The trend of quiet quitting has garnered not only news headlines but also fueled much discussion about job satisfaction within the workplace. Quiet quitting is doing exactly what you were hired to do within specific working hours and nothing more. For example, while you may have an idea that could save the company significant revenue you may simply not mention it as it’d mean more work for you. It could even lead to a raise or promotion but, still, you don’t share it. This is quiet quitting.
So what is a manager or business leader to do if you’re dealing with a case of quiet quitting? Are your direct reports or skip-levels not as talkative as they once were? Have you not actually even noticed and this random article on the web just caused you to realize John from Accounting is actually unhappy with his role? What about Sheena from Operations who seems to not have any more interest in strategic thinking anymore? There are many ways to spot quiet quitting and I’m guessing you are already dealing with it if you’ve read this far. So let’s dive into the cause and solution.
The cause of quiet quitting: manager burnout
A study released by The Predictive Index paints a very clear picture. Manager burnout is the top reason for quiet quitting. After speaking with 1,906 employees in 15 industries, managers being burnt out had serious knock-on effects that made it the biggest reasons companies are dealing with a less productive workforce.
Quiet quitting is doing exactly what you were hired to do within specific working hours and nothing more than that.
According to the report, surveyed employees feel quite strongly that they are less likely to look for another job and trust their company more if their manager is not burned out. In other words, if their manager is calm, healthy, and energized, that feeling spreads down to the rest of their team. It’s contagious.
On the flip side, that contagiousness works against you if you’re burned out. As you can see in the below chart from the report, employees with burned-out managers are extremely likely (73%) to view their team members as burned out as well.
Should managers hide their burnout?
Does this mean a manager should mask any feelings of burnout? Absolutely not. Should they simply lie and say they’re “fine” and try to keep their proverbial armor on? No.
Katie Dunn, a corporate wellness expert who has advised companies like Google on instilling wellness as a core value, explained it to me with a very simple analogy: put your own oxygen mask on first.
This means managers need to take care of your own wellness levels before trying to help others. So before you embark on an epic quest to build team trust, improve psychological safety, or simply mitigate effects of the so-called “Great Resignation,” make sure you’re in a healthy place. If you don’t feel like you’re in a solid place, commit to some personal wellness goals.
When it comes to helping your team deal with burnout, you need to put your own oxygen mask on first. Take care of your personal wellness and then lead by example.
Once you feel like you’re on solid ground in terms of personal wellness, it’s time to communicate. Make sure your team understands how you approached your (potential) burnout, what worked for you, and open a discussion about what might work for them. Having an open dialogue where you and your team can communicate about a sensitive topic like burnout can really help in the long run.
A quick note that Katie shared with me that should go without saying to the leadership community that reads Scaled Operations – taking a day or week off is not “wellness.” It’s useful and I strongly encourage it but you need to integrate positive wellness best practices into your corporate DNA.
The solution to manager burnout: coaching
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. In fact, there’s a straightforward solution to manager burnout – the cause of quiet quitting. The most effective way to improve team morale, psychological safety, and effective leadership is one word: coaching.
Coaching can help improve trust, break down barriers, and increase connectivity between key stakeholders. Coaching, according to new research published by Oxford Brookes University, is a powerful way to mitigate burnout and decreased well-being.
So, what does coaching mean and how can you do it? To me, coaching is the act of directly engaging and supporting a peer. Your goal is to guide not micromanage – a key differentiator worth noting.
The most effective way to improve team morale, psychological safety, and effective leadership is one word: coaching.
Coaching can take on many different forms. I’ll be sure to share more details about what works for me and my fellow organizational leaders in upcoming articles. But the quick version is that you could set up a peer-to-peer “buddy coaching” system where anyone can opt in by filling out something as simple as a Google form. The manager then takes the list of people who have opted in and pairs them with senior members of the team. Train the senior members on how to be effective coaches (probably best to hire an expert or seek out an internal trainer) and then make introductions. Give some basic questions to act as discussion prompts and see where it goes. As the leader, it’s important for you to take part in the coaching and share your takeaways. As you can see in the below illustration, making an effort goes a long way.
Your next step: explore the creation of these 2 programs
If you’re a leader looking to mitigate burnout, consider standing up 2 key programs:
- Corporate wellness program – Find a corporate wellness expert who can deliver sustained engagements to your team. They should be able to not only clearly explain to leadership how to mitigate burnout but also comfortable with talking to professionals at all levels about what they’re going through. You can’t simply outsource wellness, though. Managers and leaders have to participate too because, as this article pointed out, burned out managers are the #1 reason for employee burnout.
NOTE: This one should be done by an expert. There is a TON of exciting research happening in the corporate wellness space. Some of the pandemic-related changes alone are worth investing in someone who is closely following this work. - Peer coaching program – Talk about how create a coaching program in your team. Engage your direct reports and ask them how they’d run it. Gather feedback above and below. Find out what YOUR team actually wants rather than buying an off-the-shelf solution. See the prior paragraphs for quick ways to stand something like this up.
NOTE: This does not necessarily require an expert to build but may require additional support from your Administrative Business Partner to facilitate. In other words, you will need someone to keep track of who is being coached, how it’s going, encourage communication, share updates internally as needed, etc.
I’ll be sure to share more details about how to stand up these types of programs in future articles. Be sure to subscribe to the free newsletter to get those articles once they’re live!
