Hope as a Leadership Skill: Lessons on Goals, Strategy and Employee Engagement

Hope can be a working leadership practice: teams gain confidence when they can see more than one route through a challenge and take steps that show their actions matter. That’s one theme in this edition of ConantLeadership’s Leadership That Works, alongside advice on setting motivating goals, the CEO’s role in strategy, meaningful work and employee engagement.

The newsletter curates leadership resources from around the web, with the aim of sharing actionable advice, workplace perspectives and ideas for personal development. Its editors say that including a viewpoint doesn’t mean endorsing it. Readers can subscribe to the newsletter.

Build hope through options and action

In a Chief Executive article, Nikolas Badminton describes hope as a practical skill leaders can develop. The newsletter reports that 64 percent of respondents in Gallup’s 2025 Global Leadership Report said they need hope from their organization’s leaders.

Badminton recommends exploring multiple pathways. When people believe there’s only one way forward, hope can fade; leaders who can identify alternate routes help teams treat obstacles as conditions to work through rather than final judgments on what’s possible.

He also argues that organizations should make experiments part of how they work. Waiting for certainty can stall progress. Taking a step creates evidence, and that evidence can build confidence and energy by showing people that their choices have an effect. The broader lesson is personal: leaders cultivate hope through their own habits, which can then shape how their teams respond to uncertainty. Read the full piece on building hope.

Give teams a direction they can believe in

Hope needs a destination. A featured ConantLeadership article on choosing goals that motivate a team argues that people need clarity about where they’re going. Without a shared direction, engagement can suffer, with consequences for the organization’s results.

The proposed approach is to pursue the ideal while staying anchored in the real. Leaders can set an ambitious direction while remaining attentive to the conditions, resources and abilities that determine what a team can do. Holding both ideas together can help a goal inspire people without losing its connection to practical work. The article is part of ConantLeadership’s “Golden Anniversary Collection.” Its broader Higher Ground Leadership Success System presents clarity as part of a larger approach to leadership.

Strategy needs shared work and clear ownership

A McKinsey analysis makes the case that strategy is a team effort, but the CEO still has responsibilities that can’t be handed off. Research, foresight, idea development, analysis and decisions can involve people across the organization. The CEO’s job is to stay close enough to the central debates and choices to apply judgment where the company’s direction and resources are at stake.

One risk of too little CEO involvement is fragmented accountability for how a strategy creates value. Another is an unclear value creation thesis: an explanation of how the company expects to earn returns from the resources it commits, given its markets, advantages and view of the future.

Many people may contribute to that thesis, but the CEO remains accountable for its rigor and continued relevance. The role also involves building conviction across the management team. Owning a strategy means more than writing it; leaders need to help the people responsible for carrying it out understand and believe in its logic. The full analysis outlines six strategy roles for CEOs.

Connect meaningful work to people’s strengths

Mark C. Crowley’s Psychology Today piece shifts the question of meaningful work inward. Job titles and duties matter, but so do a person’s values, talents, personality and accumulated experiences. Those parts of a person’s life don’t disappear when they enter the workplace; they influence what work feels worthwhile and where someone can contribute well.

For leaders, that points to the value of self-awareness when making career choices. The aim isn’t to find a flawless job, which may remain out of reach, but to understand oneself well enough to pursue work that makes good use of one’s strengths. Crowley’s article, “Are You Doing the Work You Were Meant to Do?”, explores that idea. ConantLeadership also links the question to its six-step Blueprint process and the belief that a person’s life story informs their leadership story.

Use one-on-ones to find out what employees need

With 20 percent of workers worldwide feeling engaged, Kia Afcari argues in a Greater Good article that managers can take practical steps to improve connection and well-being at work. One is to make one-on-one meetings more intentional by asking employees:

• What are you most proud of in your work lately?
• What idea, perspective or possibility haven’t you had a chance to share?
• What challenge or obstacle can I help you address?

These questions invite employees to talk about progress, offer ideas and raise barriers where a manager may be able to help. Afcari notes that managers may underestimate the effect of time spent with employees, while supportive behavior can make a meaningful difference. Read the full article on engaging employees.

Meet practical needs alongside the search for purpose

Another ConantLeadership article identifies four human needs connected to engagement: Living, Loving, Learning and Leaving a Legacy. Its excerpt focuses on Living. Employees need fair compensation that allows them to meet their responsibilities to family and community. Leaders should also pay attention to workplace conditions; compensation alone can’t make a poor work environment satisfactory.

The same principle applies to remote employees, who need the tools required to do their work well. The point is operational as much as personal: people are more able to contribute when their basic working conditions support the job. The article lays out its four-part framework in “Meet These 4 Human Needs to Engage Employees.”

Leadership lessons from introversion and persistence

In the Founder’s Corner, Doug Conant recommends Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. A self-described introvert, Conant says the book helped him recognize that introverts make up about a third of the world and have strengths to contribute. He recalls not using his full capacity early in his career, and says Cain’s work can help introverts understand their potential at work and in life.

He also sees value for managers who aren’t introverted: leaders work with people who are, and understanding different ways of contributing can help them support their teams. Conant points readers to the book’s insights for leaders and colleagues.

A separate essay draws on Conant’s early experience as a tennis player. Cut from his freshman team in spring 1966, he kept practicing, often alone against neighborhood walls. By the following year, he had become one of the stronger junior players in the Midwest. His first lesson from the experience is to follow a passion and commit time to improving. The essay shares 13 lessons from tennis.

Small acts can shape a career

Conant also recounts arriving at General Mills in 1976 for his first day as a product marketing manager. New to the corporate workplace and unsure where he belonged, he says a kind older colleague helped him find his way. That brief interaction, he recalls, changed the course of his career.

The story appears in an excerpt introducing the Higher Ground Success System, which Conant developed from lessons gathered over decades of running Fortune 500 companies. The system is organized around two pillars, DEPTH and REACH, and is presented in Leader to Leader and a free four-week email course.

The edition also features STEPS, a leadership course for administrative assistants and executive assistants, built around the same six-step BLUEPRINT process used to train senior executives. Details are available on the STEPS course page, with a toolkit for discussing employer sponsorship.

For leaders, the thread across these resources is practical: make the direction clear, keep more than one route open, and give people the support and conditions to contribute. Hope grows when teams can act, learn from what happens and see that their work matters.

September’s Leadership That Works Newsletter covered strategy, balancing kindness with firmness, a leadership skill of the year and ways to de-escalate workplace conflict. The current edition is by Amy Federman, ConantLeadership’s Director of Content and Editor in Chief, and co-author with Doug Conant of The Blueprint.

Header illustration by Bill Phrown on Unsplash.