Yes, bucket-filling is an extraordinary powerful leadership strategy.
Of course, there is a flip side. There always is!
Right now, the majority of us don’t give or receive (I’m only concerned with giving praise & encouragement now) anywhere near the amount of praise that we should. As a result, we’re much less productive and in many cases, completely disengaged in our jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number-one reason people leave their jobs is because they “do not feel appreciated.”
But the problem doesn’t stop there. There’s more.
One study of health care workers found that when employees were working for a boss they disliked, they had significantly higher blood pressure. According to the British scientist George Fieldman, this boss-induced hypertension could increase the risk of coronary heart disease by 17% and the risks of stroke by 33%.
“There was both a statistical and clinically significant elevation during the time people had the boss they didn’t like,” says Fieldman, a psychologist and psychotherapist. “People who work with bosses they really hated constantly for years would probably be quite vulnerable to heart disease because of the elevation of blood pressure in the long-term.”
Where productivity is concerned it would be better for organizations if people who are overtly negative stayed home. When they do show up for work, they are counterproductive. We all know these types of people. They walk around the office or job site with glazed looks or move from cubicle to cubicle stirring up trouble with whining, complaining, and even paranoia. Sound familiar?
Our estimates suggest that there are more than 22 million workers – in the U.S. alone – who are extremely negative or “actively disengaged,” and this data was a decade prior covid. Imagine now!
This rampant negativity is not only disheartening, it’s expensive. It cost the U.S. economy between $250 and $300 billion every year in lost productivity alone. When you add workplace injury, illness, turnover, absences, and fraud, the cost could surpass $1 trillion per year, or nearly 10% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). These costs are not specific to the United States; they exist to varying degrees in every country, industry, and organization we have studied.
And our figures are conservative. To estimate costs accurately, we only accounted for the direct impact that “actively disengaged” employees have at work. We quantified the productivity – or the lack thereof – occurring in each person’s own workspace. In analyzing the data, we had to assume that disengaged employees simply sat in his or her cubicle and didn’t wreak havoc elsewhere – an unlikely assumption, of course. Most disengaged employees do plenty of things each day that bring others down with their own sinking ship.
NEXT UP: You ever personally caught yourself in a downward spiral of anger, or an addiction, and there was absolutely nothing you could do to stop the free-fall?