The Role of Positivity in creating flourishing environments
Read Time: 3 minutes
This week we’re going to talk about positivity And its impact on leadership and flourishing.
Is positivity soft? Is it useful? Can you just manufacture positivity at will? Isn’t the world a hard and difficult place?
We’ve all been in difficult leadership situations and rolled our eyes at the idea of being positive when everything is crashing and burning. There’s even a term emerging to describe this as “toxic positivity.” Which is kind of like having your head in the clouds and ignoring difficult realities - something great leaders can’t do!
High performance is taxing and there are realities we can’t look away from or just pretend everything is going well when it’s not.
But some of the research we’re going to explore today does emphasize the importance of positivity or “positive emotions” in creating healthy, high performing environments. In fact it may help us realize the value in a little negativity as well.
The Tipping Point
In working alongside hundreds of companies, Barbera Frederickson and her team transcribed every word that was said in business meetings and coded each sentence for positive and negative words. They found that one-third of the companies were flourishing economically, one-third were doing okay, and one-third were failing.
The dividing line and tipping point for the companies that were flourishing was a ratio of 2.9 positive statements for every 1 negative statement. Below the 2.9/1 ratio, companies were not doing well economically. This 2.9/1 ratio is known as The Losada Ratio.
Three positive statements for every one negative statement. John Gottman, a world renowned marriage and relationship counselor found that the ratio of 3/1 would actually forecast divorce and a more likely ratio to predict a flourishing marriage would be closer to 5-to-1! Five positive comments for every one negative comment to your spouse. A ratio of 1:3 would be an absolute disaster.
Don’t Go Overboard
As The Losada Ratio became popular in the 2010’s and workforce specialists began infusing positivity in work environments (sometimes fake and forced) Frederickson and her team found that a ratio of 13:1 would have damaging effects as the positivity would lose its credibility. Too much positivity can be toxic, hence the term “toxic positivity.”
The truth is, we need both positive and negative emotions to gain a full comprehension of our environment, our surroundings, and the direction we’re heading.
We need to be anchored in reality and that means negativity has a place at the table. If we suppress the negative components of our situations and force and fake positivity it ends up being inauthentic and teams end up walking around with masks on, cheesy smiles - a lot of - “Good morning, brother!” While cursing them under your breath as you walk away.
So What, Now What?
We’ll leave you with this summary as you dive into the positive and negative aspects of your reality today.
We need a lot of positive “shots on target” to balance out critical comments, hard feedback, and challenges.
This isn’t because the person is “soft” and needs to toughen up, it's because critique lingers much longer than compliments.
Because negative comments linger longer, a higher frequency of negative comments can overwhelm our system, jam us up, put us in a tense, defensive posture.
The more people are in a tense and defensive posture the less curious, responsive, and open-minded they are to change, solving problems and working together.
Allow positivity to be rooted in reality. People know when the leader is not being genuine.
As the leader, your inability to deliver positive feedback may be more of an accusation of your internal posture and less of an accusation of the (sometimes poor) performance of the team member.
A few quotes to send you on your way:
“Positive emotion does much more than just feel pleasant; it is a neon sign that growth is under way, that psychological capital is accumulating.” - Dr. Martin Seligman
“We’re either making deposits or withdrawals from other emotional bank accounts.” - Stephen Covey
“Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit - you choose.” - Proverbs 18:21