The general definition of toxic positivity is to suppress the full array of human emotion that is normal or natural in favor of positive feelings only. It is OK to feel sad, overwhelmed, tired, and angry. You do not always have to have a sunny and upbeat attitude to be a good person or a stellar employee.
Lately, I have been thinking about this personal concept and how it may apply to work culture. I would like to broaden the definition of toxic positivity to include what I see happening day to day within people’s professions. First, complaining about an issue or a problem within your working life is not always negative – in fact it can lead to dramatic improvements for everyone in the corporation if the problem is acknowledged appropriately and steps are taken to improve the issue. Unfortunately, many leaders have a hard time taking criticism and tend to surround themselves with “yes” people. Often the employee bringing up an issue ( in hopes to make things better) is viewed as a problem starter, an annoyance. This is really unfortunate as a lot of growth can be had when you embrace change. Change can only occur when you are willing to accept and find value in other people’s viewpoints.
Secondly, I would like to expand the definition of toxic positivity to include pressure for a positive attitude and directives for self care when there has been purposeful decision making from management that makes it difficult to do so. I am going to call this – Professional Toxitivity. To be constantly reminded by leaders and managers to take time for yourself when your work culture is telling you to continually add more to your plate – this is Professional Toxitivity. Leaders should lead by example but ALSO enforce policy changes that enable those around them to pursue self-care as they see fit. It is easy to espouse truisms about taking time for yourself while sitting at your desk with lessened or different obligations than you once had. Employees are hustling day to day to manage the overflowing responsibilities that they have to their clients, patients, audience, students etc. which leaves them with little time to work on personal growth and development.
My suggestion for leaders everywhere including Principals, CEO’s, Direct Managers is to truly ask and listen. What does your employee need? For teachers, it may be 30 minutes less with their students at end of day to make their lesson plans for the next day. It may be an assistant that takes some of their admin tasks away so they can focus on deep work ( truly teaching your children) and not shallow work ( answering the barrage of parent emails throughout the work day with resulting documentation). For health care workers, it may be an ENFORCED lunch time where they can take a breath without writing charts or answering calls. It may be strategically helping implement ways to delegate or automate chart writing, phone calls and documentation, etc. It looks like building a culture that empowers and allows their staff to say “no” when they know adding that extra project or appointment will overwhelm them and cause their quality of work or care to diminish or their work-life balance to suffer. I know this is possible because I have worked places that do this.
There is a trend for progressive businesses to implement strategies like this and it may look like unlimited PTO and shorter work days for their staff with resulting paradoxical increases in revenue and goal achievement. Enable employees to have pride in their craft and help them accomplish their work goals with autonomy and efficiency. If you do this, they will finally have the TIME they need outside of work for self care – which will look differently for each person. No more Professional Toxitivity. It is good to challenge the status quo and give honest feedback so everyone can benefit.
The bottom line: Instead of instituting another work wellness program, enable employees to achieve their work goals in a time productive way so they then have the agency to choose wellness in their own time and in their own way.