Reflections (and Research) on Hope

I recently took part in a really great panel discussion which included Dr. Quintana Adolpho (aka “Dr. Q”), who is the Mental Health Clinical Lead at Siksika Health on the Siksika First Nation just east of Calgary.

The panel discussion was about resilience, but Dr. Q brought up an excellent point about hope. She said:

“I’ve worked with many different types of clients from different Nations and different backgrounds. And what I've noticed is that individuals who I would consider resilient also have hope. 

Hope is a concept that’s been studied; there’s science behind it. Hope isn't a wish, like, ‘I wish to have a good day’. Hope is actually a verb. It's action-oriented. And it's something that we can implement in our lives.” 

What Dr. Q said resonated with me because many of the kids involved in Classroom Champions are resilient kids. The kids in just about any community you can name that is rife with challenges are often resilient kids. Despite whatever battles they face, the majority keep on showing up.

But resilience isn’t enough. What I’ve seen in my work is that we can teach kids all we want about resilience and goal setting and perseverance, but if kids don’t have hope that implementing that knowledge today will help them tomorrow, then nothing else matters. 

They need to have hope, we all do. Hope that our actions today can bring about a better tomorrow. Hope that we can achieve a good life for ourselves. Hope that we can achieve our goals. Hope that our dreams are possible. Hope that it’s possible to come through the trials and tribulations of life. 

And yet, I think hope has been misunderstood, or at least underappreciated, because it feels squishy.  How do you measure it? What outcomes does it bring?

Well, as Dr. Q spoke to - hope can be measured. Turns out, The Hope Institute is a thing. And they have identified three different ingredients to hope: 

• First, you have to have a goal, something you want to achieve. 

• Next, you have to have a pathway to achieve that goal — i.e. you have to be able to see a way forward. 

• And finally, you have to have a sense of agency or choice — i.e. you have to be able to choose your own actions in service of that goal. 

In other words, we can help kids (and adults for that matter) cultivate hope by helping them set goals, helping them find pathways to achieving those goals, and nurturing their sense of agency.

After this conversation, a lightbulb went on in a way that hadn’t occurred to me before. Our team has been researching hope for years, drawing upon Gallup data that shows that engagement and hope positively influence student outcomes.

(And because of my preconceived notions, I didn’t absorb the research well enough and simply saw it as something too squishy to really highlight.)

We conduct surveys with students before and after the Classroom Champions program, as well as in control groups to measure hope and goals for the future.

We have drawn upon research for years (download the Impact Report [pg 6] and references for the research here that I’m pulling this from) that hope — ideas, energy, and goals for the future — is one of the most potent predictors of success of our youth. Hope involves a person’s ability to conceptualize the future along with the ability to set clear goals, develop specific ideas, strategies or pathways to reach those goals, and initiate and sustain the energy for using those strategies.

Hope is not significantly related to intelligence or income, but it is linked consistently to attendance in school, credits earned, and academic achievement. Specifically, hopeful middle school students have better grades in core subjects and scores on achievement tests. Hopeful high school students and beginning college students have higher overall grade-point averages. 

Hope is malleable and all students need support from parents, school, and the community to build their hope and goals for the future.

What we find, when you expose kids to incredible people doing incredible things while building hope, is:

I’m not sharing this to brag about Classroom Champions. (Okay, maybe just a little.) I think there’s a takeaway here for all of us:

As leaders, as parents, as mentors, as educators, and as people — we need to be able to foster hope within ourselves, and the others around us. 

AND knowing hope is measurable makes me more hopeful that this is achievable. (See what I did there?)

At a time that seems generally less hopeful, I believe the question “How do you cultivate hope?” will be a quintessential question for all of us. 

In schools, it won’t matter if we can teach kids calculus if they don’t believe that they can do something meaningful in their lives with that knowledge.

In business, it won’t matter if we assemble a team of geniuses, if they don’t believe they can innovate, or improve, or do good things with their work.

At home, it won’t matter if we tell our kids to stay in school if they don’t believe they have a bright future ahead.

And in ourselves, it won’t matter if we have all the resources in the world if we don’t believe we can do something that matters. 

Thank you Dr. Q for bringing this back to the surface for me.

And as I look around our world - I think hope matters now more than ever.

– Steve