Simon Sinek says leaders should avoid toxic positivity and doomsday messaging alike. Instead, acknowledge uncertainty while expressing confidence, and assure employees that no hard decisions happen until they're proven safe. People filter every announcement through one question: how does this affect me.
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Toxic positivity is a real thing. Everything's fine, everything's good, we got this. Don't do that. Because it's like people can tell when their, you know, boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on them. You know, it's like we're not idiots. Like, we can tell when somebody's BSing us, right? Like, we're finely tuned social animals that kind of have to know this stuff. for our own survival. And so when people are BSing us, it makes us more nervous because we think, whether it's true or not, we think there's something they know that they're not telling us, which makes even more anxiety. And it creates an us and them inside the organization. And so what you want is, you also don't want doomsday. You just, you don't also want, Oh no, I, I don't know how this is going to go. It's, it's— I know it's important. I know it's good technology, but we, we, we at the— we don't know. Like, don't do that either. What people are looking for is confidence, and they want to make sure that you've got their back. Any time you make any corporate announcement about any technology or any systemic change or any strategy, the only thing going through people's minds is, how does this affect me? That's any— that's— they don't care about grand strategy. Like, how does this affect me? Personalizes it. Personalize it on a daily basis. And people are really, really simple. We want to feel safe. We want to feel cared for. We want to feel that somebody knows who we are as a human being. That's pretty much it, right? And, and so that's where I find the best communication works. For example, speak with confidence. Right? And you can still have that message of uncertainty with confidence, like, hey, we know this is super exciting. We know this is like the next frontier. To be honest with you, no clue how it's going to net out, right? We're experimenting. We're trying things out. Some things will work. Some things won't. But one thing we know for sure is no hard decisions are going to be made until we're 100% sure that this is good for our people and good for our company. Right now, we're in a mode of experimentation, and we're looking for input from those on the front line. Who wants in? You know, and, and like invite people and make them feel like they're a part of it. This is not new. This is not new. Like, AI is new, but like implementation of new technology, not new. Strategic changes that will affect my daily job, not new. Like, we know how to do this. And I don't know why we're freaking out and suddenly thinking that the communication, the human skills all of a sudden are going to change. They're the same. We just need to double down on them.
