Leaders Inspire Hope

This post was originally published on January 28, 2021, on Instagram as part of Her Growth Collective.

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I recently started listening to the "HOPE Not Hate" podcast. As far as I can tell, the Hope Not Hate organization is a political action group in the UK that says it was founded to “provide a positive antidote to the politics of hate”.

In 2013, I began working for a software start-up headquartered outside London. That meant several business trips to the UK for me and during those trips I began to notice the increasingly nationalist rhetoric making its way into culture. Through the TV in my hotel room and, eventually, through subtle comments around the office, I began to hear more and more British citizens complaining that they were losing political power.

Now on the other side of the Brexit vote, we know where that road led.

This podcast intrigued me because the UK is a few years ahead of the US in its modern day fight against white supremacy.

This podcast, combined with the countless interviews with Republican voters in the news during the recent American Presidential Election, taught me an important leadership lesson.

Hope is not only a tool for good.

We so often think of hope in the Obama context (forward progress) or the faith context (sunshine and rainbows and all things bright and beautiful).

But when you really listen to what members of white supremacy and other extremist groups are saying, it is that they too are motivated by hope. At the group level, they are hopeful for a return to the past when “people like them” held greater cultural and political power. At the individual level, many of their members were outcasts in some way; hoping to just feel like they belong somewhere.

This, perhaps more than anything else, is what made Donald Trump a dangerous leader. He understood the power of hope and consistently, publicly, and willfully used hope to encourage the spread of hate.

Hope is a powerful feeling. The ability to inspire hope in others is a powerful leadership skill.

As a leader, the question is whose hope will you inspire?

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This post is written in partnership with #HerGrowthCollective, encouraging women to walk the path of self-development together.