Toxic Positivity at Work: How Leaders Accidentally Create It and How to Avoid It

The meeting went well. At least, that’s what everyone said.

The team had been through a tough stretch. Missed deadlines. A project that failed despite months of effort. People showing up tired in a way sleep does not fix. So you did what good leaders do.

You thanked everyone. You acknowledged the pressure. You talked about resilience, learning, and staying positive. You reminded the team how capable they were, how this was “part of the journey”.

Heads nodded. Cameras stayed on. A few smiles appeared. The meeting ended on time. Later that day, two things happened.

One person messaged a colleague privately: “I don’t think it’s safe to say how bad this actually feels.”

Another quietly updated their CV.

Nothing overt went wrong. And yet, something important had just been lost. This is how toxic positivity at work usually begins. Not through cruelty. Not through denial. But through well-intended leadership, applied too quickly and from a position of power.

Why good leaders create toxic positivity without realising it

Most leaders are not dismissive or uncaring. You care. You are trying to keep momentum. You are trying to protect morale so your team can keep delivering at peak performance.

In a flexible or remote workplace, this pressure intensifies. You have fewer informal cues, less hallway context, and more incentive to keep meetings efficient and forward-looking. So positivity feels safe.

When positivity is used to move past emotion instead of through it however, it starts to become toxic. Not because optimism is wrong, but because timing matters.

What toxic positivity actually is (and what it isn’t)

Let’s clear something up.

Toxic positivity is not optimism. It is not resilience. It is not encouraging people to focus on solutions.

Toxic positivity occurs when positive framing is used to:

• Bypass legitimate emotion

• Minimise discomfort or loss

• Signal which feelings are acceptable

• Shut down dissent in the name of “moving forward”

It often sounds reasonable:

• “Let’s stay positive.”

• “It could be worse.”

• “This is a great learning opportunity.”

• “We don’t want to dwell.”

The issue is not the phrase.

The issue is what it silences.

Over time, this erodes human connection, weakens leadership and teamwork, and quietly damages the workplace experience.

Why toxic positivity undermines performance, even when morale looks fine

Research on relational energy shows that people gain energy, focus, and engagement through interactions that feel authentic and respectful. They lose energy when interactions feel dismissive, unsafe, or emotionally managed (Owens et al., 2016).

Here is the paradox. Toxic positivity feels good to the speaker and draining to the listener. Why? Because it creates emotional labour. People suppress what they feel to match what is rewarded. That suppression reduces cognitive capacity, engagement, and willingness to speak up. Psychological safety, defined as the belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, is one of the strongest predictors of team effectiveness (Edmondson, 2018). Toxic positivity directly undermines it, even when teams appear harmonious.

This is how you end up with polite agreement instead of high performance teams, and output without sustainable high performance.

The leadership trap: positivity as emotional control

Under pressure, leaders might feel pressure to default to:

• Speed over sense-making

• Solutions over listening

• Optimism over accuracy

This is not a character flaw. It is a nervous system response. But when positivity becomes a way to manage discomfort rather than respond to it, people learn an unspoken rule:

Bring solutions, not reality.

That is not leadership. That is emotional risk management.

How to prevent toxic positivity without becoming negative

Here is the good news. You do not need to lower standards, indulge spirals, or become pessimistic. You simply need to slow down the emotional sequence. Try these practical shifts. One at a time. Keep what works.

1. Validate before you reframe

Validation reduces emotional intensity and supports regulation. It does not mean agreement.

Try:

• “That sounds genuinely hard.”

• “I can see why this is frustrating.”

• “This has taken more out of people than we expected.”

Only then move to problem-solving.

2. Ask what support people want

Instead of guessing, ask:

• “Do you want me to listen, help you think, or help you act?”

This single question prevents many well-intended missteps, especially in flexible work environments.

3. Slow the pivot to solutions

Moving too quickly to action often signals avoidance.

Try:

• “Before we jump to fixes, what still feels unresolved?”

This creates space without losing momentum.

4. Make realism safe, out loud

Generic questions like “any concerns?” rarely work.

Instead:

• “What’s one risk we might be underestimating?”

• “If this fails, what will be the reason?”

• “What are we not saying that needs to be said?”

Leaders who ask these questions actively prevent toxic positivity.

5. Separate emotion from performance

Feeling frustrated does not reduce performance. Suppressing frustration often does.

Say:

• “We can acknowledge how this feels and still hold our standards.”

This is the bridge between honesty and delivery.

What replaces toxic positivity? Credible optimism.

The opposite of toxic positivity is not negativity. It is credible optimism.

Credible optimism says:

• “This is hard.”

• “Your reaction makes sense.”

• “We can still move forward together.”

Teams led this way do not avoid difficulty. They metabolise it. That is how moments of peak performance become repeatable, and how organisations build sustainable high performance without burning people out.

A final reflection

If you recognised yourself in the opening story, that is not a failure. It means you are leading in complexity. Good leadership is not about saying the right thing. It is about creating the conditions where truth can be spoken and energy can recover. After people talk with you, ask yourself:

Do they feel more free to be honest… or more careful?

That answer will tell you whether positivity is helping, or harming how your people show up at work.

References

• Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Wiley.

• Owens, B. P., Baker, W. E., Sumpter, D. M., & Cameron, K. S. (2016). Relational energy at work: Implications for job engagement and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(1), 35–49.

• Cameron, K. (2021). Positively Energizing Leadership: Virtuous Actions and Relationships That Create High Performance. Berrett-Koehler.

• Shenk, C. E., et al. (2022). Validation and emotion regulation: Experimental evidence on reducing negative emotional intensity. Journal of Experimental Psychology.

• David, S., & Congleton, C. (2013). Emotional agility. Harvard Business Review.