| Every morning Raul shows up at Starbucks, chooses a seat facing the door, opens his laptop, and promptly greets everyone who walks in the door.
Raul shouts, “Good morning! Howya doing?”
Random coffee-deficient people smile and respond, “Good! How are you?”
Raul bellows earnestly, “Unbelievably fantastic!”
I’ve been observing this exchange for years – his delivery never falters. And the affect is palpable – his energetic spirit lifts people’s moods.
Research suggests that positivity in the workplace:
- Improves teamwork and relationships
- Increases productivity
- Enhances job satisfaction and retention
- Bolsters performance and job growth
- Reduces stress and health issues
The benefits are so critical that a Japanese railway company once deployed scanning software to check that its employees were enthusiastically grinning. Each morning employees were required to beam into a camera that rated the quality of their smile and offered advice on how to look less gloomy.
But research shows that cultivating real positivity is more powerful than pretending.
- Deep Acting: really trying to be positive
- Surface Acting: faking positivity (like forced smiling into a camera)
Deep Actors are positive for prosocial reasons – to improve the workplace; whereas Surface Actors are just trying to impress the boss and keep their job.
So how can we intentionally generate positivity at work (even if we lean a bit pessimistic)?
Some proven deep-acting approaches:
- Laugh more
- Gossip less
- Keep a gratitude list
- Mentor others
- Be curious and interested in co-workers
- Celebrate, cheer, acknowledge, recognize
- Notice excellence
- Repeat the good stuff you hear about others
- Put things in perspective
- Reframe negative situations into learning situations
- Lower your expectations on things you cannot control
- Focus on possibilities
- Be kind – everyone is battling an inner voice
There’s no reason we can’t all be… unbelievably fantastic! |
