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Toxic positivity does more harm than good

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Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#181

Post by rdiddly »

shrimpx wrote: post #136
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #8

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 contrive…

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…

The word flattery might be useful here.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#182

Post by NoSorryCannot »

bittercynic wrote: post #135
Bayart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and cold." European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and annoying."

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…

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.)

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#184

Post by Bayart »

deanCommie wrote: post #172
Bayart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and cold." European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and annoying."

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 wit…

>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 to 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.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#185

Post by robocat »

deanCommie wrote: post #172
Bayart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and cold." European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and annoying."

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 wit…

> 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.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#186

Post by Fnoord »

dbish wrote: post #117
baxtr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 rath…

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.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#187

Post by learnstats2 »

bitcharmer wrote: post #153
Bayart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American in Europe : "Jesus, everyone here is so rude and cold." European in America : "Jesus, everyone here is so fake and annoying."

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.…

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.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#188

Post by topkai22 »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #8

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 contrive…

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.

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#189

Post by ptr »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #140
ChuckMcM wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> 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.

So you can never make mistakes in your commitments?

Re: Toxic positivity does more harm than good

#190

Post by username90 »

Jochim wrote: post #75
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #8

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 contrive…

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.

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".
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