8
Fostering Hope
“Hope” is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
— EMILY DICKINSON
The emotion that is most significant to winning emotional commitment is hope, the feeling that something desirable is possible or is likely to happen. Hope has many faces and so attracts many descriptions. It has been called a weapon against intractable problems, a valuable possession, and a catalyst for change. Aristotle captured the fanciful face of hope when he described it as “a waking dream.” Author Madeleine Blais, writing about an Amherst Lady Hurricanes high school basketball team determined to make it to the state championship and overcome a history of choking, concluded that, “Hope is a muscle.”1 Blais’s characterization of hope suggests that it benefits from exercise and the right nutrition. Internet journalist Dorothy Anne Seese pointed to the catalytic face of hope when she called it, “The engine that drives all things.” Samuel Johnson wrote that, “Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.”
Norman Cousins, almost totally paralyzed by a degenerative disease and given just a few months to live, eventually returned to work after treating himself with high doses of vitamin C and laughter. Cousins deemed hope to be independent of logic, and wrote, “The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life.” Pliny believed that, “Hope is the pillar that holds up the world.” Best-selling author Anne Lamott described the challenging process of hoping when she wrote, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” Vaclav Havel, who won several prestigious international literary prizes in addition to serving as president of the Czech Republic said, “Hope is a state of mind, not of the world.” Educator, Yale University chaplain, and civil rights activist William Sloane Coffin, Jr. wrote, “Hope arouses, as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible.”2 Beverly O’Neill believes that, “Hope is the best thing you could provide anyone.” One of the greatest sources of satisfaction in her role as mayor of Long Beach is “Every day you can provide hope for the future.”
Leaders foster hope in four ways:
1.With their optimism about grounding their insights and visions in reality, and about the capabilities of others
2.With practical actions and successes
3.With the hopeful tenor of their personal stories
4.With the power of their insights and the nobility of their visions
Optimism, Pessimism, and Hope
The beginning, the initial spark that produces hope and builds emotional commitment is a leader’s optimism. Optimism is a choice. The opposite choice, the alternative to optimism, is pessimism, which does have its own value. Pessimism is the tendency to view life’s circumstances as troublesome, ominous, or futile. In an unsure and perilous world, pessimism helps us stay attuned to reality. Laurence J. Peter, of Peter Principle fame, wrote that, “A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street,” which is a wise thing to do. Pessimism, however, is no basis for leadership. Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Leadership is about seeing opportunities, not difficulties. Helen Keller, whose words more fully address the essence of leadership, wrote, “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”
Martin Seligman has been studying optimists for more than thirty-five years. He wrote that the difference between pessimists and optimists is in how they habitually think about bad events or situations. Pessimists tend to believe that bad events have pervasive and permanent consequences and will undermine all of their efforts, rendering them helpless. Optimists, on the other hand, see any particular bad event or situation as limited to that one circumstance and as temporary.3 In so doing, optimists restrict their feelings of helplessness.
Optimism and pessimism are each habits of the mind, and while pessimism has some utility, optimism is the healthier and more satisfying habit. The research of Seligman and others shows that optimism can ward off depression, can be a source of higher achievement, can enhance physical well-being, and is a more pleasing state to live in. Seligman concludes, “There can be little doubt about it. Optimism is good for us.”4 And, more to the point of leadership and winning emotional commitment, he wrote, “Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope.”5
The Art of Hope
Pat Croce is a leader who has mastered the art of hope. Inc. Magazine dubbed Croce “The Dale Carnegie of the 21st Century.” “I think that is a supreme compliment,” Croce said. He is most widely known for his work as president and part-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. Croce engineered one of the most dramatic turnarounds in sports history, reshaping the 76ers, earning a berth in the 1999 National Basketball Association playoffs for the first time in eight years, and reaching the playoff finals in 2001. Along the way, attendance increased by 46 percent. During that time, Tom Friend, senior writer for ESPN The Magazine wrote of Croce, “There is no better sports CEO out there”6 He is also recognized as the founder of Sports Physical Therapists Inc, which had forty sports medicine centers in eleven states before merging with Novacare, and as the author of several books, including the New York Times best-seller, I Feel Great and You Will Too.
Croce knows about life’s disappointments and adverse events, and offered two examples. In 1977, when Croce graduated from physical therapy school, he wanted to become the physical therapist for the Philadelphia Eagles football team. “They slammed the door in my face,” he recalled. Many years later, in his first year with the 76ers, when they were still losing, he had to fire both the general manager and the coach; difficult tasks for a self-described “people person.” Today Croce says of these two experiences, “I think God gives us challenges so we become stronger. We have challenges that come our way, and at the time we can’t understand why, but it just makes us stronger when we pursue our goals and visions.” This is an optimist speaking. His defeats and difficulties are limited to specific circumstances and are temporary. Croce takes optimism even a step further than seeing setbacks as temporary and limited; he sees value in his defeats and difficulties, believing that they make him stronger.
A 1999 motorcycle accident tested Croce’s optimism. His left leg was shattered when another cyclist skidded into him on wet pavement shortly after the beginning of a coast-to-coast motorcycle trip. The result was multiple surgeries involving bone and muscle grafts to save his leg. Croce’s doctor told Tom Friend, “Through this whole thing, he had about ten minutes of post-traumatic depression, and people usually have that problem for months. He had about ten minutes.”7 Croce said that during his time in the hospital he asked himself, “Why you, Pat, why you?” His answer was, “Why not?”
Today, in true optimist fashion, he said, “I looked around on that hospital floor and saw kidney transplants and all kinds of really severe illnesses. Yeah, they had to graft part of my shoulder into my leg but that was nothing. Whenever I want to be grounded all I have to do is take a walk through McKee Rehabilitation Center and see all these patients who are paralyzed from the waist down or from the neck down, or bodies dysfunctional from stroke, that puts everything into perspective.”
Success Is Always Possible
Wilma Mankiller knows that growing up in the Cherokee culture, with its emphasis on keeping the mind free of negativity, is the source of her optimism. One of her favorite Cherokee traditional prayers begins, “First let us remove all negative things from our mind so we can come together as one.” She said, “The idea is that if we harbor negative thoughts—envy, greed, hate—those thoughts will soon permeate our being and prevent us from acting in a responsible way. Negative thoughts become negative actions.” This Cherokee view is in harmony with modern thought and science: Martin Seligman wrote, “Our thoughts are not merely reactions to events; they change what ensues.”8
“All my life,” Mankiller said, “I have seen people in terrible circumstances who have managed to find something positive to focus on. They find some positive characteristic about even the most ardent opponent. They look back on trauma and pain and think about what lessons they learned. I have seen any number of people who live with almost no amenities but they know genuine love, deep friendship, and appreciate simple things like a good song or a lovely flower.”
Like Croce, Mankiller’s optimism was tested by physical challenges; she has had multiple surgeries to deal with a variety of afflictions. Still, her optimism does not wane. She said, “All my adult life, I have constantly tried to live in a positive way, free of as much negativity as possible.” This optimism is necessary to her leadership because, she said, “Building clinics, working on federal legislation, or any other project requires knowledge of the subject matter and skill as well as absolute certainty that success is possible.”
Pessimism has no value to leadership for Mankiller. She said, “Who wants to follow a leader who sits around wringing their hands and reciting a litany of problems?” Martin Seligman agrees. In Learned Optimism, he states flatly that, “Americans want optimists to lead them.”9
Not Pollyanna
Croce’s and Mankiller’s optimistic outlooks do not avoid the problems of the moment. They have a kind of optimistic realism, an attitude that communicates to others that vision must be pursued even in the face of difficulties, and that commitment means, “the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don’t give up.” Croce said, “I am not pie-in-the-sky, don’t get me wrong. But my glasses are tinted rose-colored. I am not Pollyanna. I know there is negativity in the world. I know there is pessimism. I know we have losses. It’s OK. I believe there is a reason for all of that, I just am not smart enough to understand the reason, so let’s keep pursuing.”
Beverly O’Neill echoed Croce’s words when she explained her attitude about moving forward despite the kind of budget constraints that frequently plague cities: “We have a great future and we are going to be working toward that future even though our finances right now are in very bad shape.” O’Neill said that, along with pursuing her vision of a better Long Beach, “You can’t ignore the problems of the present.”
Two Varieties of Optimism
The optimism of leaders such as O’Neill, Croce, Mankiller, and Harris appears in two ways. First, and most obviously, it shows up in relation to the insights and visions they and their followers are pursuing together. The second and less obvious way it appears is in relation to others: Leaders who win high levels of commitment are also optimistic about the capabilities of other people. Pat Croce said it very simply: “I am a big believer in people.”
O’Neill asked the people in her office to identify something they might add to their job, something that would be fun for them. One man gave up his Saturdays to coordinate cleaning up the city with groups that wanted to work on that. A woman who has a special fondness for children developed a curriculum to take to schools. O’Neill said, “I really believe in the ability of people. Some of them have great qualities that have never been brought out.” Bill Strickland, speaking of the students who attend Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild and Bidwell Training Center, said, “There is nothing wrong with the kids that come here, except that they don’t have an opportunity to show they are world-class citizens. You treat them that way and they will.” And Alice Harris explained her rationale for being optimistic about the capabilities of others by saying, “God took a chance on all of us. You can’t help people and not grow yourself.”
William Purkey, articulating invitational theory, wrote that the assumption such leaders make is, “People possess untapped potential in all areas of human endeavor.”10 This assumption is grounded in the understanding that no clear limits to human potential have yet been discovered.
Successes and Personal Stories
A leader’s optimism is not the only means to sustain hope and emotional commitment over the long course of effecting significant change. Practical actions and successes, and the hopeful tenor of a leader’s personal story, can also provide hope, not only that things can change, but also hope that we can change things. The hopes of the people around Bill Strickland were certainly raised when Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. This grant became the catalyst for a $7.5 million capital campaign to construct a 62,000-square-foot vocational training and arts center. The hopes of the Cherokee Nation were raised by Wilma Mankiller’s success at helping the tribe win a self-determination agreement, allowing it to assume responsibility for Bureau of Indian Affairs funds. Matter-of-fact and on-the-ground triumphs such as these are a source of pride and give impetus to further hopes. If leaders and their organizations do not deliver such practical achievements, their stories and mobilization efforts flounder. Their credibility wanes, frustration and cynicism mount, and then despair can drive out hope.
Mary Ellen Hennen provided a story about how practical success can fuel hope. Hennen launched the Minnesota State lottery as its director of administration, and also serves on several not-for-profit boards. One of her leadership roles, she said, is to, “Get people moving towards doing things that they never thought they could do.” In a former job, as executive director of the Public Utilities Commission of Minnesota, she inherited a small and inadequately equipped organization. She said, “They saw themselves as a tiny poor agency having to make huge organizations toe the line and do the right thing. They felt helpless. It drove me insane because they were well educated and well positioned to do what they wanted to do, but they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do.” In other words, there was no sense that things can change, let alone any sense that we can change things. Jim Wold seconded Hennen’s sense that getting people moving fosters hope. He said, “People get hamstrung by believing someone else is responsible. The line we really need to use is, ‘What can we do right here and right now to make something happen?’ ”
Hennen discovered that her organization had no system to keep track of all of the information it used to prepare public utility commissioners to make decisions about utility rates. She saw an opportunity to fuel the hope of the organization that it really could effect change. She gathered a group of people to decide what kind of system would meet the need. She also provided them with resources when asked. “I didn’t know what they needed,” she said. “And I wasn’t about to prescribe what they needed. But I had to get them the resources.” The first resource they needed, she said, was, “That I trusted them. That had evidently never been done before.” Then she got out of their way.
Hennen’s group designed and won approval for a new integrated information system. She summed up the importance of such successes for building and maintaining hope when she said, “If you are not accomplishing something and you can’t see something practical, your enthusiasm and your interest are not going to be captured for very long.” The value of this experience to her organization went far beyond a new information system. The more important value was the sense that, in her words, “We can make a difference.” That sense generates hope and emotional commitment.
Leaders also foster hope when their stories speak about how they overcame obstacles, or transformed themselves, or delivered a success. Wilma Mankiller’s story of overcoming prejudice against women to become the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation can be a source of hope to other Cherokee women, as well as to other women who suffer prejudice. Alice Harris’s transformation from an out-of-work teenage mother to the Sweet Alice Harris that is known throughout California, as well as in the corridors of the U.S. Senate, can be a source of hope to impoverished people anywhere. Bill Strickland’s tale of growing up in a crumbling urban environment, committing himself to the potter’s art, then becoming a much sought after expert on the relationship between the arts, business, and social responsibility can be a source of hope to anyone in any crumbling neighborhood.
Public Good or Private Goods
Along with their optimism, practical successes, and their own personal stories, a leader is also a source of hope when his vision has a noble quality to it. As described in detail in Chapter 3, such visions offer followers the opportunity to commit to something larger than their own self-interest. Such opportunities seem to occur less frequently than they once did. During the final quarter of the twentieth century Americans underwent a change in their thinking about what is important. Martin Seligman described the change as a shift from “the public good to private goods.”11 The combined weight of the assassinations of great social leaders, the Vietnam War, presidents and other leaders who disappointed and betrayed us, along with the failure of families and religious institutions to address the despair created by these distressing events, has left us with a famine of hope. As a result, we have turned our backs on noble visions in favor of a personal and self-centered satisfaction that is unfulfilling. We have a drive to work for the common good, and we are frustrating that drive. As Bonnie Wright said, “People need to help other people.”
This shift in emphasis from the public good to private goods is mirrored in the visions of those in leadership positions when these visions are mostly about needs for personal achievement or about the prestige and accomplishments of their organizations, rather than about contributions to the common good. Such visions accept the shift from public good to personal satisfaction rather than challenging people to rise above their own interests, or to create a more equal balance between their own interests and the common good. Those in positions of leadership who capitulate to the shift from public good to private goods do not provide an adequate basis for hope, except for hope that is entirely self-centered and ultimately unfulfilling. Seligman wrote, “The life committed to nothing larger than itself is a meager life indeed.12
Developmental Strategies for Fostering Hope
The strategies listed below are of two kinds: strategies to foster hope in others, and strategies to help leaders develop and maintain their own optimism. Optimism is a habit, and is thus the achievable province of anyone. There are attitudes and strategies that anyone can adopt to help them develop the habit of optimism.
Celebrating Success
It has been said many times before and in many places, and it is worth repeating: Leaders must encourage the celebration of successes. Such celebrations validate the hope of the past and fuel the hope for the future. Celebrations do not have to be grand. For example, Jim Wold likes to begin every meeting with the people who work for him with the question, “What is going well?”
Doing the Impossible
What “impossible” thing could be accomplished by the people you lead that, having accomplished it, would fuel hope?
Assuming Self-Responsibility
One attitude in particular is essential to develop the habit of optimism. This attitude is one of seeing the self as the source of the self. It is sometimes referred to as self-responsibility. Those who are self-responsible acknowledge that they create their own thoughts and feelings. This is the opposite of victimization, in which people conclude that their thoughts and feelings are caused by some source outside of the self. The self-responsible person would be more likely to ask, “I wonder what it is about me that causes me to get angry at him,” rather than to think, “He makes me angry.” Leaders rarely, if ever, succumb to feeling victimized. They rarely abdicate their own responsibility for what they think or how they feel. Pat Croce said, “I should let you know, in reality, there are threads of negativity that enter into my gray matter, and then I have to fight them off.” Croce knows that he is the source of his thoughts and feelings and that he alone can change them.
Listening to Self-Talk
Each of us has a running dialogue with ourselves. Developing a habit of optimism involves interrupting that dialogue when it becomes negative. Pat Croce hears the threads of negativity that cross his mind. Wilma Mankiller’s beloved Cherokee prayer—first let us remove all negative things from our mind—assumes that one hears those negative things. Tuning in to the dialogue we are having with ourselves allows us to interrupt it when it becomes negative, and can help us spot the habits we have formed. Sometimes a simple, “Shut up!” to ourselves is very useful.
Hanging Out with Optimists
Bad stuff happens, and sometimes the people around a leader are draped in gloom, helplessness, and foul temper. Pat Croce said, “Regardless of how I wake up in the morning with a positive attitude there are nasty people and negative situations that arrive.” Croce is very firm about this point: “Don’t treat me with any whining, because I don’t want to hear it,” he said, “You want to whine about something, let me bring you to see Sister Mary and let’s look at what she is doing with the homeless.” Sister Mary is Mary Scullion, who the Philadelphia Inquirer called, “The tough-minded guardian angel of Philadelphia’s homeless.”13 Mary Ellen Hennen said, “If you don’t want to try, I will have a lot of problems with that.” Alice Harris is equally as vociferous as Croce and Hennen are about people with negative attitudes. She said, “I don’t like to deal with people around me with a ‘can’t’ attitude. God didn’t make us with a ‘can’t’ attitude. We are made with power.”
Any leader who wants to maintain the optimistic attitude that fuels hope will find pessimists draining. Warding off the negativity of others can soak up a lot of energy. Leaders who want to maintain their own optimism, and thereby have a better chance of fostering hope and winning emotional commitment, need a contingent of optimistic people around them. Not people whose optimism is of the Pollyanna kind, but people whose optimism has the same realistic element the leader’s does.
Getting a Good Night’s Sleep
Pat Croce has several strategies for maintaining his optimism. “One of them is sleep,” he said, “I can guarantee you I am way more positive in the morning than at night.” Wilma Mankiller concurs. She said, “Whenever I am feeling burned out or pessimistic, I simply get a good night’s sleep.”
Summary
Fostering hope is the third competency for winning emotional commitment, the other two—self-awareness and emotional engagement—being preconditions. The emotional commitment of others thrives best in an atmosphere in which the leader’s self-awareness permits her to be emotionally engaged with followers, in which the validity of both constructive and unconstructive feelings is acknowledged, in which unconstructive feelings are transformed, and in which hope prospers. Leaders most often fail in their attempts to foster hope and win emotional commitment because they have not developed in themselves the underpinnings that create such an atmosphere. They are not self-aware, and so cannot resonate with the emotions of those around them, and can become caught in unproductive and inappropriate behavior. They are not emotionally engaged with their followers, and so do not have the opportunity to capitalize on productive emotions and transform those that are unproductive.
When a leader’s self-awareness and emotional engagement are impoverished, his attempts to foster hope devolve into gratuitous cheerleading, stoic appeals to pride or personal achievement, and overreliance on rewards for performance. It is unavoidable that a leader will set the emotional tone for whatever group of people he leads. When a leader has developed the underpinnings—self-awareness and emotional engagement—and when he also assumes attitudes of respect and trust toward others, then the leader’s optimism can be contagious; it can foster hope and can win emotional commitment.
Questions About Yourself to Contemplate or Discuss with Others
Who, in your life experience, was practiced at fostering hope?
To what degree are you practiced at fostering hope?
What is it about fostering hope that rings true for your current leadership role?
How important is fostering hope to your further development as a leader?
Notes
1.Madeleine Blais, In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle (N.Y.: Warner Books, New York, 1995).
2.The sources of quotes in this chapter, unless otherwise noted and excluding those by leaders interviewed for this book, can be found at <http://www.brainyquote.com>.
3.Martin E.P. Seligman, Learned Optimism, (N.Y.: Knopf, 1990): 4–5.
4.Ibid., 291.
5.Ibid., 48.
6.Tom Friend, “Eyes on the Prize,” ESPN The Magazine, <http://espn.go.com/magazine/friend_20010523.html> (April, 2003).
7.Ibid.
8.Seligman, Learned Optimism, 7.
9.Ibid., 207.
10.William W Purkey, “An Introduction to Invitational Theory,” at International Alliance for Invitational Education, <http://www.invitationaleducation.net> (June, 2003).
11.Seligman, Learned Optimism, 284.
12.Ibid., 284.
13.“Sister Mary Scullion: The Tough-Minded Guardian Angel of Philadelphia’s Homeless,” Philadelphia Inquirer (December 25, 2000) (unsigned editorial).