Management Perspectives

Be positive’, is the most widely used terminology in organisations, hackneyed by the ginger group of personnel who are perpetually besieged with bottom lines, targets, EBITDA, incessant meetings, gross margins, competition, conversion rates, etc. The phrase finds its solace in the mess of convoluted aspirations of every employee who visualises climbing the corporate ladder faster to the celestial city of success and growth but seldom arrives mid-way to find the lurking disappointments in low appraisal ratings or to the chagrin of the boss’s reproval. Positivity coaches (a recently conceived neologism for honchos who give pep talks in return for huge sums from the corporate treasury) harp on the magical power of thinking positively for employee growth. Most of them, positivity coaches draw their inspiration from the nuances of positivity made known to the world by Norman Vincent Peale, Martin Seligman, Napoleon Hill, etc.

The Power of Positive Thinking, a book released in 1952 by Peale, is the very first treatise on positivity and visualising positivity in every ordeal to make life better. Later, the idea of positivity gained traction in the times of Martin Seligman, particularly in the ‘90s, who amalgamated the notion of positivity and science and deemed it positive psychology. Recently, these ideas formed the foundation for proponents of positive thinking like Anthony Robbins, Ken Blanchard, Wayne Dyer, Rhonda Byrne, etc. Rhonda Byrne took the concepts to an extreme when she wrote the best-selling book The Secret, and asserted that having optimistic thoughts was the secret ingredient that would ensure success in practically any circumstance. It was everything anyone required and thus success would follow ideas of success, and failure would always follow the thoughts of failure.

But does the factor of positive thinking affect employees’ efficiency? Do visualising positive outcomes lead to desired results? Is positive thinking a panacea for all organisational problems or is there any other tested way? Let’s find out

Rethinking positive thinking

Unfortunately for the proponents of positivity, most of the research in this area indicates that the effectiveness of positive thinking is substantially exaggerated. Dr Gabrielle Oettingen, Professor of Psychology, University of New York, has conducted in-depth research in this area. He has spent more than 20 years researching this topic and has found that unlike what we think, pleasant imaginations do not always help us accomplish our objectives. Positive thinking really saps our motivation and weakens our determination to complete the necessary activities.

Dr Oettingen critically reexamines positive thinking and provides a more helpful, nuanced view of motivation based on strong empirical data in her concise book, Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. According to conventional thinking, inspirational dreams should ideally always motivate us to take action. Dr Oettingen tests this by enlisting a group of undergraduate college students and dividing them into two groups at random. She advised the first group to imagine that the upcoming week will be a knock out: fantastic grades, amazing parties, happy times, etc.,
and asked them to visualise positive outcomes. Students in the second group were urged to write all of their ideas and daydreams about the upcoming week—both good and terrible ones—calculative neutral visualisations. Surprisingly, compared to those who were directed to create a neutral dream, the students who were told to think positively felt far less motivated and productive. It turns out that blind optimism does not inspire individuals; rather, as Dr Oettingen demonstrates in a series of analytical studies, it fosters a feeling of ease and complacency. It is as if when we daydream or fantasize about something we want, our minds are duped into thinking we have already accomplished the objective. Studies reveal that simply daydreaming about a desire decreases blood pressure, whereas thinking about the same wish and imagining not receiving it raises blood pressure, suggesting that there may be a physiological foundation for this impact. Daydreaming could make you feel better, but it saps your energy and makes you less ready to take action. It, also, puts our culture’s unwavering belief in the docks that, ‘if you can dream it, you can do it’. It appears that the key to accomplishing your objectives is to be aware of both your desires and the actual obstacles that you and the outside world erect in the odyssey to success and happiness.

In another experiment conducted by Dr Oettingen, two groups of obese persons were assigned the task of reducing weight. One group was urged to see themselves as a leaner version of themselves and to think only positive thoughts about losing weight and the other group was asked to visualise practically about the outcome. The findings were startling after a year. The majority of optimistic thinkers dropped the least amount of weight. Why? Again, visualising success might make you feel good and accomplished before you’ve really achieved it, decreasing the desire to put effort into it. Thus, People fare badly in terms of having real achievement the more enthusiastically they fantasize and daydream about their future success.

Impeding positivity

Researchers forthrightly deny that simply thinking positively does any good and is almost toxic for our personal growth. Dr Susan David is a recognised Harvard Medical School psychologist and one of the top management thinkers. An expert on emotions and the author of the book Emotional Agility, she explains what toxic positivity is, how it appears in our culture, and how we as people and leaders may combat it.

‘A tyranny of positivity’, as Dr Susan calls it, toxic positivity is the refusal to let ourselves or others feel the complete spectrum of emotions, especially the unpleasant ones. When you are an individual, you can appear to be convincing yourself that everything is OK even when it is not. It can appear that you are experiencing an unpleasant emotion, but instead of letting the emotion go, you decide to focus on all the positive aspects of the situation. We have been led to believe that doing this will make us stronger, but Dr Susan claims that the hypothesis is false and the reverse is true. This is the case because if we do not deal with the unpleasant emotion, it will not go away and the issue will not be resolved.

If we experience tough feelings while interacting with a toxically positive culture, we start to think there is something wrong with ourselves. Toxic positivity sounds like individuals in our life telling us desuetude phrases like “Keep your head up” and “Be optimistic” that do not address the real issues when we are trying to understand our unpleasant emotions. When asked how they got to where they are today, successful individuals or those who have experienced objectively challenging circumstances may respond, “I got here because I embraced optimism and believed in myself,” which does not elucidate the complete picture. The superficiality of the narrative makes everyone believe that embracing optimism shall make them stand out or help them become star performers which does not happen really.

Embracing realism

What is the ideal way then? Thinking positively does not help and people seldom think negatively about any prospect unless they are very sure about the outcome, which is a rarity in itself. Some of the critics of positive thinking urge individuals to stop talking positively and focus only on difficulties or hindrances that lie on the way. But this adjustment is too immoderate. According to studies, this tactic is no more effective than having positive fantasies. The best strategy is the hybrid strategy that blends optimistic thinking with ‘reality’ which works wonders according to the research. Dr Gabrielle suggests a technique she calls mental contrasting, which entails first imagining the ideal goal and then the difficulties or impractical barriers that stand in the way of that goal. Gabrielle reasoned that seeing the challenges right after the good fantasy would counteract its calming and dissociation effects and motivate individuals to action. Dr Gabrielle conducted a study and asked participants to select a goal for either their personal or professional lives. She divided them into four groups and asked them to rate how feasible they believed their aims were. The first group engaged in mental contrasting, where they first entertained optimistic fantasies before considering the challenges, they might encounter. The second group solely engaged in optimistic fantasies. The third group simply focused on the real obstacles. The fourth group had a reverse contrast where they first thought about the practical hurdles and then they had their optimistic fantasies. Dr Gabrielle has discovered that people with attainable goals, which is group number one felt more energised and motivated to work towards them.

The idea is not to disparage positivity. It is very helpful in various potential scenarios, but it has to be balanced with prudence. If employees combine optimism with a clear grasp of the challenges to be overcome and the work to be done in the organisation, then they shall perform better than the rest who engage only in positive visualisation.

Therefore, it appears that today our workforce requires a right union of optimism and realism, and the idea is not old. In the 5th century BC, Lord Buddha endorsed the same idea with a different connotation called ‘Madhyam-Pratipada’ (the middle way). The middle way seems to be the only working way for our aspiring personnel who seek achievement amidst all the agony. It worked for Lord Buddha a long time back who sought nirvana and there is no reason it will not work for our burgeoning workforce who seek a ‘corporate nirvana’ of their own.