By: Michael DeVenney
Hope is perhaps the single greatest character attribute of a successful leader. Leaders give people a reason to believe.
When leaders fail to communicate a message of hope for a better future people lose faith in them - and the future. Leaders must be the greatest believers.
Our world is more volatile, chaotic, and uncertain than ever. We may intellectually understand the facts and the figures but our decisions are in the end made from our hearts and not our heads. We need a vision of hope for a better future to engage our commitment to follow.
We are all leaders in different roles in our lives. For professionals, clients look for direction and advice to achieve their goals. Employees look to managers and executives for meaningful work and growth. Our families look for support and encouragement. We are all leaders in many ways helping people get to where they want to be.
We have a responsibility in leadership positions – whether as a corporate executive, a professional or family member – to take a position and have a positive vision. People look for our advice and have faith that we will lead them to a better future. We can not abdicate or avoid this responsibility. Leaders need to have hope combined with a vision of taking action.
Customers, shareholders, employees, investors, and family look for our leadership. It is not the need for blind faith, denial, or wishful thinking – it is the need for positive reasoning.
Sadly, with the global financial markets in a crisis position, we have not seen leaders and professionals providing that message of hope. A message of fear, negativity and recrimination may spark short term action but they do not build the sustainable investment of followers. In fact, a focus on fear deadens engagement and no sustainable value is created.
What do people need to hear?
Hope can best be described as the positive expectation and desire for something to happen. Leaders personify hope. More than wishful thinking, hope is attached to action. Blind faith is not the answer, hope is based in thought. Rather than a simple denial of the situation, hope is realistically acknowledging both today and tomorrow.
Conveying hope is not always easy. It requires courage and conviction. Negative beliefs can hurt performance and progress for those who look to you for leadership. Leaders need to be actively hopeful. The message needs to be repeated consistently.
Without the message of hope, we can become fearful with unrealistic expectations and feelings of powerlessness. We disengage. A message of hope connects people to both a positive expectation and a greater feeling of certainty.
Many leaders have a vision. Many leaders attach strategies and tactics to translate the vision to reality. Still, many leaders fail to attain their goals. Vision without a message of hope does not connect with the audience.
Hope mobilizes action to overcome obstacles. Hope energizes and embraces possibilities. When people are hopeful they believe they can accomplish what is before them – despite potential discomforts along the way. Hope reduces uncertainty – it is all about staying open and receptive.
A leader’s message needs to provide hope by touching on several points:
- The message needs to connect to the aspirations and dreams of the audience
- The message needs to stretch people beyond their boundaries a little – provide a challenge to overcome
- The message needs to focus on what is right rather than what is wrong
- The message needs to provide meaning to the audience – it needs to be important to them
How do you frame the message?
There are many great books and papers on how to deliver your message. I would add a further consideration in terms of understanding your audience. It is always crucial to think about your audience – their needs and situations – in crafting your message. Another step in connecting with your audience is to pay attention to their instinctive strengths. Each of us has an instinctive approach to taking action – our conation. Hope requires action and conation is a quick way to connect vision and action.
Conation is best described as a natural tendency or impulse to direct effort – a conscious method of carrying out self-determined actions. It is how we get things done. Conation affects how we communicate and respond to that communication. Knowing how our audience responds to our communication is vital to delivering a message of hope that resonates.
Kolbe© is the only assessment today that measures the conative profile for people. From their research, we can frame a general understanding of what our audience needs to connect to our message.
- We need a summary of why – not the full details but just the key facts that we can read and hear to relate to what we need to know
- We need an outline of the steps you want us to take – again, not in detail but just the general process of how we will get there – what steps we need to take and the bottom-line outcome
- We need to understand the future benefits – sell us a bit on how this direction will help us and the challenge we will overcome
- We need to see the big picture – even a real picture of the end result - to inspire us would be great – we want to see what will come from our efforts – visuals help focus our minds
As leaders, we need to galvanize the minds and hearts of our audiences. Wrap the message in personal stories to connect best.
How do you have a message of hope when the world – or your part of it – seems chaotic? We all have times of indecision and questioning. We also have a responsibility as leaders to help others make their decisions. The media generally does not help our efforts as leaders. With a short term focus and a strong bias to the negative, what our audience hears from the media if often a message of fear and noise. Research shows that negative information is seen as more salient than positive information for some reason. “When making decisions, many of us are weigh the costs of losing – or the negative – much more than the rewards of winning – the positive.” The positive message from leaders must be ongoing to build engagement and commitment – and faith.
As a leader, we need to step back and confirm our hope and vision. We can follow the general conative outline of our audience and craft our message:
- What are the key reasons behind our vision? We need to base the reasoning on what is right rather than what is wrong.
- What are the simple steps we will follow to make our vision a reality? Involve a bit of a stretch for us.
- What are the benefits for your audience in following the vision and overcoming the challenges in front of us? The benefits should connect to the aspirations of the audience.
- What will the big picture look like? The vision and message should provide meaning to what is most important to the audience. The end result needs to be worth it.
Use personal stories to promote your message. Incorporate visuals so we can see. Provide a written summary with the spoken word and we connect. Message the hope of a bigger future for us in your vision and we commit.
If you think about the message of politicians today, do you feel a message of hope? When you hear financial leaders speak today, do you connect to their message of hope? Do the media give you a positive message of a better future?
All of us are leaders in different roles of our lives. We need to step back and craft our message to connect with those who look to us for direction. It is our responsibility – and privilege.
Studies have shown that pessimists have an 18% higher risk of death than the average in any given year. As well, those who view life positively live an additional 7.5 years on average. It pays to believe in a positive future.
What can you do today to step up as a leader and deliver the message of hope to people around you?
Think about if the future was guaranteed – what would you do? Do that.
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