Light at the end of the tunnel
Leading with hope through Covid-19
By Dr Amal Ahmadi (Postdoctoral Fellow in Organisational Behaviour)
A frog started to climb a tree with the goal to reach the top. Other frogs repeatedly jumped and shouted, “it’s impossible, it’s impossible, you will fall”. Yet the frog successfully reached the top of the tree despite the negative noise. How? It was deaf, and instead, thought that the other frogs were cheering in support, which filled the frog with hope to climb faster to achieve its goal…
Reflecting on hope is timely in the unprecedented dark times we find ourselves in. Whilst leaders in the twenty first century often operate in rapidly changing and dynamic work contexts, this has become ever more intense in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it continues to have on work environments. As unprecedented times call for unprecedented solutions, resilience and adaptability have taken a whole new level to overcome current challenges.
Hope is therefore increasingly more valuable during this time. Research correlates hope with various positive outcomes. A review and meta-analysis of 45 studies conducted in the last two decades on hope in the workplace finds that hope can play a significant role in predicting employee performance, influencing for instance job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and overall employee health and well-being (Reichard, Avey, Lopez, & Dollwet, 2013).