Putting Hope to Work
It has been a challenging year for the Jewish people. As of this writing, fourteen months after October 7, Israel still finds itself in a multifront war, with many of its citizens consistently under rocket fire in their own homes and communities, not to mention those bravely and unbelievably continuing to protect us in their active or reserve duty with the IDF.
Fourteen months is a long time. Many have posed concerns about fatigue, frustration and just plain exhaustion as the war toll sets in. How do we go on when hostages remain in the tunnels of Gaza and husbands and fathers remain away from their homes?
We hope.
In a piece for Commentary Magazine (“Hersh Goldberg-Polin and ‘The Hope,’” September 2, 2024, https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/hersh-goldberg-polin-and-the-hope/) immediately following the horrible discovery of the murder of six hostages, Seth Mandel writes:
Hope is in our DNA. For 2,000 years it’s been passed down from generation to generation. We are born and bred to hope. And look—we made it, we fulfilled our longing by reestablishing sovereignty in our homeland. . . . Sometimes the hope is followed by triumph, as it was in 1948. Sometimes the hope is shattered by what follows, as it was this weekend. But the hope itself is never wrong. It’s why we’re still here.
The Jewish people are a people of hope. Our nation was established on it—Avraham and Sarah were left to assume they would never have children of their own, yet they held on to hope. The national anthem of our beloved Jewish state is “Hatikvah”—literally, “the hope.” Avraham and Sarah, against all odds, did have a child, without whom our nation would never have come to be. And after two thousand years of being exiled from our land, against all odds we did build a Jewish state, without which we cannot imagine life today. We pray for the day that we can similarly comment on the current war as we continue to hope, pray and act for it to end.
Hope is a tool we exercise not only in our faith, in our religious lives and in times of stress. We use hope, as well as its close cousin—optimism—in our day-to-day work. As Daniel Goleman points out in his book What Makes a Leader: why emotional intelligence matters (2014): “And of course, optimism and organizational commitment are fundamental to leadership—just try to imagine running a company without them.” Indeed, if you don’t believe in your mission and/or product, in yourself, and in your team, can you truly lead?
There are several ways hope and optimism can be manifested in the workplace.
1. Belief in a Higher Purpose: I’m asked from time to time if I love my job . . . and I do! But I’ve found that when I tell people I do, they assume I love all of it, that it’s just a joy. That resonates with the similarly risky notion that “. . .if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” While that may be true for the elite few, most of us are faced with difficult moments, days, people and situations—and so we need to hold on to something larger than ourselves. This is why when developing a strategic plan, one must outline not only a mission that serves a greater purpose but also a vision that imagines a brighter future. During a visit to the NASA Space Center in 1962, President John F. Kennedy met a janitor who was carrying a broom down the hallway. The president casually asked the janitor what he was doing, and the janitor replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” Believing that your work is tied to something bigger helps you to be hopeful even when you might simply be cleaning up a mess.
2. Belief in Yourself: As an employee on a team, you will have a specific job description outlining tasks and desired outcomes, some of which may be in your current skill set or bandwidth. But not all. With time, success at those tasks has the potential to breed greater responsibility and the opportunity to flex new or underdeveloped work muscles. There is a high likelihood that you will fail at something. How you react in that moment may make all the difference. Do you attempt to learn from it—to “fail forward,” to seek advice, coaching and expertise from others with more experience? Or do you lose faith in yourself, withdraw into a shell and wait for things to pass? The more you believe in yourself, the greater your courage and confidence to try new things, to learn from them and to grow. This can only happen if you have optimism, if you believe that you can reach for more. One of the hardest things to do is to raise your hand and offer to lead a project. A typical reaction might be, “I already have a full-time job!” Recently, a younger colleague of mine saw that there was a need to help run a program. It was beyond her level of experience, but she stepped up and helped to successfully deliver the project. She owned it, learned from it and now leads it.
3. Belief in Others: Perhaps the greatest challenge for some is to believe in their teams, colleagues or bosses. You may have been let down before by a breakdown in communication or execution, an email left unread, a project delayed because someone didn’t do something you could have handled. Perhaps you see opportunity after opportunity for coordination or collaboration that others miss, perhaps even willfully. Unlike other baseball teams, the New York Yankees famously do not put individual names on the back of their jerseys, preferring to let the name on the front of the jersey speak for them as a team, helping them stay focused on the notion that they must rely on each other.
Indeed, if you don’t believe in your mission . . . in yourself, and in your team, can you truly lead?
Trusting your fellow professionals—bosses, peers, direct reports and beyond—is so fundamental and yet often elusive. Cynicism has increased steadily over the past fifty years, ensnaring many of us in an ironic mental trap: when people believe they must fight their way to the top, they are less likely to get there. In “Why Cynics Are Less Likely to Succeed,” (Harvard Business Review, August 2024, https://hbr.org/2024/08/why-cynics-are-less-likely-to-succeed), Jamil Zaki, professor of psychology at Stanford University, makes the case that those leaders who “make trust the default” and are the first to trust are far more successful than their cynical and doubting counterparts. Despite loud, extreme and toxic voices that often dominate public conversations, most people really want to believe in others and in their potential. Optimistic leadership can and does change this negative pull on employee belief and behavior. When managers believe in their employees, they can change how employees feel about themselves, and help them envision success aligned with the company’s mission. Leaders have a powerful opportunity to create conditions in which people can express their desire for a more collaborative, positive culture. Trust, optimism and hope are key tools for leaders in the workplace and beyond.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks brilliantly wrote in To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility ([New York, 2007] 166):
Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the
belief that, together, we can make the world better.
Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It needs no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to hope. The Hebrew Bible is not an optimistic book. It is, however, one of the great literatures of hope.
We are not just people of optimism; we are people of hope. Many people can think optimistically and positively. Not all can dream, strategize, set goals and truly believe in a better future for us and for our people.
We have recently entered the dark winter months and will soon celebrate Chanukah, the second Chanukah we will celebrate amidst war. Rabbi Sacks extends his teaching about hope and optimism with a beautiful Chanukah lesson. There is a well-known discussion in the Gemara about using a Chanukah light to light another. Of course, our practice is to use an extra light, the shamash, to light the others. But what about using one of the actual Chanukah lights to light the others? Rav argues that one may not do so, as we’d be diminishing the light of one candle to supply light to another candle. Shmuel disagrees, and this famous discussion becomes one of only three instances where we follow Shmuel. Why?
Shmuel’s reasoning explains that when you share your light, when you reach out to others, when you extend your help, your knowledge or your faith, not only does your own quantity not diminish, but it actually increases. When I share with you, I’m not left with less—I gain.
Hope embodies the idea that when we actively work together, when we lovingly share with others and courageously give of ourselves, we can truly make the world a better place.
How will you exercise your hope today?
Rabbi Dr. Josh Joseph is executive vice president/chief operating officer of the Orthodox Union.