Quiet Firing: Childish and Unacceptable!

Let me emphasize it again just in case we’re not on the same page… Quiet quitting may be a relatively new term but it ain’t a new thing! And while I’ll never suggest I’m OK with someone giving less than satisfactory effort expecting a world-class reward, I’m also not OK with the folks charged with leading those people shirking all responsibility for a team just getting by because 50% of them fall in the albatross that’s neither actively engaged nor actively disengaged - that spot Teddy Roosevelt could have been referring to when he mentioned “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat…”

For those who are willing to accept the responsibility that comes with leaders, the responsibility of moving our team members from tired to inspired, we need to do everything in our power to help them understand and value how their individual contributions serve a bigger picture and we need to help them tie that back to the things they value most as individuals. As I shared last time, that’s what we need to apply equity rather than equality! I’ll tie all this together soon by detailing some simple things we can apply to be sure we’re meeting those individual needs. Before we do that though, there’s one final thing that’s grabbed my attention as I’ve sifted through so many articles around this quiet quitting idea…

I found something in the Wall Street Journal explaining that The Backlash Against Quiet Quitting Is Getting Loud, that shared this perspective:

“Every generation of workers has had its anti-work philosophies and many managers and striving colleagues have always taken issue with them. Cue the quiet-quitting backlash: The concept has sparked a flood of vehement commentary from business leaders, career coaches and other professionals lamenting what the shift away from hustle culture means for Americans’ commitment to their jobs, while some young professionals are praising it.”

While I get their point, I still believe that falls more in line with finger pointing than taking responsibility for initiating change… But it’s far better than an approach I’ve seen referenced, quiet firing… And an article I found on Forbes.com called 6 Signs That Quiet Firing Could Be Trending In Your Workplace explained that this way, “quiet firing happens when an employer may or may not have a specific reason to exit an employee from the business and takes actions that make that person’s job unpleasant or unrewarding in order to get an employee to leave on his or her own terms.”

I’m not hashing all that out here, check out the article if you like… The statement I will make on that though is that anyone taking that approach to combat what they perceive as quiet quitting, to make a job unpleasant enough for the team member to leave on their own rather than having the backbone to address any undesirable behavior, doesn’t deserve the responsibility of leading a team. Someone displaying that type of childish behavior may indeed have a title of supervisor or manager, but they’re damn sure not leading - and they don’t deserve the respect of the rewards that eventually come from authentic leadership - so they can’t hardly expect to receive the active engagement that yields those results!

Since that’s clearly not anyone who’s been willing to hang with me this far through the process, I look forward to picking up next time with what we can do to provide each individual team member with what inspires them and earns that active engagement!