a clapback on “toxic positivity”
This is a clapback. I’ve heard tell of toxic positivity. I’ve been criticized for practicing it and requiring it.
I’ve never actually seen it in the wild.
I believe it does exist. I also think behavior that merits the label is rare. A toxic dosage of positivity that must be is quite high.
Positivity is like water. It’s good for you! You probably need more of it than you typically get. Yes, too much of it can be harmful - but you need so much of it for that to be true that it’s unlikely in any normal circumstance that you could or would get there.
Like some other therapeutic or medical diagnoses, “toxic positivity” has crept into workaday discourse and now attaches to a lot of stuff it doesn’t really fit.
There are facts and stories. Facts are facts; they exist independent of us. We do not get to choose them. Stories are of our own design. How we arrange those facts and make meaning of them, how we label and interpret them - that’s all storytelling. It’s an essential practice and good leaders do it really well: with compassion, clarity, big perspective, focus.
Positivity is a story. It’s a way of presenting and labeling facts. What some call “toxic positivity” is very often just old fashioned dishonesty. It’s someone trying to tell you certain facts aren’t facts. I don’t have patience for that. I also want to call it what it is.
It’s emotionally safer as the critic to use a quasi-medical term that attacks style. It’s riskier to say a blunt thing that hits substance. “I don’t think you’re telling the truth.” or “I think you are withholding information.” is so much more assertive than “I am annoyed by the consistent sunniness of your portraits of our work.”
This is mere anecdata. But the folks I’ve heard cry foul about toxic positivity weren’t upset, at base, about the positivity. They had broader and deeper dissatisfaction. Their frustration wasn’t as much with the tune we were whistling on the trail as the belief that we were hiking up the wrong mountain altogether. The unpleasant truth is they didn’t really like their jobs.
To take this from a rant to some suggestions: if you’re hearing whispers on your team about the dread Toxic Positivity, ask some questions:
About yourself - am I giving a real and open account of the facts that we face, including the “bad” ones? Am I consistently telling the team “what is so”?
About your disgruntled teammate: are they bought in on the mission, strategy, and culture of the place? Where do they have a question mark floating above their heads about one or more of those things?
-Eric
