How Experiencing Positive Emotions in the Workplace Improves Wellbeing and Performance
There is an underused opportunity to promote greater wellbeing and productivity in the workplace: cultivating positive emotions, such as happiness, joy, gratitude, play, fun and more.
Purposefully encouraging positive emotions is especially significant at this moment in time. The reality is, there’s a heaviness in our world and our lives right now. It is so front and center. Promoting positivity helps us look for the bright spots. Experiences of levity give us the strength and capacity to deal with the collective hard times we’re facing.
Surprisingly, positive emotions is the wellbeing pathway I’ve found leaders have the lowest awareness about and give the least attention to.
I’ve noticed leaders focus more on having a positive and growth mindset, which is equally significant, but separate pathway of wellbeing.
Why is that?
Perhaps, having positive emotions feels so obvious. It happens every day whether we pay attention to them or not. Therefore, it’s not often in someone’s thought process for how they build their vitality. I’ve found leaders don’t consider the significance of fostering positive emotions in teams and organizations either. However, we must intentionally notice and cultivate positive emotions every day to get the benefits.
Positive emotions—the pleasant emotional states we experience—contribute to a sense of wellbeing and fulfillment. As Barbara Fredrickson, a leader in positive emotions research, shares in her Broaden and Build Theory: “Positive emotions broaden people’s mindsets, encouraging them to discover novel lines of thought or action.” They create an upward trajectory to increase the ability for us to connect with each other and take positive action.
Benefits include:
Enhancing wellbeing
Fueling resilience
Opening us up to new ideas
Increasing engagement and creativity
Building our emotional resources and reserves
Creating connection and building trust
Setting ourselves up to show up at our best
There is enormous potential for leaders to purposefully foster positive emotions in themselves and create an environment where others can experience them.
Promoting positive emotions doesn’t mean suppressing or ignoring difficult emotions. It’s not about pretending to be positive all the time, or the extreme of toxic positivity. It means genuinely looking for opportunities to introduce more positive emotions and actively working against our brain’s negativity bias.
It includes creating the space for others to express all of their emotions—which positively energizes others—because they feel seen, heard and acknowledged.
How positive emotions can enhance the workplace – meeting culture as an example
Think about a typical meeting. Often these status quo meetings are focused on a dense PowerPoint with an overload of information. When there is discussion, the same few people respond each time, potentially dominating the conversation. At the end of the meeting, next steps are quickly confirmed. Most participants haven’t spoken throughout the meeting. These meetings are often not optimized for the best outcomes.
Though we come together in meetings regularly, we often don’t consider how we can increase our energy by making them more joyful, appreciative, playful and fun. Meetings are an incredible opportunity to infuse more positivity and connection. Doing so creates greater access points to learning, innovation, and productivity.
Now think about a meeting that focuses on cultivating positive emotions. The meeting would start by building in time for authentic connection which creates more openness from the start. During the meeting, there are fun and interactive ways to get everyone’s perspective, including surprising elements. For example, everyone has a buzzer that makes noise to use while brainstorming. Attendees hit the button every time someone says something that resonates. The room becomes filled with laughter while workshopping new ideas. Everyone leaves feeling engaged and energized.
In this example, not only were the meeting objectives accomplished—with better results than the status quo—everyone had a fun and enjoyable experience. People leave energized and motivated to take on the challenge at hand.
Fostering positive emotions in the workplace creates a wonderful gateway towards increased connection and openness.
How to encourage positive emotions:
1. Bring awareness to positive emotions
Start by bringing awareness to why it’s important to cultivate positive emotions. Our brains are wired for negativity, which means we naturally focus on the bad more than the good in our lives. Therefore, intentionally focusing on positive emotions counterbalances that.
Consider how you could create positive emotions for yourself. It’s different for everyone. Reflect on the following:
What cultivates positivity and joy in me? What are the small things that I can do throughout the day that will make a difference?
Actively seek moments to experience small amounts of positivity throughout your day.
2. Elevate meetings to emphasize experiencing positive emotions
When we come together, there are so many moments to cultivate positive emotions and two-way communication, which are foundational for team performance.
Ideas to include positive emotions in meetings:
Think like a facilitator and not a meeting coordinator: consider how you could run the meeting to create an environment with increased positivity and two-way communication.
Intentionally structure meetings to build in time for connection to bring more clarity on how to work best together, create alignment and/or give everyone the space to share how they are doing.
Bring different tools and interactive ways to make sure all voices are heard so that it’s not the loudest people dominating the conversation. For instance: use sticky notes or dots for voting; introduce colors, markers and opportunities for everyone to write on the board.
Look for opportunities to learn through play in a safe way, such as through a case study or experiential learning.
3. Cultivate an environment of gratitude
Actively expressing gratitude to yourself and others on a daily basis helps us each feel acknowledged. Ideas for expressing gratitude:
Have a regular gratitude practice where you reflect on what you are grateful for about yourself and team members.
We all want to be appreciated for who we are as human beings and recognized for what we do well and accomplish. Include opportunities for both giving appreciation and recognition.
Celebrate everyone’s unique strengths on your team. Lean on each other’s strengths and learn from each other.
Proactively say “thank you” to others in one-on-one or team meetings.
Do simple things to encourage gratitude. For instance, at the end of a meeting, ask everyone to respond to: what’s one thing you’re grateful for?
By seeking moments of joy, play, fun, and gratitude, and more, we can find places of light and love within and around us.
