You learned the most important lesson in leadership from the time-out chair
Do you remember that kid in your 4th grade class who was always getting in trouble?
(If you don’t, it may have been you, but I don’t judge.)
Once that kid had a reputation for misbehaving and being a troublemaker, it was hard for them to stay out of trouble. It became an engrained in how the class functioned and engrained in everyone’s expectations of what to expect from that kid.
When an adult treats a child like they expect that child to misbehave, what do you think will happen?
The child quickly learns that because the adult expects them to misbehave, the slightest infraction will confirm the adult’s bias.
They can behave all day, but if they do something that toes a line, they’ll get in trouble where others may not.
This creates a nasty negative feedback loop where the child doesn’t see any incentive to do well.
What the child really needs is recognition when they are doing the right thing so that they know what to strive for and what gets rewarded.
Employee engagement works the same way.
Organizations develop cultures and expectations around how feedback is given. Negative feedback loops or nonexistent feedback loops will inevitably end up with everyone disengaging.
This is because doing the right thing brings them no benefit and doing the wrong thing punishes them rather than teaches them.
This disengagement is more than just an academic hypothesis. “Quiet quitting,” a now viral concept, describes how employees who feel disengaged decide to do the bare minimum without quitting.
This is the best of both worlds for those mentally resigned employees, but the worst thing for the company.
Not only is someone getting paid to not bring their best selves to work, but they are working with other employees who may get frustrated by the second-order effects of someone deciding to do only the bare minimum. This can be incredibly infectious to an organization.
What causes people to quietly quit? I think the most common explanation is actually not the most accurate. The most common explanation I’ve seen is that people have been asked to take on more responsibilities than is reasonable at their current salary.
Now it’s absolutely fundamental that an employee is paid a fair wage for their job, but we get much more out of our jobs than a salary. Plenty of people leave jobs that pay really well.
This is not an issue of being underpaid; this is an issue of people being under-appreciated.
People need to feel like bringing more than their bare minimum will produce more than bare minimum results for themselves.
When you frame it as a matter of appreciation, this problem actually becomes more complicated to solve. We can’t just increase wages across the board and completely reengage our workforce.
Employees feeling appreciated, coached, and supported is key to being motivated to do their best.
Managers need to be empowered and encouraged to drive cultures of positive feedback. This, in some cases, means undoing negative cycles of feedback. Those negative feedback cycles leave people feeling dejected and unwilling to put forth additional effort.
Interrupting these patterns means that something new will need to take its place. It’s not enough to say “we don’t do this.” We need to figure out what we will do instead.
Change management is exceedingly difficult, because people fall back on old habits. That’s why incorporating new tools and systems can help support a culture change.
Using AI personalized coaching to help associates get real-time feedback on their work begins that positive feedback loop. This can help create space for associates and managers to discuss bigger picture career goals and progress.
The most critical thing when engaging a workforce is to show appreciation and utilize a positive feedback loop. Once employees start to slide into disengagement and quiet quitting, it’s much harder to win them back. Creating and maintaining a culture where good work is rewarded will, unsurprisingly, encourage even better work.
We owe it to ourselves and each other to take the extra effort to understand how the way we talk about work affects the quality of the work.
