Hope has an incredible value, and can make a real and measurable difference for organizations’ results. Something that was recently underlined by Gallup, in a study with around 10 000 employees.
The study showed that hope was among the 4 “primary needs” followers have from their leaders (the remaining three being compassion, stability and trust). And, while these needs are normally super important to meet the current crisis has made hope the star of the show. Which is, of course, not to say that the remaining three are unimportant in times like these, but hope does have an especially important role to play when everything grows uncertain.
“Hope is what will get us through this”, Gallup says, and they seem to have a point. Hope has already been tied to a bunch of positive effects, from wellness and life expectancy to financial savings, and Gallup has also found a connection between this hope and employee engagement. Where “employees who strongly agree that their leader makes them feel enthusiastic about the future…are 69 times more likely to be engaged”. This compared to employees who didn’t quite agree with that statement.
How to spread hope
Ok. So having employees be stoked about the future can bring some pretty great results, and even more so in a situation like the one we find ourselves in right now. Where Gallup explain that “we need hope to believe the future will be better than our disrupted, socially distant, fearful present”. Something that Dr. Shane Lopez, who was a senior scientist at Gallup, found that leaders could nurture among their employees with:
Goals: Leaders can encourage hopefulness by explaining to employees where you’re going; what goal you want to reach. Hope requiring some “object” to be tied to.
Energy: To muster their own engagement, employees need to see it. I.e. as a leader, you should have and showcase a whole lot of energy and engagement, as hope requires said engagement and the motivation that comes with it.
Ideas: Hope needs some strategising and a whole lot of creativity, and leaders who can figure out loads of ways to reach some one destination will find more ways around the obstacles in their way.
Which is to say that you, as a leader, should establish clear goals, communicate those goals with an enthusiasm that is totally unparalleled, and aid your employees by finding and showing different ways to approach problems and reach the goals that have been set. Something that can help you nurture this hope in your organisation, and bring about the incredible value that comes with this.
Source: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/308459/lead-workplace-hope-covid.aspx
