47. Cheer Up: Is Toxic Positivity Ruining Your Culture? With Dr Maike Neuhaus and Prina Shah

Cheer Up: Is Toxic Positivity Ruining Your Culture? 

How can you find ways to change the workplace culture if you find yourself in an environment of toxic positivity?

How can you create an environment where depth of conversation can exist in place of toxic positivity, when it comes to emotional intelligence in the workplace?

How can you interpret the value of negative emotions as data in order to achieve your organisation’s ultimate goals during change projects?

About today’s episode:


Today I chat with Dr Maike Neuhaus who is currently based in Brisbane. Dr Neuhaus is a positive psychologist and self-leadership expert who is passionate about helping driven professionals understand what they need in order to flourish and create positive changes in life.

I speak with Dr Maike about: How to identify and navigate an environment of toxic positivity.

Dr Maike talks about how toxic positivity impedes every organisation’s ability to thrive.

• The difference between toxic positivity and optimism.
• Interpreting negative emotions as data.
• How to create deeper, more meaningful conversations around negative emotions in your workplace.
• How to role model an environment where it’s safe to raise concerns.
• Strategies for HR professionals who identify toxic positivity in their workplace and how to start bringing in awareness.
• Reasons why toxic positivity may be exhibited by the best intentioned people in a workplace and how this often relates to boundaries and effective communication.
• What happens when negative emotions are dismissed at and outside of the workplace, and why they’re valuable data for any organization to achieve their goals. 
• I share perspective on RU Okay Day and ways to approach the conversation so that it is backed by emotional safety.
• And listen in to Dr Maike’s answer to my question:  if you had a magic wand, what is one way you would change the workplace?  Hint: it has to do with what she refers to as a flourishing meter. 

About today’s guest: Dr Maike Neuhaus is a positive psychologist and self-leadership expert who is passionate about helping driven professionals understand what they need in order to flourish and create positive change in life. She is a Researcher and Lecturer at a top 50 university and builds her work on knowledge and tools that have been proven to work. Dr Maike is the co-founder of Ducidium Pty Ltd - a company dedicated to creating better leaders through the facilitation of team- and self-leadership solutions. She is also the Founder of The Flourishing Doc - a platform through which she supports languishing humans from all over the globe to create a life that exci