Hope: Hastens Ones Potential Exponentially

I love the holiday season not so much for commercialism, but for the camaraderie among family and friends, and for the clarion call to show love, express joy, inspire peace, and promote hope, and all these actions are what make the season so great, for me, and hopefully for you, as well. Wouldn’t it be cool if people answered the clarion call all year long? Some may say, “that thought is an impossible dream,” but not for authentic leaders.

For an authentic leader, the call to “promote hope” is not a matter of wishful thinking, it is a matter of willful targeting, all year long. A leader must willfully target hope in order to promote it. It has been said that “Hope is not a method,” and General Sullivan is correct in his assessment relative to strategic planning and execution, but I am certain, if pressed, he would have agreed that hope is definitely a motivator. One must first know what hope looks like in order to target and promote it, and at the risk of becoming, too, technical let me try to provide some clarity. Simply put, hope is holding on to an achievable desire, and experiencing hopes joy of a desire achieved.

Realized desire happens when one simply acknowledges an internal ‘want’ to have, to hold, to do, or to be something or someone. A person’s desire both informs and inspires their internal motivation to reach their highest level of potential. Hope hastens one’s potential exponentially by motivating them to move more quickly through the realms of achievable possibility, expected probability, to the pinnacle of realized potential or goal / mission accomplishment.

The question for leaders is, “how do we inspire ‘hope’ in people?” First, we must provide a clear vision, chart the course to reach an intended destination, and set the conditions to create a buy-in desire, or a “want” as mentioned earlier, for our people. Second, we must help them clarify reasonable tier-level goals based on their skills, abilities, interest, and limitations, or SAIL if you will. Third, an authentic leader helps their people hoist their “sail” daily by handing hope to them. This hope becomes the wind in each team members sail, driving them forward to realizing their potential.

An authentic leader hands hope by being characterized as a, “humble-optimist-persistently-encouraging. Leader characterization and practice are paramount to hope building; it is both who a leader is (humble-optimist), and what a leader does (persistently-encourage). Anything less puts the leader, and their team, on the path of degrading hope which will ultimately lead to apathy and hopelessness. Bottom line, don’t be a “hurt locker” leader, instead be a “hope promoting” leader; the consequences are far more appealing, producing much greater results. My toast to you is this, “Here's to promoting hope not only during this holiday season, but also throughout the New Year!”