Hope is a Strategy: Why realistic optimism is essential for effective leadership

There’s a global hope crisis. Here’s how to fix it.

Some people say that hope isn’t a strategy: Ian Pettigrew strongly believes that it is.

Hopelessness keeps people stuck where they are. Hope is a powerful motivator that helps you focus on what you want and do everything in your power to achieve it. It also helps you navigate the inevitable bumps in the road on the journey. Hope is active, and has nothing to do with naive optimism, wishful thinking or toxic positivity.

This book is for leaders who want to build hope in themselves, their teams, and their organizations, so that they can succeed whilst being happy, engaged, and resilient. Full of evidence-based approaches, interwoven with both extraordinary and everyday stories of hope, it explores what hope really is, and the damage caused by getting it wrong.

Hope changes lives: in this book Ian Pettigrew, strengths coach and one of HR’s most influential thinkers, provides a blueprint for leaders to discover it for themselves and to help others find it too.

© 2025 Practical Inspiration Publishing (Ebook): 9781788606639

Release date

Ebook: 8 December 2025