High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 720: Creating Workplaces Where People Can Truly Thrive with Jen Fisher, Author and Well-Being Expert

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Today on the High Performance Mindset, I'm talking with someone who is truly changing the way we think about work and wellbeing. Jen Fisher is a global leader in this space — and honestly, she's just one of those people who makes you feel seen and grounded the moment she starts talking. Jen was Deloitte's first-ever Chief Well-Being Officer, which basically means she helped a massive organization rethink what it really means to support people. Her passion comes from her own journey through burnout and cancer, and she's used those experiences to build a career focused on helping leaders create work cultures where people can actually flourish, not just survive. She's the bestselling author of Work Better Together, the host of The WorkWell Podcast, a TEDx speaker, and the founder of The Wellbeing Team. But what I love most is her belief that hope isn't just a feeling… it's a strategy. And she helps leaders put that strategy into action. In this conversation, Jen and I dive into burnout, the future of work, wellbeing intelligence, and what it really takes to create organizations where people feel energized and valued. You're going to walk away feeling inspired — and maybe rethinking a thing or two about how you work and lead. HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE 🔹 Learn more about Jen Fisher and Hope is the Strategy: Workplace Wellbeing Expert | Jen Fisher 🔹 Pre-order Jen Fisher's book:  Amazon.com: Hope Is the Strategy: The Underrated Skill That Transforms Work, Leadership, and Wellbeing: 9781394362974: Fisher, Jen: Books 🔹 Download the 2025 Confidence Crisis Study at https://confidencestudy.com/🔹 Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with Dr. Cindra and/or her team at freementalbreakthroughcall.com 🔹 Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute at https://mentallystronginstitute.com/  Love the show? Rate and review the podcast—and you might hear your name on the next episode!

Today on the high-performance mindset, I'm talking with someone who is truly changing the way we think about work and well-being. Jen Fisher is a global leader in this space, and honestly, she's just one of those people who makes you feel seen and grounded the moment she starts talking. Jen was Deloitte's first ever chief well-being officer, which basically means she helped a massive organization rethink what it really means to support people. Her passion comes from her own journey through burnout and cancer, and she's used those experiences to build a career focused on helping leaders create work cultures where people can actually flourish, not just survive. She's the best-selling author of Work Better Together, the host of the Work Well podcast, a TEDx speaker,

and the founder of the well-being team. But what I love most is her belief that hope isn't, just a feeling, it's a strategy, and she helps leaders put that strategy into action. In this conversation, Jen and I dive into burnout, the future of work, well-being intelligence, and what it really takes to create organizations where people feel energized and valued. You're going to walk away feeling inspired, and maybe rethinking a thing or two about how you work and lead. Before we jump into the interview, I have some exciting, news. Our coaching team is growing at the Mentally Strong Institute, and I'd love you to meet one of them.

I believe everyone should have a coach. I've had my own coach for the last 10 years, and I wouldn't be where I am today without coaching. At the Mentally Strong Institute, we help leaders and athletes achieve their goals quicker, up-level their confidence, and increase their influence. Do you want to get out of your own way and get to your goals quicker, then I invite you to sign up for a free coaching call at free mental breakthrough call.com. We will help you create a breakthrough, a moment of more clarity and understanding. That's free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for a free mental breakthrough call. All right, let's jump into my interview with Jen Fisher. You're going to love this one. Thank you, Jen so much for joining.

finding us on the high performance mindset podcast. I'm just really excited to talk to you about your new book. So I'm so excited today that you're joining us. Your new book is called Hope is the strategy, the underrated skill that transforms work, leadership, and well-being. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm excited for this conversation too. Jen, as people are starting to listen, why would you tell them to keep listening? Like, why do we want to learn about how hope is the strategy? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that many of us, you know, it's hard going right now. We've been through, we've been living through tough and, you know, quote unquote, unprecedented times for an unprecedented amount of time. And, you know, unfortunately, people are struggling. And I am seeing a lot of what I would categorize as hopelessness in the workplace. because people are really feeling like, you know, what they do doesn't matter or that nothing

is ever going to change. We've been through countless numbers of transformations in our workplaces and every transformation kind of promises that things are going to get better and they really don't or maybe they do marginally or for a period of time, but then, you know, but then they get worse again. And so in my book, Hope is the strategy. I talk about all of those things. weave through my own personal experiences of being in corporate America for 20 more than 25 years. And why I think hope truly is a leadership skill set. You know, we've all been taught that hope is not a

strategy. But what I like to say to people and to leaders is that the first thing is, do you want to lead or be a part of a hopeless organization or do you want to lead and be a part of a hopeful organization? You know, like what's your pick? But also, and it, you know, it's, it's, it's, It's a little bit of play on words to say hope is the strategy. But what I'm really trying to get across is if you don't have hope built into your strategy in some way, shape, or form and you're trying to sell a big transformation to your people and you can't get them excited about the future, which is what hope is. You know, seeing a better, seeing a path forward to a better future, then your strategy is going

to fail or at least it will have a really hard time succeeding. And so that's why I truly think it's a leadership skill set and one that is underrated. And it's underrated because we don't understand it. And we certainly aren't taught it. Absolutely. And what I love about your background is we talked about how we know some common people at Deloitte. So that is pretty fine. I do.

Yeah, yeah. So we're giving a shout out to Adam and Jesse for sure and all the other Deloitte people who are listening. But, you know, you were Deloitte's U.S.'s first chief well. being officer. I'm curious just like what have you seen in the corporate world about hope and why is that really important for those people who are listening, who are leaders and who are maybe working in the corporate world right now. Yeah. I mean, so quite frankly, I haven't seen a lot about hope, which is why I wanted to write about it. And, you know, maybe I'll back up and kind of give you the story of where that came from. And so, you know, about 10 years ago,

I experienced pretty significant burnout. And as you know, and probably many of your listeners know, 10 years ago, we weren't talking about burnout in the workplace. We weren't addressing it. We didn't have, you know, learning and development programs, coaching, you know, all the benefits and resources that many organizations offer to their people now. And so I knew I was struggling, but I was working inside of one of the world's largest consulting,

organizations. It's a very high performing organization. And so I processed it as, you know, personal failure. I don't, I don't belong here. I can't make it here. I'm not, quote, unquote, high performing enough. And I think that many people believe and have been told that burnout is a personal failing and, and it's not. And so through my, you know, my own experiences isn't burning out and needing to take a leave of absence to really deal with my mental and physical health. I started, I sought out clinical health, clinical care. And that's when I learned about hope, actually. The therapist that I went to introduced me to C.R. Snyder's work and had me you know, hope exercises, had me, you know, follow the C.R. Snyder's work of, you know, creating

Awesome. You know, identifying the pathways and then really understanding my ability and my agency to change and, you know, to make change and to reach that goal. And that was my path in many ways out of burnout. And ever since then, it was so powerful for me that I had just adopted so many of those practices and kind of those cognitive practices into my own life and into my own leadership style. And so while I maybe, you know, never said like, oh, this is our hope strategy or what I'm doing is communicating hope or what I'm, you know, like, I didn't always like identify that like this is hope or

this is hope in action or this is how you create hope. That for me was kind of the way that I grew and became a leader. And working in the field and being kind of one of the first, if you will, chief well-being officers in the world, you know, you needed to, you needed to understand. hope and I needed to deploy hope quite a bit because, you know, well-being is, you know, I mean, in many ways, although we've made a lot of strides, it's not, you know, it's still kind of, you know, seen in many organizations as a benefit or a program. And it's not appreciated as the, you know, foundation that everything else is built on from a human potential and human performance perspective. But it really is. And I,

as I talk about in the book that, you know, hope and well-being are kind of, you know, I wouldn't call it a vicious cycle, but they, a vicious cycle in a positive way, right? Like, they feed each other, right? Like, you need to be, you need to come from a place of being well to really deploy hope in your life. And then hope also creates feelings of well-being and gives you kind of that motivation to, you know, to keep going. And so they really, in my mind, are very interconnected.

Yeah, well, that's wonderful. I appreciate that you said about CR Schneider's work, just because, like, research-based, right? And that's important to me. And I was thinking about maybe about 15 years ago. I was working on my PhD in performance psychology. And I was working as an academic advisor. And we did all this research about our retention programs and academic advising. And one of the things that we learned about is Snyder's work about hope. And I remember. of course, like the leading scholar on hope, but what, what is, what have you learned from his work that has informed your book and just your approach to hope in the, you know, in leadership and in life? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's a couple of things. I think that, a lot of people, myself included, misunderstand what real hope or realistic hope is, right? we are kind of taught that, you know, it's this, you know, frivolous thing, that it's, you know, wishful thinking, you know, hey, I hope I win the lottery and then, you know, kick better on the couch and, you know, somehow magic.

Wait for it to happen. Yeah, win the lottery. Yeah. And that's not what hope is. And I tell people, like, sometimes hope is really hard, you know, because you often, you know, most of us find hope when we're in a place of struggle or when something bad has happened. That's when people discover hope. And what makes hope hard is that hope does not guarantee success or guarantee a perfect outcome. But hope allows you to see multiple paths forward and to believe in

yourself enough to start to take action. And what I love about the practice of hope and, you know, the cognitive nature of hope if you, if you employ it as C.R. Snyder meant and other, Shane Lopez, other great researchers that have, that have, you know, continued the research is that the greatest thing to me about hope is that, you know, when you create kind of a hope strategy for yourself, you or a hope goal for yourself, you identify these multiple pathways. It's not like, here's the goal and here's how I'm going to get here. It's like, here's the goal and here's three or four ways in which I get, which I can get there. So if I start going down one path and it's blocked or it doesn't work, I don't feel defeated. I'm like, okay, well,

that was interesting. Let me take what I learn and shift to this pathway, right? And like, you know, and like keep going. And I don't. think that most of us have ever been kind of taught that about like setting goals. It's like setting goals and like let's you know let's forge the path. Right. As fast and as hard as we can, you know, and if we hit a brick wall, you know, get something big that we can start to hammer the brick wall away. Well, Hope says like maybe or maybe not, maybe just shift your pathway because you've identified a few more. And so you're never stuck. And I think what's interesting to me and I talk about this in the book is, you know, I am somebody that that lives with anxiety, which is, which is

interesting because I think you'll appreciate from a high performance perspective when I, when I say that. So many people are like, oh, but you're so successful and you seem so happy and you seem so like all of these things. And I'm like, yeah, and I live with anxiety. And one time a really good friend of mine sent to me, you know, just like having hope and like identifying all these pathways and having all these, you know, different ways in which you could move forward, does that make you more anxious? And I thought that that was such an insightful question, because as you know, people that live with anxiety, we like, we like certainty, you know, like, we want to know that something is going to, you know, play out the way that we want it to play out or the way that we think it's going to play out. But it's been really

interesting because instead of making me more anxious to have multiple pathways, it makes me less anxious because I don't get stuck. You know, I don't get stuck in the, oh my God, there's only one way to do this. And if I don't do it this way or if I'm not successful, then, you know, I have failed or something has gone horribly wrong. It just, it's like, okay, that's interesting information. Now I can shift. And so for me, that's been incredibly powerful for me on a personal level, but also as I as I lead others. That's wonderful. Well, I love that. And I love like, you know, that what you just said about hope gives you multiple strategies and you can get on continue. And sometimes people, you know, I at least thought,

this when I was in high school and college and I was a high level athlete and I felt like once I set a goal, I could never shift it or change it. But I think what Apple allows you to do is, you know, continue to find strategies to reach that goal. Yeah. And I know you have like your key, three key components of the hope strategy that you can help organizations see, you know, these kind of measurable improvements in innovation and performance. What are those three key components of the hope strategy. Yeah, I mean, so, well, the components of the hope strategy themselves, I, you know, aren't, aren't necessarily mine. They come directly from CR Sider of, you know, goals, which goals are, well, if it's a good goal, it's always measurable, right? Okay. Okay. So,

you know, so setting measurable goals and then, you know, and then again, understanding those pathways. And then I think what's really important from both the high performance and a, in a, in an innovation perspective because we talk so much about innovation is this idea of agency, which I feel like we kind of throw out there, but we don't really necessarily explain like, what do we mean by agency or how do we as leaders actually give people the gift of agency? Like how do we help them understand that they themselves don't have to, you know, wait for permission or wait for some, you know, panacea moment or wait for, you know, these 10 things to be true before I can actually take action. So it's very, you know, to me it's kind of very empowering.

And, you know, to help people understand that, look, you might not be able to solve the entire problem yourself or you may never reach the goal completely alone. None of us ever do. but the role that you play within what we're trying to achieve as an organization, as a team is important, and you have the ability to affect change in what you do and how you do it. And that also is very measurable. And I think from a organizational and innovation perspective, I also think the great thing about hope is that like we were talking about with the pathways, it gives permission or it makes failure okay, right?

Like, oh, we went down this path and it didn't work. But we have these other pathways that we can go down. And so we talk in organizations a lot about like, oh, how do we make failure okay? Because everybody is so, especially high performers, are so afraid of failure. But then you hear all these like great leaders and great innovators and people that have like, you know, created, you know, whatever it is that they've created that changed the world. And what do they talk about? They tell you how many times they fail before they succeed.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, and, and those failures didn't stop them. They were just kind of like, oh, okay, I'm going to shift to doing it this way or oh, and to me, that's how I, that's really how I define hope and what I believe hope to actually be. but that is certainly not what we're taught hope is. And we aren't taught that skill set as leaders. We're just kind of expected as leaders to like, you know, know how to deal with failure,

know how to motivate our teams, know how to inspire our teams. And some people, yes, are they naturally really good at it? They are. But most of us aren't, you know. And we either learn through, you know, through the fire because, you know, something happened to us where we had to learn it. But I just think, you know, in the modern world that we're living with, in so much uncertainty, so much stress and pressure, you know, so much coming at us and, you know, constant transformation, societally and within our organizations, you know, because a lot of times people are like, well, what is the role of an organization? Because an organization can't control some of the societal or cultural pressures. And they absolutely can't. And that's not. not, you know, what I think any of us are asking organizations to do. But what organizations can do

is, you know, create a space where, you know, people can truly grow and learn and feel like, you know, their leaders and their teams have their back, you know, as much as possible. And, and that they can, you know, try and innovate. And, you know, you've read the book. So there's a, there's a chapter in the book where I talk about language and how important language is from a leadership perspective because the things that we say, you know, our actions do matter 100%. But the things that we say also build hope or kill hope, you know, and so when people hear things like, that's not the way we do that here or we tried that before and it didn't work. Those are, you know, and those are words that I've said out of my mouth and I think as managers were taught that that that's responsible. Like, oh, let me tell

them. Let me, let me make sure that I tell them that's not the way we do that. at here. Well, that's killing hope. Like, you're telling somebody, don't innovate, don't try, just do it the way we've always done it. Because that's what feels responsible and that's what feels safe. But it's actually, it's not, it's actually not great. Like, it kills hope. And you know what's interesting is I think those statements also kill confidence. And, you know, somebody who has some book coming up on confidence. Yeah. I completely agree with that. And I love the way you just defined hope is like picking yourself up, pack up after you fail. And I think about all the research about psychological safety.

And, you know, you probably read that Google Aristotle study that showed like the highest performing team at Google actually had them most psychological safety. Yeah. Even though they failed. Right. And so I love how you're connecting hope to failure picking yourself back up. Hi, this is Cinder Campoff. And thanks for listening to the high performance mindset.

Did you know that the idea? we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing. If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker. Visit free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. I also love, for those people who are just listening, Jen has this cute. little hat. This is a head healer. I was like, okay, I have to ask you about that. So you mentioned,

you know, that leaders can become hope dealers. What do you think that looks like day to day? And how do you think someone could develop the skill, even if they're like really naturally pessimistic? Because like there's, you know, some people are listening there like, I'm just, you know, I'm just generally not very optimistic. Yeah. So, so hope dealer, interestingly, is, most often the statement of leaders should be dealers and hope or leaders are dealers and hope

most often is attributed which is kind of funny to Napoleon okay perhaps in his earlier years of leadership not in his later years of leadership

but for me what being a hope dealer means is you know the ability to see possibility where other see you know see roadblocks you know where others see barriers um and so i do think that anyone can and should be a hope dealer whether you're a leader or not um and whether or not you tend to kind

fall on you know the pessimistic or even like you know realist you know some people will be like well i'm a realist and i'm like well that's great because like actually hope is grounded in realism like realistic like real hope that's not false hope requires that you acknowledge things exactly as they are like that you acknowledge the truth of things and so I think for leaders it's things like you know and I think the thing about leadership too is that some of these old school like management styles that tell you like leaders should be inflappable we should never share if we're, you know, worried or anxious or don't think things that are, you know, aren't going to work. And I just, you know, that people are smart, you know, and they suss that out these days.

And people want to work for humans. They don't want to work for somebody that is inflappable. They want to know, look, and I'm not saying, you know, that like, you know, this is where kind of authenticity has kind of gotten a bad rap. And authenticity, like, never meant, like, you know, showing up at your team meeting and, like, throwing up all of your, you know, darkest deepest, deepest secrets. Like, that's not what authenticity is. But I think, you know, to me, strong leadership is, you know, is the ability to, to show up and say, hey, I screwed that up.

Or, hey, I didn't quite, you know, this isn't, this isn't what I was expecting. But I didn't quite explain myself as well as I should have. or, hey, you know, I know we're going through layoffs and times are uncertain and, you know, none of us really know exactly what's going to happen, but I believe in our ability to continue to do work and I believe in our ability to move forward together. You know, so it's acknowledging reality. It's perhaps bringing forward some of that pessimism and saying like, oh, here we go again. This is another transformation.

We don't know how it's going to play out. But what we can focus on is a team is X, Y, and Z, right? And so that is creating hope for your team is, you know, recognizing the pessimistic side, recognizing the hard stuff, recognizing and calling it out truthfully. Like people appreciate hard truth much more than they appreciate bullshit and way more than they appreciate uncertainty. Like I- that's true. Tell me the hard stuff.

Because then I can be like, wow, this really sucks. But I know what the reality is. now I can make a plan to move forward. If you're creating ambiguity and uncertainty and things aren't clear, like that's the worst place for people. Like, that's the worst place for humans to be. Our ability to sit with uncertainty is like abysmal. We just can't do it because, as you know,

I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Our minds fill in the blanks. And when our minds fill in the blanks, at least for someone like me, it's like catastrophic. I go all the way from everything's fine to like, we're all dead tomorrow. And that's why we all need hope. That's why we all need hope, yes. Because you're right, our brain does fill in the blanks and it usually goes to like the worst thing instead of the best thing.

And I'm curious about, you know, when you think about spotting more of these hope depleting patterns in the workplace before it suffers, I'm not. Honestly, Jen, I'm thinking about the workplace, but I'm thinking about sports teams. I'm getting about, I'm just thinking about this principal I know who has this goal of being a hope dealer, even in school settings, right? I could imagine your recommendations are going to be the same. But what are the patterns we might be able to notice when we're depleting hope? It's in a building hope. Yeah.

I mean, I think that it's, you know, people are in a, you know, they come from a place of being very protective. They, you know, they stop sharing ideas. where they want shared ideas or they don't share ideas at all they they hoard information they don't collaborate with one another you know in team meetings when you as the leader are you know putting ideas forward you know there is there is a lot of kind of silence and just nodding heads and kind of like hey okay tell me what to do and i'll go do it um so people really aren't innovating they're not, you know, putting any extra energy into what the project is or developing relationships

with their teammates. It's just very, I guess the best word for it is, is transactional. You know, people are, you know, people are very, they come from, they're, they're very closed off. And yeah, and you can, you can sense it. You can feel it, especially if this is new for your team, right? Where it's a, where it's a team where kind of behavior has been. changing over time and you're kind of like, oh, something feels off, but you weren't really sure exactly what it is. It's probably that people are, you know, people are losing hope a little bit, you know, especially if you or your organization or your team has been through some tough times, you're seeing, you know, layoffs or in high-performing sports, maybe you're having a losing

season in, you know, in schools. Wow, there's just a lot going on in school. I know. It can be a whole podcast discussion. Hulk in schools Yeah Yeah Yeah so you know Things like that That people just

You know they don't seem invested right They're no they're just kind of showing up And going through the motions Is really what I would What I would start looking out for You know And it has I wouldn't say like I would say It's got to be a pattern right

Like in what meeting if people are quiet Don't automatically Right assume that everybody's hopeless right People could just be having a bad day or they, you know, somebody didn't sleep well last night. But if you see it as kind of a pattern over time that continues to progress, I think that's really important to pay attention to. So when you think about the opposite and what leaders should do then to really create this workplace of hope and the culture of hope, what would you recommend people do instead? Yeah. So look, I think that, you know, hope and transformation, you know, when we think about, like, the most inspiring leaders or the most hopeful leaders or the biggest transformations that happened in our lifetime, very few of, like, if you dig into kind of the history of them, if you will, very few of them, like, happened overnight.

It might seem like it happened overnight because you were paying attention or because you just don't know the history. But most of like most really positive transformation, hopeful transformations happened one step at a time, happened by identifying one barrier at a time, overcoming that barrier and moving on to the next barrier. And so, you know, what I recommend for people, you know, leaders that might be sensing hopelessness in themselves. And I do think that as a leader, if you're trying to create, you know, a culture of hope on your team, it does start with yourself. And so in my book, I have an entire chapter that, you know, has all of these like hope building, you know, hope assessment, hope audit exercises. So you can first start to understand, like, where you are from a hope perspective and setting your own goals. and then they're actually team-based exercises that you can do as well.

But I do believe that it's kind of one small step at a time because as you take one small step at a time and that step succeeds, then that builds hope. You know, to your point, it also builds confidence. It builds a lot of things. These things are all interconnected, right? And the same thing with your team, but also giving them, you know, the agency to make change on their own.

Like I always tell leaders, look, ask your, if there's a problem, ask your people for the solution because they're the ones doing the work day in, day out, right? Like they can tell you, they can tell you all the problems and they can also tell you 45 ways that they would do it differently. Because they thought about it. Because they thought about it because they're the ones that have to like, you know, suffer through it day and day out of it not working, right? And so give them a certain amount of power and control, give them guardrails to make changes. And I do a lot of kind of, you know, I have a lot of case studies in the book where I talk about different leaders that identified these different things and then gave the problem to their teams to solve. You know, I think oftentimes, again, as leaders, we believe that we're supposed to solve all the problems. And then we try to solve them and we solve it wrong.

And that, you know, that's what creates cynicism and hopelessness and leaders, right? instead of leaning on our teams and saying like, hey, how can we co-create? Like, how can we collectively solve this problem? Because we know that hope grows in community. And if we can do this together, it creates motivation and it creates confidence. And so whatever the problem is, I always tell leaders, like, go to your team and get, let them, you know, yes, you're going to have to lean in as the leader. But as much as you can give them the freedom and the capacity to solve the. problem with your permission and your backing, like you're going to get a way better answer,

a way better solution to that problem if you tried to fix it on your own. And what comes from that is higher levels of engagement, higher levels of performance, all the things that we want to see. Absolutely. And what's your thoughts on like when leaders do this overtime? What have you seen? Maybe there's a case study you can share with us or, you know, what you've seen in terms of when leaders do this overtime. How does it then, you know, create, called the culture of a hope culture or how does it create more of a systematic change with an organization that lead to higher performance? Yeah. Well, I mean, look, what we know from an organizational perspective is that, you know, spoken and written norms are important, but what's

even more important or what drives behavior is the unspoken norms. Yeah. Yeah. You know, So true. You know, so there's often an organizational life kind of a disconnect between what we say we care about, what we say we value, what we say is important, and then ultimately what we reward. And that erodes trust, which is incredibly important. And so I think when you get things like, you know, hope and trust and alignment and you build this over time into. your culture where people where it creates psychological safety right where people feel comfortable taking ownership they feel comfortable taking risks they feel comfortable sharing new and different and you know potentially you know innovative ideas that have never been shared before that they

kept to themselves for for fear of you know being judged um you do you do see you start i mean that that becomes organizational life right like those becomes the behaviors that people, if the leaders are are leading with those behaviors, then everybody else tends to follow. Because it, you know, I mean, I know I said that our words matter and they do. Our words and our actions matter. And our words and our actions have to have to line up. And so we do have to communicate in hopeful ways.

But we also have to behave in ways that are aligned with what we say, you know, we value. And so if we start behavior. in ways that build hope. Honestly, you know, we talk about how negative, you know, emotions and behaviors are contagious. I actually think that the positive emotions and behaviors nowadays, I sound like an old person nowadays, like in today's workplace,

because so many people are struggling, I think they're more contagious. Like if you're a leader that leads, with hope, people want to work for you. They want to spend time around you. They want to know what's possible. They want to feel good about the work they're doing and how they're doing it. And when they feel that way, they wake up in the morning and they, you know, if they like the people that they work with and they like the work that they're working on and they see the difference that they make and they feel that they matter and that they're valued.

Wow. Like that's almost unmet. I mean, it's totally measurable. but it's also almost unmeasurable because it is so damn valuable. Isn't that so true? Like I think about leaders that I want to work with and they're ones that have the positive energy that can pick themselves back up that, you know, sure,

we've experienced an obstacle, but we're going to find a way and we're going to keep going. And, you know, it's like we're not going to let anything stand in our way and we're going to keep trying and not let failure get the best of us. Yeah. I think also what's really important that I get a lot of questions on you know because hope has a bad rap like many like many things that are viewed as soft that are actually not soft at all is you know is this idea of like oh well i if i do this or are people going to

like see me as this soft leader no actually like you're going to become more attractive as a leader like you're going to be the person that people actually want to work for and and so what do i mean by that like you know being a hopeful leader does not mean being polyana like you know unicorns and rainbows at all that's you know like hope is actually hard it's really hard to lead through the skill of hope or through the lens of hope because you know it's it's i kind of liken it to maybe kindness right we think like oftentimes a lot of people think that like kindness means being nice all the time well that's not what kindness means you know like being kind often means especially in a workplace

context, having the really hard conversations about somebody's performance because you care about them and you care about their future and you care about their potential. And so you deliver the difficult conversations, but you deliver it in a way that is hopeful and a way that is empowering empowering. And so, you know, this has happened to me. The most empowering, hopeful leader I know had one of the hardest conversations I've ever had in my career with someone. And of course, the first I was like bruised and hurt because we all have some sort of ego. But, you know, 24 hours later and a good sleep later, I woke up and I felt like somebody cared about me and I felt like somebody had my back enough to tell me like, hey, you need to cut it out and you need to do things this way and let's, you know, like let's come up with a different plan for you. To me, that is the epitome of what a hopeful leader is. I love it. I love it. Well, I kind of go back to Jen when you talked about, how you got to learn more about hope and it was like your own burnout and you're yeah you're moving towards therapy and then what your therapist suggested and I love you know just that story of

you know how you've used it how have you learned about burnout and that it's not necessarily exhaustion but it were like like this hopelessness that you just suggested how do you think we recognize the difference and respond because I think that there's periods of burnout that lots of people can experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And so, you know, the statement that, you know, that I make in the book that, you know, that, you know, when when we're measuring burnout, I think oftentimes what we're measuring is the loss of hope or hopelessness. And so the reason I went down that and what I think is so important, and I think that this will resonate with you, is that, you know, unfortunately in the, the well-being space, we have a word and we start to misuse that word right and so burnout is very real and so this is not meant to say that burnout doesn't exist or that burnout's not important I think burnout is incredibly serious and I do think that we're in an epidemic of burnout I think it is everywhere and that lots

of people are experiencing it but I think that we need to parse certain things apart like you know exhaustion for the weekend and, you know, feeling really tired for the weekend, but, you know, taking a week off or catching up on our rest and recovery over the weekend and then feeling better on Monday, that's not burnout. But a lot of people are walking around like, oh, man, I'm so burned out. Well, no, you're not. You're just tired. Or maybe you're feeling overwhelmed.

And so I do think that we need to get kind of more clear with our language and what these things actually are because in many ways I think we're doing a disservice to the people that are actually truly burned out because in my experience I have found that we've become desensitized in our organizations to burnout because we're using it like peanut butter and people are kind of tired of hearing about it and I think that that's a huge risk and so and I don't think that everyone is burnt out because I think that there's still a lot of of like when I talk to people, there's still a lot of energy behind wanting to change work and wanting to change the workplace. And I can tell you from the experience of burnout, you don't

have any energy. You don't, you don't care about changing anything. Like, there is no motivation. There is no, like, there's nothing. You know, like you are, you are empty, right? And so when I come across somebody or I'm coaching somebody and they're like, I'm feeling really burnt out, I'm like, you know, let's peel that, like let's peel that onion. Like, are you really feeling burnt out? Are you feeling depleted? Are you feeling something? Are you feeling hopeless? Like, are you just feeling like what you do doesn't matter? That said, sitting in hopelessness or staying in hopelessness too long can 100% lead to burnout. Yeah. And so they are connected, but I think it's really important to kind of call things what they are and understand what you're experiencing,

understand what the people that work for you or the people around you are experiencing. Because we might call it burnout and it might not it might be that but it might not be that and I think the way that we solve those things can be are very different right like resting over the weekend or take in a really nice vacation if you're burnt out in many days it's actually going to make you feel more burnt out yeah and Jen I'm thinking about the actual clinical definition of burnout and it's three things it's like physical exhaustion yeah exhaustion mental exhaustion and then the third one is like devaluation right So if you're an athlete, it's like devaluation of your sport.

You don't really, you know, it doesn't have the same role I had before or devaluation of work, right? And again, that's maybe one way to differentiate hopelessness from burnout. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think that makes a lot of sense. Well, how do you think, Jen, that coaches, therapists, you know, there's a lot of coaches and therapists or, you know, practitioners who are listening, what advice would you give them in terms of like using your content from the podcast?

or the interview, how do you think that could help the people that they coach or work with? Yeah, I mean, like I said at the beginning, the way that I learned about hope was actually through my therapist and through the practice of, you know, C.R. Snyder's work, right? Doing the goals and the pathways and the agency with my therapist. And I don't know. I mean, I suspect that a lot of clinicians, and practitioners have their own version of that. And so, and things that they do in practice and coaches and things that they do in practice with other people.

Because I think that, you know, there's, you know, there's a, there's a lot of these things that kind of fall under the positive psychology or their performance psychology umbrella, if you will, are very connected. So like I'll talk about hope and somebody will be like, oh, that sounds like confidence. Oh, that sounds like managing through uncertainty. Oh, that. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's ultimately it's good leadership, right? That's a great answer.

That's right of what it boils down to. It's like good leadership practices. But for me, you know, like I lay out a bunch of exercises in the book if they're helpful for people to use and their practices and their coaching with their people. It was really helpful to me. I do think people are starving for hope right now. And I think that it is a time where we can we can all become hope dealers and kind of bring hope to the forefront as something that you may be rooted in similar practices or old practices, but for a lot of people, the education around hope feels fresh and new and very, very timely. So I don't know if that directly answers your question, but I hope that it does help others.

Well, what I did appreciate about your book, I mean, it's really practical and I love just like how easy it was to read. And also, I love the section of what you said about just some strategies and tools that someone could use to learn more about their leadership and, you know, their hopefulness, but also, you know, things that a therapist or a coach or a coach or a leader could use with their team. principle like you were saying before yeah and i mean that that's the thing that's the thing would i tell people about hope hope is you're like it's universal like it's we all should you know like yes leaders i talk about it from a leadership perspective but the great thing about hope is that anyone can do it right like it's available to anyone and that's one of the things that i love about it like you don't have to have special training you don't have to have a title you don't have to like you know like you just have to learn about it and start doing it

I love it. So where can people find your book? Hope is the strategy, the underrated skill that transforms work leadership and well-being published by Wiley. So where can people find this, Jen? People can find it anywhere where they buy books, you know, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. If you like to go more independent, bookshop.org is a great little independent organization as well. But kind of all the major booksellers, you should be able to pre-order it. It comes out January. 27th, 2026. I can't believe it's the end of 2025 already. But yeah, January 27th, 2026. And if anybody wants to connect with me, the best way is to find me on on LinkedIn under the name Jen Fisher. Okay. I love it. Jen, what's the final advice you'd give people who are listening and want to become even more hopeful? Well, that one's easy. Make hope your strategy. And if it's not your, I'm not suggesting that it's your only strategy, but whatever other strategies you have. Also make sure you have a hope strategy. I love it. Thank you so much,

Jen. What a wonderful conversation. And I'm hopeful it made everyone think about the ways they are working through adversity and setbacks and how they can use hope to be an even stronger leader or parent or coach or whatever your role might be. So Jen, thank you so much for your knowledge and your insight today. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe, and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Cyndra.com. See you next week.