by Tom Rath
When you experience a positive interaction, it activates a very different response. Positive exchanges boost your body’s production of oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that increases your ability to communicate, collaborate, and trust others. When oxytocin activates networks in your prefrontal cortex, it leads to more expansive thought and action. However, oxytocin metabolizes faster than cortisol, so the effects of a positive surge are less dramatic and enduring than they are for a negative one.
We need at least three to five positive interactions to outweigh every one negative exchange. Bad moments simply outweigh good ones. Whether you’re having a one-on-one conversation with a colleague or a group discussion, keep this simple shortcut in mind: At least 80 percent of your conversations should be focused on what’s going right.
Workplaces, for example, often have this backward. During performance reviews, managers routinely spend 80 percent of their time on weaknesses, gaps, and “areas for improvement.” They spend roughly 20 percent of the time on strengths and positive aspects. They need to flip this around. Any time you have discussions with a team or group, spend the vast majority of the time talking about what is working, and use the remaining time to address deficits.
Use Positive Words as Glue
Most of the words you use carry either a positive charge or a negative charge. Fortunately, there is what researchers call a “positive bias in human expression.” The vast majority of words people use are more positive than negative. In large-scale studies on this topic spanning multiple countries, roughly four out of every five words used in writing were found to be positive.
Positive words, whether used verbally or in writing, are the glue that holds relationships together. Most conversations, letters, and emails are overwhelmingly positive. They need to be so the heavily weighted negative words do not counteract them.
Words with a negative charge have roughly four times the weight of those with a positive charge. If you type a note to a friend and make one negative remark, it will take approximately four positive comments just to get that person back to neutral. If you have an online debate with a colleague, every sentence the recipient perceives as negative will increase the deficit.
When you need to challenge someone, address difficult issues, or deliver bad news, just be sure to mention a few positive things as well. Balance the overall conversation with far more positive than negative words. Then try to close with specific and hopeful actions. Help the other person see the positive consequences of any changes you discuss. If you bombard the recipient with negative remarks, which have a disproportionate influence, he is more likely to shut down and not listen.
Teachers, for example, are often told to structure parent-teacher conferences with this idea in mind. When conferences start on a good note, parents are more likely to listen and be receptive.
Any time you are communicating with another person, be mindful of the importance of using positive words to hold things together. It may seem inconsequential in the moment, but subtle messages stick in a person’s mind. If friends know they can count on a message or phone call from you to boost their mood a little, it will strengthen the bonds of your relationships.
At Least Pay Attention
Even when you can’t say something nice, go ahead and say something. Contrary to what I was told growing up, negative comments are less harmful than ignoring someone. A study conducted by Canadian researchers in 2014 suggests that being ignored at work is even more detrimental to mental and physical well-being than harassment or bullying.
As one of the study’s co-authors put it, “We’ve been taught that ignoring someone is socially preferable . . . but ostracism actually leads people to feel more helpless, like they’re not worthy of any attention at all.” Participants in this study rated ignoring someone as being the safer and less detrimental route, even though it did more damage. People who were ostracized in the workplace had less engagement with their work, were more likely to leave their job, and had more health problems compared with workers who reported they had been bullied.
While the comparison to bullying in this study is dramatic, the overall finding is consistent with a great deal of research I have studied and conducted. Having a manager who is not paying attention nearly doubles your odds of being disengaged on the job compared with a manager who focuses primarily on your weaknesses.
People commonly underestimate the value of simply paying attention to another person. When people are ignored, they have a tendency to assume the worst. If someone I communicate with regularly has not spoken to me in some time, I am quick to wonder if I did something wrong or offended them. Most of the time, this is not the case. But the brain often perceives a lack of communication as something much worse.
Even negative feedback is better than nothing at all. When others critique you, at least you know they care enough to pay attention. The ideal scenario is when a dose of reality is paired with several servings of encouragement.
Start Small and Be Clear
If you allow society to keep redefining happiness for you, you’ll enter a race that you have no chance of winning. Everywhere you turn, something is suggesting that you need more to find true contentment and satisfaction in life. To persuade you to consume more than you have today, marketers will continue to make a case for why you will be happier if you can just get to the top of the next hill. But getting caught up in this race only ensures that you’ll never win.
Fortunately, the things that give your day a positive charge are usually in plain sight and do not require major purchases. A warm interaction with your spouse on your way out. Stopping by a colleague’s desk to share a few words of praise. Going for walk outside on a nice day. Talking to one of your best friends on the phone and giving her the gift of your attention when she needs it most.
These small gestures might even be more effective at boosting another person’s well-being than larger acts, according to a recent study from Stanford and Harvard Business School. As part of a series of experiments, one group of participants was assigned a goal of making another person happy, while a second group was told to simply do something that made another person smile. The results showed that small, straightforward actions to make someone smile were far more effective than broad, nebulous attempts to improve overall happiness.
The study’s authors wrote, “Acts with small, concrete goals designed to improve the well-being of others are more likely to lead to happiness for the giver than are acts with large, abstract goals — despite people’s intuitions to the contrary.” This study reveals a surprisingly simple way to approach major challenges. When a friend is going through a difficult time, do something to lift her spirits before you get into the bigger issues.
Use Questions to Spark Conversation
Whether you struggle to strike up a conversation or it comes naturally, you will benefit from talking to new people. I understand how challenging it can be to initiate a conversation with someone you don’t know in a room full of people. In fact, the mere thought of it increases my heart rate. Yet I have learned that it’s easier to start talking with people when I focus on asking good questions and then listen to the answers. Asking questions reduces my social anxiety because I no longer feel the need to say something interesting to join a conversation or fit in. While trying to win people over is not a strength of mine, I love observing and learning about interesting people.
Asking questions is even more effective when others may be skeptical of your influence or credibility or when you are engaged in a debate. A team of researchers in the United Kingdom who have been studying recordings of expert negotiators for many years found that questions are one of the most effective forms of bringing people into agreement. The average negotiators spent less than 10 percent of their total time asking questions during a given session. However, the most successful group of negotiators spent 21 percent of their time asking questions.
People love to talk about themselves. By some estimates, 40 percent of everyday sp
eech consists of people telling others what they think and feel. According to scientists, talking about oneself triggers the same reward centers in the brain as food or money. Diana Tamir, a Harvard neuroscientist who conducted experiments that included brain imaging on this topic explained, “Self-disclosure is extra rewarding . . . [P]eople were even willing to forgo money in order to talk about themselves.”
The more open you are about yourself, including revealing embarrassing moments and occasional mistakes, the more likely another person is to trust you. So accept your own small mistakes, slip-ups, and natural quirks. A series of experiments suggests that being humble and embracing self-deprecating moments is an asset, not something to be ashamed of when things go astray. In short, humility creates trust.
When UC Berkeley researchers studied these social tendencies, the results showed that people want to associate with someone who is comfortable being embarrassed in front of others. For example, the researchers videotaped 60 college students recounting embarrassing moments. The stories included typical sources of embarrassment, such as public flatulence, mistaking an overweight woman for being pregnant, or making other incorrect assumptions based on appearances. The team of researchers then rated the levels of embarrassment each subject showed.
When others saw these displays of public embarrassment, they were more cooperative and generous when they subsequently played games with the people who had been embarrassed. These studies suggest that there is no need to worry about awkward moments. In fact, a genuine response to such situations may even engender trust and friendships in the future.
I used to be quite hesitant about exposing my own insecurities and vulnerabilities, especially in a professional context. But I have learned that making fun of myself is often the safest thing to do, given the risk of offending others in unfamiliar situations. Talking about my fears, flaws, and follies often leads to an exchange of entertaining stories. Sometimes it leads to lasting connections. Being open about who I am — good, bad, and awkward — also saves me a lot of time because I am never pretending to be someone I’m not.
Connect for Speed and Creativity
It is easy to dismiss the need for close relationships at work until you focus on the bigger picture. Sure, you can get more done tomorrow if you put your head down and plow through a bunch of work. But if you fail to cultivate and maintain relationships, it will slow you down over time.
Anything of substance in life is created by working with others. I have yet to do anything very useful in isolation. Relationships boost achievement and create efficiency. If I need to explain something to a colleague I do not work with often, it may take 15 minutes. If I need to explain the same topic to a close friend at work, I can accomplish it in 60 seconds.
Friendships speed things up because emotions spread faster than words. When you see a friend at work, even if you don’t say anything, you exchange an emotional state simply based on observing each other’s facial expressions and body language. The closer you are with someone, the more likely you are to mirror each other’s words and mannerisms. This serves a valuable purpose in helping you exchange even more information in less time.
Psychologist James Pennebaker has spent his career studying this topic. He said, “When two people start a conversation, they usually begin talking alike within a matter of seconds.” When Pennebaker and his team looked at the synchronization of words married couples use, they found that word usage was similar during good points of marriages and less similar at low points. This suggests that the mirroring of another person’s words may be a harbinger of a thriving relationship. But mirroring another person’s body language, facial expressions, or words need not be reserved for your closest friendships; simply emulating the facial expressions or posture of a complete stranger can improve the quality of a conversation.
Friendships at work also come with a level of trust that allows for energizing and efficient interactions throughout the day. This is particularly relevant when a group is trying to solve a problem that requires creative thinking or when making a new product. When you get together with a group of people you enjoy spending time with, it puts you in a better mood. Experiments show that if you are in a better mood, your creativity increases and your thinking becomes more expansive. This helps explain why Gallup’s research has shown that people who have “best friend”-caliber relationships at work are seven times as likely to be engaged in their job.
When researchers asked employees how they formed a close workplace friendship, they found that it takes about a year for an acquaintance at work to become a friend. The telltale sign of a friendship between co-workers was the amount of time they spent talking about topics unrelated to work. Then the next phase, a very close friendship at work, was marked by something less intuitive: sharing problems from one another’s personal and work lives. This self-disclosure was the central element of the strongest relationships.
Building great relationships at work takes time and effort. But it can start with something as simple as asking a colleague about his weekend or regularly going to lunch with one of your friends. The effort is worth it because the relationships you build are good for your work and well-being.
Take a Break for Relationships
When Bank of America first set up its call centers, it deliberately designed them for maximum efficiency in handling customer calls. Employees’ breaks were timed so they didn’t coincide with any of their peers’ breaks. The intent was to ensure that the phone lines were always covered. Yet employee turnover was unacceptably high.
When the bank’s leaders looked into the retention issue, they discovered that a lack of relationships and daily communication between employees was the root of the problem. This lack of cohesion was six times more predictive of performance than any other metric. Because of these findings, the bank’s leaders changed the shift schedules to ensure that groups of employees could have lunch and take breaks at the same time.
Three months later, the same group of employees was handling calls 23 percent faster, and group cohesion had gone up by 18 percent. These increases translated into $15 million in added revenue for the company. The bank discovered that when employees had the opportunity to connect throughout the day, relationships inevitably formed and grew. And those relationships resulted in positive business outcomes for the bank.
Want What You Already Have
If you spend time with people who care about your development, you will grow. In turn, if you surround yourself with people who are hostile and negative, they will inevitably bring you down. The direct influence of people you spend time with affects everything from your well-being to your habits and choices.
For instance, when a friend smokes, it increases the odds that you’ll smoke by 61 percent. Even if a friend of a friend (a second-degree connection) smokes, you are 29 percent more likely to smoke. This influence goes out to someone three degrees away from you in a network. If a friend of a friend of a friend smokes, you are 11 percent more likely to smoke. This is what researchers have dubbed the “contagion effect” in relationships, and it applies to everything from smoking to obesity levels.
Fortunately, the contagion effect in relationships works in a positive direction as well. If you have a friend who is happy, it increases your happiness levels even more than a $10,000 increase in annual pay. When you do something kind for another person, he or she is more likely to pay it forward, as is the next person, and so on. Almost any investment in another person has an exponential return beyond what you can see in the moment.
Recent experiments suggest that the best way to produce sustainable increases in well-being is to appreciate what you already have and to continue creating new positive experiences with the people who matter most. When you value what you already have, not only will you grow, you won’t feel the angst of wanting more. Any time you create experiences in the context of your existing resources and relationships, it has a compounding effect on your well-being.
Use Your Phone Whe
n You’re Alone
Paying attention requires a little effort, but the rewards are great. Nothing adds more value to life than close social relationships. This is why it is so important to focus on the people you are with when you are with them.
There are countless distractions around you. In some cases, these distractions can be helpful. When I’m stuck in a long line at a grocery store, my digital pacifier (smartphone) is remarkably useful. Having the Internet in my pocket turns boring and frustrating moments into an opportunity to learn something or text a friend. However, these distractions create problems when you use them while spending time with friends, colleagues, or loved ones.
In fact, a 2014 study titled “The iPhone Effect” shows how the mere presence of a smartphone can ruin a conversation. In an experiment with 200 participants, researchers found that simply placing a mobile communication device on the table or having participants hold it in their hand was a detriment to their conversations. Any time the phone was visible, the quality of the conversation was rated as less fulfilling when compared with conversations that took place in the absence of mobile devices. People reported having higher levels of empathetic concern when phones were not visible.
Another study found that a visible cellphone decreased both attention and the ability to perform complex tasks. As I read more on this topic, I made some practical changes in my routine. I am much more conscious about the implicit message when I set my phone on a table, even if I do so just for convenience or comfort. It doesn’t matter if my ringer is muted or my phone is off. Simply seeing a smartphone is bad for my concentration, others in the room, and the quality of my relationships.