Belief doesn’t win clients. Engaged work does. And too much hope can cost you.

The question

The first release showed that psychological capital goes with more revenue, longer client retention and a better life. This one asks how. Three routes were tested at the same time:

1. Engagement: owners with more psychological capital put more energy and attention into the work, and that brings results.
2. Feeling positive: they feel more positive in their interactions with clients, and that shows in the results.
3. Projecting hope: they instil hope in clients, and that helps them win and keep clients.

Why this question matters

Psychological capital had already been shown to influence performance and life satisfaction, but the thesis notes that the mechanisms through which this happens remained unclear (Haydon, 2025, p. 212). Researchers had called for work on what sits between psychological capital and performance in specific settings, and the thesis sets out to answer that call (pp. 25, 31).

The three routes came from the interviews in the same thesis. Advisers described drawing on intrinsic motivators such as growth, flexibility and meaningful work, maintaining positivity, and encouraging clients to work towards goals and through setbacks (pp. 181, 197, 234). The thesis turned these motivational, emotional and behavioural patterns into three routes that a survey could measure (pp. 197, 219–220).

Why were these three routes tested?

• Engagement (the motivational route). This rests on Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy theory and on psychological resource theory, in which psychological capital serves as a resource caravan that maintains motivation over time (Hobfoll, 2002) (Haydon, 2025, pp. 218, 220–221). Earlier studies linked higher psychological capital to higher engagement (Sihag & Sarikwal, 2014; Luthans & Youssef-Morgan, 2017). For client numbers specifically, the thesis cited research associating engaged employees with higher customer satisfaction, more referrals and a greater propensity to seek new business opportunities (Markos & Sridevi, 2010; Inkpen & Tsang, 2005) (p. 223).
• Feeling positive (the affective route). This rests on broaden-and-build theory, under which positive emotions broaden awareness and help build lasting personal resources (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005), alongside psychological resource theory (pp. 218, 227–228). The thesis measured it as core affect, which it describes, after Russell (2003), as a basic emotional state that varies in activation, such as energy, and in pleasure, such as happiness or distress (pp. 219, 227). It reasoned that positive feeling might be conveyed to clients and prospects, drawing on leadership research in which leaders’ conveyed psychological capital raised their effectiveness through positive energising (Story et al., 2017) (p. 230).
• Projecting hope (the behavioural route). This rests on Snyder’s (2002) hope theory, in which hope combines agency, the motivation to act, and pathways, the perceived ability to find routes to goals (p. 219). Because the interviews showed advisers encouraging clients towards goals and supporting them through setbacks, the thesis expected people high in psychological capital to instil hope in clients, and that to help them win and keep clients (pp. 234–237).

Each route had six hypotheses: that psychological capital raises the route’s measure, and that the measure carries psychological capital’s effect through to each of the five outcomes (pp. 240–242).

What held, and what didn’t

Route	Outcome	Indirect effect	95% CI	Held?
Engagement	Number of clients	0.54	0.14 to 1.09	Yes
Engagement	Revenue band	0.22	−0.21 to 0.71	No
Engagement	Client retention	−0.10	−0.83 to 0.53	No
Feeling positive	Any outcome	—	all include zero	No
Projecting hope	Revenue band	−0.24	−0.72 to −0.01	Yes, negative
Projecting hope	Satisfaction with life	−0.10	−0.31 to −0.0015	Yes, negative

Psychological capital strongly predicted engagement (b = 0.78, p < .001) and engagement predicted the number of clients (b = 0.69, p = .043). With extraversion and conscientiousness in the model the engagement route still held (indirect 0.53, CI 0.12 to 1.15), so the engagement route held even with personality controlled.

What did the survey measure?

• Engagement: the 17-item scale by Schaufeli, Salanova, Romá, Bakke (2002), introduced as statements about how you feel at work and rated from 0 (never) to 6 (always/every day) over the last six months (Haydon, 2025, p. 247). The items include feeling bursting with energy at work, finding the work full of meaning and purpose, and persevering even when things do not go well (p. 250).
• Feeling positive (core affect): 16 feelings during interactions with clients over the last six months, rated from 0 (never) to 6 (always), following Warr, Bindl, Parker and Inceoglu (2014). They span anxious, nervous, tense and worried; enthusiastic, excited, inspired and joyful; dejected, depressed, despondent and hopeless; and ease, calm, laid back and relaxed. The negative feelings were reverse-scored (pp. 247, 249–250).
• Projecting hope: three items from Snyder’s (2000) hope scale, asking how central it was in client meetings to help clients see that there are many ways around their problems, to make sure they feel they could find ways out of a jam, and to help them think of many ways to reach their goals (pp. 247, 250).
• Personality controls: 17 items from the Big Five Inventory (John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991) measuring extraversion and conscientiousness (pp. 248, 251). Following Avey, Luthans and Youssef (2010), the thesis controlled for these stable traits because psychological capital’s added value is better assessed when they are accounted for. It notes that conscientiousness predicts performance across different job families (Barrick & Mount, 1991), and that extraversion is particularly relevant in jobs with high levels of social interaction, such as sales, management and teaching (Hurtz & Donovan, 2000) (pp. 251–252).

All three routes were tested at the same time, in one model for each outcome, using 5,000 bootstrap samples. The thesis prefers bootstrap confidence intervals to the traditional Sobel test, which assumes a sampling distribution that is often unrealistic (p. 258).

Why only client numbers?

Winning a client is the one outcome in the study that the owner controls most directly: it comes from activity. How long a client stays, and how much they pay, are less controlled by the owner and more by the client (Haydon, 2025, p. 278).

How does the thesis explain the other results?

On revenue, the thesis suggests that engagement may bring more clients without more revenue. Charging more takes the confidence and self-efficacy to win and charge higher-ticket clients, and lower-ticket clients may be easier to win, which raises client numbers without significantly raising revenue (Haydon, 2025, pp. 278–279). It also notes that the study did not record whether people hired or outsourced their sales and marketing; engagement may lead some to invest money in marketing rather than do it themselves (p. 279).

For retention, it points to other factors such as service quality, client satisfaction, and whether the client is doing the work and getting results (p. 273). For job insecurity, it suggests that factors such as organisational support and job stability may play a more significant role than engagement (p. 274). For life satisfaction, it notes that broader life domains, such as personal relationships and leisure, also matter (p. 275).

On feeling positive, the thesis concludes that positive feelings are not sufficient on their own; they need the specific behaviours linked to engagement to turn into results such as winning clients (p. 273). Overall, it finds that psychological capital operates primarily through motivational rather than affective or behavioural routes, and that its emotional and behavioural expressions may depend on situational cues such as client responsiveness, workload or perceived control (p. 277). In practice, it concludes, people who translate hope into structured action are more likely to achieve measurable success in winning clients (p. 282).

The hope finding

Psychological capital’s effect through hope-instilling behaviour was negative for revenue band and life satisfaction. The sample was relatively small, so treat this as a warning sign rather than a law. The likely reading, and the one the thesis offers, is that hope without a realistic plan creates expectations the work can’t meet.

The thesis’s fuller explanation is that hope involves goal-directed thinking and planning, but excessive or misplaced hope could lead people to underestimate the effort required (Haydon, 2025, p. 272). Hope that is not coupled with realistic strategies, it suggests, can show up as overconfidence or unrealistic expectations, and expectations that are not met may then reduce satisfaction with life (p. 276). Its conclusion is that this could emphasise a balanced approach, where positive psychological resources are coupled with realistic assessments and practical strategies (p. 280).

What this doesn’t show

Cross-sectional data: association, not proof of direction. One network, 85 people, 70 men and 15 women (Table 6, p. 244). The thesis itself notes that a larger sample might have found effects for feeling positive (its correlations were around .12 to .14) (p. 277). Nothing here was tested on owners of larger businesses.

My read

My view, kept apart from the numbers.

This is the finding I use most. Every owner I meet who is stuck has plenty of belief. What they don’t have is a week that converts it: the sales activity, the management meeting, the numbers read out, the thing they said they’d do last month done. Belief that doesn’t become a routine is a mood. And the hope finding is the one I’d put on the wall: the owners who talk the biggest game are often the ones whose business pays them least, because the plan was never real. Optimism needs a method.

What an owner can do with it

• Convert belief into a rhythm. Decide the weekly activities that produce the results you control (sales conversations, the management meeting, the numbers review) and measure the activity, not just the outcome.
• Separate what you control from what the customer controls. Acquisition is yours. Retention and price are mostly theirs, and they are won by the product and the structure around it, not by confidence.
• Make hope specific. A goal with one route and no obstacle plan isn’t hope; it’s exposure. Write the second route and the first three obstacles down.

Sources

References as listed in the thesis (Haydon, 2025, pp. 312 onwards). Russell (2003) and Snyder (2002) are cited in the thesis text but not in its reference list.

• Haydon, L. J. (2025). How UK business coaches cope and persist towards higher levels of objective and subjective success in boundaryless careers [DBA thesis]. Aston University. Study 2, chapters 12–13, tables 9–14.
• Avey, J. B., Luthans, F., & Youssef, C. M. (2010). The additive value of positive psychological capital in predicting work attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206308329961
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: Freeman.
• Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The Big Five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1-26.
• Fredrickson, B. L., & Branigan, C. (2005). Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires. Cognition and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930441000238
• Hobfoll, S. E. (2002). Social and psychological resources and adaptation. Review of General Psychology, 6(4), 307–324.
• Hurtz, G. M., & Donovan, J. J. (2000). Personality and job performance: The Big Five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85(6), 869-879.
• Inkpen, A. C., & Tsang, E. W. (2005). Social capital, networks, and knowledge transfer. Academy of Management Review, 30(1), 146-165.
• John, O. P., Donahue, E. M., & Kentle, R. L. (1991). Big Five Inventory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• Luthans, F., & Youssef-Morgan, C. M. (2017). Psychological capital: An evidence-based positive approach. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 339–366. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych
• Markos, S., & Sridevi, M. S. (2010). Employee engagement: The key to improving performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(12), 89.
• Sihag, P., & Sarikwal, L. (2014). Impact of Psychological Capital on Employee Engagement: A Study of IT Professionals in Indian Context. Management Studies and Economic Systems, 1(2), 127–139.
• Story, J. S. P., Lopes, M. P., Pina e Cunha, M., Yam, K. C., Rego, A., Owens, B. P., & Bluhm, D. (2017). Conveyed leader PsyCap predicting leader effectiveness through positive energizing. Journal of Management, 45(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206317733510
• Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two-sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3(1), 71-92.
• Warr, P., Bindl, U. K., Parker, S. K., & Inceoglu, I. (2014). Four-quadrant investigation of job-related affects and behaviours. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(3), 342–363.
• Snyder, C. R. (2000). Handbook of hope: Theory, measures, and applications. Academic Press.