Positive Energy. It’s a term being talked about a lot more frequently in classrooms, board rooms and locker rooms. After all, you would have to live on another planet not to have noticed the new plethora of books and articles discussing an abundance of new research demonstrating that positive people, positive interactions and positive work cultures produce positive results.

There is a growing sentiment that positive energy is the cure for the ailing business, the suffering stock price, the battered leader, the negative leadership team and the "sick and tired" morale and culture. It is, as University of Michigan Professor Kim S. Cameron described it, the holy grail of business.

Yet, while I agree with this research and sentiment, as someone who has owned a number of franchises, I wondered, "If positive energy is so important, and we all agree that the research demonstrates it works, then why aren’t more franchises more positive?"

Why are there not more people smiling at their co-workers and loving their job? Why do more people die on Monday morning at 9 a.m. than at any other time? If positive energy is so important and leaders know it, then why does negativity cost the economy $300 billion a year in lost productivity, according to the Gallup Organization?

The answer is the cost of negativity.

When I speak to leaders and managers, everyone can identify those who are negative, not surprisingly. What is surprising, however, is that many leaders and managers don’t know what to do with those people - often allowing them to breed and fester within the franchise.

And even worse, they have no idea how much these negative people (I call them energy vampires) are costing their franchise by sabotaging morale, performance, productivity and customer service and by sucking the positive energy and life out of the organization. As Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNab said of Terrell Owens, "One guy can’t make a team, but one guy can break a team."

To build a thriving, high-performing franchise, it is essential, then, to address the issue of negativity at work and to eliminate the energy vampires from your organization. That's not done with stakes, silver bullets or garlic but with a positive approach I garnered from a gardener and a college football coach, of all people.

While talking to my new organic yard guy one day, I asked him how he was going to get rid of the weeds and make the lawn look great without using pesticides and chemicals. He said, "Well, I just create an environment that nurtures the soil and allows the good grass to grow healthy and thrive to the point where the good grass crowds out the weeds and makes it impossible for the weeds to grow."

My other conversation took place with Pete Carroll, head football coach at the University of Southern California. When I asked Pete his secrets for winning two national championships and recruiting the best players in the country, he told me that positive energy is ingrained in the team's systems, processes and everything it does. Practices, meetings and gatherings in the locker room are all infused with positive energy. It’s ingrained in the team's culture and habits.

Applying these lessons to the business world, it is very apparent why negativity sabotages so many franchises, despite the overwhelming evidence and recent literature demonstrating the benefits of positive work environments.

Most franchises and organizations deal with negativity by either ignoring it or firing negative people. But, like a lawn, if you don’t address the environment, new weeds will always pop up. While pink slips will always be necessary, the best way to reduce negativity is to implement positive strategies and systems that make it impossible for energy vampires to grow and multiply.

Successful, positive franchises with positive employees and positive cultures are created like anything else: through a set of principles, processes, systems and habits that are ingrained in the corporate culture and each individual employee.

Positive companies aren’t born, they are developed. And as part of this development, it is essential to identify the people and the gaps in your processes that are contributing to negativity. You will want to address these gaps and incorporate positive strategies and best practices that are proven to hire, develop and fuel positive, engaged people and teams.

For example, most franchises have every intention of hiring skilled, hardworking, positive people. However, what a majority of them lack is a screening and hiring process that screens for optimism and a positive attitude and screens against negativity.

For example, PPR, a health care recruiting firm recently voted one of the best places to work, has implemented an intensive hiring process filled with surveys, interviews and tests that weed out negativity. The people who manage PPR know that building a positive, high-performing company begins with getting the right people on the bus, and so they spend time, energy and resources to create a hiring system that accomplishes this.

With the right people on your bus, you want to make sure you communicate consistently and effectively with them so they always know where the bus is going. Management guru Peter Druecker says that 60% of management problems are the result of faulty communication.

That is because where there is a void or gap in communication, negative energy will always fill it. When people feel fearful or uncertain or unheard, they start thinking the worst and act accordingly.

Companies oriented towards positivism address these gaps in a variety of ways, such as by hosting company-wide weekly Monday morning meetings. Google creates wide-open work spaces and meeting rooms that foster better communication and idea collaboration. Southwest airlines communicates in many ways to its employees via daily intranet updates, newsletters, conference calls and town hall meetings. Employees not only want to be seen and heard, they also desire to see and hear - and this makes all the difference.

In utilizing an effective communication system, you will want to make sure you pump positive energy instead of negative energy through the energy pipes of the organization and fuel the tanks of your employees. When you are constantly fueling your employees’ tanks with positive energy instead of negative energy, they perform at a higher level.

A company called First Transit fuels its organization with more than just gas by creating a system of positive touch points that reward its drivers for doing things right. For example, every time a supervisor notices a bus driver doing something positive, the supervisor praises the driver and also writes the observation on a specially designed sheet of paper that is submitted to the general manager.

The next day, the general manager personally hands the sheet of paper to each driver and again praises him or her again. Thus, the bus driver receives two positive interactions for every one positive action. Not surprisingly, performance has soared, moral has improved, absenteeism has decreased and profits have grown.

While a few best practices have been shared here, I advise leaders to meet with their leadership teams and create their own roadmap and vision for the road ahead. With vision and an action plan, you can begin to cultivate positive energy among your people and engrain it into your processes, systems and culture - neutralizing the energy vampires, lowering the cost of negativity and fueling your business and profits.