The Gallup Global Leadership Report: What Followers Want and Why Hope Matters Most
What the UN's newest international day means for purpose-led founders and leaders - and why hope is the most important thing you can offer the people who follow you.
If someone asked you what people need most from their leaders, you'd probably say trust. Or stability. Or clear communication. Perhaps vision, or empathy, or the ability to make decisions under pressure.
You probably wouldn't say hope.
And yet, when Gallup asked this question across 52 countries - accounting for 76% of the world's adult population and 86% of global GDP - hope was the answer that dominated everything else.
The Four Needs of Followers
The Gallup Global Leadership Report, published in February 2025 and launched at the World Governments Summit, is built on a beautifully simple methodology. Gallup asked two questions: who is the leader with the most positive influence on your daily life? And what three words best describe what this person contributes to your life?
The responses clustered into four themes: hope, trust, compassion, and stability. But the distribution wasn't even. It wasn't close.
Hope accounted for 56% of all attributes mentioned. Trust came second at 33%. Compassion and stability together accounted for just 11%.
For organisational leaders specifically - the bosses, managers, and founders people work for - hope rose to 64%.
The attributes that make up hope in Gallup's framework are telling: inspiration, vision, and personal integrity. Growth, learning, development, and achievement. Financial growth, support, and independence. These are the qualities that give people something better to look forward to - the sense that their efforts are leading somewhere meaningful.
Why This Matters More Than You'd Think
The report doesn't just identify what followers need. It shows what happens when those needs are met - and when they're not.
Among people whose leaders do not provide hope, 33% are thriving and 9% are suffering. Once hope is present, thriving rises to 38% and suffering falls to 6%. When leaders meet multiple needs - hope combined with trust, compassion, or stability - thriving rises further to 43% and suffering drops to just 4%.
Earlier Gallup research put it even more starkly: 69% of followers who strongly agreed that their leaders made them feel enthusiastic about the future were engaged at work. Among those who disagreed, just 1% were engaged.
One per cent
That's the difference hope makes. When it's present, people show up. When it's absent, they disengage - however capable the leader, however sound the strategy, however strong the organisation.
What Hope Looks Like in Leadership
The report is clear that hope in leadership isn't about optimism or positivity. It's about giving people a future they can believe in and a sense that their efforts will get them there.
This connects directly to the work of the psychologist C. R. Snyder, whose Hope Theory defines hope as the combination of goals (a clear vision), pathways (visible routes forward), and agency (the belief that your actions will make a difference). When leaders provide all three, followers move forward with confidence. When any one is missing, the connection breaks.
Gallup's own research reaches the same conclusion from the opposite direction. They studied what makes organisational leaders successful and identified seven behaviours, several of which map directly onto Snyder's framework: inspiring others and leading change (hope), building relationships and communicating clearly (trust), developing and encouraging people (compassion), and thinking critically and creating accountability (stability).
The overlap between what followers need and what successful leaders do confirms something important: leadership is most effective when it starts with understanding the people you lead.
The Universality of the Finding
One of the most striking aspects of the report is how consistent the findings are across the world. The four needs - hope, trust, compassion, stability - hold regardless of country, culture, age, or the type of leader in question. Whether someone identifies their most positive leader as a family member, a community figure, a teacher, or a workplace manager, the needs are the same.
There are variations. Younger people express a greater need for hope relative to trust. The same is true for people in organisational settings, which is why the hope figure rises from 56% to 64% for workplace leaders. But the fundamental pattern holds everywhere Gallup looked.
Hope is universal. And it is, overwhelmingly, what people need most.
What This Means for Purpose-Led Founders and Leaders
If you lead a team, a business, or a community, the Gallup report is asking you a direct question: are you providing hope?
In my own work with purpose-led founders and leaders, I see this dynamic constantly. The founders who grow well are the ones whose teams can see a future worth building toward. The founders who struggle - however talented, however hardworking - are often the ones whose people have lost sight of where it's all heading.
Hope in this context is practical. It's the Vision Script that gives a team something to build toward. It's the financial forecast that shows the trajectory is real. It's the strategic plan that turns an overwhelming ambition into visible, achievable steps. It's the conversation where a founder says "here's where we're going and here's how we'll get there" - and the team believes it because the evidence supports it.
This is what I call hope-centred strategy. The combination of a clear vision, visible pathways, and activated agency - grounded in evidence, not aspiration.
The Gallup report validates this approach with data gathered across 52 countries and more than 72,000 responses. Hope is what followers need most. Leaders who provide it see measurable improvements in engagement, wellbeing, and performance. Leaders who don't see disengagement, suffering, and the slow erosion of everything they're trying to build.
Questions to Reflect On
The Gallup report suggests that leaders succeed when they know three things: what their followers need, who they themselves are, and what their specific role demands. Here are some questions worth sitting with:
Do the people you lead feel hopeful about the future you're building together? Would they use that word - hopeful - if someone asked them?
Can they see where the business or the team is heading? Have you articulated a vision that's clear enough to follow - or are people working hard without knowing what they're working toward?
Do they have visible pathways? Can they see how their daily work connects to the bigger picture - or does the gap between today and the future feel unbridgeable?
Do they believe their efforts matter? Is there evidence they can point to - not just your reassurance, but real proof - that what they're doing is making a difference?
And finally: who provides hope for you? Every leader needs someone who helps them see the future clearly, find the pathways, and believe in their own capacity to lead. If you don't have that person, it's worth thinking about what that's costing you.
Further Reading
C. R. Snyder, The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There from Here (1994)
Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (2013)
Gallup, Global Leadership Report: What Followers Want (2025)
If you'd like to explore what hope-centred strategy looks like in your leadership - for your business, your team, or your own sense of direction - I'd welcome a conversation. Book a call and let's explore it together.
You can read more about the International Day of Hope, how the UN has recognised hope as a global priority, and the science of Hope Theory that underpins my approach.
Denyse Whillier is the founder of The Purpose Company, working with purpose-led founders and leaders to build the future they want. Read more about her experience and approach here.
