Key Takeaways
The short version
- A leader’s emotional tone often spreads through a team, shaping motivation, trust, and daily effort.
- Positivity helps when it stays honest; it harms when it becomes a demand to feel fine.
- Toxic positivity can look polite, but it can leave people feeling unseen, tense, and alone.
- Teams do better with grounded optimism: clear facts, real emotions allowed, and steady support.
Story & Details
A familiar workplace pattern
In December 2025, many teams still recognize the same scene: a project moves forward, but the mood feels heavy. A leader looks disengaged, irritated, and worn down. The air changes. People start to mirror it. Energy drops, patience thins, and the work begins to feel pointless.
The opposite scene also exists. Another leader shows calm confidence, warmth, and a steady kind of joy. Nothing magical happens to the project itself, yet the team’s posture changes. People speak up more easily. They try. They recover faster after setbacks.
This is not just imagination. In organizational psychology, emotions are not only private feelings. They are also social signals. They move between people, especially when one person has status, attention, and power.
Why a leader’s attitude spreads
Research on emotional contagion shows that moods can transfer within groups and then shape how the group behaves. In controlled studies, a single person’s expressed emotion can shift the group’s shared mood and influence cooperation and conflict. The group does not simply “feel” differently; it also acts differently. Small changes in tone can change how willing people are to help, how they interpret others’ actions, and how they handle stress. [1]
A related idea is affective presence. This is the stable emotional “trace” someone tends to leave in others after interactions. Some leaders repeatedly leave people feeling encouraged and safe; others repeatedly leave people tense or anxious. This effect can be separate from what the leader reports feeling inside. What matters for the team is what the team experiences during contact. Studies in team settings connect leader behavior and feedback style to whether a leader becomes a source of positive or negative affective presence. [2]
A third piece is psychological safety: the shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, like asking a hard question, admitting an error, or saying “I do not understand.” Research on real work teams shows that leader behavior strongly shapes this safety. Supportive, coaching-like responses tend to raise it. Punitive or dismissive behavior tends to lower it. When safety drops, people protect themselves. They speak less, hide mistakes, and learn more slowly. [3]
So a leader’s visible frustration can do more than “set a mood.” It can quietly teach the team that the situation is unsafe, unstable, or not worth investing in. That lesson changes choices. It changes effort. It changes honesty.
When “stay positive” turns into a problem
Now comes the twist. Even in teams with an upbeat leader, positivity can go wrong. This is where toxic positivity enters.
Toxic positivity is not hope. It is not encouragement. It is the social pressure to be upbeat in a way that denies real pain, real limits, or real fear. It often shows up as quick fixes: “Look on the bright side,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “At least it’s not worse,” said at the exact moment someone needs to be heard.
Mental health educators describe it as the expectation that encouraging statements should push away painful emotions, creating pressure to be unrealistically optimistic. The result can be shame for feeling bad, and silence when support is needed most. [4]
In workplace research, the idea is being shaped more carefully. One scholarly definition frames toxic positivity at work as an interpersonal response that fails to acknowledge another person’s negative emotional experience by dismissing it, pushing positivity that does not fit reality, or both. The key is not the word “positive.” The key is the refusal to make space for what is true. [5]
How toxic positivity damages teams
Toxic positivity can harm teams in several quiet ways.
The cost of invalidation
When a person’s distress is brushed away, the person often stops sharing. That may look like “less drama,” but it can also mean less warning, less learning, and less trust. Over time, people can feel lonely inside a crowd.
The cost of emotional suppression
If a workplace rewards only “good vibes,” people learn to hide what they feel. Emotion regulation research shows that some strategies, like expressive suppression, can be effortful and does not reliably reduce the inner experience of unwanted emotion. It can also carry cognitive and social costs. In a team, constant masking can drain attention and reduce genuine connection. [6]
The cost of false certainty
Real optimism is compatible with realism. Toxic positivity is not. It replaces clear facts with a demand for a bright face. That can backfire, because people can sense the mismatch between words and reality.
A useful alternative is sometimes called tragic optimism: the ability to face pain and still search for meaning and action. It is not “everything is fine.” It is “this is hard, and there is still a next step.” [7]
Mood transfer: not only negative, not only positive
Emotion transfer in leader–follower relationships is not only about negative mood spreading. Research on crossover models also looks at positive states. For example, studies in healthcare settings suggest that leaders’ positive work engagement can cross over into followers’ well-being outcomes, often through the way leadership behaviors are experienced. [8]
In other words, a leader can spread depletion, but also spread energy. The same social pathways that carry frustration can also carry steadiness, clarity, and hope.
A short Dutch moment
Simple phrases for everyday work tone
Dutch can sound direct, yet it has gentle, practical phrases that fit hard moments at work in the Netherlands (Europe).
The phrase “Dat is balen” is used when something is disappointing. A simple meaning is: this is a bummer. Word by word: “Dat” means that, “is” means is, “balen” means to be a drag. The tone is informal and human, often used with colleagues.
The phrase “Sterkte” is used when someone is going through something tough. A simple meaning is: strength to you. Word by word: it is one word built from “sterk,” meaning strong, with a form that turns it into a wish. The tone can be friendly or neutral, and it fits both small and serious struggles.
The phrase “Ik snap het” is used to show understanding. A simple meaning is: I get it. Word by word: “Ik” means I, “snap” means get, “het” means it. The tone is informal, warm, and often helps before any problem-solving begins.
Conclusions
A steady path between gloom and gloss
A leader’s emotional stance can shape a team’s emotional climate through well-studied social processes: emotional contagion, affective presence, and the conditions that build or break psychological safety. When a leader appears angry, disengaged, or defeated, the team often becomes cautious and depleted. When a leader appears grounded, warm, and confident, the team often becomes braver and more engaged.
Yet positivity is not automatically healthy. When it becomes a rule that forbids honest pain, it turns toxic. The healthiest climate is not constant cheer. It is emotional truth with dignity: clear eyes, real feelings allowed, and a practical belief that the next step can still be taken.
Selected References
[1] Barsade, S. G. “Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior.” PDF: https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Barsade_Emotional_Contagion_in_Groups.pdf
[2] Madrid, H. P. “Leader Affective Presence and Feedback in Teams.” Frontiers in Psychology: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00705/full
[3] Edmondson, A. “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams.” PDF: https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf
[4] Anxiety and Depression Association of America. “Toxic Positivity.” https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/toxic-positivity
[5] Lefcoe, A. “Toxic Positivity in the Workplace.” McMaster University (North America) repository PDF: https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstreams/7e62df00-6d47-4db2-a64e-449bd4d8adbb/download
[6] Koole, S. L. “The Psychology of Emotion Regulation.” Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Europe) PDF: https://research.vu.nl/ws/files/2599118/Koole%20Cognition%20and%20Emotion%2023%281%29%202009%20u.pdf%26lang%3Den
[7] Association for Psychological Science. “The Opposite of Toxic Positivity.” https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/the-opposite-of-toxic-positivity.html
[8] Caputo, A. et al. “Leaders’ Role in Shaping Followers’ Well-Being: Crossover in a Sample of Nurses.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/3/2386
YouTube video
Cleveland Clinic (North America). “Explaining the dangers of toxic positivity.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-oEVOKQrk
Appendix
A–Z terms
Affective presence: The consistent feelings a person tends to leave in others after interaction, such as making people feel calm, encouraged, tense, or anxious.
Burnout: A state of long-lasting work-related exhaustion that often includes feeling drained, distant, and less effective.
Cognitive reappraisal: An emotion regulation strategy that changes how a situation is interpreted in order to change its emotional impact.
Emotional contagion: The spread of emotion from one person to another, often through facial expression, voice, pace, and shared attention.
Expressive suppression: An emotion regulation strategy that tries to hide outward emotion signs, like keeping a neutral face while feeling upset.
Psychological safety: A shared team belief that it is safe to speak up, ask questions, and admit mistakes without being punished or shamed.
Tragic optimism: A realistic form of hope that faces pain and limits while still searching for meaning and a workable next step.
Toxic positivity: The pressure to show or demand positivity in ways that dismiss, deny, or invalidate real negative emotions and real hardship.
My Diary - Leonardo Cardillo 