The Rise of Toxic Positivity
- Jennifer Iverson
- Sep 20, 2023
- 4 min read
Several years ago when I was still on maternity leave from having my son, I went to the doctor to have some tests run. I had a difficult pregnancy and I wasn’t bouncing back. Among the panel of tests, she also did a hormone and cortisol test.
Cortisol is a stress hormone that floods your system during fight or flight but can also stay elevated for long periods if you perceive your environment to be stressful, whether true or anxiety-driven. It’s closely linked with adrenaline and occurs at the later part of the body’s stress response. It’s present in everyone and it ebbs and flows throughout the day naturally when functioning normally. It helps you wake up in the morning, stay motivated, and then drops off in the evening (hopefully) to prepare for sleep. You’ve probably read about high cortisol levels for long periods of time and the disadvantages to your health.
So there I was at the doctor’s office and I’m listening to her interpret my test results. When she got to the cortisol levels, her eyes widened. My immediate inner dialogue went something like, ‘Oh no. She’s going to tell me mine are really high’.
What she actually said was, ‘Jen, I have seen patients in a coma who have higher cortisol levels than you. Your body has almost stopped producing cortisol and I am floored you were able to get out of bed and drive to my office.’
Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting. And my response? I started laughing.
Full-on belly laughter like I was at a comedy show. It was partially from being sleep-deprived with a newborn but mostly it just struck me as hilarious.
My approach to wellness and self-care over the years was 95% brute force and white-knuckling my way through, and 5% spa treatments. In an instant I realized what my doctor hadn’t said yet - I had been operating on such big spikes of cortisol for so many years that my body was depleted. I was depleted. And I needed to change my approach to work and life to fix it.
The laughter from my results felt like divine comedy. I could see the perfection in my situation. In coaching, one of my favorite questions to ask a client is, ‘What’s perfect about this situation?’ I ask it when someone has gone on a long explanation of what’s not going well. I ask it when someone feels stuck and not getting the results they want. I ask it when a decision doesn’t go their way.
What was perfect about this situation for me is no amount of knowledge I had about health and wellness would have forced me to do anything differently. I thought I was working within the corporate and family systems beautifully. The culture of pushing down complaints, always showing a happy facade, and not setting appropriate boundaries were parts of the culture of toxic positivity that I had absorbed which blinded me to my own reality.
These results were the forcing function I needed. And that’s what makes it perfect.
The rise of talking about and measuring positivity and its correlated emotion, happiness, is a new phenomenon in the corporate world. Only recently have we had employee engagement indexes, questions on how positive the workplace is, and how happy you feel at the office. This new measurement brings new ways to game the measurement system.
Toxic Positivity is defined as ‘an emotional phenomenon based on the belief that no matter how hard or bad things get, people must maintain positive thinking or a positive mindset'. And working with a person, especially one in leadership, who displays toxic positivity can work - for a small amount of time. Because humans second guess their perceptions, we can pretty easily gaslight ourselves into thinking ‘I guess I don’t have it that bad. Maybe I’m just stuck in complaining mode. I’ll try and do better.' And sometimes we are stuck in a repetitive pattern of negative thinking or catastrophizing and can’t move forward to finding a solution until someone points it out.
But when we start measuring positivity and happiness in the workplace and force leaders to drive those numbers up without addressing the underlying problems and do so without ever saying a negative word - that is what’s called a leading attrition metric. It’s the behavior and actions that precede employees leaving.
So what does a leader do then?
As a leader changing the culture to one of realistic positivity comes down to two areas: a focus on Readiness and Situationally Leading.
Situationally leading looks like:
Understanding what stage of competence and skill your employee is in and leading or coaching to that level for every single task
Building awareness of yourself and your team on communication styles and conflict styles. I’m a huge fan of the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) training for this and use it regularly.
Addressing your organization’s underlying pain points and communicating often what can and can’t be fixed
Sarah Castle, a former Amazon executive and Professor of Practice in Entrepreneurship at the College of Charleston School of Business, says, "Sometimes your team needs to hear you say that X isn't working, Y isn't realistic, or Z is hard and here's what we're going to try. They need you to be transparent, so they can trust that you get it and believe when you say you're working on it."
Leading with a focus on Readiness looks like:
Understanding when someone wants to vent versus solve a problem
Looking for signs that you can ask probing questions like the one I ask in my coaching practice such as ‘What’s perfect about this situation? What skill are you (inadvertently) learning as a result of this undesirable circumstance? If you were coaching someone else through this, what would you suggest?
Castle continues, "Knowing your team and what they care about matters a lot. This can help you recognize when they need time to process something before you move to the next action or response. Take time to celebrate the wins and tell people 'good job' before you focus on how to fix a problem or do better."
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