With performance review season about to get under way in many organizations, countless conversations will be focused on leadership competencies. Despite a wide range of universal competencies that drive leadership success, few of these conversations will include a measure of the leader's capacity to build hope. To be sure, competencies like visioning, execution, resource management and the full list of EI related competencies (to name a few) remain critical measures of leadership impact. What's changed however is that today's workforce is overworked and overstressed to a point where hope has been replaced by uncertainty and fear in many organizations.

As a beginning point, it's helpful to consider what hope as a leadership competency involves. At a foundational level, hope is the absence of fear. It is the belief that the future (even tomorrow) offers an improved state of well-being. At another level, hope is ...
 

Global competition, technological advances and the demands of cost-quality-time conscious customers and stakeholders have produced a workplace environment aptly described as "permanent whitewater". Add to this the rapid pace of change and the never ending pursuit of excellence and organizations today face an unparalleled challenge to succeed. While many of these new workplace realities present real obstacles, they also present an unparalleled opportunity for organizations to set themselves apart from the competition.