Episode Details

"Hope" can sound just like wishful thinking. But at the heart of true hope is driven initiative. This week we explore four research-backed ways to build hope.

Hello and welcome to episode 75 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today's biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore four research-backed ways to build hope. "Hope" can sound just like wishful thinking. But at the heart of true hope is driven initiative.

The concept of hope captures the human imagination. We see it reflected in popular quotes.

Martin Luther said "Everything that is done in this world is done by hope". His namesake, Martin Luther King Jnr said "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope".

We're encouraged to live a life focused on hope not fear. As Nelson Mandela said "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears".

But it's easy to see hope as just wishful thinking. We might even accuse people of having false hope - of being unrealistic in their optimism.

The reality in life is that we are constantly barraged by opportunities and threats. Our brain is wired for survival and will always tend towards the threats. That's why we are so amazed by stories like that of Nelson Mandela - someone whose life circumstance while in prison suggested there should be no hope, and yet he held onto a sense of hope and purpose even through tough circumstances. Indeed, this hope drove and strengthened him.

From a psychological perspective, those who research hope focus on two components:

• The first component is Pathways - one element of hope is thinking about routes to achieve desired goals. Those with hope dream a dream, but a practical dream. For those with hope there's a belief that they will find a way forward - that there's always a pathway.

• The second component is Agency - that's having the motivation to follow these pathways. Those with hope are willing to put in the work. Agency is the belief that we can initiate and sustain action towards our goals.

The researchers find a raft of benefits from those who demonstrate these two components of hope, ranging from improved academic performance, physical health, and mental health. The research shows that Agency, in particular, really matters. Agency, that drive and motivation to keep going, is linked with later decreased demonstration of both anxiety and depression.

If you use this two part definition of hope, the researchers argue that you avoid "false hope" altogether. Having a goal, a plan, and the drive to get there is far from false hope.

Those with hope are confident they will find a way through challenge. They are also confident in their drive to pursue goals. So it's not just trying to smash through obstacles by sheer effort. Often hope is about having confidence that you will be able to find a way around an obstacle, or perhaps develop a new goal in the process.

You can think of hope as driven initiative. Agency is the drive element , and Pathways is the initiative element.

If I think about the TV shows and movies that appealed to me when I was younger, they featured characters who exemplified this definition of hope. I may be showing my age, but the original 1980's TV series MacGyver comes to mind. The back story of Angus MacGyver, the main character, was always a little vague. He had a military special forces background but also an education in physics. But he was a case study in hope. Every week he overcame extraordinary odds, often by fashioning some solution out of everyday objects.

I recall one episode where MacGyver was escaping an angry group of mercenaries in a ho