Leadership has many dimensions, but the positive organization movement suggests that hope is a quality that leaders can instill in their followers for better results. How to instill hope is often elusive.
Hope Quotations Might be What Makes a Good Leader
Perhaps the use of hope in speeches is a way to instill hope. Scholars have wanted to know if leaders are born or if leaders can be trained, and studies show that leadership ability is based both in individual traits and a trainable set of actions.
It seems that the deliberate placing of hopeful statements in a speech or pep talk is deliberate leadership action that is not necessarily based on the person delivering the message. It is common practice to have a speech writer who develops longstanding themes that defines an individual and their leadership legacy.
Positive Leadership Practice is Good for Leadership Development
Fred Luthans and Bruce Avolio developed the "Authentic Leadership" concept which merges positive organizational psychology and transformational leadership. This is an excellent model for training because it combines trait and training together with hope as a major dimension.
In the 2003 book Positive Organizational Scholarship they note that "the authentic leader is confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient [and] transparent" and they insist that organizations, including government organizations, will have to adopt greater positive, hopeful attitudes to survive tumultuous times.
So, indeed, being hopeful, acting hopeful, and instilling hope are more deliberate acts or attitudes than the result of personal traits. Hope is not a constant, so it is not a stagnant trait that belongs to any one person. It is a feeling or belief that can be changed depending on the circumstances.
Hope and Optimism are Qualities of Management Leadership Development
Sometimes hope and optimism are used together to motivate people in a positive direction. Psychologists note that people often fail because they believe they will fail. The way to reverse this is to change this particular state of mind and increase one's self-efficacy.
But Philip Magaletta and J.M. Oliver noted some time ago in their 1999 Journal of Clinical Psychology article that hope, self-efficacy and optimism share the same thought domains, yet are "not identical constructs". So this would seem to suggest that a leader's job is tougher because instilling hope alone may not be enough.
Magaletta and Oliver seem to suggest the leader would need to help people meet their goals by finding the right combination of "will" and "ways", optimism and hope in order to instill the overall sense of well-being in the follower. Will and ways might be internal motivations, but at the same time, it might very well be money and resources, too. Again, budgeting prowess is a pragmatic and necessary aspect of leadership.
Good Leadership and Management Models
Experience seems to be as valuable as it has always been, and specific leadership traits should not be discounted either. It might be helpful to include positive organizational training in the mix, especially training that includes the importance of hope.
For other positive leadership advice try:
5 Ways to Stay Positive at Work
References
Luthans, F and Bruce Avolio. (2003). Authentic Leadership Development. In Positive Organizational Scholarship. Cameron, D.S., Dutton, JE. and Robert E. Quinn. (Eds). Berret-Koehler. San Francisco.
Magaletta, PR and J.M. Oliver (1999). The Hope Construct, Will and Ways: Their Relations with Self-Efficacy, Optimism, and General Well-Being. The Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(5), 539-551.
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