In this second entry in our series on hope and joy, we’ll examine how hope—and the lack of it—affects the workplace and everyday life. Hopefully the examples we share will inspire you to build your own culture of hope, within yourself or your organization.
A few years ago,we found ourselves working with a firm that was having some pretty stormy issues. The team we were assigned to advise had just had a major project fall apart, and many of the members were still smarting by the time I arrived.
One woman we worked with was especially withdrawn. When we asked for her take on the situation, she said her confidence had been betrayed by a colleague whom she had counted as a close team member and friend. “My mistake,” she offered resentfully.
The whole experience had sent her reeling. Angry and vengeful, she began to shut down. She admitted she would probably never be able to fully trust any of her colleagues again, at least in this job. The risk was just too great. It was sure to bring another round of deep hurt. So why bother?
We felt for her. Few things in life are as emotionally painful as feeling like you’ve been betrayed or harmed by someone you thought was on your side. This can be as true at work as it is in your personal life.
If something didn’t change, we knew it was only a matter of time until she left the company. She was losing hope at a rapid pace.
The Hope Cure
In Ron Carucci’s 2021 book, To Be Honest: Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice and Purpose, he tells the story of a girl named Sophie, a nine-year-old refugee from Russia who had been given asylum in Sweden after witnessing her father being kidnapped. He was eventually freed, and the family fled to Sweden.
A few days after arriving in the country, Sophie’s parents noticed she’d stopped playing. Shortly after, the family was in-formed by Sweden’s Migration Board they could not stay in Sweden; Sophie overheard the entire conversation.
After this, she stopped eating and speaking. That was only the beginning. In the next 20 months, Sophie slipped into a comatose state. She was fed through a feeding tube and wore a diaper. Her vital signs and reflexes were all normal—but her body appeared lifeless.
Since the late 1990s, doctors in Sweden have reported hundreds of cases of this strange phenomenon, called Resignation Syndrome. The syndrome largely affects traumatized children and adolescents whose horrific experiences in their home countries are compounded by the terrifying uncertainty of their status and safety as immigrants.
Like an engine that runs out of gas or a computer whose hard drive has crashed, these children responded to the unbearable uncertainty of their future by simply shutting down. And they remained this way for months, even years. In 2019, Netflix produced a heartbreaking documentary offering outsiders a look at the condition, Life Overtakes Me.
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What’s the cure? Once families were assured asylum and safety, their children slowly came out of their comatose states and regained the ability to function.
You see, our brains crave hope to such a strong degree that they are willing to shut young bodies down under extreme distress if they are forced to go without it. What does this tell us about the human spirit’s need for this vital emotional nutrient? Building a culture of hope is more far than “necessary”—it’s essential.
To be clear, I don’t want to suggest that these children’s experiences are in any way equivalent to discord in the workplace (like our client experienced).
I do think, however, that this phenomenon shows just how critical hope is to well-being. Even under less extreme circumstances, like in relationships or your workplace—the place where you spend some 50 percent of your workweek—the absence of hope can have hugely negative effects.
To paraphrase Rick James: Hope is a helluva drug.
Building a Culture of Hope in Business Starts At the Top
(Don’t) Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter
Let’s talk more about hope in American workplace culture—or, more accurately, the lack of it.
As we touched on in the previous post , numerous recent surveys make it clear that “hopeful” is probably not a term most employees would use to describe their experiences in the American workplace. “Checked out” or “frustrated” would probably be more accurate (to put it mildly!).
It’s not just because of post-pandemic tumult and uncertainty, either. Workplace disengagement had been at a low level well before it.
According to Gallup, in 2019 only 35 percent of American workers considered themselves “engaged” in their work (though, to be fair, this was a modest increase since 2000 and 2010, when only 26 and 28 percent of workers, respectively, said they were engaged).
In light of this survey and several similar ones, as well as my years working with companies where employees have totally checked out, it occurred to me that employee disengagement is a kind of Resignation Syndrome of the workplace.
If that’s true, the solution, then, is to give disengaged workers fresh hope. This is easier said than done, of course. As we also mentioned in the previous blog post, you can’t give someone hope-on-a-stick. You can’t bottle it or make it happen instantaneously. Hardest of all, you can’t fake it.
Sometimes the best tool we have is to help people find hope wherever it’s hiding. Which takes me back to our conversation with the employee I mentioned earlier, the woman who felt deeply hurt after an incident with her colleague and was losing hope in her organization (if not humankind).
Tip
Hope is aspirational—and frequently self-fulfilling. Which is why cynicism can so easily kill it at the root. This means if you want to create a culture where hope can thrive, you will have to work to keep your cynicism and negativity at bay, not always an easy task (well, cynicism and negativity are pretty easy).
I’m not asking you to plaster a smile on your face and act insincerely sunny at all times. What I’m suggesting is that allowing hope in requires a shift in mindset—and deliberate effort. I know you’re up for it.
The next time we spoke, I said, “I know you’re hurt now, so pulling away feels like a great way to prevent getting hurt again. But if you’re honest, you know the isolation you’ll eventually feel will also hurt.”
“Pick your poison,” she responded, with no small amount of bitterness. “Hoping for trust again and not getting it would hurt more.”
I asked her to consider that the rest of her team felt sad about the distance she was keeping. Two people in her inner circle knew the origin of her pain, and they lamented that they were being lumped in with the colleague who had wronged her.
“You may think you won’t be able to trust again. But what should they do with the trust they still have in you and with the connection they still want to enjoy that you’re withholding from them?”
It took a moment, but I could see her grappling with the question. She could feel the tension between missing her colleagues and not wanting to hurt them and wanting to wash her hands of everyone because of the misstep of one person.
“Fair point.”
It wasn’t a magical turnaround, but it was something. I was helping her see that maybe some of her anger was misplaced, and, critically, maybe—just maybe—things might not be so horrible after all, despite what she’d gone through.
Hope culture 1, despair culture 0.
“There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.”
– Stephen Hawking
Why Not Hope?
Hope is created at the intersections of three things: 1) passion—a desire for something greater; 2) perseverance—the need to prevail against great odds; and 3) faith—the belief that there is something greater beyond those odds. When a person or organization is facing dark days, hope is what gets them through.
Hope gives way to compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude. Staying stuck in what I call an “ouch state”—regardless of where the ouch came from—makes us bitter, selfish, and spiteful.
To be sure, most organizational ouches feel unjust, cruel, and worthy of outrage. I’m not suggesting we turn a blind eye to inexcusable behavior or systemic harm.
But I am asking us to consider the unintended consequences of choosing not to believe change is possible. “American workplace culture” and “hope” should be able to be used in the same sentence without making people wince.
So go ahead and ask yourself: what if things do work out? Or, at least, aren’t nearly as bad as you feared? And even if they don’t work out as you planned, could you still persevere? Is any of this possible? Maybe?
In my experience, the answer is almost always yes.
Build a Culture of Hope in Your Business—Start Today
In the journey of cultivating a culture of hope, effective leadership is the compass. Don’t let challenges dim the beacon of hope in your organization. With Navalent’s expert leadership consulting, transform obstacles into opportunities and inspire a brighter, more hopeful future for your team.
And we know a thing or two about leading effectively. We’ve:
- Completed over 200 organization diagnostics
- Taken on more than 1,800 transformation projects
- Coached over 600 C-suite executives
Ready to be the change-maker? Book a consultation with us today.