While there are many ways to prevent quiet quitting, the role of a leader is key in an employee’s workplace experience. Here are some steps leaders can take now:
Connect the company’s and team’s purpose.
Leaders are responsible for building motivation and dedication in their teams, often by sharing a vision of the organization’s or team’s purpose. And leaders should share this vision and purpose with their teams with authenticity and energy!
Additionally, leaders can provide positive feedback when an employee’s work influences the team’s or organization’s purpose. Leaders can also communicate how their employees’ work makes a difference.
For example, when a team’s onboarding plan enables new salespeople to move into their roles faster than expected, supervisors should recognize this achievement by sharing this positive result with the recruiter who hired them. This recruiter found the right people for the role, with the right motivation and capabilities. They are making a difference, one person at a time.
Build trusting, respectful relationships with direct reports every day.
Connecting with people is key to leader success. Recognizing and addressing the heart—people’s feelings, such as being respected or appreciated—is as critical as engaging the head to accomplish business outcomes.
Quiet quitters usually feel underappreciated. When work goes unnoticed and unpraised, employees think they could underperform or stop working without anyone noticing or caring—and they may be correct. So how can leaders make authentic connections?
It all starts with how leaders connect and interact with their teams. Feelings of appreciation are fostered from interactions that consider each person’s personal need:
- To be valued
- To be listened to and understood
- To be involved
- To trust and be trusted
- To be supported
Leaders can use DDI’s key principles, which form the basics of effective interactions, to consistently meet personal needs in any conversation.
The key principles include:
· Maintain or enhance self-esteem. (This principle can be used to help leaders show their team members appreciation.)
· Listen and respond with empathy.
· Ask for help and encourage involvement.
· Share thoughts, feelings, and rationale (to build trust).
· Provide support without removing responsibility (to build ownership).
With quiet quitters, leaders can focus more on self-esteem, empathy, and support to understand what’s important to their team members and what they can do to support them. But leaders shouldn’t forget about the key principle of listening in their interactions with quiet quitters. According to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, true leaders are rarely the person in a group who talks the most. True leaders are the people who listen best. They notice and address what isn’t said.
A quiet quitter won’t talk on their own. They likely have lost the motivation. So, a good leader is going to listen to what’s not being said and observe what behaviors are happening, have stopped, or are missing. By asking questions and listening to what’s said and unspoken, the leader can identify what might be motivators for the individual or things within the leader’s control that can be changed. Use the information acquired from listening to re-engage the quiet quitter.
For more ways leaders can help prevent quiet quitting, read DDI’s blog.