Quiet Firing: The Chaos of Catchy Terminology

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One Millennial View: Is it just me, or are we over-simplifying and concealing bad behavior with cute/catchy terminology, that mostly exists online?

After discussing Quiet Quitting, now “Quiet Firing” is in the lexicon, and it’s arguably worse.

While this action has been prevalent in workplaces long before social media jumped on the bandwagon, its new name is described in a Fast Company article as, “When managers have lost faith in the ability of their team members to do their jobs. Rather than giving them direct feedback or opportunities to develop new skills, they hope the person will self-select out.”

Also, deliberate mistreatment of employees can be an example of quiet firing, with the same objective.

The Fast Company article continues, saying “Quiet firing is a symptom of weak leadership. ‘Managers are often not equipped to have tough conversations on performance, feedback, and expectations… If an employee is not performing at the level expected, instead of coaching them, giving feedback, and telling them the consequences of continued poor performance, managers ice them out.’”

Look, if you’ve perused one, ten, or 100 blogs on this site, you can probably imagine Quiet Firing is not our cup of tea around here. In fact, it’s likely anyone reading this would prefer if their leaders had the characteristics necessary to actually have those difficult “crunchy” conversations, and be able to coach teammates with constructive feedback. We like leaders that can attack a process, not a person. It’s funny to envision someone saying, “Hey, do we have weak leadership?” And then another responds, “oh, haha, not only do we have it, we have fun names for examples of it!”

No thanks.

That being said, why do I have trouble finding a zinger of a term for a leader that exemplifies an awesome/positive action?

It’s too bad we spread catchy/cute terminology that describes lousy practices, values and mindsets. Terms like “Quiet Firing,” “Quiet Quitting” get traction and attention, because we can rattle them off to quickly define bad examples of leaders and employees, and then that’s what we’ll spend our time talking about.

Ultimately, we know terminology isn’t what matters most. So, how about we refocus energy on the actions of great leaders or employees? Let’s step our game up, develop better, extraordinary and adaptive cultures. Let’s opt out of the chaos of catchy terminology. Chances are it predominantly exists on social media anyways, not in our real lives, so let’s prioritize great leadership actions, not snappy negative nomenclature.

- Garrett

One Gen Z View: I find the fact that boss’ believe the solution to how someone does something differently than liked, is to freeze them out til they have no choice but to quit, deeply upsetting and disheartening. I believe that instead of this, what needs to happen are straightforward conversations and communication. I understand that a good leader needs to be able to communicate with people.

- Logan
Edited and published by me.

Quiet Firing: The Chaos of Catchy Terminology

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