How Positive Thinking Became A Management Philosophy
Barbara Ehrenreich attempts to crack this in her book, Bright-Sided (How Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America), where she traces what we know as “positive thinking” and “self help” to its origins in late 1800s America, and the dominant religion of the time.
The Calvinisim brought by white settlers to New England could be described as a system of socially imposed depression. Its God was “utterly lawless” as literally scholar Ann Douglas has written, an all-powerful entitiy who “reveals his hatred of his creatures, not his love for them”. He maintained a heaven but one with only limited seating and those who would be privileged to enter it had been selected before their births through a process of predestination. The task for the living was to constantly examine “the loathsome abominations that lie in his bosom”…
What a sour picture! Calvinism also brought about a work ethic ( commonly called the protestant work ethic) and virtues such as self-discipline and hard work. However, the ruthless self examination and self loathing made people sick (especially people who were not relentlessly busy; housewives and church priests). This illness was labelled as neurasthenia, which in today’s terms could be lethargy and/or depression. It could not be cured; the best doctors could do is prescribe that the ill lie in a darkened room for days on end. This gave rise to the likes Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, considered the founder of the new thought movement and hence the grandfather of today’s positive thinking and his predecessor, Mary Baker Eddy. Their proposition was that you could cure neurasthenia by changing your thoughts and adopting a positive life outlook. It seemed to work.
The author traces this positive thought movement into its transformation into positive thinking and how it became part of the American church in form of the prosperity gospel peddled by Joel Osteen and others. What piqued my interest are the chapters that talk about how corporations started using positive thinking as a replacement to solid business thought, and how it has led to modern day workers being exploited in the name of team work and positivity. She launches a scathing attack on Tom Peter’s almost-evangelical style of leadership-thought which transformed CEOs into charismatic superstars:
At the top of the managerial hierarchy, CEOs forged a new self-image as charismatic leaders who could be counted on to have the right intuitions and gut feelings in a fast-changing world. The old-style CEO had risen from within the ranks of the company, mastering every aspect of the business before rising to the top; the new one was likely to have been hired for his celebrity status in the business world, even if it was derived from totally unrelated lines of business. As Khurana describes the transformation: “The image of a CEO changed from being a capable administrator, to a leader- a motivating, flamboyant leader”- very much like a motivational speaker, in fact.”
Trees do not rise to the sky. In the mid-90s despite the positivity, businesses started to take a hit, and had to start laying off workers and to operate lean.With rising demotivation and decline in trust by the remaining workers, the team-building movement was spawned by positive thinkers of the time.
The most popular technique for motivating the survivors of downsizing was “team building”- an effort so massive that it has spawned a “team building industry”, overlapping the motivation industry. Just as layoffs were making a mockery of the team concept, employees were urged to find camaraderie and a sense of collective purpose at the microlevel of the “team”. And the less team-like the overall organization became with the threat of continued downsizing, the more management insisted on individual devotion to these largely fictional units. “Rather than eliminate or postpone teams, organisations should consider the benefits teams can offer in a downsizing phase” a management consultant and “organizational change” expert wrote. “The team system offers a form of camaraderie that helps promote teamwork around getting the job done and enables people to feel connected to something smaller and safer than a large organization….Team building is, in other words, another form of motivation, with the difference being that, in the desolate environment of the downsized corporation, this motivation was supposed to be generated within the work group or “team”
Barbara also has a chapter on the effect of this positivity movement on American citizen’s quest for social justice. It effectively killed the social justice movement:
The strong belief in opportunity and upward mobility is the explanation that is often given for American’s high tolerance for inequality. The majority of Americans surveyed believe that they will be above mean incme in the future (even though that is a mathematical impossibility).
Why bother to fight against oppression when you believe that your status is temporary, and you would soon join the population class that is free of oppression? Just be positive and work super hard!
So what is the alternative to positive thinking? Negative thinking? No, this is as delusional as the positive kind. Both positive and negative thinkers suffer from an inability to separate emotion from perception, a willingness to accept illusion for reality, either because it “feels good” or in the depressive’s case because it reinforces the familiar, downward-spiraling neural pathways.
The alternative to both is to try to get outside of ourselves and see things as they are, or as uncolored as possible by our own feelings and fantasies, to understand that the world is full of both danger and opportunity – the chance of great happiness as well as the certainty of death. …Generally, it helps to recruit the observations of others, since our individual perceptions could be erroneous.
She then follows up by saying that groups aren’t infallible, we still have to guard against “group think”, where “Group cohesion can sometimes override realism and common sense, making us hesitate to challenge the consensus or be the bearer of bad news”
Bright-Sided was a delightful read, and anyone who is generally suspicious of the “positivity” movement will enjoy it. If you are #TeamPositivity , it will give you a reality check.
