Toxic Positivity
Being stressed and afraid is understandable right now. With fears of a looming recession, layoffs roiling the tech industry, and so much more, it's small wonder that employees and their leaders are a bit on edge. It's also not surprising that managers and executives would employ a classic leadership salve; optimism.
Rallying the team by convincing them that things are going to turn out fine seems like a pretty good idea. But there's a bit more to optimism than just the notion that people are going to experience positive and favorable outcomes. The research shows that optimism is usually not a passive state; optimists expect good things to happen contingent on their active participation. In other words, optimists will actively work to generate those positive outcomes.
As long as leaders remember the active participation part of optimism, it's generally a good approach. But things go wrong when optimism turns into toxic positivity.
If you've ever felt like your company's leaders are trying too hard to pretend that everything's just fine, or uncomfortable conversations are silenced with warnings like, "let's not focus on the negative," then you've probably experienced toxic positivity.
Toxic positivity is an excessive and distorted form of positive thinking. It's putting a positive spin on all experiences, no matter how dire or tragic. Toxic positivity could occur when a manager won't acknowledge your negative feelings or offers a trite dismissal like, "maybe this is a blessing in disguise."
A major difference between optimism and toxic positivity is that optimism doesn't deny unpleasant realities. In fact, optimism is often seen when people are confronted with some sort of adversity or difficulty.
Toxic positivity is more widespread than is often acknowledged. For example, in the Leadership IQ study, Resistance To Change In Organizations, we discovered that only 15% of employees believe that their organization always openly shares the challenges facing it. By contrast, 42% say their company never or rarely shares its challenges.
And here's the real kicker: If an employee does believe that their company always shares its challenges facing it, employees are about ten times more likely to recommend the company as a great employer.
Denying or refusing to acknowledge challenges is not leadership. While employees are stressed and fearful, denying reality doesn't make them feel better. If anything, as the aforementioned study shows, denial or evasion erodes employees' confidence in their leaders.
The key is to truthfully acknowledge the challenges while expressing optimism that we're going to work through them. The challenges aren't going to magically dissipate or fix themselves; everyone is going to have to pitch in and solve the problems. But if everyone participates, the optimist believes that good things will eventually happen.
There's another dark side to toxic positivity; leaders who deny or dismiss reality don't hear the employee suggestions that could solve those challenges.
The study, The Risks Of Ignoring Employee Feedback, discovered that only 6% of employees say that good suggestions or valid complaints from employees always lead to important changes. But when someone says good suggestions or valid complaints from employees do lead to important changes, they're about 18 times more likely to recommend the company as a great employer.
If you find your company's leaders proffering cliches like "maybe it's a blessing in disguise," "let's not dwell on the negative," or "if we don't have anything nice to say, let's not say anything," then you're likely seeing toxic positivity. That's not optimism, and it will only exacerbate the stress and fear your employees feel.
