You will never give someone hope if you do not genuinely believe in them, and you cannot fake it when it comes to having confidence in others. Believing in people is more than just talk–it is about placing your trust in them.

Businessman Harvey MacKay said, “If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.” Leaders initiate hope. Many people have no one around who truly believes in them. They travel through life without anyone to push them on and challenge them to live up to their potential. It is difficult enough for people to believe in themselves when others do believe in them, so imagine how hard it is for someone to believe in themselves when no one believes in them. 

Leaders must be the ones who accept the role as a hope-dealer for others. Believing in someone has to happen on the front end of a relationship, not on the back end. Many leaders will only believe in someone if they have proven themselves worthy of it, but people need leaders to believe in them even before they have earned it. Give others high expectations. When you communicate your belief in someone’s potential, they will do their best to meet that expectation. The best leaders are the ones who give people a great reputation to live up to. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton knew this principle, which led him to say, “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.”

My wife, Erin, and I have two beautiful daughters. When our youngest daughter was little, she would sometimes get a bit of an attitude when asked to do certain chores. Instead of obeying, she would work herself up to the point of getting upset. We would then have to discipline her and let her know that her behavior was unacceptable, but we didn’t stop there. We wanted her to know that having a bad attitude was not true to who she really was. You see, our daughter was, and still is, a sweet and loving girl who truly wants to do good, but she was letting her emotions get the best of her. So, we would remind her that the attitude she was displaying was not like her. We began to give her positive reinforcement by telling her how sweet she really was and that her current attitude did not reflect that. 

What were we doing? We were giving her an expectation to live up to. We could have simply said, “Why are you so angry when you have to do something? All you do is get upset when we ask you to do chores! Stop being an angry kid!” But that would not have given her a good reputation to live up to. It would have given her the wrong expectation. She would have grown up thinking she was an angry person and that could have turned into a perception of herself that she accepted. We made sure we spoke about her positive traits and not her negative ones. The great thing is that, as she has grown older, she has started to live up to the expectation we kept reinforcing in her. This positive expectation was so engrained in her over the years that, now, when she has a slip-up and starts to get upset, we can just look at her, and she will say, “I know, that’s not who I am.”

Leaders see potential in others even when others don’t see potential in themselves. The more a leader can draw out that potential, the further they can take their people. If someone does a great job in their performance, make sure you acknowledge that person’s effort. That acknowledgment lets the person know what you, and the organization, expect and value. If you reward what you want repeated, it will be repeated.

Taken from my book, The Hope Giving Leader: How To Lead Other Through Tough Times, available on Amazon.