Michael Held is CEO and founder of LifeSpeak, Inc. (TSX: LSPK), a leading whole-person wellbeing solution for employers and health plans.
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Quiet quitting and quiet firing are the latest buzzwords to plague business owners and human resources professionals. And while managing these challenges may be under the purview of your talent acquisition or HR team, have you considered how your personal leadership style may contribute—for better or worse—to these trends for your organization? If not, it may be time for some soul-searching to determine if quiet leading is driving unwanted trends among your workforce.
Quiet Quitting Versus Quiet Leading
It’s no secret that employee engagement is declining. Worker productivity in Q2 2022 dropped to its lowest level since 1948, and more than half of HR professionals are concerned about the negative impact of quiet quitting on employee morale and productivity. To add insult to injury, low engagement and lackluster corporate performance has been known to contribute to turnover, with at least half of the American workforce estimated to currently be in the process of quiet quitting.
There are a number of potential causes for quiet quitting—from concerns about salary to burnout to a desire for improved work-life balance. And while these drivers focus on employee motivations, there is less discussion of the role leadership plays in this phenomenon. However, the bottom line for business leaders is this: Caring about your employees requires more than checking a box. You have to treat your people like people and create a culture that will help them thrive.
With quiet leadership, that attention to the employee as a three-dimensional individual is absent. That is, not all leaders are doing the work required to build authentic relationships with their teams, and they lack a communications strategy that reinforces company values and reminds employees of the “why.” As a result, employees can lose sight of the big picture and become less engaged in their work. By taking a more active role, leaders can foster a sense of belonging in the workplace, which can be critical to improving overall satisfaction and engagement. Even better, being a more active leader may help you uncover hidden talents and identify opportunities to help employees excel.
In a word, quiet leaders make it harder for employees to feel like they belong, and over the course of my career, I have found that employees who feel like they belong are more likely to stay with a company and more likely to recommend that company as a great place to work. Leaders who are fully engaged in active leadership can impact both individual employees and the broader team by creating a collective sense of camaraderie and engagement that contributes to high-level performance.
Steps To Take
Decide what kind of culture you want, what you want to live by and what you want the company to represent. Then, find the people who will align themselves with that endeavor. From there, you can begin to understand who your employees are and what kind of culture will help them to thrive—both personally and professionally. You won’t accomplish this with contrived attempts at camaraderie, like forced happy hours or ping-pong tables in the office. Fostering a genuine culture requires understanding what your employees need and creating a system that supports those needs. For some, that may mean resources to support mental health. For others, it may mean flexible schedules so they can care for an aging loved one. For others, it may mean showing interest in their lives outside the office and acknowledging their contributions. Only by engaging with employees will you understand their unique needs.
While work environments remain highly dynamic and hybrid or home-based work becomes the norm across many industries, building authentic and personal relationships can be awkward and challenging. However, making the effort to connect with employees and be fully present as a leader can pay off in the form of higher retention, engagement and productivity. Meanwhile, an active and engaged leadership style can allow you to identify signs of disengaged employees or low morale, so you and your team can proactively address and manage your workplace culture for optimal performance.
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