Michael Beck

The Hidden Cost of Quiet Quitting

Quiet quitting is one of the issues being talked about on a regular basis these days. It’s where someone becomes disengaged at work but doesn’t actually quit. Instead, they show up every day and do what’s asked of them, but nothing more. They basically do just enough to keep from getting fired. The Gallup organization estimates that quiet quitting comprises as much as 50% of the workforce in many companies! Obviously, this behavior curtails productivity, slowing a company’s growth, and causing lost revenue and profits.

But there is another, more expensive cost to the organization. And this cost is not obvious at first. It’s hidden until it reveals itself, which by then, is too late to fix.

It causes your best employees to quit.

Let me explain the dynamics and what you can do about it.

Typically, most organizations who have an intentional culture (meaning a culture that’s by design rather than by default), value things like professionalism, showing mutual respect, having integrity, being solution-oriented, and being collaborative. When a leader and/or an organization tolerates the behaviors associated with quiet quitting, it undermines the culture of the company.

Doing the very minimum is not only lazy, but it’s unprofessional. Professionals don’t need to be told in detail what needs to be done. They want to do a good job and will usually do whatever it takes to ensure the work gets done accurately and timely. But, when a leader tolerates a poor work ethic, it sends the message that there’s no need to work hard. Doing the minimum has no negative consequence.

Additionally, in order to meet deadlines and the needs of the organization – because the quiet quitters are slowing progress – the better, more engaged, more professional team members end up working harder to pick up the slack. After all, that’s what professionals do – whatever it takes to get the job done correctly and on time.

The consequence of all this is that many of your best employees will either become quiet quitters themselves or will quit and find a company who has a better, more positive culture.

So, how do you address and reverse the whole situation, so you avoid losing good employees and re-engage the quiet quitters?

Your initial instinct might be to take a harder line with quiet quitters and require them to step up their game or get fired. But this approach would be misguided. And it’s misguided because:

Quiet quitting is a symptom, not a problem.

When you take steps to address a symptom, it usually makes matters worse. The key, therefore, is to identify the underlying problem causing quiet quitting. And that brings us back to the well-known phrase: People don’t quit companies, they quit bosses.

Quiet quitting is caused by the way they are treated by the people who lead them. If people are treated like things, engagement drops. If adults are treated like children, engagement drops. If people are not treated with respect, engagement drops. If leaders lack integrity, engagement drops. And if leaders are unappreciative, taking people for granted, engagement drops.

Most leaders want to do a good job and want to be an effective leader, yet many fall short. They usually fall short for one or more of these reasons:

1. The skills needed to lead aren’t the same skills that got them where they are.
2. Many leaders model the same poor behavior they saw in the leaders who proceeded them
3. Regardless of intellect, education, or years of experience, we all have blind spots and can’t see what we’re missing.

The key, therefore, to reversing quiet quitting and all its implications, is to improve the effectiveness of the leaders and managers. Let me know if we can help you improve your team’s leadership effectiveness.

Leadership Training is Ineffective

I know I’m not going to make any friends within the leadership training community with this statement, but here it is…

There’s no such thing as leadership “training”.

Leaders can’t be trained. Leadership competencies are developed over time. Let me elaborate.

Over the years, I’ve given lots of thought to why leadership makes a difference. And although developing good strategies and making smart decisions are important, they don’t make someone a good leader. We all know smart executives who are poor leaders.

Good leadership is about people skills, not technical knowledge or processes. Good leaders bring out the best in people. When a leader becomes good at bringing out the best in people, engagement increases, productivity improves, turnover drops, and the organization gets better results.

Another reason leadership training is ineffective is that we all have blind spots. In my 20+ years as an executive coach, I have never met an executive who thought they were a poor leader! The reason, of course, is that we all have blind spots and can’t see what we’re missing. If we can’t see our weaknesses, we don’t know they need to be addressed and/or improved. Therefore, most people will dismiss much of what’s being offered in leadership training as being irrelevant. They don’t see how they’re being ineffective, so they don’t see the need to change. (Or they think they are already great leaders …)

Additionally, what a leader thinks of his or her abilities is fairly irrelevant. What matters much more is what others think of them as a leader. It’s the main reason we generally start a coaching engagement with a 360° assessment. It’s important to get an objective picture of how a leader is viewed throughout the organization.

And finally, developing effective leadership competencies takes practice. That’s why the process is developmental. Coaching conversations occur over a period of months and addresses real-world situations and the underlying issues. After that, it’s a process of implementation and refinement.

Specifically, in order to be effective, leaders need to learn how to earn people’s trust, earn people’s respect, treat people like people, treat adults like adults, show appreciation, and effectively develop people

In my experience, many leaders think they do all of that, but in fact, don’t do them very well.

In summary, providing training is good for people who are new leaders. It helps them become aware of the principles of effective leadership. But after they’ve been in a leadership role for a while, training becomes ineffective. Instead, they need someone to point out their blind spots and help them improve. It’s why executive coaching is so widely used.

All Leaders Have Blind Spots

In truth, we all have patterns, habits, and beliefs that limit us. The challenge is that we generally can’t see how those thought-patterns and beliefs hold us back.

Blind spots can severely impact a leader’s strategic vision, their course of action, and their rate of success. Blind spots can impact decision-making and creativity, and they act to limit the strategic initiatives we are willing to consider. They even affect how we relate to others – hampering our leadership effectiveness, our political adeptness, and our executive presence.

It doesn’t matter how experienced we are, what our background is, our age, level of education, or intelligence. We’re all subject to blind spots. Leaders, like everyone else, acquire blind spots from life, but as leaders, they suffer additional blind spots caused by their need to operate within the corporate environment.

Blind spots show up in our beliefs, our thoughts, and our actions. When it comes to our thoughts, the same thinking that got us where we are can’t take us further. If we keep thinking in the same way, we’ll keep coming up with the same kinds of solutions. Our thinking becomes stagnant without outside stimulation. The only way to expand one’s thinking is to get fresh, outside perspective.

When we get attached to the process of how we imagine success will be attained we become blind to other possibilities. And when that happens, we’re like a fly incessantly beating its wings against a pane of glass trying to reach its goal. It doesn’t matter how hard we try if we’re pursuing success in an ineffective manner. When we’re not willing to consider other courses of action, we limit our success. How does one distinguish between dogged determination and blindness? It usually requires input from an outside, unbiased source.

Additional blind spots within the corporate world arise from two sources. The first source is corporate culture – corporate culture in a general sense as well as the specific “culture” of an organization. We hold beliefs about how organizations should function, how they should be structured, and which behaviors are valued. Every organization has its own special culture – either by design or by default. And while a corporate culture can be an asset, it often acts to create blind spots with executives. The second source of blind spots arising from the corporate world stems from the need of leaders to achieve productivity through others. As executives, we run the risk of our thoughts and beliefs being influenced by the thoughts and beliefs of the people under our guidance.

Breaking free of limiting thoughts and beliefs is essential for achieving the results we want, however, there are some inherent challenges in releasing blind spots. Many blind spots are so deeply ingrained within our make-up, we’re no longer aware they control us. Without outside perspective, these beliefs appear to be truths. It’s important to keep in mind that generally these limiting beliefs are YOUR truths rather than THE truth.

It is critical that leaders identify and release their self-limiting blind spots. To that end, it requires outside perspective and input from someone who can point out what they can’t see for themselves.

Please give us a call and let us help you and/or your leaders move past their blind spots, and achieve the success they want and the organization needs.

How to Effectively Lead Professionals

There’s an art to leading professionals. It’s something I’ve mastered over the years as an executive coach by helping my clients become more effective in leading their teams.

We’ve all seen leaders who do a poor job leading people. They micromanage. They don’t engage or listen to their teams. They don’t create a trusting environment. They treat adults like children. And they even treat people like “things”.

Leaders who are effective go about leading in a different way…

I first began honing my approach after interviewing Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler. Jody and Cali had been tasked with creating a differentiated approach to the idea of the workplace and called it the Results-Only Work Environment® (ROWE®). ROWE is built on a foundation of autonomy and accountability for every single person. People are focused solely on getting work done. Hours worked don’t matter. Showing up at the office doesn’t matter. Time off doesn’t matter. Everyone gets crystal clear on the results they are expected to achieve, and managers manage the work, not the people.

The results were remarkable. Teams were clear on the important results to be achieved, engagement scores skyrocketed, and wellness scores jumped. Productivity rose significantly and voluntary turnover essentially dropped to zero. (Who would leave a culture like that?)

There’s quite a bit that needs to shift in order to implement a true ROWE culture. But to me, an essential aspect of why it works comes down to how leaders lead professionals.

The key to effectively leading professionals is to treat professionals like professionals.

At the heart of this approach is the reality that the vast majority of professionals want to do a good job. They want to produce professional results.

Consequently, a leader doesn’t need to constantly monitor the work and progress of a professional. Instead, they need to ensure that the person is clear about what needs to be done, what the outcome needs to be, when the task needs to be completed, and the relative priority of the work. The leader needs to be available to answer questions and the team member needs to know to let the leader know if there is a problem or a delay. (Obviously, if something is extremely urgent or time-sensitive, there needs to be more two-way communication.)

But once all of this is established, the leader needs to leave them alone to complete their work. They can (and should) wait for and expect the results to be delivered with quality and on time.

The most effective way to lead professionals is to treat them like a professional.

Do team members ever screw up? Do they ever act unprofessionally or produce inferior work? Of course. But it should be a rare occurrence and should be dealt with in an appropriate manner.

When professionals are treated as professionals, the quality of work improves, engagement increases, and turnover drops.

Dealing with Difficult People

Virtually every one of my clients over the years has brought up the subject of dealing with difficult people. There’s no escaping the fact that they come into everyone’s life at one time or another. Sometimes they come in the form of an unhappy or hard-to-get-along-with client, customer, or co-worker. Sometimes they’re a person we report to or someone who reports to us. And sometimes they’re just someone we happen to come in contact with like a store clerk. Whoever they are, they can cause anxiety, frustration, concern, or anger in us and can even cause us to become like them – someone difficult to deal with.

Sometimes the best way to deal with a difficult person is to avoid them altogether – give them wide berth. But often we don’t have that option. The difficult person is someone we simply have to deal with. Most people would say that in those situations, we have three options. These options are: 1) Try to change ourselves, 2) Try to change the other person, and 3) Resolve to tolerate the situation – basically decide to put up with them. I’d like to suggest that there’s a fourth, very effective option as well – perhaps the most effective of the four options. Let’s spend some time discussing these four options.

1) Try to Change Ourselves
Your first instinct might be, “Why should I be the one to change?” In fact, quite often you’ll find that to be an appropriate response! Often, we are not the catalyst for their behavior. But sometimes we are. If you’ve ever had people in your life who cause you to become difficult or obstinate, then doesn’t it stand to reason that you may be causing that same reaction in someone? It’s in situations like this that we have to examine our own behaviors and reflect on whether we’re the cause. Frequently, we’re blind to our shortcomings. We don’t see what we’re missing. How do you find out whether you’re the cause of the other person’s difficult behavior? Option 4 holds the answer.

2) Try to Change the Other Person
In Option 1 our initial response was to ask, “Why should I be the one to change?” Our first reaction was one of justification. Basically saying, “I’m not the one with the problem!” Guess what happens when we ask the other person to change? You got it. They have the same reaction we would have had. Everyone feels justified in their behavior. No one intends to behave arbitrarily or irrationally. We always have a reason for acting the way we do. Attempting to force the other person to change just doesn’t work. (Just ask any spouse!) No one will change anything about themselves until and unless they choose to do so. Option 4 holds the answer.

3) Decide to Put Up with Them
“Tolerate it.” “Just deal with it.” The only thing that accepting things the way they are accomplishes is to postpone a confrontation. Although this course of action (or inaction) appears to avoid a confrontation, in fact it just pushes the confrontation down the road. Even though this path is frequently taken, it has some far-reaching unhappy consequences. It affects you, the other person, and your team.

You: You end up spending valuable energy by deciding to tolerate this person. It takes energy to tolerate a poor situation – energy which you need for other, more positive and productive efforts. In addition, by tolerating this person, your attitude suffers. Although we decide to tolerate it, we don’t ignore it. Tolerating something that reduces our level of energy and our attitude is a poor solution.

The Other Person: If you reflect back to a time when you became complacent, lost interest, and experienced a drop in attitude (as we all have at one time or another), you’ll find one of two reasons for this shift. One reason is that the work you were doing really didn’t interest you – the work was unfulfilling. The other reason is that we became disillusioned with someone or something. In situations where the reality of the situation is different from the one we first imagined, is there a way to make things better? Maybe. Option 4 holds the answer.

Your Team: A leader sometimes tolerates a difficult person for an extended time, hoping they’ll “come around” and thereby avoid a confrontation. Until something happens – some event or challenge – and they feel they have no choice but to confront and often terminate them. After they’re gone, the leader is often surprised at the number of team members who come forth and comment on what a drag on the team that person had been. They’ll speak up about their poor attitude or poor work ethic, and often add, “I don’t know why you kept them so long!”

When you don’t address a difficult person – when you decide to tolerate them – your whole team is affected. In addition, ask yourself this: When you keep a difficult person on your team, what does it say about you as a leader and what does it say about your values and your integrity? Tolerating a difficult person doesn’t work in the long run.

4) Strive to Understand Them: The Key to Success
This option is about being an effective leader and being an effective communicator. It’s about being compassionate and strong at the same time. It’s about being good for someone rather than being good to them. It’s about understanding rather than telling.

This solution is about taking the time to understand the other person’s reasons for acting the way they do. If you’re effective at this, you’ll be able to either help them change their perspective on things or, in the alternative, help them to move on to something that better suits them. This solution is about helping people grow and maximize their talents.

How do you come to understand the reasons for their actions and their attitude? Just ask. Ask why they act the way they do. Usually, they’ll be more than happy to tell you. In truth, their behavior is a symptom rather than a problem. Keep asking questions to get at the heart of the issue so you can either shift their perspective or help them move on. Once you’re at the core issue (the underlying problem), you have the ability to make a difference in their life. It’s amazing what can come out of a sincere desire to help. How would you have felt if, at those times when you felt complacent with a poor attitude, someone took the time to listen to you and offer some other perspectives? How would your life be different today if someone had helped you see yourself and/or your life differently?

As a leader, you have the ability to make a difference in someone’s life.