“How little the fear of misfortune is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck.”
— Adam Smith, 1776
We all need to be motivated.
The craving for motivation is almost as universal as the need to be appreciated, and it can be found in a teenager’s entropy-adjacent room, in the sapped morale of beleaguered employees, or in the low rates of civic participation in a public attuned to the media’s incessant drumbeat of negative news.
Motivation rooted in fear isn’t motivation at all. “The floggings will continue until morale improves” is apocryphal and nearly universally understood, capturing the sheer lunacy of supposed encouragement by trepidation.
Leaders care about the mental and emotional state of their people as well as their output.
They care enough to speak to them and give them as sense of hope as they address challenges and chart a path into the future.
At such times, hope is a necessary talisman to ward ourselves against the dangers of pessimism, fear, and despair.
To hope is to put our belief in the unknown.
To hope is to try new things.
To hope is to change.
But hope itself isn’t enough: “hope is not a strategy,” as those who wish to counter the joy and anticipation of hope will tell us. And to a degree, they have a point.
By itself, hope is not a strategy. It’s not a goal, nor is it a plan.
Leaders need a vision, goals, a strategy, and a plan to be effective. Let’s review:
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