The other day I pulled up to a stoplight and noticed the bumper sticker on a car in front of me: "Wag More, Bark Less!" it read. Having just come from meeting a management team with whom I'm consulting--a group inclined to dwell on what's WRONG--I had to smile at the obvious appropriateness of the message to those of us in the non-canine population.

Every dog owner I've ever met is charmed and amazed by that wagging behavior: "He greets me at the door happily, no matter what!" Yet some of those same dog owners show up at work with only complaints and criticisms, the classic "glass half-empty" approach.

Recent brain research has finally labeled this to be what some of us felt all along: bad for us. Trevor Blake, author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and in Life, describes a study showing that exposure to even 30 minutes of negativity reduces the number of neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain needed for problem solving. Maybe that explains why the "barkers" we know tend to hang out with other barkers and always have extensive material to bark about.

What if we did "wag more" when trying to tell a colleague that she's holding up the report we need to get to senior management? Might we just sound phony and manipulative, maybe even snarky ("Very nice margins on that last draft")? Or is it possible to sincerely say something positive, then request what we need?

Check out the difference between these two comments:

1. "Nicole, we have a problem. I still don't have your section of the report and I have to present the whole report at 2 p.m. tomorrow. I've really had it with your delays."

2. "Nicole, I'm looking forward to seeing your section of the report. If you can possibly get it to me first thing tomorrow, I'll have time to incorporate it into my report at the 2 p.m. meeting."

I tried to temper that first comment to make it polite though annoyed. All of us know people who would say much worse. And that second comment? Hopefully it's a "wag" that wouldn't make us sound phony-manipulative.

So if we're supervising someone's work, and we're tempted to say, "You need to stop taking so many personal calls during work hours," might it be possible instead to emphasize some recent contribution we appreciate and let the person know we'd like to see them put more of their hours in the office to THAT kind of thing? If we then want to also mention that it seems like personal calls are taking up a lot of that time, that would be fair. We still might get a lot farther than with the "barking" approach.