Marnie Brokenshire: Workplaces gaslighting staff with toxic positivity

Workplaces across Australia may be unintentionally gaslighting their employees through one of the most overlooked cultural issues in modern business, toxic positivity.
 

According to Marnie Brokenshire, Australia's leading workplace culture and emotionally intelligent leadership expert and cofounder of Uncapped Potential, many companies are unknowingly using their values and behaviours to suppress authenticity and deny staff the ability to express emotion, discomfort or vulnerability and it is creating serious consequences.
 

"When positivity becomes mandatory it becomes manipulation," Brokenshire said.
 

"We are seeing organisations where emotional honesty is being replaced with enforced cheerfulness and the result is a culture of silence avoidance and burnout.
 

"Many organisations have implemented 'happiness' mentalities to try and provide a 'supportive environment' at the expense of authenticity. The impact is having a negative effect."
 

Brokenshire outlined the impact of toxic positivity and the gaslighting it causes across workplaces.
 

The rise of corporate gaslighting

Brokenshire and her business partner Nicole Mathers use emotional intelligence models to evaluate workplace culture. One pattern they are seeing far too often is 'corporate gaslighting', where company values dictate how people should think, feel and behave and where if you don't "feel" that way, or want to challenge something, it is not welcomed.
 

"Values are meant to guide behaviour, not control it," Brokenshire said.
 

"But when values like 'we always have fun' or 'positivity is essential' become the default response to stress or crisis they begin to erase the reality of what people are experiencing. That is when culture crosses the line into psychological harm."
 

When the smiles are forced and the mantras don't land
 

Take this example, one of our clients who operates a large call centre team was dealing with an influx of unhappy, overwhelmed customers due to a significant interruption that was completely out of their control. They were told by management repeatedly to 'shake it off' and 'remember we only have fun here' every time they raised concerns or showed signs of emotional strain.
 

The manager meant well, bringing in pizzas, upbeat playlists and daily motivational quotes but staff were emotionally exhausted, unsupported and silenced. Turnover hit 80 percent in three months.

"This is not just about toxic culture. It is about tone deaf leadership that confuses positivity with progress," Brokenshire said.
 

"Being relentlessly upbeat in the face of real hardship is not resilience. It's avoidance. It pushes people to question their own emotional responses which is the very definition of gaslighting."
 

A checklist for unintentional harm

Brokenshire warned that many companies are unintentionally sending damaging messages through their values communications and leadership behaviours. Telltale signs include:
● Dismissing emotion with phrases like 'don't worry about it' or 'you're being too negative',
● Praising positivity at the expense of honesty,
● Ignoring or punishing staff who speak up or show vulnerability,
● Forcing motivational mantras in environments of high pressure or stress; and
● Making happiness or fun a performance metric.
 

"If people feel they can't be real, make mistakes or raise problems without being labelled difficult or negative then your culture is not psychologically safe," Brokenshire said.
 

"You don't have a high-performance environment. You have a pressure cooker with a smiley face emoji."

Culture must evolve beyond slogans

Brokenshire said that corporate values need to be reviewed regularly for relevance, clarity and impact. Too often values are well intentioned but poorly embedded, interpreted inconsistently, contradictory to what actually goes on, or weaponised in ways that were never intended.
 

"If you've got motivational posters on the walls and meltdowns in the meetings then it's time for you to revisit the alignment of your cultural values and what's real," Brokenshire said.
 

The solution lies in high-quality leadership training and building emotionally intelligent organisations, real conversations where nothing is off the table, and where people are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work, and not just their cheerful side.
 

About Uncapped Potential (UP)

Uncapped Potential (UP) is a forward-thinking consultancy founded by Marnie Brokenshire and Nicole Mathers, dedicated to empowering HR practitioners and business leaders to drive high- impact strategies and build thriving, emotionally intelligent workplaces. The company focuses on providing innovative and practical leadership solutions, challenging traditional methodologies and redefining what's possible in corporate success. UP has rapidly grown, partnering with medium to large businesses, including major corporate entities.

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