When positivity becomes compulsory, it stops being supportive and starts becoming manipulative. Right now, across Australia, too many workplaces are unintentionally gaslighting their people through a culture of toxic positivity and it’s costing them trust, performance and wellbeing.
In my work as a leadership and culture strategist, I’ve seen this play out time and again. Organisations, often with the best intentions, weaponise values like ‘positivity’ and ‘fun’ in ways that silence real conversations. Instead of building resilience, these cultures suppress emotion. Instead of psychological safety, they foster mistrust.
Don’t confuse good intentions with good culture
One of the most telling examples I’ve encountered involved a national call centre dealing with a serious wave of service disruptions. Customer calls were intense. Staff were stressed, fatigued and emotionally depleted. But rather than acknowledging this, leadership responded with upbeat music, pizza parties and daily motivational memes posted to walls. Every time someone raised a concern, they were reminded to ‘stay positive’ and ‘keep the vibe light’.
Turnover hit 80 percent within three months.
That wasn’t a people problem, it was a culture problem. Toxic positivity had taken hold and it created an environment where discomfort and distress were not only ignored but actively discouraged.
Values should guide, not govern
At their best, values serve as a compass. But when they are rigidly applied or used to dictate how people should think and feel, they become tools of control. I’ve seen organisations where values like ‘we always bring positive energy’ become the default response to stress, failure or challenge. Instead of validating genuine emotion, these mantras erase it.
If your team feels they can’t speak candidly about their concerns, or that raising an issue will result in being labelled negative, then your workplace is not psychologically safe and most certainly not embracing opportunity for innovation. In that context, performance suffers, trust erodes and engagement collapses.
How to recognise the warning signs
Many organisations don’t realise they’re sending the wrong signals. Here’s what I tell HR and business leaders to look for.
When staff express stress, fatigue or frustration and the response is to brush it aside with statements like ‘just be positive’ or ‘don’t dwell on it’, it signals emotional dismissal rather than support.
When leaders continually praise cheerfulness but fail to recognise honesty, you create a reward system that prizes performance of positivity over genuine contribution. This is corporate theatre and not a real genuine workplace that listens to its people.
If employees who raise concerns or challenge the narrative are subtly excluded, labelled as difficult or told they aren’t aligned with company values, your culture is punishing authenticity.
If slogans like ‘we’ve got this’ or ‘good vibes only’ are plastered around the office during high-pressure periods, instead of providing practical solutions or clear leadership, you’ve got a problem with performative culture.
And if ‘happiness’ or ‘team spirit’ becomes part of performance evaluations, you risk turning emotional expression into a KPI. That’s not culture, that’s coercion.
Each of these behaviours sends a clear message: only certain emotions are welcome here. That message doesn’t create high performance, it creates anxiety, detachment and turnover.
You can’t plaster over pressure with posters
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if your company values are laminated on walls but not reflected in how people are treated, especially during moments of difficulty, they’re not values, they’re branding and if these same values are expected of some, but not others, then you have a real problem.
This is where leadership capability makes the difference. Values must be regularly reviewed for clarity, relevance and impact. Leaders must be trained in emotional intelligence so they can hold space for discomfort, support meaningful conversations and recognise when a situation calls for empathy over enthusiasm.
Workplaces must move beyond slogans. Culture isn’t built in comms campaigns, it is built in how leaders show up when things are hard, in how feedback is handled and in how honesty and authenticity is rewarded.
Leadership must make space for emotional range
HR leaders play a critical role here. If you’re serious about building a culture of trust and high performance, you must help your organisation understand the difference between authentic optimism and enforced positivity. Real leadership is not about ‘good vibes only’. It’s about being able to hear hard things, sit with discomfort and respond with integrity.
The best workplaces support the full range of human emotion, they don’t shame it. They create environments where people feel safe to be real and in doing so, they unlock deeper trust, stronger collaboration, new ways of looking at things, and more sustainable performance.
Culture is built through truth, not through denial and leadership must be the first to go there.
