Why is everyone talking about… glossing?

Are the leaders in your organisation ‘glossing’ over potentially dire workplace issues? According to some of the latest data from a recent Leadership IQ poll, only 23% of employees feel that their leaders respond constructively to their problems. Additionally, they found that 65% of employees feel their organisations are not doing a good job openly sharing the challenges they face. 

This could be partially explained by what’s recently been dubbed “glossing,” where leaders simply ignore the issues within their teams in favour of a strictly positive outlook. This has resulted in employees feeling like their organisations are less transparent about the challenges they face, which we know to be bad for business. 

In our own research at Personio, we charted a distinct correlation between employees who feel their organisations are transparent about the challenges they’re facing with higher rates of satisfaction (95%) and performance (91%), and lower rates of churn (25%). Glossing isn’t something that just demoralises workers, it can go on to suppress productivity and innovation writ large.

The behaviour of glossing can be traced back to cultures of toxic positivity. “Toxic positivity is the pressure to express only a small range of the spectrum of human emotions, so that anything that isn’t cheerful and upbeat is repressed and avoided,” explains Angela Amias LCSW, a therapist and founder of Healthy Relationship Academy, a workplace wellness training program. 

Environments of toxic positivity often pave the way for actions like glossing. And while we can’t entirely fault managers for trying to “look on the bright side” and focus on the positives, ignoring very real problems to such a degree can make them far worse. 

As David Rice, an HR expert at People Managing People, said in conversation with Indy100: “[Glossing] causes people to believe that [managers] don't hear them, either wilfully or through ignorance. It also leads people to question your connection to reality and whether or not you're ever genuine.”

Glossing is a leadership behaviour that stems from a cultural issue of toxic positivity. To address it, here are some steps your HR team may want to consider: 

• Hone in on change management: Consider doubling down on change management to help both leaders and employees understand the variety of ways in which we cope with change in the workplace (both the good and the bad).

• Focus on feedback skills: Glossing becomes an issue when leaders are not receptive to negative feedback or criticism of any kind. Invest resources into training people on constructive feedback and how leaders can work with it to turn negatives into positives. 

• Build leadership development programmes: Managers are multipliers in your organisation. If you want them to exhibit certain behaviours, you need to transparently train them up on what your business considers to be a priority. It may be time to launch a full-fledged programme. 

• Create support systems: Offer resources such as employee assistance programmes and mental health workshops. Ensure employees know where to turn for support when facing challenges.

• Managing Toxic Productivity at Work

• Why Is Everyone Talking About… Productivity Paranoia?

• 10 Change Management Models for Successful Organisational Change

That's all for this week's edition of Personio Pulse: This Week in HR. Check back next week as we continue to dissect the latest trends impacting the ways we work. 

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