Here was my chance to make a difference!
And the way I chose to help this supersuccessful person to feel better? I denied her feelings. Not a good thing, turns out.
I countered every single negative thought she was having with a reason why she was wrong and “should feel great” or “ought to forgive” herself or “was being too hard” on herself.
Thinking I was helping, actually I was making it worse. I took away her right to suffer. In fact, I teetered on the cusp of shaming her for feeling down.
With all the best intentions, I missed the whole point. She was feeling brokenand needed to let the pieces fallon the floor in front of her.
Realizing that I was making things worse by only focusing on the sunny side and by denying her need to feel broken and fall apart, I suddenly remembered a concept I once heard about the importance of being able to “fall into” pain rather than simply denying it. This concept, I was now remembering, was about honoring and highlighting the broken parts. Drawing attention to the damage, even!
So, what is this radical-acceptance-like process of honoring and even highlighting our failures and broken parts?
It’s called Kintsugi, and it’s a beautiful way of turning damage into beauty.
The Japanese practice of “kintsugi” is the art of embracing damage. Check out this Kintsugi video:
“Now you shall transform to a new level, my friend. Think wabi-sabi and kintsugi: the art of embracing damage!”
Now remembering this concept of being stronger in the broken places, I stopped my barrage of “happy thoughts” and apologized mid-conversation to my friend. I acknowledged that I’d been trying to deny the fact that she felt broken. I was trying to pretend the cracks weren’t there. I told her that I’d suddenly remembered this Japanese art of Kintsugi, and that I would send her a video to illustrate the concept right away. We ended the conversation awkardly, and I seriously questioned whether I knew how to be a good friend.
Pushing past my disappointment in myself, I sent her the Kintsugi video, hoping that she was still open to my support, even after I’d botched and Pollyanna’d my way through our earlier conversation. After I sent the note and video link, I started to question myself.
“Who am I to tell this highly successful and internationally recognized thought leader how to live?”
“Why do I always appoint myself as the ambassador of all that is positive?”
“What if she resents my message and sees it as patronizing?”
There I was, spiraling to all my places in my head where my own brokenness lurks.
Worrying about how my friend might feel after I’d missed the point with her suffering, I was spinning in my own broken parts, thinking…
I’ve spent my whole life embracing the broken, the not quite, and the almost…
Saving birds with broken wings
Fixing toys with broken parts
Cheering for the underdog
Coaching those who don’t yet believe in themselves
Coaxing sunshine from clouds
Just as my negative self-talk was reaching a fervent pitch in my head, the phone rang.
There was my friend, laugh-crying through the phone line, telling me how she finally felt understood. The video just spoke to her. Captured her. She told me how she felt connected to this concept of embracing damage. How she IS kintsugi. How this concept of mending the broken pieces with gold and proudly displaying them was exactly what she’d needed. It was a great moment, and not just because my friend was feeling better or because I’d been able to help her. It was a great moment because she and I were creating Kintsugi in real time. We were piecing back together a set of broken shards of a conversation and making the resulting product even better than when we’d started.
I knew on that day that I would never look at broken pottery in the same way again.
Now, whenever either of us faces a rough patch in life, or when things fall apart altogether, a single word helps us both begin to put the pieces back together and to anticipate an even more beautiful outcome than the original situation could have intended.
Kintsugi.
Embracing the damage. More beautiful in the broken places.
Susan E. Hendrich 