The Complicated Role of Hope in the Workplace

Emotions, like love (not the romantic kind), fear, and joviality have all been demonstrated to play a key role in how some organizations function. Hope, however, is one emotion that has been given short shrift, despite how frequently organizations invoke hope when striving toward challenging goals. When leaders outline a big vision, they have to acknowledge, in part, that failure is also a possibility — no matter strong the feeling of hope runs through the organization. The authors conducted research at an organization seeking to heal human trafficking victims from trauma to better understand how hope affects a team. They found that leaders might need to promote a more realistic form of hope that embraces both the highs and the lows — and one that can be adjusted when organizations face challenges or setbacks.

Emotions are a part of everyday life — both at work and outside of it. In the work context, emotions are particularly likely to emerge when organizations are working on ambitious or challenging projects. For example, large numbers of employees might experience shared joy if they take time to celebrate their successes in achieving project milestones. Or they might experience collective sadness as they mourn the failure of a product launch that was touted as the “next big thing.”

These kinds of emotions, along with love (not the romantic kind), fear, and joviality have all been demonstrated to play a key role in how some organizations function. Hope, however, is one emotion that has been given short shrift in organizational research, despite how frequently organizations invoke hope when striving toward challenging goals. Indeed, it is commonplace to hear organizations encouraging members to “keep hope alive” in the face of challenges or even to promise a more hopeful future to clients or customers via their products and services.

While hope sounds like a purely positive emotion on the surface, in our research, we find that hope plays a more complex role in organizations as they tackle challenging goals. At the organizational level, hope is made up of three parts:

1. Organizational members need to have a shared vision for a hopeful future. That is, they must believe that it is possible to move beyond their current circumstances and achieve more desirable outcomes.
2. Organizational members have to believe that they know how to get to their goals, via methods and practices that they deem appropriate.
3. The organization must embody a shared sense of motivation toward their goals; when times get tough, hopeful organizations believe they have what it takes to weather the storm.

But, while hope partially embodies the idea that a better future is possible, this belief requires a simultaneous recognition that the present is not ideal – or even that it is bleak. When leaders outline a big vision, they have to acknowledge, in part, that failure is also a possibility, no matter strong the feeling of hope runs through the organization.

Because hope is a double-edged sword, we argue that organizations must harness hope wisely and productively to keep their teams looking forward. To explore this question, we conducted research at an organization seeking to heal human trafficking victims from trauma. We studied this group for two years, collecting data through interviews as well as spending extensive time at the organization. (One of us devoted more than 150 hours to observation.)

Through our research, we found that this organization shared a hopeful vision for the future as part of everyday conversation. When times looked bleak, employees turned to the vision and reminded themselves that their efforts could help heal those who had been trafficked. They believed their methods, which included therapeutic, psychological, legal, and social services, were effective. Finally, they kept their motivation alive by providing opportunities for employees to socialize and bond, and leaders regularly emphasized the importance of sticking together when times were tough.

At times, the hope culture brought this organization positive results – it was vibrant and full of life, and even decided to expand its goals beyond their initial scope. We found that emotional contagion, which is the transfer of moods among group members, was a key driver in determining the impact of the hope culture on outcomes. When events suggested that the organization’s promises seemed within reach, hopeful stories spread throughout the team.

For example, some survivors were making steady progress toward their goals, gaining internships or becoming peer mentors in drug and alcohol recovery programs, while also becoming more confident in themselves and the futures they wanted to attain. When positive stories like this were shared, the organization remained steadfast in promoting recovery for survivors and advocating for an end to commercial sexual exploitation on a global scale. Indeed, they even set out to achieve more than they originally planned.

However, we also found that hope cultures can backfire. A hope culture is only positive when making progress toward its promises seems realistic. But when events appear to contradict the hope culture’s claims or throw things off track, there’s a similar emotional contagion — but in a negative direction. In our research, when events occurred that called the hope culture into question, hopeless emotions started to catch on.

For example, when survivors returned to using drugs or alcohol, or disappeared back onto the streets, members discussed their struggles a lot. In turn, these stories sparked negative emotions within the organization. Especially when survivors were following the tenets of the organization’s program, were supportive of other residents in their journeys, and seemed to believe in the positive vision the organization promised — but still failed to recover — the gap between the promise of a hoped-for future, and reality, widened. As a result, despair set in. When negative emotions reigned, the organization became hopeless and grew increasingly more dull and de-energized. And, they began to abandon their goals.

The bottom line: Hope cultures can boost organizations to achieve outcomes they never thought possible — or they can wind up undermining motivation when less desirable events or outcomes occur. So, how might organizations leverage hope in positive way, and avoid the pitfalls?

Because many organizations invoke hope when trying to solve important, but complex, problems, they should know that maintaining hope takes effort. We found that the highs of hope cultures soar very high, but the lows can be difficult to manage. Anticipating such fluctuations may help better prepare organizations for the difficulties they will face along their journeys. When developing a vision for the future that includes ambitious goals, leaders should discuss the realities that go along with goal achievement. It will not be straightforward — doubts will arise and setbacks will happen. Urging employees to view this as a natural part of the process might deter them from feeling shocked or disappointed when things don’t go as planned. Further, it might help employees to push through hopelessness, instead of succumbing to it.

In order to create more stability in hope cultures, organizations might promote a more realistic form of hope. For example, when organizations face challenges or setbacks, they might discuss what’s still possible. In other words, even when one door closes, organizations might ensure that employees don’t lose sight of those that are still open. Similarly, during tough times, organizations might also remind employees of prior time periods in which they were thriving and making positive progress toward achieving their goals. Such narratives might help restore employees’ hopes, by highlighting that failures are often sandwiched between successes, and that better days may indeed be on the horizon, if they continue pushing toward their goals. Overall, if organizations can help employees to embrace both the “highs” and the “lows” of hoping — and drive more realistic narratives about the nature of hope — they might better stay the course in successfully tackling their thorniest problems.

While our research reflects a first step toward understanding the role that hope plays in organizations, we believe that it can be harnessed effectively — and propel organizations toward goal achievement. Yet, the pain of hoping must be recognized and appropriately managed in order for organizations to push through hard times. It is our hope for organizations that, by following this guidance, they might learn to appropriately invoke and manage hope at work. In doing so, they might be more likely to survive — and even thrive — when grappling with large-scale business and societal challenges.