Episode 265 · 8 January 2026 · 50:31
Are We in a Hope Crisis at Work? With Matt Poepsel, PhD
Featuring Matt Poepsel
Are We in a Hope Crisis at Work? With Matt Poepsel, PhD
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Introducing Matt Poepsel and the hope crisis
What is hope and how it differs from optimism
interview#hope#optimism#talent-optimization
New beginnings and the post-achievement crash
Why hope ran out during the pandemic
interview#pandemic#hope#workplace-culture
How to spot a hope crisis in an organisation
Stretch goals vs. impossible promises
interview#stretch-goals#leadership#promises
Installing hope: intentionality, agency, and pathways
interview#hope#intentionality#agency#pathways
Enlightened leadership and the role of human connection in the age of AI
interview#leadership#human-connection#ai
Is hope contagious and practical advice for 2026
A leader Matt remembers and final takeaways
interview#leadership#takeaways#hope
Show notes
Are We in a Hope Crisis at Work? — with Matt Poepsel, PhD
Guest: Dr. Matt Poepsel — Marine veteran, author, and the self-proclaimed Godfather of Talent Optimization at The Predictive Index.
Hope isn't fluffy positivity. It's a measurable psychological skill — and according to Matt Poepsel, most organisations are running on empty.
Matt joins Al and Leanne to make the case that we're facing a "hope crisis" at work, and it's quietly draining performance, motivation, and leadership effectiveness. Drawing on Snyder's Hope Theory, he breaks down the two components that determine whether people stay engaged or slip into autopilot: agency (the belief you can influence outcomes) and pathways (seeing the concrete steps to succeed).
They dig into why years of instability and constant change have eroded hope, how leaders unknowingly remove autonomy, and why AI makes human leadership a competitive advantage. Plus, Matt introduces his concept of Enlightened Leadership — a shift away from command-and-control toward a more selfless, purpose-driven model that balances technology with humanity.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Hope is a skill, not a vibe. Hope is action-oriented — it requires both agency (believing you can influence outcomes) and pathways (seeing the concrete steps to get there). Leaders can build both deliberately.
- Leaders are the hope custodians. You can't just set a big vision and expect people to follow. You have to show the path, create intentionality, and give people a sense that their effort leads somewhere real.
- AI makes human leadership more valuable, not less. As AI automates the admin, the human bits — connection, transformation, feeling — become the competitive advantage. That's where Enlightened Leadership comes in.
More From Matt Poepsel
- Website: mattpoepsel.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mattpoepsel
- Podcast, Lead the People: mattpoepsel.com/podcasts/lead-the-people
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Matt PoepselI had this bottomless pit of achievement as an insecure overachiever and an imposter syndrome sufferer for many, many decades. I knew that that goal wasn't going to bring happiness. And I think that insulated my hope because I always knew there would be something else even once that goal was attained. I go back to my mom. You know, we didn't have it great growing up. We were Midwestern family, you know, middle income at best on a good day. But the hope that she had for me and what she saw as my potential, It was there. It was there. When I set out to join the military service and earn the title of becoming a Marine, that was a time when I was full of hope because I was ready for something new in my life. Or when I signed up for a PhD program and I thought, man, I'm going to really learn at the highest levels. I'm full of hope. It's not as generalized that you wake up and say, I just think something general is going to be positive in my future. That's not hope. That's just optimism, period. The thing that I hate to see is leaders who are hesitant to ask. A lot of their people. The thing is, is that we can challenge people. We don't have to worry about that if it's coming from a mutually intentional place. If we want them to succeed and do well and to grow, and we want to stretch them, we're going to give them gobs of support and safety. You can make big asks of people, whether they're your kids, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a direct report, whether it's a spouse, it doesn't matter. But if you're going to be a jackass, that's not going to work. And so I think that hope can provide that insulator. Right? To be able to say, if I'm tracking hope, if I'm making sure I'm constantly stoking the flames of hope, then it's okay for me to ask for stretch because I'm creating the conditions for someone to succeed in a way bigger than they probably saw for themselves. And those are the leaders we remember.
Al ElliottIf you're listening to this on the day it comes out, you've probably been back at work for about a week, and that new year, new me energy Uh, might be being tested.
Leanne ElliottYeah, there is actually research showing the second week of January is when most people start abandoning their goals. But here's the interesting thing, it's not really about willpower, it's about something psychologists call hope. And before you start rolling your eyes, it's not what you think.
Al ElliottYeah, because our guest today, Dr. Matt Poepsel, makes a really important distinction. Hope isn't just about being generally positive or optimistic, it's much more specific, and honestly, it's a lot more useful than that.
Leanne ElliottMatt is the godfather of talent optimization at the Predictive Index. Yes, that is his actual job title. And he also teaches graduate-level leadership at Boston College. His work is grounded in proper psychological research, specifically Snyder's Hope Theory, which breaks it down into 2 components: agency, your belief that you can affect outcomes, and pathways, your ability to see the steps to get there.
Al ElliottAnd after 5 years of pandemic disruption or economic uncertainty, AI anxiety, which we covered a few weeks ago, Matt argues we're facing something of a hope crisis because I think people are waiting for things to go back to normal and it's just not happening. So let's find out how you can find hope again, even on a dark, cold, wet January day.
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, Brought to you by, of course, the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottAnd my name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd together we help organisations build amazing workplace cultures. We're gonna get right into today's episode after a very quick message from our sponsors.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Matt PoepselMy name is Matt Poepsel. I work for The Predictive Index where I'm the Godfather of Talent Optimization, which is a ridiculously fun title and a ridiculously fun job. So I also teach graduate-level leadership and HR at Boston College, and I just love to share my insights about our world of work, the future of work, leadership, all that good stuff all rolled into one.
Al ElliottYou're right. That is one of the most unique job titles I've ever heard.
Matt PoepselGodfather of Talent Optimization. That's right.
Al ElliottWhat does it do? What do you do there? What does that mean?
Matt PoepselYeah, so a lot of it's working with complex organizations that are struggling to align people strategy with their business strategy. They're struggling with lots of different challenges like that. I also host a webinar series. I do lots of fun stuff over at the Predictive Index.
Al ElliottWe're here to talk about hope. Can you just tell us what exactly do you define as hope?
Matt PoepselYeah, I think about hope as this positive mental state when it comes to some sort of future position we might find ourselves in, right? So you think about hope, it's It's this notion that things that we have as goals for ourselves, there's some sort of future objective out there that we think that we can achieve. That's how I look at hope.
Al ElliottSo is the opposite of hope technically would be hopelessness?
Matt PoepselYeah, it's almost like there's a void, right? There's a vacuum. There's this just almost like where there should be energy, there's just no energy. And I think that that's part of what psychologically we feel. If you've ever been in, you know, sometimes you hear about the dead-end job. There's no hope. There's nothing you could do that's going to make a difference. You're not going to be successful no matter what. Yeah. How do you apply yourself in that situation? How can you bring your positive energy to an environment that's just going to absorb it with giving you back nothing in return? I think that's kind of how I would think about the opposite of hope.
Al ElliottAnd let's just talk about the other 2 words, which might technically be synonyms, positivity and optimism. Is there any difference between hope and those 2?
Matt PoepselYeah, I think there's a huge difference in the sense that hope is more action-oriented, right? That's more of an operational thing versus optimism and positivity. These are more what I would call dispositional. So they're kind of moods, they're mindsets that we have, they're generalized. But if I think about, you know, this is New Year's, so we're talking about people have fitness goals, for example, I might be a generally positive person no matter what, or I might be a generally pessimistic person no matter what. But when it comes to saying like, I wanna get in shape, I wanna lose some weight or whatever it might be, I think all those New Year's resolutions that are so popular, hope is much more specific and action-oriented in that way. So I think they're related for sure. But I look at hope as not something that's just completely conceptual and fluffy. I think it's something that's more operant, if you will, in terms of driving us toward our goals.
Al ElliottPerhaps is there someone, and you might not want to name them, is there someone you know of, or perhaps a point in your life where you were like, yes, I am full of hope and this is exactly how I want to be?
Matt PoepselI think there's tremendous energy in new beginnings, for example. So when I set out to join the military service and earn the title of becoming a Marine, that was a time when I was full of hope because I was ready for something new in my life. Or when I signed up for a PhD program and I thought, man, I'm gonna really learn at the highest levels. I'm full of hope. I, I think that anytime you start something like a new project or something that you're passionate about, maybe if you decide, like, I'm at, at my advanced age, you know, I don't pick up a lot of new hobbies, but let's say I do. I wanna play violin or something. Then all of a sudden you can be hopeful about the thought of being able to replicate some of the music you hear and love. Big challenges require big changes internally. They require big energy. And I think that's why I really look at hope as being so critical.
Al ElliottYeah.
Matt Poepselto being successful when you take on a big endeavor like that. Like if you decide you want to climb a mountain, you know, I have a little bit of mountaineering experience. You don't just get to enjoy that view from the top. That's an earned view. And it takes a lot of energy to do that. So to face your fears, to do the training, to put in the effort to drag yourself up that mountain, you know, that takes a lot of energy. And I think that hope really fuels something that's critically important to me, which is commitment. And I think that where we're committed, that's where that restorative energy comes from that keeps us going in the face of obstacles and And challenges and setbacks. So I think that's why hope is just, it's really kind of an overlooked thing. And I feel like after 5+ years since the pandemic of just endless shifts in the workplace, for example, people have lost hope. They feel like every year for the last several years, it's kind of been like, okay, things are going to go back to the way they were, or things are going to be okay again. It's not happening. And I think people have really had their hope tested. And many are unfortunately succumbing to that sort of void that we talked about a little bit earlier, that lack of energy, that going through the motions. That's what hopelessness looks like.
Al ElliottWe were all quite hopeful at the beginning of the pandemic, and then it just went on and on and on. So what do we do when hope isn't enough?
Matt PoepselYeah, I think sometimes things take over and fill in the gaps that hope, you know, may not fully get us there, like you said. And I think that a return to hope and going back to those conditions and taking our attention away from the obstacles and thinking more about what's possible, the possibilities, and And those sorts of things are things that we can do to renew our hope. And I think it's been understandable. You know, I don't begrudge anyone for going through and feeling what we're feeling now. We've never seen a workforce that's as burned out, that's as stressed out, that has one foot out the door hoping that the job market, you know, gets better so they can make a move, or feeling isolation. I think everybody's like, I really like remote work because I have so much flexibility. I put my kids on the bus. Not realizing that they feel exceptionally detached from human reality and interaction. And I think that this is why, again, I don't begrudge anybody for not feeling the same levels of hope as before because we've been tested. And I think that we don't have a world of work that really honors or celebrates or nurtures hope and certainly commitment in the way that we would like.
Al ElliottWell, let's move on to this world of work idea because I've got a note down here from my very clever wife and co-host, something about Peterson and Bryan. And this is what she's written. Research shows that hope predicts job performance as strongly as intelligence.
Matt PoepselI think that every time you see these workplace studies, they're always super contextual. But I do feel that generally speaking, hope absolutely does predict performance in that way. Intelligence does too, as you pointed out. But I think that hope is important because it fuels things that are really good for organizational work. So when you think about creativity and innovation, or sometimes they refer to organizational citizenship behaviors, team dynamics, psychological safety, collaboration and cooperation, all of these things depend on hope. Because when you're hopeless, if you feel like there's not going to matter anyway, it's just not going to work. This new product launch that we're working on, it's just going to be dead on arrival. You're not going to do those things. You're not going to persist through those inevitable obstacles that work throws at us. So I feel like I'm not surprised, and I am familiar with that research, that hope and the level of hope people feel absolutely can predict performance because that's what it takes to overcome those challenges. And I think hope plays that critical operating role, that very specific goal-oriented role in helping us persevere.
Al ElliottSo just flipping back for a second to what, maybe is it 5, 10 years ago when you built a software platform and sold it? Now, this is, I'd imagine the beginning of that would be hope would be at the toppest level it possibly would be because you're excited about what you're doing.
Matt PoepselYeah, hugely. And I think it was kind of meta in the sense that I had studied hope as part of my doctoral research. I studied goal attainment, hope, and subjective wellbeing, 3 components that came along with basically when we receive good coaching. So do I actually, am I more successful in achieving my goals when I have a coach? Am I feeling more hope? And am I feeling a better just level of general sort of psychological well-being? And in that case, all 3 of those increased in my doctoral work for a group of randomly selected participants that went through the study. And so I was like, how do we make this work at scale in organizations? And so I built an early version of a technology-assisted coaching platform. So yeah, the level of hope to say, I've seen how coaching as a modality, if you will, can help people in their lives and at work. Now we can bring this to the masses, all those kinds of things. Yeah, that gave me a lot of hope to strike out and to try to do something that can be a little scary, stepping out on your own after you've been in an organization for a long time. And as an entrepreneur, those things are inner roadblocks that you're going to have to overcome. And I would say that hope is fuel to help you do that, for sure.
Al ElliottA lot of founders who buy, who basically build and then exit, sell, whatever, they find themselves dropping quite significantly in like, you know, their mental health levels and whatever once they've sold. Did you come across that? And in the context of hope, did you notice anything about yourself when you sold?
Matt PoepselI felt that at different times in my life for sure. And I think that for me personally, what happens is when the goal shifts or is achieved positively or is achieved not positively, you failed to achieve the goal, that's when hope gets tested. And as an example, not even just in the software business, but earlier in my life, I decided to run a marathon. I'm a painfully slow runner, Al, but I just said, I don't know what, I'm doing this thing. And for every week, I was full of hope because I was on a training program. And then it was like, I've never run 6 miles before. I've never run 7 miles before, week after week, and then up to 20 miles. And then I ran the day of, I finished the race. Uh, it was a very slow finish, but I did it. I accomplished it. And immediately I was hit with almost this postpartum kind of situation where the goal was achieved and now I wasn't working toward anything. And that hope that I had been experiencing and the payoff dissipated so fast, much faster than I ran that race, as it turns out. But I found myself like, okay, now what? And it was years later that I picked up Ironman and said, oh, you know, this is gonna This is going to do it. And it fueled hope for years and years to try to train for that big race. And then at that time though, I had become wise enough to realize that no goal attainment was going to complete me, right? I had this bottomless pit of achievement as an insecure overachiever and an imposter syndrome sufferer for many, many decades. I knew that that goal wasn't going to bring happiness. And I think that insulated my hope because I always knew there would be something else even once that goal was attained. And thankfully I was able to attain it. So it's just a quick detour into saying that, yeah, when we achieve something big, even that we've been working for and looking forward to for a long time, when that is gone, maybe you've sold your business, you've completed the marathon, you've earned the title, whatever it is, don't be surprised if you feel this kind of lull, this depression of hope, because now you just don't have that new goal yet. What's that next horizon? Because I think that's part of what hope requires is what is the outcome? What is the goal that we're working toward? Otherwise, hope doesn't really have a target, and then it's not hope anymore. So that's something you can kind of get used to and And want to seek in your life. And when you don't have that, for those founders that sell a big business and are like, well, now I have all kinds of money and free time. What I don't have? Purpose. I don't have a goal. I don't have something I'm working on. And sometimes they throw themselves into something too quickly because they want that feeling because they identify with it as who they are essentially when they're at their best. But if they don't exercise judgment and discernment to pick something that truly is purposeful, they find themselves sort of dissatisfied and frustrated and It can really cause some setbacks.
Al ElliottIf you walk into an organization and you've been called in to go and do some work with them, how would you know whether generally there is hope present in the organization or not?
Matt PoepselYeah, I think that you can almost feel it. You feel the energy level. You feel whether people are going through the motions. It's transactional. It's curt. There's just not a lot of spark there. There are sophisticated, more sophisticated ways we can measure it, but I think it's just a sentiment you get when you're on a team for sure. And another thing is that hope itself requires that we can see that there's steps we can take. There's things we're doing. I mentioned, for example, a training plan. If you're running a marathon, you're like, okay, I'm gonna have a training plan. And the second is that you have this sort of autonomy, this agency to be able to affect that sort of outcome. So when you talk to team members and they're like, I'm just a cog in the machine, like, no, that's, that's not a good sense. And a lot of times what I find is that the bigger the organization, the more mature it is, the more hierarchical and bureaucratic it is. the more hope dissipates because now agency has given way to bureaucracy, to mechanics of the business. It almost overwhelms our individual contribution. You feel like a number. So I think those environments in particular, you really have to insulate hope. But that's kind of what I would look for is even just in conversations, you can tell, like if you say a question like, what are you excited about? And people struggle to really give you a cogent answer to that, that means that they're likely lacking in some sort of hope. That things are going to be better as a result of their efforts. I think those are 2 critical conditions.
Al ElliottAt this point, is it the leader's responsibility to restore hope?
Matt PoepselI think it absolutely is. I think the thing is that you, as a leader, what you find out pretty quickly is that there's a huge difference between being an individual contributor where you got to directly affect the outcome versus being a leader where you don't directly get to do anything other than to create the conditions. You can invite people, you can cultivate, but you can't do the things. That's not what leadership is. So here, what we're saying is we can create the conditions for hope, even though we can't make people hope, right? We can't do that. But in many cases, we don't do that. And then all of a sudden, we are responsible for them not having that hope too. So I think that as a leader, we do have responsibility to, you know, what I say is to paint the picture with everyone in it.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Matt PoepselSo if I'm saying like, we're going to be a big success and we're going to do this, or customers are going to— we're going to win number 1 in this satisfaction survey, whatever it is that I'm hopeful about, do all my people see how they're uniquely contributing to making that possible? Or are they just disconnected? They say, well, I'm only in accounts receivable. What do I have to do with that goal? Like, that's where they don't see that agency portion of hope, for example. Or if I'm the leader and I know what we're working toward, but I don't tell anybody in a way that they actually care about, then they don't really see the path. Like, why are we doing this again? Like, you know, other than just at the superficial level, if they don't feel it deep down in their bones and in their soul, then all of a sudden, then we failed in our leadership responsibility.
Al ElliottI would worry that if I was a leader and I was coming in, right, okay, let's use this example of we're going to win number 1 for our customer, for our NPS, for our team or whatever. If the challenge is too big and the hope is too much of a stretch, I sense that some people might think that a manager's being naive or not thinking through the potential ways that we could achieve this. I'm just wondering about how we balance this realism and the hope so that we don't create a goal that's too stretched.
Matt PoepselYeah, I think that's a really delicate balancing act, isn't it? You have to pick something that's a stretch goal, sometimes we refer to it, or something that's not so comfortable that we're not going to really perform at our best. We're not going to really apply ourselves or even show ourselves what we're capable of. But if it's too much of a stretch and we set ourselves up to fail, that's not good either. So it is really an intuitive act in a way. And I mentioned Ironman earlier, Al. It's unbelievable to me when I first learned of that race, the very first thing I thought in my mind was, I don't, I don't think I can do that. And a part of my brain flipped and said, who said that? We can do anything. And I said, well, let's think about it. You're a slow runner. You can't swim the length of a pool. You don't even own a bike. Like, what are you talking about? You're going to go do an Ironman. But what I remembered was that I have had a long string of multi-year big goals, and I'm really good at being regimented and developing a thorough plan. So while it might've been audacious to set that as a goal, considering my starting point, I knew enough about myself and how I operate that it wasn't— it was going to be very difficult. And it did take 4 years for me to get ready, but it wasn't impossible.
Al ElliottYeah.
Matt PoepselSo to me, that was a great personal example of something that was an uncomfortable stretch, but it wasn't an impossibility where I set myself up for something that just absolutely couldn't be done. If I said, I'm gonna become a Major League Baseball player, like, okay, that's not gonna happen. Like, you just don't, you don't have that in you. But I think that, you know, something that's, that's a team is, it's okay if your team thinks this is more than we're capable of. What they can't think is this is impossible for us and we're being set up to fail. So this is where the leader's confidence, the leader's mannerisms and optimism, their track record, their, the care that they share for taking their people with them really can bridge that gap between what we think we can do and truly what we can do. And that's what the best leaders do. And I think hope plays an essential role in that. I think they give people hope even when the path can't fully be known or seen, if there's confidence that we will figure this out.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Matt PoepselAnd people truly believe that, then they will act as if that's true and they will do that and make that happen. And I think the most successful stories that we get to read about or enjoy or tell our friends about always comes down to when we did something probably more than we thought we could accomplish, but we did it together and we didn't know how it was going to turn out, but we made it work. Like, those are the stories that you want to read about, and those are the projects, the companies that you want to be a part of. So if you're in a safe company that always hits its goals and nobody's ever uncomfortable, well, is that really where you want to be? And if you're in another one that says, we never hit our targets, it's always a disaster, we always come up short. Well, is that where you want to be? Somewhere in that middle is something that we surprised ourselves and we made it work and we produced the outcome for our customers, for, you know, whatever it is that your stakeholders are. I think that's where you want to be.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Matt PoepselIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Matt PoepselI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Matt PoepselDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. As you were describing that, I was thinking about Elon Musk and whatever you think of him and his management style or whatever, I think he's always said we want to go to Mars or something.
Matt PoepselWell, he has a track record. Like you said, regardless of what we might think about his leadership style, he has a track record. If I put together a team and I said, we're going to go to Mars, People would rightly be skeptical, right? But I'll tell you that when you've accomplished those things, and sometimes you see this in sports, you see it in the military, you see it in business world, you see it in nonprofit, somebody comes in and says, I'm gonna turn this thing around. And if they have the track record or if they have the leadership character and capacity, they can do it, right? They can do it with and through other people. So I, I think that, you know, a lot of times when we look at these big, hairy, audacious goals, whether it was our first exploration to the moon in the '60s, right?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Matt PoepselOr whether it's now Now it's Mars. Someday it'll be something more than Mars, I'm sure. It's just a matter of saying that hope is warranted if the leader is prepared to offer the agency, right, that all the team members kind of see their contribution toward it and the pathways, the outcome, the ability to pull it off. And I think it's also fine if we set up multi-year missions that say it's going to take us a long time to figure this out. But at that scale, you're talking about the grandest scale of Mars. And there are other many examples of that, product launches that take years, or who knows what kind of AI race we're in now. There's all kinds of examples where we can set these big, hairy, audacious goals and ask for the level of hope and command the level of hope, but that can only happen through the proper leadership style.
Al ElliottI think some leaders might be going, okay, okay, Matt, I am 100% on board with this. I don't have the track record, but I do want to introduce into my team a BHAG, a big, hairy, audacious goal, but they don't have the track record. What do they need to introduce this so they're not going to get laughed out of the next meeting?
Matt PoepselI think the first is intentionality. Are you choosing that goal because your executives handed it to you and now you just feel compelled for their, you know, for your own sort of glory and purpose to pull that off? That's not a great intention to ask your team to follow you. If it's genuine though, if it's authentic, if you truly believe that it's possible and you're willing to do all the hard work and all the effective leadership technique to be able to help them pursue that goal with you, then I would say ask for that hope and issue that BHAG, but also be transparent about it. Be honest and say, I don't know. I'll be honest with you. I don't know exactly how we're going to do it, but here's how we're going to figure it out. And we're going to be prepared to pivot, or here are the guiding principles that are going to help us be successful. And then start with some of the smaller wins. If you don't chunk down a project to go to the moon, like, you're going to need to have some proof points along the way, right? So if you come in and you have a big, hairy, audacious goal, I would suggest that if you don't have the track record, you just need to over-index on the small wins and the proof points so that you can develop that track record. If you come in, you've already done it 100 times before, and this is just your latest.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Matt PoepselYou'll get a lot more leeway from people, right? They'll be a lot more insulated for whatever vision you're painting for them because they trust you. They've done it before. You've got that track record. So maybe you can say we're part of a 3-year turnaround and I don't need to provide as many milestones upfront. I still think you should, but let's say that you just wouldn't have to obsess over that quite as much as you do if you're an unproven leader. So I'd say the 2 things in there, number one is make it, make sure it's coming from an authentic place that you truly feel it for the right reasons, not for the wrong reasons. And second is just recognize and be honest that you don't have that track record necessarily. You have to be transparent about it, but then just make sure there's a lot of proof points early so that people can see that it's happening, right? We all want to have that feeling, it's happening, right? That's, that's, you're going to have to do that as opposed to just based on your reputation or your charisma alone. So if somebody is listening and they're like, gosh, you know, I've got a big goal in my, in my gut and I just want to give it to the team, I'm a little nervous about it. You're like, okay, great. So are we experiencing agency and pathways? Are we experiencing the hope of saying, I'm the one who can do this, I can put this in front of our team? And the pathway is, well, how am I going to go about doing it? Well, maybe that little exposé there gives you a little bit of confidence to say, okay, I can still ask for it. I just need to be transparent about it. And I just need to make sure that we're going to set up for a bunch of quick wins. So great, there you go. Now you've got a pathway. So yeah, I hope people do feel hope about that. If again, we're challenging the team and The thing that I hate to see is leaders who are hesitant to ask a lot of their people. The thing is, is that we can challenge people. We don't have to worry about that if it's coming from a mutually intentional place. If we want them to succeed and do well and to grow and we want to stretch them, we're going to give them gobs of support and safety. You can make big asks of people, whether they're your kids, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a direct report, whether it's a spouse, it doesn't matter. But if you're going to be a jackass, that's not going to work. You can't do that to people. That's not fair. So I think that a lot of times I see especially early career leaders who tend to be hesitant because they don't want to stretch people because they don't want to burn a relationship. Unfortunately, it does a disservice. And so I think that hope can provide that insulator, right? To be able to say, if I'm tracking hope, if I'm making sure I'm constantly stoking the flames of hope, then it's okay for me to ask for stretch because I'm creating the conditions for someone to succeed in a way bigger than they probably saw for themselves. And those are the leaders we remember.
Al ElliottHow do we measure hope?
Matt PoepselI think number one is you can even talk about it at all. When it comes to measuring it, it could be as informal as, hey everybody, I just want you to go in the chat, you know, how hopeful are you feeling right now? Scale of 1 to 10, if you had that type of team safety. If you've earned that right. If you haven't, you can put it into your engagement surveys. You can put it into your pulse surveys if you have an HR team that's installed those kinds of tools. Add an item like, whenever we encounter obstacles, we always tend to figure it out. Okay, that's pathways. Or, I see my contributions as essential to our collective success. Okay, that's agency.
Leanne ElliottRight.
Matt PoepselLet's find out and let's take a look across the organization of who's rating those items highly and who's not. Maybe those leaders are in need of some education when it comes to how to foster hope. It's like these things are so fast and free, Al. How many things in life are fast and free? Not many. But when it comes to proper leadership, when it comes to engaging our team and helping them feel a sense of hope and see themselves as being essential in what I say, paint the picture with everybody in it.
Al ElliottYeah.
Matt PoepselLike, it doesn't take long and it's not expensive at all. It's totally free. You just have to be willing to do it and you have to think to do it and you have to prioritize it. So I feel like hope, the return on hope therefore is quite high.
Al ElliottI've written down 2 words here, agency and pathways. Is this part of like the system to install hope?
Matt PoepselYeah, as a psychological construct, which is what nerds like myself like to do, is come up and test these things and come up with organizing frameworks. Those are 2 from Snyder specifically. It came up with 2 of these critical elements. And I love agency, which is basically my autonomy, my capability as an actor to take action. I have to see myself in it, obviously from a hopefulness perspective, that's huge. And the second pathway is, can I see a way to get to that, steps I can take to make this beneficial, positive outcome in the future? So again, back to the silly example of me, for example, running a marathon, Knowing that I could do the work, I can put in the miles, I have the self-discipline. Okay, great. And then the pathways of, I had to go get a training plan, just download it off the internet. Fine. But any plan is a better plan than no plan. And then being like, I can see where if I do these things that are written on this spreadsheet, then I'm probably going to be able to run that marathon. Sure. Done. That's a tidy example, but it's essential really for hope. So I like those 2 vectors, those 2 components of hope for sure, agency and pathways.
Al ElliottI've got a note down here, enlightened leadership. Is that your term?
Matt PoepselYeah, that's my term. All right. I tell you how, that's a doozy. It's a doozy. Well, so I mentioned a couple years ago, I think many of us experienced the global pandemic and it helped us in a way because it kind of juggled our priorities, our values. And I'm no different than anyone else. I might be a little different than I scheduled my midlife crisis to take place right during the middle of the global pandemic, which was not too wise. That's how it happened. And so I found myself in this free fall where I'm kind of like, oh my gosh, is the work I'm doing the way I'm doing it, this isn't resonating with me anymore. And I've just landed square on a Buddhist meditation cushion as it turns out. So I started to practice meditation and think about these Eastern philosophical concepts alongside my Western psychology of leadership because I stink at meditation. I can only think about work. And they all kind of got commingled in there. And I came to realize that when I use the term enlightened leadership, it's not Eastern, it's not Western. It's just the reality that the Age of Enlightenment was all about taking on new ideas and throwing off old ones. And so I feel like an enlightened form of leadership is one where we throw off these outdated attitudes and beliefs. It is very surprising for people who don't study leadership for a living that Many of the frameworks and what we characterize as leadership today was developed in the '60s and '70s. It's been a full 60-plus years since some of these things that we teach were really relevant or developed. And so the modern, especially in the West, the modern sort of role of leadership is very me-centric. It's a lot of times has to do with the charismatic leader, the authoritative leader, And guess what? In today's environment, everything has changed. Everything has changed. Generations have changed. Technology has changed. The nature of our collaborative, connected economy, everything has changed. Leadership hasn't. So for me, when I talk about enlightened leadership today, I say, how are we going to move past the outdated attitudes and beliefs that are holding us back? They're preventing success in 3 key areas, what I call performance, people, and purpose. All 3 of those systems are buckling under the pressure of outside forces right now. And I think that this is really a reckoning as we enter this new year and we're thinking about in the era of AI adoption, in the era of increasing complexity, speed, pressure, the generational value shift, people just having experienced so much emotional intensity and burnout. The old ways of leadership are leading us in the wrong direction. So an enlightened form of leadership is much more selfless. It's much more collective in nature. It balances the increasing technology that we have access to with the humanity that continues to differentiate us. And if I could put a really fine point on it, Al, what I'll tell you, leaders are healers of separation. And an enlightened form of leadership is what draws people together and creates alignment that creates the sort of multiplier effect that we need to drive performance and to care for people and also to serve purpose. So to me, the dark ages of leadership couldn't end quickly enough, and unfortunately they won't end quickly enough, to be honest. But I feel like an enlightened form of leadership is ours for the taking.
Al ElliottIf the old style of leadership, like courageous leadership, or the person who stands at the front of the boat and goes, yeah, come on, we can do this, you've got that. And then the enlightened leadership is much more selfless. Where is the driver? If you— I wouldn't know as a manager listening to you how I'm going to be enlightened as a leader, but also still, you know, taking charge, so to speak. Yeah.
Matt PoepselYeah, that's the paradox, right? So leadership isn't about you. It's about the mission. It's about the people around you. But at the same time, it's only about you because you can only control yourself. And it is a paradox, I will admit. But I feel like the term I like to use is we through me. Like, how can you serve the needs and the capabilities of your team to pursue that goal under this banner of hope like we've been talking about? And you're the essential actor. You're the team leader. And if you're not the team leader, you're just a thoughtful team member, guess what? You're still a leader. You can show up every day, you can manage your work, you can lift up your coworkers. I don't care what role you're in or what your title is or what your office or your home office looks like. You're a leader in my book. So then the question becomes, what does we through me look like? How do I make sure that my strengths, my gifts, maybe if I have this, maybe I'm good-natured and I'm humorous and people enjoy working with me, use that. How do you use that? How do you bring that in to help people really recharge as they're pursuing difficult goals. So I do acknowledge that it sounds scary in a way, and it sounds like, well, what's my role in all this? But that's exactly what's happening. You have to think that in the old days, the leader had the information, they made the decisions, and they routed information up and down the organization. And we had layers and layers and layers of middle managers. Well, what's happening now? Well, computers do all that stuff better, at least a lot of it. And so now we're seeing organizations get flat. Real flat. So now all of a sudden it's like, why do I need you to prepare a dashboard and send it to me? I can just have real-time access to information directly from your people. So goodbye, manager. And you're like, whoa, what happened? Well, you weren't doing the human parts. You were doing the mechanical parts. And AI's gonna be a hell of a lot better at that than you. So instead, what I like to look at is think about the separation that takes place when we fall into misalignment, when people fall prone to their competing goals, when they fall into their own self-interest and they're not working as a collective, that's when we dissipate the energy of the organization, and that's when we hurt our ability to achieve our goals. So instead, that's why I say leaders are healers of separation. And our conversation today about hope is one great example of what a leader can do. How do you pull the team together by fostering hope, by making sure everyone can see themselves in the picture, that they see the role that they contribute toward the collective success? That's leadership. That's what it looks like. But if you stand there and you say, well, I'm in charge and we're going to do what I say and I'll make all the decisions, thank you. It's like, you're not even qualified. Everyone's a specialist now on your team. Everyone's got access to AI tools. So I don't care what you know. That's not what differentiates you anymore. How could you move us and keep us together while we're moving? That's what leadership is now. So I feel like for anybody listening that's saying, how do I move to an enlightened leadership perspective? Or what happens if I don't? We see what happens if you don't, you're redundant and you're gone. Instead though, remember that we're going to see escalating technology and that's a good thing, but we also need to see escalating humanity and that's a leadership thing. So to me, it's focus your energies on those things that will always be necessary and are more essential than ever.
Al ElliottSo AI can do probably a lot of managers' work, but But what we're saying there is we focus on the stuff that AI could never do, which is human.
Matt PoepselThe human bits, the transformation, the connection, the feeling. Like, I don't think that I've ever felt hopeful just because of an interaction with AI. That's just a distinctly human sort of emotive and operational experience. So I feel like that's the example of what leadership will preserve to be. We have to remember that we're going to have this phase that we're in, In 2026, where adopting technology and just adding technology is going to produce a short-term gain, but eventually all those gains will dissipate. Everyone will have access to the same relative technical capabilities and investment. It's going to level the playing field. So what's the long-term competitive differentiator? It's the human parts. It's the creativity, the innovation, the agility, all the things that we've talked about that require psychological safety, that requires commitment. That requires hope. That requires leadership. If you expect to be in business for the next 5 to 10 to 20 years, you better get good at the leadership of the human parts, because that's the part that's going to separate the winners from the losers, not who's got which algorithms. Everyone's going to have the same algorithms. Like, that's like trying to compete on electricity. Like, no, it's just like everything is going to essentially be broadly accessible to the entire marketplace. But leadership doesn't work that way. When you have the best leaders, you can get the most energy out of your people. You can have an unfair competitive advantage when it comes to attracting talent and retaining talent and deploying talent, right? Not algorithms, not computer code. But we have to adopt those things too. We need those efficiencies. I'm not a Luddite by any stretch, but I just know enough and have been around long enough to know that the human bit, the leadership bit, is what will separate sort of those who have a competitive advantage versus those who are sort of continuously at risk. If you think back to somebody who had the quote, leaders are dealers of hope, leaders are dealers of hope, that was Napoleon Bonaparte. He understood, he understood that you need to paint this picture of the future if you're going to ask an army to fight for you. And that's a pretty extreme context, obviously. So unless you're a leader who's kind of taken over half the free world, then maybe you have the cred to argue with Napoleon. I wouldn't. But I think that military leaders, sports leaders, anybody in high-stakes environments, when you think about big turnaround situations, when you think about emergency medicine, right, these people who are in high-stakes leadership environments understand the role of hope. They understand the human spirit and will as making the difference. In those very public sort of environments. And so I think that for a leader who says, all this talk about hope is soft, maybe your stakes aren't high enough, or maybe you don't recognize how high stakes you are actually in an environment. And it's easy to feel squishy about it because it's unfamiliar. But if that's the case, that's not leadership, that's something else. That's reductionism. That's mechanical approach. That's going to land you sort of in yesterday's news, right? Versus the companies that are able to attract top talent and feed a sense of purpose and do it in a way that feeds performance. Absolutely. Profitable businesses are non-negotiable. We can't run non-profitable businesses. But I think that at the same time, that's not the sum total of what we're capable of. So I feel like it's limiting. It's self-limiting, actually, to feel that hope is soft. Take a look instead, rip a page from people like Napoleon who understood it at the grandest scale and the highest stakes.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Matt Poepselwhy the human will is essential to large-scale success.
Al ElliottI think we've heard that the phrase fear is contagious. Do you believe hope can also be contagious?
Matt PoepselYeah, I do. I think both are contagious. And again, when I ask my students for their reflections and I talk about things like optimism and hope, that's exactly the term they use. Even without being prompted, they'll say the word contagious. It's contagious. I feel it when my manager, my supervisor, my leader is hopeful, positive, is confident, is sure that we're gonna be successful, it's contagious. They feed off of it. And I think my counsel to leaders is always, everyone is always watching all the time. And it's not 'cause it's literally true, but it's more true than not true. And it's true enough that we should just think that way. All eyes are always on you, and they're looking at your body language, even on Zoom. They're looking at your word choices. They're looking at how you frame problems as learning opportunities and obstacles that are actually going to make us stronger once we figure them out. They're looking at all of that. And that's why I feel that hope is contagious, because it's hard to be around somebody who— you have to be a pretty hardcore skeptic and really be focused on the devil's advocate role, which is a valuable role, by the way. If somebody comes in with hope, it's not that they should bristle at how dare you challenge me, I'm hopeful. It's like, no, they need to challenge you. That's a good thing, right? When you have team members who are skeptics, let's not throw them out and say, oh, they're just negative. No, no, no. As long as it's operationally helping us, as long as it's done in the right way and it's not toxic per se, arguing a counterpoint is actually quite good. When you're on a debate team, you've always got the counterpoint team trying to help you make your argument stronger. But I do think that it is contagious. long-winded way of saying that if we lead by example and if we're authentic in our hope, we're not just giving it lip service, then it absolutely affects and changes. And it's kind of like yawns and smiles. Those are contagious too, because those are kind of core human things. So I think there's a lot of examples of what's contagious in our organizations. We need to feed the right things, knowing how contagious these things are.
Al ElliottLet's just be a little realistic about the beginning of 2026, the— you've already said and alluded to that there's an awful lot of layoffs, there's an awful lot of like bad things going on and stuff that still feels like it's coming down the pipe. If you just can't get there to feeling hopeful, is there a stage before it or is there a pathway so that I can get to hopeful?
Matt PoepselI think a lot of our beliefs take their formation in stories that we tell ourselves. Psychologists refer to it as explanatory style. Some of us have a naturally pessimistic explanatory style, and we tend to see something that's minorly negative, and then we pull on that until we can catastrophize it and say it's going to take over our whole lives. Others have an optimistic story style, explanatory style, and they might find the positive in everything, maybe even to their fault. They may have rose-colored glasses, so to speak. So we need to understand that and have that self-awareness. We have to remember that headlines, for example, are designed to get us to click. And a lot of times we celebrate the negative. If you watch the evening news, if you look at the headlines, a lot of times we are getting a view of the world. Now, people are absolutely losing jobs. People are losing their jobs to AI or having them refactored, at least all kinds of stuff in there. And economic headwinds are a real thing. And jackass management is winning out over humanistic enlightened management in some cases. But I think that those things are also temporary. A lot of times, you know, these things are cyclic in nature. There will be a boom time again. These things always happen. If you're old like me, you've seen several of these. And when it does happen, then people are going to find the freedom to move around a little bit and make choices about their employment and things. And I think that in the short term, if you find yourself that you've lost a job, or if you find yourself that you're anxious about what AI is going to mean for you in 2026, I understand completely. I totally get it. I've certainly felt it myself too. But I think when we explore the facts, the reality, the truth behind it, and you fall back into, well, what am I capable of doing? You probably will show yourself that you're stronger than you think. And there are specific short-term things you can do to improve that situation. And I think being realistic about the situation that, yeah, this sucks. I think you have to admit that this sucks, but at the same time, not to lose that hope that in the long term, You can take actions and you can make things work to your advantage and you can accomplish your goals. Sometimes we have to refactor those goals. That's true too. But I think that that would be my advice as we enter yet another year of uncertainty. Things always change. There's no going backwards. We can only move forward. And I think that when we try to keep things as fixed, And like, oh, I just had my job perfect the way I wanted it. I didn't ask for all this AI stuff. Yeah, that's not how the world works, right? So, but being hopeful that what if something better? What if I could redesign my job in a way that I actually like it more? But that confronts us to face our fears and our comfort that we've historically had. Yeah, that comes with the territory, but that's leadership. That's self-leadership in that case.
Al ElliottI'd like to finish up by asking you whether you've got a particular leader who you remember from either working with them, working for them, someone who stands out perhaps that has the qualities that you think are just, that's what brings hope to a team?
Matt PoepselYeah. I mean, I've been blessed in a way to work for so many effective leaders from my military service, my work in the business world, even in academia. I go back to my mom. We didn't have it great growing up. We were a Midwestern family. Middle income at best on a good day. But the hope that she had for me and what she saw as my potential, it was there. It was there. And so I felt that. And I felt an opportunity, an obligation, a responsibility to kind of test my own limits, so to speak. So I don't think sometimes we could— I could give you a pithy response like, oh, Churchill. Churchill was so great. And he was. And he offered hope to a nation and the world. And those are grand-scale things. Every time you see a natural disaster, a turnaround, these big situations, yeah, you're gonna see those examples. But I think a lot of times I like to look for more relational examples in our own community, sometimes even in our own homes, where there was all the reason in the world to be frustrated and sort of disheartened about what might happen or the future or the economic situation we were in or anything like that, but she wouldn't allow it. And that gave me hope. I think we all have that opportunity to be that person to those around us, to lead by expressing hope, embracing it, by using it, by cultivating it, by not running away from it because it sounds, oh, people aren't going to take me seriously, or they're going to think I'm a fool. No, that's foolish. Understanding and embracing the fact that we're human and that deepest humanity of ours, that is the future of leadership. It's what we need more than ever, especially because of what we're going through.
Al ElliottThat was Dr. Matt Poepsel, and I really hope, pun very much intended, that you're feeling a bit more hopeful than you were 45 minutes ago.
Leanne ElliottWhat I really enjoyed about Matt's approach is that he's not selling toxic positivity. He is acknowledging that things are really difficult right now— layoffs and AI anxiety, the constant uncertainty— and he's basically saying that hope isn't about pretending that that's not happening. It's about believing you can do something about your situation and see a path forward.
Al ElliottIf you wanna find Matt, he's very active on LinkedIn. We'll pop a link in the show notes. Do check because his surname is not spelt the way that I thought it was. His book is called Expand the Circle. It's a 5-step framework for what he calls enlightened leadership. One reviewer compared it to Stephen Covey's 7 Habits. Very high praise indeed. And in fact, go back to episode around about episode 201, I think we had someone from Covey's organization on. So this book is definitely for you if you are a leader and you want to balance performance, people, and purpose, and not just have to feel like they're picking one.
Leanne ElliottYou don't have to. to pick one. You really don't. You should also check out Matt's podcast. It's called Lead the People, which he describes as being for middle managers on a mission. So if you've been promoted a few times, but you don't yet run the place, and you're feeling a bit stuck in the middle, this is the perfect show for you.
Al ElliottYeah, I'm a bit disappointed you didn't go for Poepsel's People, because I think that'd be a greater, a great name. We'll leave all the links in the show notes as always.
Leanne ElliottWe will. And if this episode resonated with you, we would really appreciate it if you'd share it with someone who might need a bit of hope right now. January can be a tough time, and sometimes just knowing that what you're feeling is normal and that there is a way through it is enough. That can make all the difference.
Al ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We'll see you next week.