Hopeless - The 5 Hope Killers

The topic of Hope continues to dance around in my brain. I see its application everywhere I look. As I have been paying attention to life and taking notes I have come across what I call “The 5 Hope Killers”. Take a peek:



Insecure Killer Leadership
Now I’m not talking about the work killer in the sense of “Killer wave dude! When we’re done let’s go to Sharkeez and get some killer fish taco’s!” I am using it in the context of people who kill other peoples’ hope. Seriously…it’s not a cool thing. Killer Leaders have no vision or anything that would go with it like milestones, strategy, etc. They don’t try to connect with their people because they see no need for it. When it comes to timely, informative communication and encouragement Killer Leaders feel it’s a waste of time. These people don’t think it’s their job to equip people – that’s HR’s role. Finally, making the tough decisions needed to grow provides them too much discomfort and they’d rather live with the dysfunction. John Maxwell was right when he said, “Everything rises and falls with leadership.” If you work for one of these priceless gems, hope is a vapor floating around in the atmosphere. Good luck ever finding it. Sorry.

Intense Burnout and Fatigue 

When there is little or no hope you get tired…tired of the grind, tired of the people, tired of the bad jokes, tired of the bad numbers, tired of being short-staffed, and tired of the long hours. One of the best things you can do is eat right and stay fit. Your physical fitness plays a major role in your outlook and energy level. Feeling fit will allow you to defend against the onslaught of hopelessness.

 

Invisible Improvement

Have you ever felt like you lose more than you win? If you could just catch a break things could turnaround. It is in those times that little victories become monumental. When hope is getting crushed there are things that can plug the leak and begin to turn things in the right direction. The problem is that most leaders fail to celebrate those small wins and they remain invisible to the team and those little nuggets of hope are lost forever.

 

Individual Results Overshadow Team Success

I asked someone a question the other day, “If you could have anything come out of adding a new person to your work group what would you pick?” Without hesitation she said,

 

“That the person would care more about the team’s results than their own and that they would view the group’s collective work as their own.” Wow! What a powerful statement! You see she could have talked about less of a workload, or some financial benefit, but instead she sees success defined in a selfless team who cares about each other first and foremost. When people care more about themselves a loud sucking sound can be heard miles away removing hope from the work environment and replacing it with anger, frustration, resentment, and politics. Pat Lencioni cited this idea in The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team when he put it as the last part of his dysfunctional pyramid.

 

Isolation

When I am part of a team that’s losing hope, one of the worst things that can happen is to begin to feel like both you and your team are the only ones who can’t get it together (cue Barry White – cuz he can get it together for sure!). Other business units, teams, churches, and companies are finding success but as hard as you work nothing changes. This feeling of isolation slowly extracts hope from the environment and replaces it with a debilitating attitude that can result in losing your people completely. “Poor Me” and “Poor Us” dominates the conversations at team meetings and performance reviews. The longer these feelings of isolated failure and decline go on the more hope seeps out of the team.

 

Take a moment and see where you and your team stand. Don’t worry though, my next entry will be the positive side of the equation addressing how to build hope. You’ll need this in order to right the ship and start heading in the right direction.