[HN Gopher] Toxic positivity does more harm than good
___________________________________________________________________
Toxic positivity does more harm than good
Author : prostoalex
Score : 308 points
Date : 2021-01-16 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| lbblack wrote:
| Personally, having a good attitude will be better over the long
| run than a bad attitude for mental health but lying to people
| won't solve anything. An over-excited spirit can be just as
| weakening as an under-excitied spirit.
|
| To each their own, but I find be joyful or humourous during hard
| times is much better for people to be around than to be someone
| denying someone else's individual right to be happy.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| There are at least two things that annoy the hell out of me:
|
| 1 Fake positivity
|
| 2 Co-workers that are "happy" to work during PTOs
|
| The first one is described in the article. The second one is
| somewhat related to the first one or could even be the result of
| fake positivity. Working during a paid time off (PTO) is terrible
| for culture - makes your co-workers feel guilty if they won't
| spend a few hours at work during their PTO. I almost feel like an
| employee's access to Slack/E-mail should be restricted to read-
| only while they are on vacation.
|
| If you are one of those two, stop kissing your manager's ass!
| Enjoy your vacation-forget about work.
| 458aperta wrote:
| You pretty much described Vancouver, BC. One of the lowest
| average salary in North America, expensive housing, and
| normalized exploitation of labor. Fake positivity is just the
| cultural fact of life here and I think it hurts productivity.
|
| We all know that because housing is so scarce, having a job or
| not can mean you have a roof over your heads or not. It's
| really disgusting the way they treat workers here. So of course
| there is going to be a Stockholm syndrome effect here.
|
| Won't pay the market price but want the best. From what I've
| heard from insiders, they all do "surveys" with each other to
| fix wages since the 2000 dot come bubble collapse. The
| Vancouver Model is essentially: underpay your workers, demand
| the best and increase margins.
|
| Then they wonder why we can't be like Silicon Valley. Most
| startups here get acquired by pre-primary market and very few
| ever IPO thus rendering stock options worthless.
|
| It's no wonder that there is a massive brain drain going on and
| that startups here consist mostly of immigrant workers. I'm
| sure in some scale the exact same thing is taking place in SV
| but at least Indian engineers are making far more than what
| they would here in the Florida of Canada.
| occamrazor wrote:
| What's wrong with "At least"? What is the implied rest of the
| sentence?
| rimiform wrote:
| "At least you still have a job (even if it sucks)"
| JimTheMan wrote:
| And further to that, by saying that sentence the person is
| not acknowledging someone's pain and suffering. They are
| dismissing their concerns.
| mzan wrote:
| During reading the article, it was impossible not thinking to
| this famous Italian pop single:
|
| https://youtu.be/jx8GhXm-HcA
|
| " I'm out of the tunnel of amusement [...] we live on memories,
| gentleman, and games sincere embraces, kisses and fires of all
| those moments, sad and amusing and not on moments that were sadly
| amusing "
| bryzaguy wrote:
| You know what's more toxic than toxic positivity? Diagnosing your
| coworkers with a writer invented, empathy devoid term because
| they annoy you. Is this opinion piece helpful?
| taurath wrote:
| Toxic positivity often comes from the idea that seeking happiness
| is the right goal always. If you believe that then you believe
| anyone who is not happy is somehow failing and you can give them
| a hand up. The right word I think should be contentment.
| Happiness is impossible to have all the time. You can have
| contentment pretty much all the time.
| kazen44 wrote:
| thank you for this comment. it has described the kind of
| thinking that is important very well.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > "usually followed by the hashtag #blessed"
|
| Among the oldest portions of the Bible is the Book of Job.
|
| Well worth spending some time there to remember that, short of
| stage 4 cancer, there is generally room for things to worsen.
| bickeringyokel wrote:
| I'm sure this is a problem in companies large enough to have a
| sizable HR department, but don't most of us work with a bunch of
| cretin engineers that always think everything anyone else does is
| wrong and a sales team that is never satisfied with the thing
| they asked for?
| [deleted]
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Psychological safety is being able to speak your mind without
| negative repercusions. Toxic positivity is not psychological
| safety.
|
| Personally, I think psychological safety leads to another
| phenomenon: groupthink. By emphasizing harmony over everything
| else, groups suffering from groupthink apply self-censorship,
| silence is seen as agreement, and the ability to make rational
| decisions is lost. Not only that, but the group develops a strong
| identity and anyone who doesn't agree is seen as disloyal.
|
| For a software engineering team, groupthink usually means
| becoming a death march towards failure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
| mactyler wrote:
| No it doesn't.
| breck wrote:
| 2 quotes I like :
|
| I'd rather be part a-hole than full of sh-t.
|
| If you can't say something nice apologize later.
| arendtio wrote:
| Pretty opinionated and preachy while mixing different things. I
| think a can-do attitude is something one should have within
| oneself, but it is something completely different from the
| emotions a person emits to the outside world.
|
| Having a critical but positive look at the world is most likely
| very healthy, in the spirit of 'Change what you can and accept
| what you can not'. Constantly emitting a positive image, on the
| other hand, leads to the problems described in the article. But
| the problem is not the positivity, but the need to express it
| even it is not coming from within.
|
| Don't be afraid, to share your true feelings, but try to view the
| world in a balanced way (now I was preachy myself...).
| fastball wrote:
| I think Toxic Positivity is a bit of a misnomer, I'd probably
| call it "False Positivity".
|
| It's not some subset of real positivity that is toxic, it's
| just... not actual positivity. It's an act.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I 100% agree with this.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| No, there is toxic positivity, but I don't think this article
| is talking about it. I'll give you an example.
|
| "Don't worry, it'll get better."
|
| People genuinely believe that and for many things, it's true.
| For someone with a chronic and severe mental illness with no
| known cure? We're sick of hearing it.
|
| There is no better for me. I'll never be completely free of
| suicidal thoughts or medication side-effects. I will never be
| free from degree of pain and suffering many people don't
| understand.
|
| Does that make me unhappy? Frequently but I'm used to hurting
| all the time and I try to make the best of it.
|
| For more: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-
| positivity-509395...
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Speaking as someone with mental health issues and as someone
| who has been the shoulder for others who are the same, no,
| saying it'll get better doesn't help because almost nothing
| that could be said will.
|
| But being lead in circles of doom talk and complaining by
| someone who is inconsolable naturally leads to vacuous
| sayings like it is what it is, it's not as bad as it seems,
| or count your blessings, only because I have to say something
| in reply despite not having any answers.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > only because I have to say something in reply despite not
| having any answers
|
| I completely understand and my reply comes out of very hard
| experiences from decades of helping people.
|
| Humans are emotional beings. We want to help. We hurt when
| we can't. We feel guilty. The natural response is to say or
| do anything to make that guilt go away. This is a deep,
| hardwired response. It is a natural response and a good
| one. I consider this to be one of humanity's best traits.
|
| But it is not a good response in this situation. My goal is
| to help people. If I am to do that, nothing I say should
| said out of my own feelings of guilt or helplessness.
|
| I've learned to embrace guilt and acknowledge it's there
| but also tell it it is not helpful in that moment. I need
| to do what I know is right, not what I _feel_ is right.
|
| Hand and hand with this is letting go of the belief we have
| control. We can not save people who don't want to be saved.
| There is only so much we can do. And we will fail. I've
| lost friends I've wished I could have saved but I know
| there were no words. Therefore, I have no responsibility
| for their actions.
|
| As a very wise person once said,
|
| _It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That
| is not a weakness. That is life._
| beefman wrote:
| It's more than just phony positivity. It includes supression of
| criticism.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| The author's point seems to be that it is toxic to a person to
| (try to) exist in permanent state of positivity.
|
| I can get behind that notion. I've had friends who were
| chronically positive. It gelded our friendship because they
| hoarded all the negative stuff in their life.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Is gelded a typo or is this an expression I wasn't aware of?
|
| I kind of like it, without sincere emotions something was
| missing (like when a horse is gelded).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| You read it like I meant it. eg:neutered, typical
| interactions aren't happening here
| aminozuur wrote:
| You got it right: https://wor.do/geld
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| > The author's point seems to be that it is toxic to a person
| to (try to) exist in permanent state of positivity.
|
| Yes. The article started out with the psychologist explaining
| how the client was looking for fake doctor's notes just to
| avoid going to work because the client didn't feel "totally
| positive" that day. That's toxic positivity, the feeling that
| you can't outwardly display anything less than complete
| cheerfulness, that you have to bottle up any problem inside
| and not let it out.
| op03 wrote:
| Next up True Negativity or Positive Toxicity. Take your pick.
|
| "Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and
| ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to
| talk about stability and constants, about similarities and
| normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures,
| simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to
| symbolize with this language is a world of process, change,
| differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths,
| interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the
| mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static
| language forms is part of our problem." - Wendell Johnson
| rimiform wrote:
| Johnson sounds like he just finished reading Deleuze and
| Guattari.
| jdsalaro wrote:
| "Makes broad, meaningless and demeaning generalizations about
| language and its creators by alluding to their inability to
| capture the world's complex nature while doing that very same
| thing by means of rigid categorizations and stark remarks all
| in the interest of sounding edgy" - Wendell Johnson
|
| Nice, albeit terribly useless, soundbite.
| mpweiher wrote:
| For a long-form examination of this topic, I can heartily
| recommend Barbarah Ehrenreich's 2009 book _Bright-sided: How the
| Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined
| America_.
| snthd wrote:
| I can recommend Oliver Burkeman's book "The Antidote" "Happiness
| for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking".
|
| https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16681873W/The_antidote
|
| https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865478015
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Being disingenuous is bad. In other news: water is wet. More at
| 11.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Too much positivity at the workplace and at one point, it feels
| so empty and cringy. Especially when it's just words, as opposed
| to actions. Or a facade like other commenters have mentioned. The
| worst part is when you don't feel like playing along but have to
| or else risk being seen as the "party breaker".
| dshpala wrote:
| I discussed this article with my team, and the responses were
| very positive!
| cma wrote:
| Apparently Bloomberg is now breaking the back button on mobile.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| There is a massive region encompassing both Instagram filtered
| perfection as well as gallows humor.
|
| I agree completely that positivity can be forced to toxic levels,
| but I also see folks drop a plate or get something on their shirt
| and it's the worst thing ever and the idea adopting a "whoops, oh
| well" laughing it off outlook appears to them as forced and toxic
| positivity. Positivity is great and not letting things get you
| down is really important if not taken too far.
|
| So what's the measure for too far versus not far enough? I feel
| like I see too far and not far enough on equal measure in my peer
| group.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I've got friends that suffer something like this but I have never
| been able to put it to words. The danger is when these
| fastidiously benevolent people implode without warning or giving
| any signal they may do so.
| aritmo wrote:
| That's not "positivity". That's 'gratuitous praise'.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apparently the solution example is to watch 'inside out' (yes I
| cried).
|
| Ecclesiastical stoicism has kept me sane this year simply because
| my expectations are so incredibly low.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| This has kind of been a problem at my workplace. Everything from
| the company's marketing material to its recruiting practices
| exudes an almost overwhelming amount of positivity. They put a
| huge emphasis on hiring "the nicest people in the world".
| Disagreements or arguments at the company are almost non-
| existent, because everyone tries their hardest to be positive and
| nice at all times. Every other sentence in Slack ends with an
| emphatic exclamation point (or two or three) and / or a smiley
| face.
|
| I like my job, and I will gladly take it over a workplace with
| toxic negativity, but it's still been somewhat exhausting.
| There's that underlying anxiety that if you're somehow not seen
| as exuding the correct level of positivity, that you might get
| let go.
|
| Everyone at the company is constantly patting themselves on the
| back about how it's "the greatest place to work in the world" and
| that they have "the most incredible co-workers". This makes it
| hard to disagree with things or point out things that aren't
| working, because everyone is so afraid to hurt somebody's
| feelings.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| It's hilarious during interviews when everyone says "I've never
| worked at a company like this", "I've never worked with a team
| like this, truly the best"...I roll my eyes...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I've worked at multiple companies where the interviewers will
| say stuff like "we have the best engineering team in the
| world!", and then you get hired and look at their codebase...
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's often a facade too! I've heard privately at one employer
| the statement "We all outwardly sing Kum-ba-ya and hold each
| other's hands but everyone has razor blades in their palms
| and they hold hands pretty hard..."
| gxqoz wrote:
| I've been converted to using exclamation points after phrases
| like "thanks" in emails. The book Because Internet convinced me
| that the rules of email politeness have changed. I don't love
| it, but whatever. Language changes.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > Everything from the company's marketing material to its
| recruiting practices exudes an almost overwhelming amount of
| positivity.
|
| I don't know if it's because I'm french but that kind of thing
| makes me throw up in my mouth and is a super big turn-off. Some
| things sucks, it's fine, accept it and move on or try to make
| them better through actions. Words don't make things better.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I don't have any hard evidence for this, but it seems to me
| that this fake positivity is a lot more prevalent in the US
| than in Europe
| hntrader wrote:
| > I will gladly take it over a workplace with toxic negativity
|
| Agree, having a colleague with a negative disposition (< 3rd
| percentile of general population) is in my view much, much
| worse than colleagues that exude the normal amount of fake
| positivity, even though the latter is annoying and draining and
| is more deceitful than the former.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yeah, that's basically where I'm at. It's irritating
| sometimes, but my stress levels are much lower than places
| I've worked with a negative atmosphere, so I will live with
| it.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm not a big Jack Welch (former GE CEO) fan. But I did catch an
| interview on a news program where they asked him how to succeed
| in business, and the answer was awesome: "Know the facts and act
| on them." Seems being artificially positive (or negative) is a
| great way to become detached from reality, and eventually, make a
| lot of very bad decisions.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This is one of those cases where I think that a subtle change to
| fit the headline into HN submission constraints made is a lot
| worse.
|
| The original is, "Trying to Stay Optimistic Is Doing More Harm
| Than Good"
|
| "Toxic positivity" makes more sense in the context of the
| article, which is much more about personal mental health than
| general workplace behavior. It is not about other peoples'
| positivity, it is about accepting your own negative emotions as
| healthy. It is not about positive feedback in meetings. Anyway,
| it has reasonable parting advice:
|
| _Ho, the neuropsychologist, has an unexpected suggestion to help
| calibrate a Pollyanna perspective: a session watching Disney-
| Pixar's Inside Out, which animates and dramatizes human emotions.
| "One of the best antidotes to toxic positivity is reexamining
| your value system and understanding that some of the best moments
| in life, when you truly feel good, are full of mixed emotions,"
| she says. "And that's what we should be embracing as human
| beings."_
| hnarn wrote:
| I vastly prefer honest negativity over dishonest positivity. An
| example of this is the behavior of service personnel in the US
| compared to my native country, every time I go there I almost
| want to tell them to tone down the niceness, but of course
| there's no point because I realize I'm the odd one out.
|
| Of course I appreciate the effort of being "nice" but when you're
| not doing it out of genuine care for someone I'd much rather just
| be treated in a neutral way, like you'd treat any human being you
| encountered that you knew nothing about. I don't much enjoy being
| treated as an old friend by someone who wouldn't lend me five
| bucks, and I don't enjoy being asked polite questions that
| require elaborate answers when you really don't want to listen to
| the answer and your eyes glaze over within the first seconds.
|
| Adults have left their insecurities behind them and should
| understand they're not, at least initially, the friend of every
| human being and shouldn't have a problem with being treated in a
| professionally reserved way.
| Bayart wrote:
| American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and
| cold."
|
| European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and
| annoying."
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I thought that was about Russians, not Europeans in general.
| In Russia it's considered a mental illness to smile without a
| good reason.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| It's a thing in Germany as well. I remember that one of the
| reasons customers gave why they didn't want to go to
| Walmart when it opened a few shops in Germany was because
| they were freaked out by the happy act that employees had
| to put on.
|
| The sort of always smiling, always laughing stereotypical
| American waiter or something would be perceived as
| juvenile, fake or not very bright over here.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Most Russians I've know on a one on one basis were pretty
| jovial and fun to hang out with. They did thing people were
| "fake" and "smiled too much" in America though. I told them
| the American take on reality was as legitimate as their
| more cynical attitude. It's all in learning about culture
| and why people are the way they are. Russians tended to be
| very straight forward and say what's on their mind, and
| Americans will hold it back. There are pluses for both
| positions.
| sneak wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I get along so well with slavic
| and eastern european people.
|
| The dynamic range is higher, versus having to figure out
| the difference between smiling and mega-ultra-smiling (as
| in the USA).
| hnarn wrote:
| While that's definitely a Russian "thing" it's by no means
| confined to Russia.
| odiroot wrote:
| I think you could apply the same in Poland. Maybe not
| "mental illness" but being a bit "off", maybe drunk or
| drugged. We also associate smiling too much with snake oil
| salespeople.
| lallysingh wrote:
| How does a European in Canada feel?
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. I'm a slavic expat in UK. I recently
| raised an issue with how teachers at our kids' school are
| struggling with utilising technology in productive ways. I
| also offered taking a day off work to help them get better at
| things like google classroom and google docs. I was labelled
| rude solely by pointing out the deficiencies. It didn't
| really matter that I offered constructive way of resolving
| this. According to the brits, I was rude because I pointed
| out areas of improvement. WTF?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It's probably in the way you presented it. I'm sure there
| were positive things you could say about what they're
| doing. Then offer more help with topics you're an "expert"
| on without being patronizing. Nobody likes to be shit on.
| Start from neutral ground and call it improvements, not say
| "I don't like your shitty methods, here mine are better".
| No one will respond to that.
| learnstats2 wrote:
| I guess that you haven't fully understood the complete
| problem space of everything that a teacher has to master in
| order to be effective, and everything that a school has to
| provide resources for (including other areas of training).
|
| Classroom teaching is not highly dependent on technology
| and low-tech solutions are often better.
|
| Your suggested solution asks teachers to give up a day of
| their time (unpaid?) for what _you_ think is important,
| without listening to what teachers actually find difficult
| about their jobs.
|
| Even if what you are saying is right and genuinely helpful,
| it won't immediately look like a good solution to the
| teachers or to the administration.
| arp242 wrote:
| The British way of pointing these things out is something
| along the lines of "Oh this is great, have you considered
| X?" Translated to English as you or I would understand it,
| it's more akin to "meh, it kinda sucks, X is better".
|
| Or something like that anyway; I never really figured out
| this whole thing in the time I lived there.
|
| Here's a chart to help you get started: https://pbs.twimg.c
| om/media/DL8gbEoX0AAcwAq?format=jpg&name=...
| deanCommie wrote:
| Canadian here.
|
| Our culture tends to pick and choose from the best of either
| the American or the European approach. We don't always get it
| right, and the combination/middle ground isn't necessarily
| better than either of the alternatives, but I do feel like we
| have some general insight and sympathy to both the European
| and the American philosophies.
|
| I've also lived as an ex-pat in Europe for 4 years working
| closely with both Europeans and AMericans.
|
| In this regard, I think the American approach is superior.
|
| 1) Europeans are overly sensitive about "micro-friendliness".
| I've heard people complain that the cashier at the grocery
| store asks "How are you doing?". "They don't really care, why
| do they ask!"
|
| I've had to explain that no, they don't care, but that moment
| of friendliness is still a pleasant one, and over the course
| of the day, all those moments add up to a generally positive
| contribution to one's existence.
|
| Americans do take faux-friendliness over the top (especially
| if it's only reserved for the local in-group, see: southern
| "hospitality"), but I think the Europeans need to lighten up
| a bit.
|
| 2) While I don't need my waitresses to be so friendly to the
| point that they seem like they're flirting with you, the
| European waitstaff at restaurants are far from neutral, and
| are actively disinterested in your hospitality experience.
| This doesn't apply to fancy high-end restaurants, of course.
| But just a general casual lunch or dinner you're just not
| going to get the same quality of service as you do in North
| America.
|
| While I abhor tipping, I can't help but think that it does
| create some positive incentives in staff here.
| Bayart wrote:
| >But just a general casual lunch or dinner you're just not
| going to get the same quality of service as you do in North
| America.
|
| That's just circling back to North America and Continental
| Europe having diametrically opposed notions of what good
| service means and what social interactions are desirable.
|
| At the risk of sounding like a prick, a good staff member
| here is someone who makes themselves completely invisible
| from customers while keeping the shop running smoothly.
| Having a waiter trying to build a rapport with me because
| ultimately I have the be the one paying them instead of
| their boss is infuriating, and the intrusion of a third
| party into my table-size privacy bubble is extremely
| unwelcome.
| robocat wrote:
| > I've heard people complain that the cashier at the
| grocery store asks "How are you doing?". "They don't really
| care, why do they ask!"
|
| Uggghhhh, I _loath_ being asked that. Firstly, the staff
| are forced to say it as part of their job and they are
| checked. It's inhuman to make someone do that. Also it
| fucks with my head - now I feel forced to do some
| interaction to lessen the evil of their work day (it is
| always shitty jobs) and I find it draining by sympathy. It
| breaks the humanness of just being polite and thankful to
| anyone you interact with that is working hard (even if they
| are tired, emotionally drained, or don't want to be there).
|
| > especially if it's only reserved for the local in-group,
| see: southern "hospitality"
|
| Can you explain that?
|
| > tipping, I can't help but think that it does create some
| positive incentives in staff here.
|
| Tipping is outright disgusting: paying people to be nice
| just creates inhuman fakeness. The image of some fat
| leering arsehole, or ugly souled woman, getting their ego
| stroked by a young wage slave is abhorrent. The worst I
| ever saw was young American tourists on the coast of Mexico
| (a small town called San Francisco I think) - the way the
| tourists treated the staff was wretchedly vile (maybe due
| to the staff being mostly poor and Mexican?)
|
| Edit: that sounded a bit US bashing, so I will add that I
| have met many wonderful, kind, interesting and friendly
| Americans. I have even been treated to Southern Hospitality
| and it seemed genuine enough to me (even though me and my
| partner essentially just gate-crashed their party on short
| notice!). Being white and kiwi might help my impressions
| though...?!
|
| Edit: in my experience Canadians and New Zealanders have
| similar outlooks.
| bittercynic wrote:
| American here. I think many of us are kind of socially
| unmoored, and actually don't know how to take a neutral tone,
| and get anxious when someone takes a neutral tone with us.
| Almost like we're so insecure that we need constant positive
| feedback/reassurance that we're in a friendly situation. I've
| been around this my whole life and haven't gotten used to it,
| but I do the overly friendly act when it seems that people
| are expecting it. It doesn't cost me anything, and it seems
| to help people leave an interaction feeling secure.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Americans aren't socially unmoored. We come from a society
| where people smile as a matter of being polite. People
| everywhere have to learn social signals and ours happen to
| involve smiling as a matter of course.
|
| This thread is pretty irritating for being kind of clueless
| to the reality that every culture on earth is going to have
| trappings like this and the alleged stoicism of Russia and
| Germany are no exception. (Thinking someone is simple or
| mentally ill because they smile too much is already such a
| trapping.)
| bzb6 wrote:
| Welcome to Costco, I love you.
| heimatau wrote:
| > I vastly prefer honest negativity over dishonest positivity.
|
| As scripture says, 'Faithful are the wounds of a friend'.
| Sometimes the best thing we need is a little vinegar that is in
| our actual/tangible/observable best interest.
| Bayart wrote:
| Give me _feedback_ , not encouragement. I don't care whether you
| tell me my work is good or bad, but I very much care than you
| qualify that statement with data points or a new outlook that
| enable me to improve that work.
|
| I think a lot of technical guys see professional interactions
| that way, with pats on the back being at best an empty ritual, at
| worst a waste of useful time.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| For me this is the key. Positivity and negativity are both
| harmful if they're not _specific_. Saying "the team did a great
| job" is basically worthless. Cool, let's all do the exact same
| thing we did last time with no variation so we can do another
| "great job". Versus "the team did a great job communicating
| changed expectations mid project that meant we didn't lose a
| client" can actually lend some insight.
|
| Negative feedback is the exact same (keep it specific) though
| with the nuance of saving negative feedback that's personal for
| 1:1 convos.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I've felt a lot of "false" positivity espoused by project
| managers, especially those in charge of agile ceremonies.
|
| Examples: "I'm really {proud,impressed} of all of you for your
| output this sprint", "You guys are {killing,crushing,owning} it",
| "You all should be very proud of what you guys did", etc.
|
| These aren't given after periods of crunch time, they're
| literally every week to the point where it feels so contrived and
| artificial. They're given when we're just doing normal, expected
| work.
|
| I've mentioned this to colleagues and friends and there seems to
| be two camps of people: those who want constant positive
| reenforcement and those who it completely has the opposite
| effect, an annoyance. I guess I fall into the latter.
| nathias wrote:
| Its a type of condescention, maybe some people fail to
| recognize it (thats probably the reason why its used in the
| first place).
| namdnay wrote:
| Yes yes yes. That's what I can't stand - I don't mind the
| hypocrisy, what really grates is the condescension. Who are
| you to congratulate me? Why would the opinion of some random
| corporate bullshitter mean anything to me?
|
| And of course the whole political game where people have to
| send congratulations just to signal that they're part of
| leadership
| quercusa wrote:
| I started DuoLingo recently (for Latin) and the over-the-top
| cheerleading there is driving me nuts.
| baxtr wrote:
| I was one one of those people doing this. Not because I liked
| it. I hated it. It felt false. But because I somehow thought it
| was expected of me. All other leaders of the company would do
| the same. Cheer for their team, applaud them publicly, always,
| constantly. I felt I had to participate in that kind of
| political game because otherwise the team, the people I cared
| about would feel bad about themselves. I guess what I'm trying
| to say is that this depends also a lot on company culture.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Well depending on the type of org you're in, it could be
| dangerous not to. When everyone else is doing it, if you
| aren't, it just makes the other managers think, "Wow, that
| manager isn't praising their people. They must _really_ suck.
| Remind me never to work with that team. "
| dbish wrote:
| I'm a senior leader and I try to go against the grain on
| this. I can't stand pile-on emails where every leader has to
| reply all with "great job" for minor things. I work to
| provide positive feedback for specific and great work because
| people see-through false positivity and in the long run you
| can see that the folks doing the work are very clear with
| thinking these "ra ra" displays show a disconnect from
| reality rather then a positive reinforcement. They remind me
| of the (pardon the language) "shit sandwich" way of providing
| feedback that some people feel they have to do: give a (many
| times false and vague) positive not then say your true
| feelings and end with a positive note. If they aren't
| specific, it just feels fake and people are just waiting for
| the true feedback in the middle.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Manager 2 jobs back did sandwiching all the time. Its even
| fake if the positive is truthful because the middle part
| (criticism or substance or negative) is the meat. Its
| manipulative, and I prefer honesty.
| matwood wrote:
| I wonder if we all have just become too cynical. I don't need
| praise, and simply prefer more money. But, if someone in charge
| is trying to keep the team attitude right with some positive
| thoughts, letting it get to me is really _my_ problem and not
| theirs.
| topkai22 wrote:
| From the perspective of someone who leads an engineering team-
| I'm genuinely happy and proud of my team when things are going
| well. I'm not blowing smoke when I say something like that-
| it's all true.
|
| Now I will call out a bad sprint, and I'll praise even more
| after a great sprint, but it seems to be me that just making
| our deadlines week after week is something to be genuinely
| happy for.
| malingo wrote:
| Do you mean "espoused" instead of "eschewed"?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Ah yeah, my bad.
| sneak wrote:
| If everything is super duper great, then nothing is.
| akudha wrote:
| I too fall in the latter category. Nothing is more annoying
| than fake appreciation, fake love etc. It is better to keep my
| mouth shut if I can't mean what I say
| [deleted]
| Puts wrote:
| This made me think about how different it is to motivate people
| to exercise. Some people seams to need a full on military boot
| camp to get exercise done, and some people just totally shuts
| down when someone tells them what to do. When it comes to
| management, we don't only need to understand that different
| people need different types of motivation, but also that
| something that is essential to motivate some can be directly
| contra productive and harmful to others motivation.
| orzig wrote:
| A million times this. People are diverse, in basically every
| way. It's the worst and best part about them.
| 5tefan wrote:
| Very true. Not easy to deal with humans.
| angelbar wrote:
| Welcome Zukerberg...
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| I tend to see "toxic positivity" as an attempt to gaslight
| people, but with the presumption of good intentions, and that
| presumption of good intentions somehow washing away the
| deleterious effects of gaslighting people. Somewhat
| unsurprisingly it turns out it's the gaslighting that's the
| problem, not entirely the motivation for engaging in it. My
| experience has been that high-performing people gravitate
| toward being motivated by engagement with reality, not by
| suspending disbelief to engage in contrivance or farce. This is
| true on the other side of it as well. They won't tolerate
| "toxic negativity" either, which is just another form of
| gaslighting in an attempt to motivate by way manufactured
| crisis or exigency.
| sneak wrote:
| I generally refrain from comments that don't contribute to
| the discussion, but having already done the thing that
| indicates "good comment", I still wanted to cosign and
| further express how spot-on this comment is, in my
| experience.
|
| (I also recognize the inherent irony of doing this in a
| thread about empty praise, heh.)
| lbblack wrote:
| I think one of the most important things for a person in a
| leadership role to understand, is how to understand other
| people by _confidently_ understanding yourself. If you can 't
| offer me encouraging advice and honest critique - without being
| afraid of hurting my personal feelings, I'd be left without a
| clear direction. Otherwise, you'd be easily able to recreate a
| positive growth cycle in your team (e.g. significant boosts in
| morale, productivity, communication, etc.)
|
| False positive emotions are _usually_ the result of someone
| denying the acceptance of truth. What ever that truth may be.
|
| This is probably going to sound super corny but YMMV. The
| psychological impacts of denial are devastating. The
| psychological impacts of love, acceptance and forgiveness are
| limitlessly fruitful.
|
| I see a lot of HN posts recently on the existence of these
| superhuman developers with god-like abilities or productivity.
| Everybody on this planet is human, yet we interact with others
| intellect or knowledge as if it were a static state. It's not.
| Every human mind is quite literally, a quantum computer. Anyone
| can grow their intellect or wisdom or maturity, it just takes
| the proper push in the right direction and some guts.
| qwantim1 wrote:
| The story though is about toxic positivity affecting the person
| putting a lot of pressure on themselves. It led to success but
| the concern was of the excessive stress and taking a day off
| for mental health break "sick day" to make up for it.
|
| If you personally don't like positivity which isn't fake, then
| it might be good to dig into that. I have a hard time with fake
| positivity but genuine positivity is usually acceptable.
| caturopath wrote:
| I was so taken back by this when I joined a huge tech company
| for the first time. I couldn't tell at first whether people
| were so miscalibrated that they couldn't tell that the work
| wasn't impressive or whether it was just a tradition to
| bullshit all the time. So many of the exaggerated positive
| statements are about things so minor that they actually come of
| a bit condescending to me.
| josephorjoe wrote:
| This has been my experience as well.
|
| I'm still not sure who is fake and who is sincere about this
| stuff.
|
| We have a weekly status meeting with the first section
| dedicated to "how are we winning" -- which is like awesome if
| you are a baseball team but when you are rolling out
| incremental features to a modest app and dealing w routine
| operational concerns it's hard to get that excited about
| "nothing caught on fire this week" or "we did the thing we
| said we'd do".
|
| And we have these horrible self and peer appraisals that we
| have to do where you are expected to describe routine
| competence in terms that should normally be reserved for a
| someone who rescued all the kittens and puppies from a pet
| store fire.
| Jochim wrote:
| Is it annoying because it seems disingenuous? If so what makes
| it so?
|
| I used to be much more cynical about unwarranted
| praise/positivity. My mind has pretty much been changed by my
| current job, our team lead doesn't communicate how he's feeling
| to our team at all and this has had negatively affects on not
| just my morale/happiness but my teammates' as well.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Words lose their meaning when overused. That's the one reason
| that to me, it feels disingenuous. When even the smallest
| thing is "really amazing", everything is "really amazing".
| Result being, whatever that person says has very little worth
| except when something is clearly detrimental.
|
| That alone would be manageable. Yet, this behavior is often
| expected from others too, which creates an environment that,
| at least to me, is incredibly suffocating. What's worse, such
| an environment caused two problems for me:
|
| First, by upping the average of "relatively perceived as
| positive", objectively neutral people are perceived as
| negative. I've actually had colleagues go into emotional
| distress and vent to me over this.
|
| Second, it at least _seems_ like overly positive environments
| are afraid of criticism and critical people. As a critical
| person myself, it has been incredibly difficult to navigate
| such an environment and it lead to me essentially becoming an
| assembly line worker who "just shuts up and does their job".
| Also anecdotal, without critical people, going into the wrong
| direction either ends up being corrected very slowly, or not
| at all (and given how multi-dimensional work tends to be,
| going into the wrong or nowhere-near-optimal direction is
| very likely).
|
| As a result, to me, no feedback at all is only slightly worse
| than overly frequent, overly positive feedback.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Yes and I don't think it's because it seems disingenuous,
| it's because it is disingenuous. Not out of malice but
| because if you're not being super positive and supportive,
| you're causing discord and not being a "team player".
|
| Most weeks at work are completely benign where we're not
| doing "amazing" work, we're doing "work". We're doing our
| salaried jobs as expected.
|
| It's frustrating when every Jira ticket that gets closed is
| some moral victory that needs to be held high. It's not, it's
| our jobs and it's frustrating to deal with the faux
| positivity when I just want to do my job.
| username90 wrote:
| There is just as much signal in constant praise as there is
| in no praise, ie none. The only difference is that in the
| constant praise scenario you are expected to be happy and
| thank your manager for the "praise".
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| A lot of insight in the parent comment here. Most importantly
| this: _"...there seems to be two camps of people: those who
| want constant positive reinforcement and those who it
| completely has the opposite effect ... "_
|
| If you are leading and or managing a team, one of the most
| important things you need to know are how do people want their
| feedback. My experience is that it varies from person to person
| (I suspect that there are many more than two camps :-)) and as
| such it is unlikely that you can meet that need in group
| feedback.
|
| Because of that, my choice these days is to split feedback into
| two fora, the group status meeting and 1:1s. In the group,
| feedback is modulated by progress against plan. So "we need to
| work harder" for behind plan, "neutral" for on plan, and "this
| team is killing it" for ahead of plan. In 1:1s the feedback is
| based on the expectations that have been set for that team
| member, do they know what is expected of them? Do they know how
| it is being measured? And where are they with respect to
| measurement vs expectation.
|
| 1:1 feedback often times (for me) takes on more of a
| mentor/mentee tone rather than a how are we doing on the
| schedule tone. Doing that well also requires a certain amount
| of trust which, as a manager, you have to earn by being honest
| with your team members.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| "We need to work harder" is not the kind of manager I like.
| The best ones just set a great example and work harder and
| put in overtime themselves and the rest of the team are
| usually are sympathetic enough to follow.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Overtime shouldn't be the solution. Team member shouldn't
| be put into overtime by social pressure.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| > So "we need to work harder" for behind plan
|
| That will just get me angry. If you screw up your commitments
| that's on you. Own up to it and talk to your stakeholders.
| Don't make me work harder for your mistakes.
| ptr wrote:
| So you can never make mistakes in your commitments?
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| I do. Sometimes I work harder to compensate, some times I
| apologize. But then it's my mistake so I can negotiate
| with myself.
|
| Sometimes working harder is warranted. Some salesperson
| screwed up, and it's not really possible to reneg the
| multi million dollar contract. "I'm sorry guys, what can
| we do?"
| tchalla wrote:
| In the end, HOW you deliver feedback matters. Personally, I
| have three important characteristics for a feedback.
|
| Point 1 : "Be Specific". I can not stress this enough. Please
| point out specific observable behaviour.
|
| Point 2 : Frame feedback in terms of team/organisational
| goals. Every team has a purpose within the organisation. It's
| a team game and every team member should know the feedback in
| context of the team game. Individual feedback, team context.
|
| Point 3 : Cite the past but look for future changes in
| behaviour. You can not change the past but you can influence
| the future.
|
| For example, "Hey John! When you do X, it helps the team
| achieve Y. Please continue doing so!" or "Hey John! When you
| do Z, it lets the team down. What can you do differently?".
| palimpsests wrote:
| Completely agree that HOW matters so much!
|
| To me and probably many others (albeit often
| subconsciously), point 3 comes across as blaming, overly-
| generalized, and lacking in personal (and group)
| accountability for your experiences.
|
| What about something like,
|
| "Hey John, the last time you did X, Y happened, which had Z
| consequences.
|
| I felt { disappointed / let down / concerned / irritated /
| worried / angry / $whatever_emotions_came_up_for_YOU }.
|
| Other team members reported feeling $emotions.
|
| What was going on there for you?
|
| How can I / we help you to avoid X in the future?
|
| Do you have any ideas about what you could focus or work on
| in order for Y not to happen again?
|
| Here are some specific requests I have for you in order to
| avoid this kind of thing in the future: $requests "
|
| The edgy part about this for many people is taking
| ownership for their experience, we live in a society with a
| lot of deconditioning around this . Nobody else but you is
| responsible for how you feel. John didn't let you down, you
| had expectations about what he was going to do, and to your
| assessment, he didn't meet those expectations (that's also
| a reasonable thing to say, I think -- I would give more
| detail and context about specifically how those
| expectations weren't met). That you felt one way or another
| about this has nothing to do with John, and there's a lot
| of subtle and overt problems that can arise in a
| relationship when we attribute our experience to another
| person with our language.
|
| I also mention that it sounds overly-generalized because
| saying "when you do X" has an implicit assumption that he
| will continue doing X in the future, and isn't really all
| that specific about why X has certain consequences - I
| think it's better to use specific situations in the past
| when X happened and to talk about what came up when that
| occurred. This is basically what I'm hearing you say in
| Point 2 :)
|
| edit: fixed variables, wording
| UpsilonAlpha wrote:
| To add on to this. Following these steps will often avoid
| the problem described by GP. If you can't find specific
| actions to praise, then there is a good chance the
| recipient will feel the praise is hollow.
| didibus wrote:
| You should write a book for managers, and every page should
| just be this comment repeated for 200 pages.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| FWIW I strongly agree with this comment. I have painful
| experience from _not_ doing each of these things at various
| times.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| > "this team is killing it" for ahead of plan
|
| Why do you think telling your team this is useful?
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/about-
| fathers/201202...
| andersource wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the linked
| article. There are a few important distinctions, most
| notably (from the article itself):
|
| > "We praise drawings ... because we want our kids to
| continue to work hard, and to do good work... But what we
| really want to teach our children... is that they should do
| good work because of the satisfactions it provides."
|
| While I understand how this could apply to children (if not
| necessarily agree), we don't manage teams to have fun, we
| do want to encourage them to do good work.
|
| As for the wider question, if a team is doing really good
| work, why not give credit where it's due? I feel like not
| acknowledging when people are putting in extra effort is a
| great way to discourage them from doing that.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| I think the case with children is the same as with
| adults. We don't raise children "to have fun". Some would
| say we raise children to have a meaningful life for the
| parent, and I would hope for the children as well, i.e.
| "to do good work" as you say.
|
| Like others have said, effect of praise would be very
| specific to individuals, but some have said praise hasn't
| helped them much. It definitely has not helped me, so
| here is my reasoning as to why you should not praise a
| good team. For me, stop the praise, tell me how to be
| better, and show me you care about me improving, and care
| about me on a personal level. Yes, I know that when I
| work hard and give you good output, it helps company, I
| don't need people to tell me that I worked hard. I can
| see it (If your company prevents your employees from
| seeing the effect of their output, thats the problem,
| don't say praise is necessary. The boss should not try to
| be the feedback loop). The reverse pavlovian effect can
| kick in otherwise: If it doesn't come when I am working
| hard, I feel bad. Also, the boss does not control
| reality, so becoming my feedback loops is bad, because he
| can warp reality based on his perspective.
|
| It looks like this is highly specific to individuals
| though, the above works for me.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I find it useful to acknowledge when the team is performing
| beyond expectations. That has been in response to early
| feedback I received in management roles _from team members_
| that when they were putting in extra effort they didn 't
| feel it was "seen" and so it demotivated them to put in
| extra effort.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Maybe your employees have been conditioned to expect
| praise when they work hard, and do not currently have the
| opportunity to develop their intrinsic motivation to do
| good work.
|
| Just because drug addicts become needy without their
| supply, doesn't mean they should juice up. Analogously,
| just because people become demotivated due to lack praise
| (or other reasons), does not mean praise is necessary to
| boost their performance. It might just be a sign there is
| an unaddressed problem.
| shrimpx wrote:
| This may sound a bit cynical but it's honest: When everyone
| else is gratuitously praising engineering, it sort of creates
| an atmosphere that feels like engineering is being taken
| advantage of by these other people: managers, sales people,
| execs. It feels like these people think you're their cash cow,
| and also that they think you're kind of stupid, and gratuitous
| compliments are enough to keep the cash cow going. That may not
| be what goes on, but that's what it feels like.
| [deleted]
| rdiddly wrote:
| The word flattery might be useful here.
| amelius wrote:
| Next time you get such a compliment, maybe ask for a raise or
| a bonus? Then you know whether the compliment was real or
| not.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Hey, you get free string cheese, what more do you want?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That sounds like a personal issue though. I generally know if
| I'm doing a good job or being a load, and I don't look to
| external support or denial of that. I prefer regular work
| reviews but I don't need to hear it all the time. People are
| people and quite varied, some will think you're doing a great
| job and never say a thing, others prefer to be "positive" and
| lay it on a bit thick. When I want an honest evaluation I
| just ask to please point out both the good and bad from my
| manager/peer.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Same for me. I hate the celebratory management emails after
| crunch time. They feel insulting to me. I expect management to
| help during the project and not celebrating once everything is
| done. That while not having fixed obvious problems during the
| project. My partner is the other way. She loves and needs
| praise. The more the better.
|
| Another interesting thing was at the end of one of the last
| projects. There was a survey where we could choose between a
| Patagonia shirt and a plaque. Guess what? The majority voted
| for the plaque. That was astonishing to me but a good reminder
| that I seem to be different.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > Another interesting thing was at the end of one of the last
| projects. There was a survey where we could choose between a
| Patagonia shirt and a plaque. Guess what? The majority voted
| for the plaque. That was astonishing to me but a good
| reminder that I seem to be different.
|
| Holy shit. This is incredible. I'd be curious what management
| forced you to do during this period. Longer hours?
|
| I wish there was some "fucked company" equivalent for
| tracking corporate charades like this.
| lostlogin wrote:
| What did the plaque say? This is amazing.
| trhway wrote:
| some demotivator like this https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/
| 1/0535/6917/products/dedicat... ?
|
| In general you can't trust/take seriously whatever the
| management says, except for 1. specific information
| reflected in the HR systems and 2. the specific
| tasks/deadlines/etc. assigned to you and the related
| progress/delivery/etc. discussions.
|
| Specifically, when it comes to public praise, the manager
| publicly praising his team/dept/org is actually praising
| themselves while supposedly being publicly modest/coy by
| not explicitly praising themselves, and this is why
| management loves making those praises.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| From past experience I would LOVE to see some managerial
| acknowledgement of their fuckups that lead to crunch time.
| Praise is temporary, but if no changes are introduced from
| the other end of the work pipeline people will get crushed.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| I'm kind of in a weird in-between role. Usually when crunch
| time happens we were well aware that the deadlines were
| aggressive or the feature was going to be a major PITA to
| implement and brought that up but executives pull ranked
| and basically said I don't care figure it out. We're all
| kind of defenseless honestly, it's just some of us are
| lucky enough where we're not directly responsible for
| creating the actual product.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| The executives might not care right now, but when the
| peons who do the actual crunch time leave, they'll end up
| with newcomers with no one to train them. Crunch time
| should be for real emergencies only.
|
| When I learned that my all-weekender overtime was only to
| keep an internal deadline, I started look for a new
| position immediately.
| didibus wrote:
| Haha, I feel I fall on both groups. Like, tell me how awesome
| I did and also better give me a bonus or I'll take my awesome
| self somewhere else ([?]#_#)
| randycupertino wrote:
| Sorry, in lieu of individual bonuses, management has
| decided to reward employees with a company team building
| boat trip!
|
| :-/ Nothing is worse than being stuck on a company boat
| trip. You can't arrive late, and you can't leave early!
| Also no where to hide or duck out for a bit. Literally
| stuck on the boat.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I want celebratory bonuses not "attaboy" emails for sure. I
| like to know on a regular basis what they think but don't
| ever take it too much to heart. Managers/CEOs are just people
| too. I think I know myself best, and try to be honest with
| myself.
| rglullis wrote:
| > between a Patagonia shirt and a plaque
|
| If I wanted a shirt, I'd buy a shirt. If the plaque truly
| reflected some effort done by the team that accomplished
| something big and deserved proper recognition, I get why
| people would prefer it. You can't buy respect.
|
| Now, of course the cynical me will argue that the whole thing
| is a trick question and that no one of the alternatives are
| good - downright offensive actually.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| I agree. It reminds me a bit of an episode of The Office,
| where the top salesman (Dwight) is explaining how he was
| Salesman of the Month 13 out of 12 months the previous
| year. In lieu of a pay rise, management had given him two
| plaques for the month of February.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I remember reading a Harvard Business Review article which
| was literally "How to motivate your employees to work
| harder without paying them more."
|
| And it was full of this kind of nonsense - plaques, award
| ceremonies, teeny-tiny presents as bonuses, and so on.
|
| Cynicism and offence are perfectly reasonable and fair
| reactions.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Project and Product managers have to give this praise because
| they contribute much less to the project, but take the majority
| of the credit. Designers and Engineers do the actual work. This
| is the sad reality of most tech companies with more than 20
| employees.
|
| Not having PMs and PdMs is a massive benefit of smaller orgs.
| Do everything you can to avoid hiring these people.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| "You guys are {killing,crushing,owning} it"
|
| I say this to my team a lot, even though they're operating as
| "expected" levels for my company.
|
| The reality is there are a lot of teams and a lot of companies
| that simply do not expect much from their teams. We do. I want
| to remind the team that they are doing good work.
|
| When people have confidence they're doing a good job, they're
| more likely to continue to do a good job.
| smrq wrote:
| You might want to internalize the parent comment, because
| it's entirely possible that some of your team members are not
| taking it that way. I'm on the receiving end of such feedback
| often. I know that it's coming from a genuine place. But that
| doesn't stop it from being irritating!
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| There's a class of people though, myself included, that do
| not like external validation. I thrive on internal validation
| on my perceived work product strength. I feel like I'm a
| better judge of whether my work is good or bad than a non-
| technical project manager.
|
| It's different when it comes from a technical peer or a
| technical manager. There it definitely means more.
|
| Closer to my point though, it was the continued repetition of
| the positive reinforcement. I'm talking a weekly occurrence
| where the situation did not call for the reinforcement. It
| felt fake and, to me, had the opposite effect as intended.
| clairity wrote:
| everyone responds to intrinsic motivation (which in part is
| what you're describing). very few people can last very long
| on extrinsic motivation only (like fake praise). there's
| not two classes of people who divide neatly into one camp
| or the other.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I must be one of those who feel slighted when I recieve undue
| praise. It's kind of patronizing hyperbole and I see it as
| being treated like a toddler than a grown, paid professional.
|
| I'm not one of Pavlov's dogs.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Something to watch out for is people becoming jaded if you
| use bombastic winning language like "crushing it" all the
| time, and your praise language doesn't measure up to the size
| of the win. If a tiny fix and a huge win are both "crushing
| it", a sense of meaninglessness will permeate.
| clairity wrote:
| no one wants fake praise, but rather real, genuine praise
| only. some folks will convince themselves the fake praise is
| genuine, but mostly, everyone can tell in their heart of
| hearts which is which. you're not really fooling most folks
| most of the time.
|
| give real praise only when it's deserved. support and
| compassion, however, should always be readily at hand.
| megous wrote:
| Depends. Your output may feel great to someone else, but
| you may not feel excited about it personally. (and there
| may be no conflict, or fakery of praise in it) Perhaps
| based on how perfectionist you are, or based on what you
| like about the work. You might be excited/motivated by
| different aspects of your work than your manager.
|
| To me it would come down to whether I think other person is
| praising my work just to get more of it done just for the
| praise (I'd have negative reaction), or whether he just
| likes it that much personally (neutral to mildly positive
| reaction).
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| Perhaps it would be better to express a genuine feeling
| instead.
|
| Praise implies being in a position to praise at all.
| Having some authority or mastery with regard to what is
| praised.
|
| Often enough, I am that authority. I don't expect praise
| from my clients. I'm getting payed precisely because they
| lack the mastery I offer.
|
| Instead I would be happy to hear about their true
| feelings. Stories of gratitude, or relief, or whatever
| else happened in their life that I might have played a
| role in.
| megous wrote:
| Yes, I understand. But a lot of the time people express
| feelings indirectly, and it's pointless to try to change
| everyone's communication style. So people sometimes use
| praise if they're happy about something, or whatever, and
| I interpret that in a way that suits my well being.
|
| It's just part of the communication style of someone, or
| even part of a culture of a country. If it bothers me,
| and it is the relationship I care about or looks to be
| long term, I may ask the person to communicate
| differently with me.
|
| But most of the time I get praise from random people on
| the internet, and I just interpret it that they are
| grateful for my contributions, regardless of what they
| say.
|
| Sometimes they want something from me, and are probably
| not comfortable with just asking for it, so they pad the
| communication with some praise about the software or me.
| Some state that they're uncomfortable asking for help
| more directly, some just add praise at the beginning/end
| of each reply. (which gets kinda strange after 3-4
| interactions :))
|
| It's nice if someone communicates more directly, but I
| can try to understand the other people, too, regardless
| of communication style.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you
| accept" ;)
| clairity wrote:
| then it's not fake praise (in the latter case), but
| genuine praise, whether you value the output the same or
| not.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| I like my feedback in cash, if you like my work give me more
| money, I seem to be in the minority though.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| They should just dole out cryptocurrency every time they say
| that. The words would have meaning again.
| arkitaip wrote:
| They would just launch their own crypto, allowing them to
| gamify their teams for all eternity.
| cordite wrote:
| Maybe a terrible idea, but it was inspired by the parent
| comment here..
|
| Fork DogeCoin, when someone goes above and beyond, reward
| them more each week.
|
| When they want, they can use dogecoin to do something like
| 20% time.
|
| I'm just following on the satirical nature of the parent
| comment here, don't take this as a real suggestion.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| Put your money where your mouth is, or something like that
| bavent wrote:
| My work effectively does. "Points" we can redeem for physical
| goods or trips.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Isn't that a little patronising?
| [deleted]
| brutal_boi wrote:
| Sometimes, Sometimes not. I can imagine everybody taking out
| the phone to check crypto prices as soon as the words were
| said
| dnautics wrote:
| Or you know, currency.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Same people I guess that think you have to find something
| positive to say about every code review.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Our 2 groups seem to be split down the Atlantic: the US folks
| love the clapping and positive reinforcement, the europeans
| seem to roll their eyes. (Generalisation ofc)
| praptak wrote:
| Presenting the neutral as great is merely cringy and annoying.
| It's much worse when failures are presented with the mandatory
| positive spin. Especially the failures of the management when
| the employees get to bear the costs.
| lbblack wrote:
| Failures shouldn't necessarily need a quote "mandatory
| positive spin". But they don't necessarily need a quote
| "mandatory negative spin". Meeting somewhere in the middle
| for a team is how generally speaking, consensus is met.
| caturopath wrote:
| Sometimes I've wondered if this keeps down ambition -- the only
| workplace I've been in where this is common, people seem to have
| a pretty low bar for success. I wonder if part of that is that
| folks think that they've achieved a lot when they get so much
| praise, even when they are not achieving a whole lot.
| itronitron wrote:
| It certainly keeps down quality. It takes hard and thoughtful
| work to actually think about and evaluate the work product of
| others to the point that constructive guidance can be offered.
| It's much easier to just say 'wow, that looks great' and smile.
| kazen44 wrote:
| also, sometimes hard decisions with severe negative
| consequences have to be made. not being open about these kind
| of decisions because they are not "positive" does far more
| harm then good.
| civilized wrote:
| For those getting paywalled https://outline.com/YpT9Eb
| Jakobeha wrote:
| The article's conclusion makes sense to me. Too much negativity
| is wrong for kind of obvious reasons. Too much positivity is also
| wrong, because not everything is positive so it sounds fake.
|
| In my experience, the best outlook is to appreciate what is
| actually good in life (e.g. your qualities, good things that
| happen), and accept that what is bad (e.g. your flaws, bad things
| that happen), are bad.
|
| Unfortunately if you barely have anything, than your life
| objectively sucks and no outlook is going to make you happy. But
| the thing is, I've seen a lot of people who are depressed that
| don't "barely have anything", they have food and shelter and
| qualities and things going on in their lives which should make
| them happy, but they still spend their time thinking about the
| things they don't have.
| [deleted]
| everdrive wrote:
| Toxic positivity seems to be a major method of communication for
| human resources.
| jariel wrote:
| 'Emotional Dishonesty'.
|
| In a positive direction it's at least more palatable than
| otherwise, but it's still bad.
|
| Orgs. that focus on emotional support and politics more than
| outcomes will feature this prominently.
|
| Oddly - it may not matter. Sometimes pushing the cogs of ABC corp
| forward is mundane, and everything else that happens is just
| fluff talk, like the sign on the bathroom door, it doesn't change
| how many widgest were bought and sold, or like the language on
| the 'stop sign' in Canada: French or English it doesn't matter,
| it's just something irrelevant argue about instead of having an
| actual war about it.
| trentnix wrote:
| Or better stated, _dishonesty_ does more harm than good.
| [deleted]
| Frost1x wrote:
| Well, you can be honest in the facts but the perspective around
| those facts is opinionated. Business culture pushes a constant
| optimistic outlook for perspective, which to me is ridiculous.
|
| It suffers from not only being optimistic when you shouldn't
| be, but also being overly optimistic in situations. I pretty
| much only experience these behaviors in workplaces.
| projectileboy wrote:
| This is the result of a culture where companies will lay you off
| tomorrow to bump the stock a quarter point. Every single one of
| us is in a gig economy. You eat what you kill, and you can never,
| ever project weakness, unless you already have money.
| haunter wrote:
| Prime example is the current Cosmo row about putting obese models
| on cover ("This is healthy") while Covid is rampaging in the US
| and killing obese people https://www.rt.com/news/511466-cosmo-
| fat-healthy-covid-cover...
| arkitaip wrote:
| That's a terrible example and your biases are showing.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| TBH saying that someone with BMI 30 is "healthy" is twisting
| the meaning of the word beyond recognition.
|
| Is smoking healthy? Philip Morris would certainly like it if
| people believed that. Fortunately, they do not believe it
| anymore.
|
| The false dichotomy of "either you hate fat people or you
| feed them positive bullshit" definitely looks like toxic
| positivity to me. No space for "your weight will likely cause
| you health problems down the line, here is how you can help
| it" there.
| [deleted]
| blackearl wrote:
| It's funny that people got so mad about that cover because the
| article within is about how to be positive when going to the
| gym and doing the exercise that you're able to do. Not going
| "well I'm so fat already, hope is lost"
|
| For all the fat hate, there are also the people who genuinely
| think that being obese is healthy. What better way to get
| through to those people than to trojan horse them with that
| controversial cover?
| username90 wrote:
| If it said "Smoking is Healthy" they would have been sued to
| hell, and obesity cuts more years of your lifespan than
| smoking.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I'm pretty tired of name calling like "fat hate". Obesity is
| a health risk; there's nothing wrong with calling a spade a
| spade.
| hntrader wrote:
| It's a bit different to the intended meaning of toxic
| positivity in the article, which is about dishonest
| cheerfulness. Maybe we need a different name for what you're
| describing. Promoting metabolic disease as healthy, when it's
| one of the leading causes of early mortality, is certainly some
| type of toxicity ...
| rimiform wrote:
| Per the article: "Even the oppressive insistence that we
| should love our body, no matter what, can tip into upbeat
| intolerance by implying that it's not OK to want to work on
| tummy folds or laugh lines."
|
| It's certainly related.
| antisthenes wrote:
| This is just a corporation pandering to one of their
| demographics.
|
| Toxic positivity is something that happens in interpersonal
| communication. It's meaningless praise and excitement,
| bordering on condescension. It usually also comes from a person
| who isn't really qualified to distinguish accomplishments from
| regular work, because they aren't an expert in the field.
| croissants wrote:
| I think the article touches on a distinction between these
| things:
|
| > Even the oppressive insistence that we should love our body,
| no matter what, can tip into upbeat intolerance by implying
| that it's not OK to want to work on tummy folds or laugh lines.
|
| I read the Cosmo cover as suggesting "it's OK to not want to
| change your body", toxic positivity would be "it's not OK to
| want to change your body". In that case, toxic positivity is
| more restricting -- it's the difference between "it's fine to
| not be sad" and "it's not fine to be sad".
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I claim "it's OK to not want to change your body" is itself
| toxic positivity.
|
| Yes, it's "okay" in that you should not experience body or
| fat-shaming for being obese. No, it's not "okay" in that you
| are at extremely elevated risks of every health disease - and
| your quality of life is really terrible in comparison to
| people who are not obese. It's actually really terrible for
| the state and for society to normalize this level of
| disregard for out health.
|
| I think this lesser form of "toxic positivity" inspires
| complacency and a general victim mentality out of people who
| for whom their pain is partially or entirely self-inflicted.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| > you are at extremely elevated risks of every health
| disease
|
| That's factually inaccurate.
|
| > It's actually really terrible for the state and for
| society to normalize this
|
| I don't believe there is any science to back this assertion
| up. It's an interesting hypothesis, but I doubt it's true.
|
| > think this lesser form of "toxic positivity" inspires
| complacency and a general victim mentality
|
| Actually, the opposite is true. Shame is linked with health
| care avoidance: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/artic
| le/abs/pii/S17401...
|
| I'd be interested if you have seen evidence that shame
| increases weight loss in obese people? Am I understand you
| correctly that's your thesis?
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > I'd be interested if you have seen evidence that shame
| increases weight loss in obese people?
|
| GP comment doesn't claim that. You're just making this
| up. It's a scientific fact obesity is a health risk. What
| is the point in denying that?
| williesleg wrote:
| Needful H1B's are always positive. And I'm positive they're
| destroying our IT infrastructure, one project at a time. They do
| the minimum to make it appear it works so they get it off their
| desk. Just like their home country. What a fucking mess.
| netsharc wrote:
| The author sadly throws Seligman under the bus by comparing him
| to the quack author of "The Secret". Seligman's work is more than
| just "Pessimism should be avoided", and he didn't say avoid
| negative feelings, but that there are 2 ways of seeing setbacks;
| the pessimist usually thinks it's permanent ("it will be bad
| forever"), pervasive ("everything is fucked") and personal ("it's
| because of me"). Meanwhile the optimist would see a problem as
| temporary, specific ("We just need to fix this thing") and not
| due to the self, but more to do with circumstances (e.g. "I
| didn't sleep well so I didn't perform that well").
|
| So it's not about how to avoid acknowledging problems, it's about
| how you shape your mind to see and deal with problems...
| noir_lord wrote:
| As a lead I find the best approach is to just figure out the
| person on your team and use whatever approach suits their
| personality well.
|
| On that topic, remember to say thank you when someone on your
| team gets you out of a jam, There are parts of the systems at
| work that I simply don't understand yet/never will because they
| are far outside of my team typically so if someone saves me a
| bunch of time because they happen to know that system, a thank
| you goes a long way - it's also an admission that as a lead you
| _don 't know everything_.
|
| I find "I don't know either, lets find out" opens a more
| productive dialogue than pretending you know everything - on top
| of which seniors (and good juniors) can spot a bluff anyway and
| you just lose credibility.
|
| Almost any management style works if you are genuine, open and
| authentic.
| [deleted]
| kofejnik wrote:
| Interestingly, I have this link open in another tab:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/do-elder-g...
|
| where they argue that Goths subculture manages to deal with aging
| very well precisely because they eschew fake positivity and
| eternal youth and concentrate on deeper emotions and themes
| instead
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There's a great book about this, called _The Dark Side of the
| Light Chasers_ :
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Light-Chasers-Reclaiming/dp...
| [deleted]
| blackearl wrote:
| It's hard when you work with really nice people. I was looking at
| rolling out a new app to my company and everyone was really
| positive on it during our testing. It was only after pressing
| people on whether they ran into any issues that I finally started
| getting some real feedback and complaints that were dealbreakers.
|
| It gives me a bit of anxiety and imposter syndrome when
| everything is going _too_ well. It 's easy to fall into the line
| of thinking that "I can't be doing a perfect job, so maybe
| they're keeping up appearances while scouting a replacement?"
|
| Critical feedback doesn't have to be cruel to be effective. No
| feedback or everything being roses can be nearly as bad as angry
| feedback.
| danieltillett wrote:
| As a manager what every report wants is to be genuinely listened
| to by their manager. If you make the effort to really listen to
| what your report has to say you don't need to worry about praise
| or other feedback.
|
| The downside is real listening is incredibly time consuming - I
| struggle to get under 60 min per person per day (not all at once
| of course) without compromising its effectiveness.
| jancsika wrote:
| > That's where self-doubt and reflection are elbowed aside in
| favor of a gung-ho, can-do spirit.
|
| Honestly, the times I can recall doing this, _nothing bad
| happened as a result_.
|
| Then again, I didn't follow it up by snorting cocaine or
| compulsively posting on Instagram.
|
| I'm going to rankly speculate it those kinds of follow-up
| behaviors that turn a natural part of life into a glaringly
| obvious self-destructive plot the likes of Wonder Woman 1980.
|
| Edit: clarification
| lrossi wrote:
| The article is mentioning Instagram as an amplifier of this need
| to fake being happy. But I think Facebook is responsible for it
| as well.
|
| I was once talking to a colleague who was showing me some old
| vacation pictures. Some tropical area. I commented that they were
| looking amazing. He said that actually there was a pile of
| garbage next to them, but they only put the good looking photos
| on Facebook.
|
| Everybody wants to look perfect online, so much of the
| appearances are faked. It makes sense, since everything is
| public, so we feel pressured to make ourselves look good.
| Repeated, I am not surprised that it can cause harmful
| psychological effects.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| It certainly hasn't made dating any more easier. Online dating
| is filled with sugar babies, catfishes, or doctored up photos
| beyond belief. Also it instigates a relationship to be solely
| through text. I mean jesus dating is about vetting and days or
| weeks of texting before actually meeting one another nowadays.
| Nobody wants to do anything physically anymore unless they've
| actually met you. It's to the point that it's almost a waste of
| time. COVID restrictions certainly haven't helped either.
|
| I wonder if US culture will ever revert. I think it's gone down
| a very dangerous path for the middle class. It will be only a
| matter of a few decades before we adopt the Japanese strategy
| of paying women to retire and have families instead of
| advancing their careers because of major population decline.
| np_tedious wrote:
| Not to downplay the mental harm discussed in the article, but
| the more mundane issue you touch on here is what gets to me.
|
| With this constant demonstration of happiness / positivity,
| it's extremely difficult to get a real, honest read on
| something. Not everything you ate was incredible, not
| everywhere you went was perfect. In fact, 50% of them were
| below average! I wish more people would quit performing and
| give the real scoop. But that tends to only happen in pretty
| tight circles now. I noticed this effect even in a group chat
| of close friends once it grew from 5 to 8.
| kazen44 wrote:
| its the same in small teams at work. having worked in a
| small, close knit team which was in constant discussion and
| "conflict" with each other because people in the team where
| very passionate about the work. its far note liberating to a
| have work environment where everyone can critique freely
| instead of taking up appearances just to be "nice".
| sigstoat wrote:
| > He said that actually there was a pile of garbage next to
| them, but they only put the good looking photos on Facebook.
|
| when your friends used a slide projector to show you their
| vacation photos, they left the bad slides out of the projector.
|
| i'm on board with facebook being a problem, but it's in more
| subtle ways than folks not showing you their bad photos.
| croissants wrote:
| Sure, but I think film made each photograph a bit more dear,
| making it less likely that somebody'll take a dozen just to
| pick the best one.
| analog31 wrote:
| Just wait until you're older, and Facebook devolves into
| nothing but rich parents humble-bragging and outright bragging
| about their kids. Yeah, Spring Break in Paris must have been
| wonderful, too bad your kid only got into 9 AP courses this
| semester.
| tqi wrote:
| I don't think the public nature of social media is driving
| this. After all people's private photo albums and slideshows
| back in the day were also heavily curated collections of "fake"
| happiness. I think the difference is thanks to the internet and
| the proliferation of smart phones, we are able to consume a
| much larger volume of these collections.
| 11eleven wrote:
| Something that I realized is, negative thoughts and emotions are
| normal and part of life. It's the counterproductive or hurtful
| behaviors we may engage in, as a reaction to the negative
| thoughts or emotions, that we can try to avoid.
|
| Feeling bad about having negative thoughts or emotions and being
| afraid to express them, only makes it more likely we'll engage in
| counterproductive coping behaviors.
| kazen44 wrote:
| this raises a good point.
|
| being negative is almost always culturally seen as a bad thing,
| especially in the US, while in would argue hiding your
| negativity is far worse in the long run because it occludes
| your state of mind to your peers.
|
| having moments when life just truly sucks is absolutely normal,
| but expressing it happens is not.
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