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> Airing concerns or struggles in the workplace can be really nerve-wracking. Often, we are afraid of appearing unprofessional. We fear being judged negatively. This is the perfect opportunity to practice active listening. This ^ is toxic positivity. I am not unpaid therapist for my work colleagues. I have my own problems.
This article reads a lot like SEO spam. I can't really say why. Perhaps it's the title structure, or just the word count boosting?
I agree with greatly dislike this, on the surface... but this article suffers from basically the same thing itself?! > I asked our Customer Success Champion, Natasha, about this topic. Empathy is one of her many superpowers. Groan ! ... unless I misunderstood it... now I'm wondering if the 'think positive' lead image was used unironically..?
How about the toxicity of attacking positivity? This world has WAY too much negativity right now and it's downright harmful to human psyche. People are freaking giving up on the world and deciding that they should never have children because they think they'd just be bring them into a doomed world. That's when you know negativity has gone so far. Some toxic positivity on the odd occasion to counteract the nonsensical…
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Exactly. I know that having kids ruined my mother's life and trapped my parents in an unfulfilling relationship. Why would I want to waste my life raising kids, when it leads to misery (scientifically proven!) and requires so much money and time?
As some other comments touch on, what this could be framed as is "Ruinous Empathy", which is what Kim Scott calls it in Radical Candor: https://www.radicalcandor.com/radical-candor-not-brutal-hone... . The crux of it is that it's more useful to give someone a harsh truth that will help them grow (in a tactful way, while conveying that you care about them personally) rather than trying to be nice but ultimately not he…
People generally make what they think are rational decisions, it always feels like extreme hubris when someone decides that they know what would be best for someone else. They can't possibly know what reasoning lead to their current course of action. Thats what makes toxic positivity toxic, its people deciding that whatever lead you to have less than a cheerleader level of positivity is irrelevant, your thoughts on the matter are irrelevant, because they know how you should feel about something and want to help you "course correct"
I consider YouTube comments to be an example of "toxic positivity". YouTube are using AI to only show "postive" comments first, but the overall effect is a bizarre cultish "uncanny valley" approximation of how a real community react.
It really depends on what kind of content you're watching though. For wide swaths of content on youtube, there is nothing worthwhile that can be said in the comment section, either because youtube wouldn't show that sort of comment, or because there's earnestly nothing to be said.
Any mention of the reality of the situation was met with replies about not being a team player and showing negativity. It was an absolute morale killer for the development and SRE teams charged with on-call rotations which resulted in exhaustion and frequent outages.
Start-up code is often naive and hastily put together. Growth pains are expected as customer count and revenue increase. Don't bullshit the situation with false positivity. Address the issues and live to fight another day.
In the end, that SaaS has slowly faded away to obsolescence due to the lack of honesty about the actual state of the union.