Executive Podcast #206: Quiet Quitting Is a New Name for an Old Problem

Quiet Quitting is term that describes someone who has decided to limit their job output to only those things strictly stated in their job description. They do not take on additional assignments, in fact they have decided to look for ways to do the absolute minimum to complete their job responsibilities. Is this an employee problem or a leadership problem?

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results.

Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, Executive Vice President with Maxwell Leadership.

Welcome and thank you for joining. As we get started, just a quick reminder, if you want to download show notes that Perry has prepared for us today, you want to learn a little bit more about really where these conversations come from, which is Perry’s getting into the trenches of organizations and coaching and facilitating. If you’re interested in that with our organization and letting us help you do that, you can visit maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There’s a form there that you can fill out and our team will get back in touch with you or you can download the blog and/or the show notes for today.

Perry Holley:

I was excited at Maxwell conference we were at, that people say, “We really like the show notes.’ I wasn’t sure anybody knew they were there.

Chris Goede:

Yes. I think there was one person that told us over and over again, they downloaded them and filled them out.

Perry Holley:

But that’s all right.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Well, today’s topic, this is something that we’re going to talk about and it is relevant to what we’re hearing in organizations. And it’s funny because we often heard The Great Resignation and now it’s kind of shifted to this topic we’re going to talk about today, The Quiet Quitting. And I love your subtitle. Perry titled this Quiet Quitting, A New Name for an Old Problem. And this is something that, man, we’re hearing over and over again. But you’re right, as I think about this, and we’re going to unpack this a little bit today, this is something that I think leaders and organizations have been dealing with for some time.

In preparation for today, one of our team members actually had sent an article over to us. It was a Forbes article and I was looking at it. What caught me in that article as we dive in here today is that they were talking about, within a one week time, just in July recently, that there were over eight million looks, views, downloads, whatever TikTok is, around this Quiet Quitting, one week, eight million views on TikTok about this. So it is an issue that everybody is aware of, hearing, and talking about.

Perry Holley:

And it’s a label that was applied to, like I said, an old problem, but what’s scaring me about it is that someone maybe had not considered this as an option, this eight million views and it’s just growing exponentially, to say, “Oh, oh, hmm, I could do that. Why am I working so hard?” And it’s actually a thing now that you’re bringing awareness to people that maybe I should adopt this Quiet Quitting. Before we go any further, why don’t we define what we think it is, because I was on a coaching call this morning and my executive said, “I’ve heard of it, but what is it? I have not paid attention to what it is.” So what do you think it is?

Chris Goede:

Yeah, so Quiet Quitting really describes the limited output that someone on your team would be contributing to, or doing, in regards to what is strictly stated in the job responsibility, job description, which that would not work here at the Maxwell Leadership organization. Because we often say, “Hey, the last time the job description will probably be very accurate, would be the first day that you’re on the job,” and we kind of move that around. But what ends up happening with these team members is that they don’t take additional assignments. They’re not giving you a little bit of that extra, they’re doing the bare minimum. You and I have talked about this before, there’s some great illustrations.

The bare minimum that they can be doing to keep their job. They’re completely disengaged. And that’s really where I go when I hear this Quiet Quitting. I go to that word disengaged because we talk so much about, in culture, how do we get people engaged? And I think that there is an interesting dynamic around this, and this may be happening for many different reasons that we’re going to get into today. One of them may even just be flat out burnout, and they go, “That’s it. Not only is everybody else trying to do this, but I’m burned out.” In that for Forbes article, I saw this other quote too that I thought was really, really good. The quote says, “I also think this is a small yet important symptom of a bigger culture problem of really a distant and ineffective leader.” Eeverything rises and falls on leadership, and so this again starts with leadership.

Perry Holley:

Absolutely. Well, I think you’re right on with the engagement idea is people are disengaging on purpose. They’re purposely saying, “I’m going to disengage.” The word that’s used in engagement surveys is discretionary effort. And so you’re basically seeing that people are saying, “I’ve got some discretionary effort, I could give it to you or I could give it to something else.” And they’re basically saying, “I’m going to hold back on that discretionary effort. I’m going to do whatever the minimum is to do my job and I’m going to stay with that.” I will note, that question why now? Why is it being labeled? Somebody came up with a clever phrasing of it to something that’s kind of catchy, Quiet Quitting.

But the idea of just look at the last two and a half years where we’ve been the pandemic, all the jumping through hoops, and realigning, and audibles, and pivoting, and all the things that everyone had to do to continue to produce during those challenging times has now got us working out of the office, working at home. And what I heard some people and some of the research I had done was that, “I’m overworked, underappreciated.” Someone else said, “I have a very hard time determining when I’m done, when is work over. My balance of my life or the integration of work and home has dissolved into I work all the time and I’m unappreciated for that.” And that being forced to work outside of the workplace, many of us, I’ve worked from home for many years, and it is a problem that I could be working all the time and I had to come up with some boundaries and things that we do.

Chris Goede:

You did?

Perry Holley:

Oh, sorry.

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Chris Goede:

Or the Mrs.

Perry Holley:

I was asking for a friend.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. She’s like, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Perry Holley:

I was told what my new boundaries are.

Chris Goede:

That’s right. I love it. Yeah.

Perry Holley:

But that’s really what I think is going on, is it finally reached a point where somebody put a name. And now, like I said earlier, I’m nervous that anybody on any team anywhere that sees this can say, “Hmm, I never thought about it. I could do that too.” And I thought, “No, no.” Like you said, everything rises and falls on leadership.” So maybe we should talk about what we do about this.

Chris Goede:

I like what you talk about with the boundaries. Because I found myself during the pandemic, and then even after, as we were working remote, the boundaries, they weren’t there, to your point.

Perry Holley:

So they weren’t even blurry.

Chris Goede:

They weren’t even blurry, they weren’t there. And I think what ends up happening is now we’re getting post pandemic, people are encouraging team members to start coming back in the office. And some have a blended approach to what that looks like. But the problem is, is that there’s still, even now that they’re asking them to come back into the office, there’s still this fuzziness around the difference between your work and your home life and it just becomes one thing all the time. And with that, I also think some organizations, and for a lot of us, even saw increased productivity from our team members or ourselves, but that was really driven by the more time that was being spent on certain projects or certain things, which increased the productivity.

And so now we’re almost, as we bring people back into the office and have been for a little while, we’re expecting the same type of productivity from them and it’s just putting more pressure on them. So could this also be, and we just recently talked a little bit about this with Tim Elmore, one of our thought leaders, could this also be a difference in generational team members?

Perry Holley:

You know, I do think that does have an impact on it, although it’s not all of it. But you think about, I’m a baby boomer, very late, late, late, late, late year baby boomer. Did I mention late year baby boomer? But the baby boomer generation was all about achieving and hard work and success and money and advancement, and that sort of thing. My kids’ generation is more about purpose and about cause and balance and family and they want to work. They’re not opposed to working hard, they just want to have a division of the two parts of their life. And so I do believe there’s a lot of components that could be there.

Another thing that I thought about was the advancement. A lot of times when I was coming up, the person that did all the extra projects and put themselves out there and did all the work, they were the one that got promoted. And so if you’re thinking, is that the ticket to admission for promotion in this company, I’m not sure if I want to play that game. And a lot of people are saying, if that’s the only way forward, maybe I don’t want to go forward, and I’ll just do the minimum now, get my paycheck and have my life to do that. So lots of dynamics to this for sure.

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Chris Goede:

Yeah, I think, to your point, it is a multifaceted dynamic problem that leaders are dealing with. And so when you think about these Quiet Quitters, or those that are Quiet Quitting, maybe even on your team, is this really a problem with the team member dealing with all of those things we just talked about? Or is this really around leadership ability or the leadership capability? And so I think I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. We talk a lot on this podcast about leaders leading people, about leading teams, from a corporate standpoint. This could be on both sides of the coin here. What are your thoughts on that?

Perry Holley:

Well, looking through research and I have a friend that does Jack Zinger and Joe Folkman, worked with years ago. They do a lot of research and they looked at 360 degree assessments of leaders. And through that they were able to determine that even the best leaders, those that were considered high quality leaders, also had some Quiet Quitters on the team. But it was more on the employee, for all the reasons an employee may have a bad attitude, or not be in the right role, or number-

Chris Goede:

Same as if they were disengaged back in the-

Perry Holley:

Right. Something going on in their life, something to disengage. But the worst leaders, I think that they had the lowest, the worst… The best leaders only had a 3 to 5% Quiet Quitter rate. But the worst leaders had quite a number, 40, 50% could be Quiet Quitting. So it really comes down to, it’s a leadership issue. And I think we talk about a lot of things here. I want to present today kind of looking through what are some of these components that, what do we do about this if you’re a leader and you want to make sure that, even if your people are hearing about it and think, “Hey, I could do that,” they won’t want to because of you.

Chris Goede:

So let’s start at the top. When we talk about leadership competencies, the number one topic that we always get questions about from our clients, our partners, people that we just consult with and help is around communication. Matter of fact, I just came off the road a couple of days where we were with an organization and this comment came up where they said, “It doesn’t matter the industry, the tenure of the leader, the culture, we all have problems with communication,” and I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right.” So I think it’s the same thing here with when we’re going down this road and we notice that we have people that are disengaged or are Quiet Quitting. We got to make sure that as leaders we’re having open communication with every single person on the team. I think you got to be very clear and you got to make sure that you’re in alignment and agreement with that team member around a couple of things.

So their role and their responsibility, what are the expectations? We talk often about the fact that the difference between expectations and reality is disappointment. And that disappointment comes on the shoulders of the team member, but also the leader if you’re not very clear there. And so what are those expectations? And then also have a conversation with what’s working and what’s not. We’re talking about this right now as our team here, and then, you and I. And I think you got to begin to have those communication. And you got to step out. You got to lead them and you got to say, “Hey.” You got to initiate it. “Let’s have a communication about this. I’m sensing, I’m feeling this. I’m not saying you’re Quiet Quitting. That may not be your intent, but let’s talk about these things, make sure we’re in alignment.”

Perry Holley:

Well, I really like that, what’s working, what’s not. It’s such a simple thing to ask but to really listen. And I’ve used it as a start, stop, continue. What should I start doing that would help you be more engaged? What should I stop doing that’s making you less effective? What should we keep doing? Lets people know that you’re listening, you care about that. I think number two, for me was, can you really get to know the people on your team? Do you really know them? And it’s knowing their strengths and weaknesses, knowing what they value, what matters to them most. Another great one I found that drives engagement, what are your career plans? Anytime I had a boss that asked me about my career plans and then asked if they could help me in making my plan forward, do you think I leaned back and pulled away or do they think I leaned in? I thought, “Wow, they acted like they really wanted to help me do that.”

And then what are those aspirations, may be personal and professional. I had a boss once that would ask a lot about what are you aspiring to do in your off time? I mentioned woodworking. “And what are you doing to grow as a woodworker?” I thought, “Is he going to buy me a saw?” I don’t know, but I should have played that better. The whole idea here, we talk about it, the three things that every follower’s asking about you, and the three questions being: Can you help me? Do you care about me? Can I trust you? People on my team know that: I can help them. I care about them. They can trust me. Checking in with them, I know about them. I’m having open conversation. I’m showing that I’m interested in you. I’m pretty much going to be engaged. It’s a good recipe. It sounds simple, but it’s one of the things we do that really adds to engagement very, very easily.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, I love you talked about how when you had leaders in the past that asked you what are your career plans and you kind of leaned into them. A lot of people say, “Well, what if those answers… Can I really truly be honest,” because it’s maybe not here at Maxwell Leadership. Absolutely. I have those conversations all the time with our team members, and say, “What is it? And if it’s not here, I still want to be that support. I still want to be that leader that helps you get there.” And I think when you do that, you get buy-in, is what we’re talking about, from our team members.

I love how that was number two for you. It’s also a direct correlation to level two in the five levels of leadership and that’s so important to build the foundation. The other thing about that for me is, man, you want to be a conduit for their development. And that’s what you were saying. Whatever it is personally, professionally, woodworking, speaking, whatever it might be, you want to make sure that you’re helping drive their development. And I think that that will re engage them a little bit more. Number three is how do we help set and enforce boundaries? And I just looked away from the camera if you’re watching us on YouTube because I don’t feel like this is with integrity that we’re talking-

Perry Holley:

We’re not the poster children.

Chris Goede:

I also think that Perry put this in here directly on behalf of my team for me. But this is something that man, I want to talk more with you offline about how we set up some guardrails for this. Because leaders, what you model, ends up showing up in your people, period. And with us traveling, with us working on weekends, with us being in different stages of life, we have different schedules, but how do we have this work time and home time? What are the priorities that we want from our people so that they can focus on that and then not necessarily expand outside of that to keep adding value or delivering to the team?

And I think if I would do a better job, just speaking of me, modeling this, would my team follow? I was having a conversation with one of our other executive facilitators this week and he’s like, “There’s not a time,” and he’s goes, “I’m not telling you this is good, but there is not a time where I don’t email or text or call a couple individuals on your team and they don’t respond right back.” And he goes, “That’s a problem.” And I was like, “I know.” So I had that conversation and then now you brought this content to us, and so I’m thoroughly feeling convicted.

Perry Holley:

Well, I want people to think about a boundary as the fence around your yard. A fence tells you what’s in play, what’s yours and what’s outside that fence is not yours. And doesn’t mean you can’t help outside your fence, but you take care of what’s inside your fence first. And the fence lets me know where my yard ends and where does my work end for the day. You mentioned my wife and I putting boundaries in, because I work at home. I have a beautiful home office. I like to write and think and study. I love what we do. I love processing on this stuff. And I would do it all the time. And she just made a comment, “Why do I have to yell for you to come to dinner?” She’s right, she shouldn’t.

So I just put a boundary, I’m going to stop at a certain time. I put 6:00 PM. It could always be earlier, but it’ll never be later. Drop the laptop lid and walk out. But what if it’s not done? It’s never done. It’s never done. But when I look at the Quiet Quitting, people are saying, “I don’t know when it’s done.” It’s not done. That’s why the boundary is so important. And your point about being an example is, even though I like to work all kind of weird hours, I don’t want to put that on my people. So I use the, “Send later.” And I don’t know if people on our team have noticed, sure get a lot of email from Perry at 8:00 on Monday mornings. But I was working Saturday morning, but I like it, but I don’t want that on you. And I love the way you use the term season of life to call me old.

Chris Goede:

I said, “Our,” I’m in the same season of life as you.

Perry Holley:

Actually, you’re a little earlier, but I picked that up. But it’s saying yes, I don’t have kids at home right now. So Saturday morning, for me, it’s a great time for me to catch up on stuff and I will send emails, but I will not send it right away. I’ll make it delayed because I don’t want people thinking I’m expecting them to come out of their weekend or out of their trip to the ball game, put their kids out of the soccer match to come in and answer my email. Because our team is highly responsive, highly servant minded, and they will do it. They will stop what they’re doing and answer. So I thought it’s a great example for us as leaders here to model that we don’t expect you to be working on the weekend.

Chris Goede:

It definitely starts with us. Let me share the story I just thought about as you were sharing that. Oftentimes, isn’t it true, as leaders and as team members, we tend to make sure that we are almost erring on the side of working more than we are to protecting our personal time, our family time. It’s something that most of us do and it’s not right. That’s what we do. And so my wife, who is an incredible leader herself, very strong communicator, I’ll never forget, she said, “Hey, at 6:00…,” dinner reminded me of this, she said when the kids were younger, “Hey, we’re going to have dinner at 6:00.” I was like, “Okay, great.” She goes, “I expect you to be home by 6:00.” I said, “Okay, great. I’m there.” So sometimes I may have been in the driveway still on a phone call. I may have been in my home office, and I would maybe show up at 6:10, 6:15, and she’d go, “Can I ask you a question…,” not in front of the kids, we’d have a conversation later, and you know where this is going.

She goes, “Would you show up 15 minutes late for a meeting with John?” “No.” “Well, don’t show up 15 minutes late for my dinner meeting.” And she’s like, “What if we began to think about our home life when we think about this balance,” and balance is a tough word. I don’t like to talk about balance because I think it’s hard. I think there are seasons again of work and different things that you’re all in and all out. But I thought, “Man, that is such a good example for us to say 6:00,” like it’s going to be there tomorrow. It reminds me of you saying Tuesday’s coming, tomorrow morning’s going to be there and there’s going to be a list of stuff on there. I’m not saying we don’t want you to Quiet Quit and be disengaged, that’s not what we’re saying. But we’re saying how do we help our team members and ourselves model that?

Perry Holley:

I think it helps keep my energy high when I know that I can stop, go re energize, be with my family, get my rest, start again tomorrow. I’ll come in and I don’t need to Quiet Quit because I can afford to be fully engaged because I know there’s an end of the day coming.

Number four, just quick, is checking in. Make checking in with people a regular part of your weekly one-on-ones? And if you don’t have a weekly one-on-one, you absolutely have to have a weekly, or maybe biweekly, depending on how big your team is. But you got to be checking in with people. How are things going? How are you doing? What are you feeling? How’s your workload? You do this great with me. You’ll say, “How are you doing? What’s on your plate? I know you got a lot going on, working. Get you some help? Can I put somebody on something? Can we delegate something from you?” That kind of modeling of the checking in. It seems simple, but it’s very, very effective for that.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. I love your comment about if you’re not having one-on-ones with your team, make sure that you begin doing that in some sort. Some may need to be weekly, some may need to be every other week, maybe it’s monthly. But you got to make sure that you’re doing that. And number five, which could have been number one, but I’m also very proud of you that we also have five numbers, which we didn’t talk about until we got to the end of this here. Is make sure you’re showing appreciation and gratefulness to your people. They are working hard and we want to make sure that if they’re going above and beyond the expected behavior and we’re seeing it and we’re feeling it, that we need to express that. Our team and our people, they just want to feel seen and they want to feel heard. And the way to do that is to make sure that you’re showing that appreciation and greatness.

Well, as I wrap up for us here today, a couple things I just want to share with you. Another article I was reading said two thirds of leaders experienced burnout within the last year, that they had interviewed, had conversations with. And I think it was several hundred different leaders in this article, two thirds of leaders. I would say you and I probably have experienced it as well. So we’re 100% here at this table. And I don’t know where you’re at, but I’m sure you’ve experienced some of that as well. Maybe you’re not, as you’re listening to this, maybe you’re not a leader. Maybe you’re just part of a team and you have felt it as well. And so that’s where it comes back to these five points that Perry brought to us today for you to really just jot them down and go through them and make sure that you’re working through that so that you get on the other side of that burnout.

And then I have three things as we close that just may help kind of activate this for you. So you need to initiate a conversation with your leader. No matter your level of leadership, whatever, is you got to initiate a conversation to where you can do these three things. Number one, assess your present status and current state, and have a conversation about that. It’s what you talked about, what we kind of do periodically. Number two, ask for help. That’s a weak statement for leaders or people. I can’t do that, right? I can’t ask for help, but I don’t want you to see that as weak. Now I say this again, not doing a very good job of this because we joke around at times where we’ll come out of meetings, and be like, “Chris, why are all the to-dos coming out of the meeting on you instead of asking the team for help?”

And then finally, it goes back to us asking help, build a habit of thinking about things that are on your plate. Not everything, but thinking about things that are on your plate to where, instead of focusing on just the to-do, begin focusing on the who may be able to help you with that. To be able to kind of share the load so that you don’t get burned out and doesn’t lead to you Quiet Quitting. And then leaders, if you will model this, your people will follow.

Perry Holley:

That’s good. Great. Thank you Chris. And just a reminder, if you want to leave us a comment or a question, if you want to learn more about our offerings or you want to download that learner guide, you may do all that @maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We love hearing from you. We’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.