A workplace culture and emotional intelligence leadership expert has warned that employees are at risk of unintentional gaslighting brought about by what is known as “toxic positivity.”
According to Marnie Brokenshire of Uncapped Potential, many companies are unknowingly using their values and behaviours to suppress authenticity and deny staff the ability to express emotion, discomfort or vulnerability, and it is creating serious consequences.
“When positivity becomes mandatory, it becomes manipulation,” Brokenshire said. “We are seeing organisations where emotional honesty is being replaced with enforced cheerfulness and the result is a culture of silence avoidance and burnout.”
She added: “Many organisations have implemented ‘happiness’ mentalities to try and provide a ‘supportive environment’ at the expense of authenticity. The impact is having a negative effect.”
In evaluating the current workplace culture, Brokenshire and her business partner Nicole Mathers discovered a common pattern of ‘corporate gaslighting’, where company values dictate how people should think, feel and behave and where if you don’t “feel” that way, or want to challenge something, it is not welcomed.
“Values are meant to guide behaviour, not control it,” Brokenshire said. “But when values like ‘we always have fun’ or ‘positivity is essential’ become the default response to stress or crisis, they begin to erase the reality of what people are experiencing. That is when culture crosses the line into psychological harm.”
Brokenshire warned that many companies are unintentionally sending damaging messages through their values, communications, and leadership behaviours through actions that include:
- Dismissing emotion with phrases like ‘don’t worry about it’ or ‘you’re being too negative’.
- Praising positivity at the expense of honesty.
- Ignoring or punishing staff who speak up or show vulnerability.
- Forcing motivational mantras in environments of high pressure or stress.
- Making happiness or fun a performance metric.
“This is not just about toxic culture. It is about tone deaf leadership that confuses positivity with progress,” she added. “Being relentlessly upbeat in the face of real hardship is not resilience. It’s avoidance. It pushes people to question their own emotional responses, which is the very definition of gaslighting.”
“If people feel they can’t be real, make mistakes or raise problems without being labelled difficult or negative, then your culture is not psychologically safe,” she continued.
In addressing the problem of toxic positivity, Brokenshire stressed that corporate values need to be reviewed regularly for relevance, clarity and impact so such values do not end up having an adverse effect in the workplace.
“If you’ve got motivational posters on the walls and meltdowns in the meetings, then it’s time for you to revisit the alignment of your cultural values and what’s real,” Brokenshire said.
Brokenshire also emphasised the importance of high-quality leadership training and the establishment of emotionally intelligent organisations where real conversations are held where nothing is off the table, and where people are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work, not just their cheerful side.
