We are losing one of the most powerful drivers of performance at work, the expression of optimism. That is what I am seeing in 11 years of workplace data. While people still call themselves optimists, they are less likely these days to share that optimism with others. And given that optimism has been linked to a wide range of positive business and health outcomes, that decline matters.
Measuring optimism
Since 2015, more than 25,000 working professionals have taken the Success Scale, an assessment my research team and I use to measure optimism and expression at work. Across 11 years of results, roughly eight in 10 respondents still describe themselves as optimistic about their future at work. But how people describe themselves and how they act are not always the same thing. What has changed is their behavior. People are less likely to express the optimism they do have.
Compared with the earlier years of the study, the share who report telling at least three other people when they feel optimistic fell from 37% to 30%. Starting three or more conversations a day on a positive note dropped from 48% to 41%. And responding positively when a colleague introduced a new idea fell from 53% to 46%.
What caught my attention most was where that encouragement went. I expected since the world can feel so negative at times, encouragement might have turned to criticism, but it didn’t. When a colleague introduced a new idea, criticism held near 5%, which is right where it was a decade ago. The shift was toward neutrality.
A workplace doesn’t have to become overtly negative to lose something important. Sometimes people simply stop saying the things that remind the rest of us that something is working or that an idea might be worth pursuing. Expressed optimism isn’t only a private belief. It is also information we transmit to one another. It’s phrases like, “I think we finally figured out the problem.” Or a manager pointing out that a difficult project moved farther in two weeks than in the previous two months. Those tiny interactions may seem small, but they remind us our efforts matter or the project is moving forward.
When those signals disappear, the problems don’t leave with them. A team still needs to talk about the missed target or customer complaint. The problems get airtime, while information about progress often doesn’t.
The lesson for leaders
I got curious about that imbalance as a national news anchor at CBS during the Great Recession. When we ran a story about someone finding a way through, those stories drew an outsized response from viewers. People wanted to know what was possible, not just what was wrong.
I wanted to understand the science behind why that landed so differently in the brain. That question eventually took me from the anchor desk to graduate work in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
In one study I conducted with Arianna Huffington, published in Harvard Business Review, we gave people information about a serious problem. Half received the problem alone. The other half also received a short list of possible solutions. Hours later, the group exposed to solutions performed roughly 20% better on creative problem-solving tasks.
The lesson here for leaders is that we can talk about the problem but we can’t stop there. We also need to move our team on to brainstorming about solutions. That simple act changes what the brain believes is possible. I had begun to suspect that years earlier in the newsroom: The brain doesn’t need a rosier picture of reality. It needs a more complete picture, one that includes rational, positive facts.
Tools you can use
There are three ways leaders can start to increase the expression of optimism at work. I’ve seen leaders use these tools effectively in my work with Fortune 500 companies, especially during periods of uncertainty and change.
Make progress visible. Don’t reserve attention exclusively for what remains undone. Ask, “What moved this week?” or “What worked that we need to build on?” The best managers I’ve worked with don’t wait until the end of the project to talk about what’s working. They make progress a regular part of the conversation.
Pair problems with agency. A leader’s job is to start with truth and then ask, “What have we learned, and where can we go from here?” We don’t want to minimize the problem. Instead, we must help people see where they still have influence.
Make encouragement specific. Instead of saying, “Great job,” tell someone why what they did worked and why it mattered. Praise like, “The way you simplified that analysis helped us make the decision” tells someone exactly what they did well and can do again.
When we name progress, surface a possible solution, or encourage a colleague’s idea, we create evidence that our actions still matter. That evidence strengthens a positive culture at work and makes it easier for others to see what is possible.
That may be what workplaces need most right now: not more pressure to feel positive, but more of the optimism already there to be said out loud.