Hope Itself Is Not the Answer

But without it, it’s impossible to lead

Banquet at the Crossbowmen’s Guild in Celebration of the Treaty of Münster by Bartholomeus van der Helst, 1648 (public domain - Rijksmuseum)

“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…