If American business executives, middle managers, and worker bees had been a bit more cynical, the country might not have plummeted into its current economic mess. Big banks such as Lehman Brothers would have heeded employees' concerns about the firm's deep investment in the growing real-estate bubble. Executives at the mortgage giant Countrywide Financial would have, with greater skepticism, picked apart the logic that every American could qualify for a home mortgage, and Wall Street analysts would have handed out company ratings more judiciously. Yet optimism prevailed in each example in journalist Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.
According to Ehrenreich, the business culture of the last 20 years shunned statistics and science in favor of motivational speakers and self-help books. Against that backdrop, money and success flowed from one's attitude rather than one's skill set. Ehrenreich recently spoke to NEWSWEEK's Nancy Cook about the ways in which the cult of positive thinking has affected American workers—along with her prescription for solving America's jobs crisis. Excerpts:
Cook: So, what's wrong with being happy at work?
Ehrenreich: Well, it's wonderful to be happy. Optimism sometimes is justified, but what has happened in the American business culture has been some kind of staggering retreat from reality. I always assumed that corporate culture was rational because of my background in science and in journalism, but what I began to understand in the 1980s, 1990s, and throughout this decade was that the business culture had become unmoored. The idea of being the CEO went from being someone who had mastered the business to being someone who was a charismatic figure. Some business writers started to talk about the corporation more like a cult.
Health Top Tips Nutrition Love Lifestyle Happiness Weight LossI remember reading one of these crazy books on attraction—about how you can get what you want by wishing it. One of blurbs on the back was written by a guy who worked for the company that held my retirement funds. That scared me. It's clear that the build-up to the financial meltdown involved real denial and people acting on the idea that it's bad to have negative people around.
How has this emphasis on positive thinking changed workers' daily lives?
It means artificial smiling and artificial cheer. It's a strain on people emotionally; the effort of managing the appearance of one's emotions is work. It means not asking the hard questions you think about asking. When people have been criticized for being negative at work, very often what that means is that they asked too many questions. I always thought asking questions was a good thing.