Combat Quiet Quitting: 6 Leadership Coaching Tactics

“Quiet Quitting” became a viral topic in mid-2022. After cropping up on social media channels like TikTok toward the end of Q1, it took off in mainstream media. To some, Quiet Quitting represents the next phase of the “Great Resignation” and is an antidote to, or the end of, hustle culture.

In particular, employees:

Execute the core tasks of their job during their required working hours
No longer go “above and beyond” for their employers
Establish boundaries to attain balance between their personal and professional lives
Build on the flexibility of work-from-home or hybrid work arrangements that arose during the pandemic

Despite the name, employees who engage in this behavior haven’t “quit” anything except for pursuing a path toward eventual burnout. Still, there are others who view this mindset as contrary to more traditional values and expectations that have driven business, innovation and results for decades. It’s lumped in with terms like “slacker culture” and seen as more evidence of increased self-centeredness and isolation, especially among younger workers.

Factors Contributing to “Quiet Quitting”

As discussed in this article from Harvard Business Review, the willingness of employees to go the extra mile depends on how well managers balance getting results with a concern for others’ needs.

The study cited in this article looked across 13,000 employees’ ratings of 2,800 managers. It found employees who worked for managers who excelled at this balance vs. those who were least effective were three times more likely to go the extra mile (62% vs. 20%) and nearly five times less likely (3% vs. 14%) to engage in Quiet Quitting.

Trust is the most critical factor in differentiating managers’ ability to inspire employees to go the extra mile. It goes hand in hand with employees believing that their manager cares about them and is concerned for their well-being.

How we communicate with each other determines how we create trust and sustain relationships. Coming through and out of the pandemic, this has been one of the greatest challenges for employees, managers and teams to overcome.

“The willingness of employees to go the extra mile depends on how well managers balance getting results with a concern for others’ needs.”

During the pandemic conversations became more intentional and, by necessity, more scheduled (e.g., Zoom meetings). They also became more distant and transactional with apps like Slack or Teams taking the place of more casual, face-to-face or “drive-by” chats.

Being more physically distant led to an increased sense of emotional distance, resulting in employees feeling less connection or alignment between themselves and their managers, teams or their work. As communication and connection fell off, so did employee engagement and their willingness to stretch beyond the “transactional” nature of what they were hired to do.

Improving communication and rebuilding trust are the most important components to reducing the chances your team’s performance will derail due to quiet quitting or active abandoning. This is true regardless of whether your company or team is in the office full-time, maintaining hybrid arrangements or permanently remote.

When “Quiet Quitting” Becomes “Active Abandoning”

While it may seem troubling that employees aren’t giving their all, at all costs, to their employers, there’s nothing inherently negative about this practice. The job and responsibilities they were hired to perform continue to get done. At the same time, they’re working on achieving balance across the various spheres of their lives.

There may be a tacit acknowledgement by these employees that they don’t aspire to be or do more than they currently are in this role. Not everyone is cut out or destined to reach the c-suite or become a leader. These employees may be opting to step off that track (or, as they see it, a treadmill).

Setting, honoring and adhering to established boundaries are essential to employees’ well-being. Understanding each employee’s motivations and aspirations, and building appropriate plans to achieve them, are vital to maintaining engagement and supporting development. This is true both for individuals and the teams they’re on.

Engagement and commitment become a team management challenge when:

The pace of change exceeds a team’s ability to adapt
New work or priorities are consistently added without providing incremental resources (e.g., headcount, time, technology) or removing less important responsibilities
Individuals lose alignment between their work, purpose or what motivated them to join the organization

When this happens, it’s no longer a case of quiet quitting. It’s “Active Abandoning,” which is the result of mounting frustration with increasing demands, insufficient support, nothing coming off the table and no adjustment to compensation.

This drives employees to reevaluate their situation, conduct a personal accounting of its cost, and eventually decide they’re no longer willing to pay it

While the results of Active Abandoning may look like Quiet Quitting, the energy and intention behind each are quite different.

The goal of Quiet Quitting is to re-establish personal balance. Active Abandoning, however, is a precursor to employees “voting with their feet” and ultimately, attrition. The key to success in overcoming the challenges of Quiet Quitting and keeping it from turning into Active Abandoning lies in how a leader responds.

Leadership Coaching Tactics to Combat “Quiet Quitting”

Here are leadership coaching tactics for managers to build trust and better balance getting results with concern for others’ needs:

Meet with your teammates regularly. Check-in with them informally through the week and have a 1:1 scheduled every week or two to discuss status items, hear about challenges and build rapport.
Be curious. Discuss with each employee on your team what’s motivating them professionally and personally. How do they feel about the return to the office, shifting priorities or any other areas that might drive higher stress levels? What does “work-life balance” mean to them? How committed and aligned do they feel about their work and the problems they were hired to help solve?
Seek to understand, then be understood. When this is your goal, you avoid the urge to defend, justify or argue “why” something is or is not important to do. A subjective interpretation like that creates emotional distance between the two of you and diminishes trust.
Ensure that your team members know you value them. Share recognition with a cadence and style that matches how they want to be recognized and their contributions and accomplishments acknowledged.
Shift from “rigid” to “creative.” Rather than being “rigid” about doing everything, get “creative” when it comes to prioritizing work. If something comes in or increases in importance, is there an opportunity to stop, slow or deprioritize something else? Can it be transferred to another team or individuals with bandwidth?
Deliver on your commitments. If you promise something or say you’ll do something, make sure it gets done by the time it’s supposed to be done. It’s one of the fastest and most effective ways of building trust. Similarly, nothing erodes trust as quickly as failing to do what you committed to doing.

For those rare times where you can’t deliver on what you committed, it’s vital to master how to apologize. Instead of being the end to a conversation, an apology is an opening for a deeper and more meaningful one. For a great explanation of what to do and what to avoid when apologizing, listen to this selection from NPR Life Kit.

Attain Results from Leadership Coaching

The acceleration of the workplace trend in Quiet Quitting and Active Abandoning resulted from weakening connections and engagement between employees and their companies.

Lack of trust or the absence of a good relationship with a manager is cited among the top reasons individuals leave their roles voluntarily. To combat this, leaders can take positive, proactive steps to rebuild these ties and increase engagement by strengthening trust between themselves and their employees.

Communication and trust-building skills are critical in all personal or professional relationships. In the workplace they make the difference between engagement or apathy, happiness or disappointment, and growth or malaise.

Developing these leadership skills and transforming them into strengths are foundational to 4D Leadership & Executive Coaching by Leading Edge. Schedule a complimentary discovery call to discuss how we can support your growth and performance as a leader.