TED Talks Daily - Sunday Pick: How to quit (and why it matters) with Anthony Klotz | from Fixable

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

During the pandemic, Anthony Klotz predicted the “Great Resignation”: a mass exodus of unhappy workers leaving their jobs after COVID epiphanies. Now, he’s seeing a different pattern begin to emerge as people opt to hunker down in their current jobs until they can find a better option. Anthony is an organizational psychologist and professor at the London School of Management. His recent book, Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters, explores how we make decisions in our jobs and careers. In this episode, he joins Anne and Frances to weigh in on the patterns developing right now in the world of quitting, offer practical advice for how to make measured decisions in a fickle job market, and explain the phenomenon he calls “jolts,” when a person experiences something that causes them to suddenly reevaluate their position. Together, they also work through a listener’s dilemma as she navigates a relationship with collaborators who mistrust each other, and offer tips for leaders who suspect a member of their team may be considering quitting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Sunday, y'all. Elise Hugh here. Today, we're bringing you a Sunday pick where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us for you. During the pandemic, organizational psychologist and professor Anthony Klotz predicted the great resignation, a mass exodus of unhappy workers leaving their jobs after COVID epiphanies. Now he's seeing a different pattern emerge as people opt to hunker down in their current jobs until they can find a better option. In this recent episode of Fixable, Anthony, whose work explores how we make decisions in our jobs and careers, hosts Anne and Francis talk with him on the patterns developing right now in the world of quitting. He offers practical advice for how to make measured decisions in a fickle job market and explains the phenomenon he calls jolts when a person experiences something that causes them to suddenly reevaluate their position. Together, they also work through a listener's dilemma as she navigates a relationship with collaborators who mistrust each other.

and offers tips for leaders who suspect a team member may be considering quitting. Whatever you're dealing with at work, Fixable is there to help, offering actionable insights to create meaningful change in your life and workplace. Listen to Fixable wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have a problem you want fixed, call their hotline anytime at 234 Fixable. That's 234-349-2253 to leave Anne and Francis a voicemail with your workplace problem. That's coming up right after a short break. I think right now in the world of quitting, people are making fast quitting decisions more than they ever have,

which allows some people to get out of bad situations and access the career they dream more quickly. It also leads to higher levels of regret around quitting than we've seen before. This is Fixable, a show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they're not. I'm Anne Morris. And I'm Frances Fry. Frances, it feels like so many of us are holding our breath and just gripping the steering wheel of work right now. And I get it. We were just starting to deal with all of the pandemic era change to the workplace.

And then AI arrived in the group chat alongside all kinds of macro uncertainty and change. Yeah, it does seem like the theme of the show recently is, how do we manage this? Yeah, I know. We keep inviting people to the show to make us feel better about this and help us manage and better understand this period of massive change. And quite honestly, to help us find a rigorous and an optimistic way forward and both of those are necessary. Absolutely.

Today, we're going to keep going and we are bringing on a really fascinating guest who studies quitting as a window into our experience of work. His research went viral during the pandemic when he coined the phrase, The Great Resignation. At the time, he predicted that we'd see a wave of people quitting their jobs after pandemic-related epiphanies. It must be so cool to be right. You pretended so rare for you.

I'm talking about Anthony Klotz. Anthony is an organizational psychologist and professor at the London School of Management. He's the author of the recent book, Jolted, Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters. In this book, he's also exploring a larger question, which is how we actually make decisions in our jobs and careers. I'm so curious about jolts. I want to understand jolts. I want to understand how to endure them, how to create them, all thing jolts. So I'm really excited about that. I also, to the earlier point where he got the prediction right, I want to understand how he sees around Quilts. Yeah. I think he does, and I'd love to learn from it. Yes, me too. So let's bring him in.

Anthony Klotz, welcome to Fixable. Thanks for having me. So if we may be so bold as to describe you to you as a way to get this party started, you seem to be very good at making sense of larger forces and patterns that are impacting our experience of work. So much is shifting right now. in the workplace, what do you think are the major patterns we should be paying attention to right now? What do you think is signal versus noise for most people? Yeah, so there are a few interesting patterns and trends, I think, going on in the world of work right now. And a lot of it has to do with AI. But I think before we get into that, like a lot of it has to do with where we were five years ago. And I'm not saying during the

Great Resignation, but actually during the pandemic. Like this was a period of time when the economy and the labor market was essentially shut down. And so you had a lot of individuals who maybe wanted to quit their jobs or were experiencing these changes in their life as a result of the pandemic, but couldn't necessarily act on them through work because the economy was so slow. And now we're in this period that thankfully isn't the same as 2020. But it is this period of time where we're in a very employer-friendly labor market, a very slow labor market, low hire, low-fire.

And you have disengagement numbers creeping up higher and higher. And so I think if we look back and look ahead, we're finding ourselves in this position again where a number of individuals would probably like to switch jobs if they can, but they're not in a position to do so right now. I don't think we're ever going to see another great resignation. But if the economy is to pick up and the labor market does pick up, we're going to see this elevated level of quitting again. And so in terms of what that means for workers on a day-to-day basis. I think there's lots of distractions right now. Distractions is a great word. Yeah, the world of work is so uncertain. The future of work is uncertain. It seems like we can look on the news every day and see, you know, AI is going to

eliminate jobs or generate all these new jobs. And so for workers, I think the key is really to continue to focus on, you know, day-to-day happiness and well-being. Because I think a year or two from now, it's going to be a lot clear what the future of work looks like. And so there's not a lot of use in ruminating too much about it right now. We've heard the phrase the great hunkering down to describe this moment. Is that how you see it? And am I hearing you correctly in saying, this two shall pass and from your perspective relatively quickly? Yeah. So these patterns are cyclical. And so it will pass. I don't know about quickly. And this gets to the market. when it comes to the future of work. But I do love a good viral workplace, you know, buzzword and the

great or phrase. And, you know, we had maybe six months or nine months ago the term job hugging came out and sort of suggesting that people are clinging to their jobs. You know, that term didn't have a lot of data behind it. And now we have a new term, the great hunkering down, which I think speaks to some of the same feeling that in this market right now, you know, we came to a out of this period of time in 2021, 2022, when employees had a lot of power in the labor market. And work seemed more flexible than it's ever been before, right? Work can fit around my life. And so many of us as workers got a taste of this like world of work in which we have a lot of power. And work is very flexible. Now, over the past, you know, 24 months that that has changed quite a bit.

And so we're in this period of time where individuals would like to access, you know, the best version of work that they possibly can for their life, but it's not always there for them. And with, you know, the layoffs that are happening around AI, whether they're, the reason really is AI or something else, it's created a lot of uncertainty in the labor market. And so you have individuals who are staying put until the labor market improves. Now, so I like the term, the great hunkering down. I like job hugging in terms of their accuracy. see, I don't know if they're 100% accurate. When we look at the number of people who are looking at the job market right now and who would switch job, if they could, those numbers are fairly

high, like around 50% or higher of individuals, are at least casually keeping an eye on other employment opportunities, which is fairly high. And that doesn't speak to me necessarily individuals who are clinging to their job or hunkering down. It means I'm going to do what I need to do and to hopefully not get terminated or not get released right now. But when the opportunity presents itself, I'm going to also have put myself in a position where I can make a move. Yeah, I think some of the headlines around all the power shifting back to employers are overstated. And I want to pull on that thread for a second.

But Francis, you just said, wow. Yeah. Will you speak to what you were reacting to there? Yeah, such a casual statement, but that 50%, so one in two workers, have their eye out the window at other opportunities. If I were an employer and half of my workers had an eye out the window, that would be, I'm going to go ahead and call it a red flag. Like, that's not even any other color,

because that's a lot of distraction. Even if they're not acting on it, I don't think they're not acting on it because of me. I think they're not acting on it because of what they're seeing out there. You're just waiting for the next street car to come. Yeah. So my wow is what a great time to compete as an employee-centric organization. I suspect you would be very popular.

Popular and you would be setting yourself up to win in the talent market of, you know, 2027 and 2028. We saw that, you know, during that period of time in 2020, when the labor market was really bad, companies that continued to invest in employees, even though they didn't necessarily have to retain them, because turnover was low. Companies that continue to do that, once the market took off

in the Great Resignation and turnover spiked, those companies that kept investing in their employees in 2020 experienced significantly lower levels of turnover once the market took back off, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it does. If you continue to invest in relationships,

if you continue to invest in people when times are bad, they'll stick with you when it flips. And so I see that happening, you know, right now where a lot of people are looking in the companies that continue to invest in their employees, they may not see it show up in lower turnover right now, but they will later this decade. Yeah. We're going to get to your expertise in quitting in a second. But you talked about one thing we learned in COVID, I think as employees, was how much we valued

autonomy and flexibility. Tell me more about that long tale of COVID. and how that pandemic-era experience of work and employment is still affecting the workplace today. At a high level, when you give individuals more autonomy in any aspect of their life, and you give them more freedom for a period of three to six months or a year, and then try to take it back, it doesn't go well. Once we get some freedom, we're like, no, this is mine now. And I do think during the pandemic individuals experienced, you know, freedom and how they scheduled their work, how they worked. It was a tough time, but I think everybody saw this possibility for more autonomous working, for me being a little bit more of myself, being it'll bring more of myself into the workplace.

And that generally felt good. And it's been eroding a little bit over the past five years. But people are resistant to that. And you see it showing up in a number of different ways, not just in terms of how many. people are casually looking at the job market. But you could think of something like the fire movement. Fire meaning financial independence retire early. So the idea that you save money earlier in your career so that you can retire or have the option to retire as soon as your 30s or 40s. So that you can have an FU attitude earlier. That's exactly it. Or just going to move up the timeline.

And as it turns out what this movement, you know, what the research is showing is this movement is, about anti-work or saying no to work. It's about I want the freedom to walk away from work. I want the autonomy to walk away from work if something happens that clashes with my values or that causes some sort of harm to my well-being. And that was a movement that, you know, we thought would have like a fairly short cycle and it continues on. And so what that shows is individuals, you know, got this sense of my relationship with work and the constraints that work puts on my life is different than I thought it was. It's more flexible than I thought it was. I could have more autonomy through work. And I could use work as a more efficient vehicle on my path to the

good life, if you will. And with how much time we spend at work and how central it is to most of our lives, of course we're not going to give up on that notion early in surrender and say, well, I guess it's just back to the nine to five where I don't have control anymore. It's just not really how we operate. Yeah. Anthony, Ann and I are often thinking about how well different parts of academia brand what they do and whether or not they should go visit the marketing floor in me. I'm in the operations world. Most of the time and most of the ideas.

Most of the time and most of the ideas. Having said that, you and your friends are pretty good. reluctant stare, great resignation. So you don't have to visit the marketing floor nearly as much as my friends do. Part of what motivated me to write the book was that I felt like when I looked at, you know, we've been studying why people quit their jobs for 100 years. And when I look at that literature, I think there's all these great characters in that literature of like reluctant stares or the turnover contagion, the honeymoon hangover effect. But it's all trapped in our academic journals and hadn't really made its way out. And I think over the last, what, 20 years we've gotten better as academics at communicating the findings of our studies. But, yeah, we could all do with going to the marketing floor and getting better at it.

Well, Anthony, let's turn to your book, which is terrific. Your focus on quitting, which is we understand it, is also a window into how we're experiencing and behavior. in the workplace now. So how are we quitting today and what impact is it having? You know, we tend to think of quitting as a fairly rational process that is the result of a long period of deliberation where we weigh up. What are the negative things and good things about my job? And then what are the negative things and good things about whatever else I could do? And then I make this rational decision. In about 50% of the time, that's accurate. We do go through that sort of process. But increasingly, in the other 50% of the time, it's a less rational process where some event happens.

I call it a jolt. It could also be called a shock where, you know, an event, bigger, small, happens in your personal life, happens in your professional life that causes you to rethink your relationship with work. And when that happens, it can really speed up the move toward quitting from being a content employee to all of a sudden being disgruntled and wanting to leave. And of course, in the wake of these jolts, we can also often make bad decisions because these are emotion-laden events and we don't always make the best decisions in the wake of those types of events. I think one positive outcome of the Great Resignation and the talk around it is that quitting has become more normalized and talking about quitting has become normalized. One reason I think the term the Great Resignation went viral was because a lot of people were thinking about quitting. but who can we talk to about quitting? Not that many people. And so, you know, when you see that there's a term that sort of captures how you're feeling around quitting, you can express it.

I think right now in the world of quitting, people are making fast quitting decisions more than they ever have, which allows some people to get out of bad situations and access the career they dream more quickly. It also leads to higher levels of regret around quitting that we've seen. before. Is the headline here that we think we're being much more rational and deliberate about the decision to quit? And it turns out we're not even for something as high stakes as whether to stay or leave your job. So I think there's two sides to these events. Like I mentioned, like they can unlock a better career for us in a better life. At the same time, they can lead us down the wrong. path. And so I think the headline is that in the wake of these jolts, we often make bad decisions, which isn't unusual that we make bad decisions. Humans make bad decisions all day every day.

Yeah. When this emotional event happens to us that affects a really important part of our life, often it involves our personal and professional domain. We feel like this is a time-constrained decision. There's money involved that we make a rash decision. Or we decide that the right thing to do is to make no decision at all, and we should have acted. Like, that was the moment. And so, you know, you end up with these, like, sad statistics where when we look at people who have quit their jobs, the majority of the time, those individuals' happiness in their next job,

never gets back to the level of the happiness in their prior job, on average. That is a totally sad statistic. Of course, within that, there are people who, you know, find the jobs of their job, dreams and those sorts of things. But we often think that grass is going to be greener. And it turns out that it's not, there's just a different set of problems or something like that. At the same time, at the end of people's careers, when you ask them, what are their biggest regrets over the course of their career? The majority of the time, they say, I should have quit this job sooner. Like, I waited too long to quit. And so recognizing these jolts is more about saying,

when they happen, they give us some information. And we often don't act when that is the moment to act or we take action too quickly. And it leads us into a situation that actually didn't improve our situation at all. So, Anthony, it feels to me that we could use an answer to how should we quit well? Let's say we're going to quit. How do you quit well? If you have the time, putting plenty of thought into it is a good idea. And so say you're going to quit, you know, making sure that you figure out the reason that you're

going to quit. So really narrowing it down to like these are the main things that are driving me out of this job. And it's important to keep in mind, what are the main parts of our job that drive our happiness and meaning at work? It's primarily the tasks that we do every day, like the work itself and the people around us, which isn't that surprising, like the job tasks and the people. And if those two things are good, any other reason for quitting, you should. look really deeply into because giving up a job where you like the work and you like the people is a big deal. And so really hold on to those two things. So part of it is just recognizing why you're quitting. This seems pretty obvious. But the next thing to do is to speak up and see if you can change

it. So always give the company, even if you think there's no way, they'll go for this. If you can, ask for this to be changed. Because if you quit and the next thing that you go to, you go to, to you realize this isn't quite what I thought it would be. Maybe I could have fixed my prior job. You'll know that you couldn't have fixed it because you spoke up. Francis, I feel like you are building a theory of quit before you quit that I think is aligned with what Anthony is talking about here. And I do a lot of coaching and anecdotally for people I'm coaching who are eyeing the exit. I spend a lot of time getting them to slow down and really test the assumptions that these problems aren't solvable in their current job before they walk.

So, Francis, talk to us about quitting before you quit. Anthony, I just noticed this over the last, you know, couple of years. And I was totally influenced by when Cheryl Sandberg wrote her, you know, Blockbuster book, Lean in. And she said to women, don't leave before you leave. I'm noticing now, I would say you should leave before you leave because the time when you've realized you're going to leave and I find that people are unbelievable in that period of time. Once you've decided you've had it, you're going to leave that period of time. People are amazing, amazing. And so then I'm thinking, well, how can we get that? What if you did like act like you were leaving before you leaving? Because Anna and I, night where you always joke, we're like, well, where was she? Like, where was she all this time? Yes. People have swagger confidence. They got nothing to lose. They're speaking up in meetings in ways they never did before. People are reacting. They're taking up space as leaders. And there's something

very powerful. Intoxicating. Yeah. I talk about it as this pre-quitting power surge that you get. Love it. For most of our time as employees, in terms of the power balance between, us and our employer. The employer has the power, right? I mean, most of us need the paycheck and are grateful to have this job and couldn't just go walk out and find another job tomorrow. But the moment you decide I'm leaving, I have a plan for a life after this company, that power balance completely shifts and you don't need the organization anymore. And that power feels really good. And power, we know power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. Like power really reveals your authentic self. You can act the way you want to act without worrying about repercussions because you know you're

moving on to the next thing. And so I think that's probably what you're picking up on is that, you know, more powerful, um, self-assured sense of individuals. It's also why sometimes people resign in really awful ways because they feel like I'm powerful and this is my last chance to get even. But the majority of people are good and the majority of time, there is this, this positive period of time before departure. I'd love people to be able to access that without having to leave. Yeah, I think really great leadership can unlock that. And we see that in, you know, some individuals who have really good relationships with their

managers before they actually put in their resignation, when they first think about leaving, they go talk to their managers about it because they have this really deep trusting relationship psychologically safe. And they talk to those individuals. and I think that sort of, you know, empowering leadership style can get the best out of employees all the time. We also see, though, one of the main signs that somebody is going to quit is often silence. Individuals get a little bit quieter in meetings because they realize they're not going to be a part of the future organization. So when you're sitting in the weekly or monthly planning meeting, you think, like, I'm not going to chime in about, you know, the street.

strategic initiative that we're doing because I'm not going to be here. So really in-tune bosses are often able to pick up on when an employee's thinking about leaving because they notice they're getting a little bit quieter as well. So Anthony, let's go back to Francis's question. This is a show called Fixable. We like to fix stuff. So I have done all of this thoughtful stuff. I have left before I left. I've taken my power for a test drive. I've reached a confident conclusion that I am going to try to find greener grass on the other side. What is a thoughtful, elegant, gracious way to quit in 2020? An Anthony endorsed way to quit. Anthony Clotz, TM guide to quitting. Go. Yeah, absolutely. Let's start with just like at a basic level.

It's having a meeting face-to-face or at least virtually with your direct supervisor, your manager, your leader and letting them know that you're leaving, expressing a bit of gratitude and telling them what you're going to do. That gets a little bit tricky if you're going to work for a competitor, but you should be prepared for the worst if you're going to work for a competitor anyway. But having that initial face-to-face meeting and sharing a little bit of gratitude and the reason that you're going is critical. If you want to upgrade on that, giving more the necessary notice is usually appreciated. As part of the research that you're doing before you quit, you're kind of figuring out what's the reasonable notice period. It's very different based on industry and

company. You could volunteer to be available even after you leave in case anybody has questions. And part of the reason that you're trying to set up this positive departure is, even though you may never think that you need it, but it is setting up the potential for boomeranging back if you need to. And by boomerang, you mean I've left and then I regret it and I ask to come back. Yep, that's exactly right. Wow. What percentage do you have some data around the phenomenon? In some industries, it's up to 25% of all, of not quitting, of all their hires are rehires. And so this is partly why they're investing so much in alumni programs and alumni relations.

It's not just to improve their employer brand and to be good organizational citizens, which is important. But it's also because companies are realizing our best. recruiting pool, maybe are former employees. So why not give yourself a little bit of room to come back worst-case scenario? And you can do that in one way, but well, by being a good employee, that's the best way, being a high performer. But the second way is making sure that you leave in the most positive manner possible. I think that there's also a boomerang, that's boomeranging back to the organization, which I'm sure happens much more often. But it's boomeranging back to the people. You don't know where the other people are going to go.

And so our network stays very vibrant, particularly in this kind of environment where there are all kinds of external shocks. That person might be your boss one day. You might be hiring that person to be on your team one day. So I would say to our listeners, even if you are sure you are never going back to the company, I am not sure you're never going to be working with anyone in your network. again. And I have one bad interaction with one person on the team. Everybody hears about it. And then that just poisons it for everyone. So I would say that that's also a reason to think hard about the way in which we exit. I hadn't thought about that, but I think that's exactly right. Yeah,

boomeranging back to your network. That's a great idea. And I'm sure that happens a lot. We'd like a pithy marketing forward name for this phenomenon from you by end of day, Anthony. Yeah, I'll get to work on it. All right, we got a listener question asking us, should I stay or should I go? And I'm wondering if anything else surfaces for you in addition to the Anthony Klotz TM playbook for quitting. Here's what this person wrote. I'm on a three-person team with longstanding distrust between the other two team members. We get the work done, but collaboration is difficult, conflict stalls progress, and leadership is aware, but not intervening. I enjoy the substance of my role. role, but I feel more engaged when I partner with other healthier teams. I'm unsure whether to keep investing here or seek a transition. How would you coach this person through this decision? This is interesting. I think in organizations we often think like the third party to dysfunction is probably fine, but the more we study it, we realize that if you're a witness to abusive supervision,

if you're a third party to two team members who are always in conflict, it has almost, the same effects. It's like secondhand smoke. Yeah. Yeah, it has almost the same negative effects on you. And so that's what this person is experiencing. You know, I think part of it has to do with the time horizon. And if you're in a place where you enjoy the organization and agree with its mission what of trying to accomplish, you enjoy the work itself. And this is strictly an unpleasant interpersonal issue. Is this going to go on forever? Are these two employees a lifers? And you probably are as well. So you're looking at this as a long-term situation. If so, that's pretty tough. And you probably do want to

extricate yourself. Of course, we talked about speaking up earlier. So is there a way that you can talk to ideally your manager, somebody in the organization, about some other opportunity where you can move on to that other team? The tricky part is doing that without throwing those two under the bus, if you can. If you're in that situation where these two aren't going to move into new roles any time soon. Try speaking up. But after that, probably start thinking about potential exit strategies makes sense. I want to switch to the employer perspective now for a minute. So let's say I'm noticing that Francis, who historically was a great performer, has, from my perspective, been phoning it in recently. She's quieter in meetings. And I think it may be related to the fact that I skipped over her for

promotion in the last month. What is my move? Like, how would you coach me through this moment? I want to keep Francis on the team as she has a very bright future. It's very kind. From the beginning, I saw it, baby. You had a ton of potential. You know, our brain comes up with pretty quick hypotheses as to why people are acting the way they do. We make attributions right away for why Francis is being quiet. But the reality is we have no idea. Bottom line is we have this high performer who's become quiet and there could be any number of reasons that happened, but almost none of them are good from a leadership perspective or from that individual's perspective. And so it makes complete sense to surface it from a standpoint of care first. This

individual who used to be lit up and engaged has withdrawn. And there could be a serious reason behind it. And you as a leader, in a position of power, to perhaps help, you know, this person navigate whatever situation that is. So it could just be run-of-the-mill burnout. It could be that they're upset over that promotion. It could be, you know, they have caregiving responsibilities or something that's happening on the other side of the world to a group of people they identify with has really made them rethink life. At any rate, as a boss, as a leader, you're in one of the best positions to help them navigate that situation through work. So You know, we often get to exit interview meetings and we find out why people are leaving and it ends up being these things that are very fixable. And looking back, leaders will say, I knew they got quiet a year ago and they weren't the same from then on. And the question is like, why didn't the moment you notice that they were getting quiet, why not speak of? It's part of the mantle of leadership is to say, I'm going to wait into this conversation that may be difficult and uncomfortable. But it also may be a conversation where

I have the power to make this person's life better through work. Great. And so if I'm hearing you, you're saying, use your words, get in there, be somewhat direct in saying, I've noticed this pattern, and I'd love to help if I can. Yep. That's exactly right. And if nothing else, I mean, like I said, one of the top pre-quitting behaviors is silence. And so also as a leader, you're planning for the future.

And so if this person is moving toward the exit door, then, And it helps you, you know, just operationally be more effective by saying, okay, if Francis may not be with us that much longer, let's come up with a plan B. You know, as an inspiration for an answer to this, when I was a late stage junior faculty member, so I was committed to the institution, I was watching a series of, in this case, a series of women leaving the school. and once they would leave, I would go and meet with them and say, is there anything that you think I should know about your experience as someone who cares about you and cares about the institution? And that was the entirety of my script. Oh, my gosh, did I learn so much that if only that was known to the institution, first of all, the institution, would never have found out because nobody ever does the exit interview. But my characterization of what I learned, pebbles not boulders. These were pebbles that grew into boulders with inattention.

And I think in every single case, it was avoidable if there was near-term action around the pebble. I think there's, you know, so much more organizations can do to learn from quitting. And really, it's just following the example that you just set to some extent, which is just listening to the individuals, share what they would like to share, whatever it may be on their way out and not trying to label it. Is this the reason that you quit? Because often when people are leaving, they'll also speak for the people that they're leaving behind their friends and say, here are some issues that you might want to deal with. I think organizations can learn by tracking the way that people quit their jobs. So we spend, you know, so much time on onboarding and rightfully so, but really don't give much thought to offboarding, including not training managers, how to respond when a high performer quits.

And so when I study quitting and ask people, how did your manager respond? The answers are wild from, and often its managers get extremely upset or get extremely emotional and break down because they take it personally. and those types of reactions are understandable as human beings, but they really make it impossible for the organization to learn much from that point forward, because the person who's quitting shuts down at that point. And so how is it when somebody does quit that we can immediately start a positive relationship with them so that we can learn as much as possible and so that we can keep the relationship going and even after they physically walk out of here for the last time? Yeah, 25% of them, maybe.

coming back to the door. Let me ask you another one from the employer perspective. We're hearing a lot from leaders now who are finding their way with their teams after layoff or restructuring. Often the layoff wasn't their decision, but they are still responsible for team culture and morale. What advice would you have for a manager in that situation. If the layoff or the restructuring has caused people to change the actual work that they're doing, which is part of the folks in the tech industry who I'm working with right now, it's not just about layoffs. It's about these restructurings where I was working on these projects that I really cared about. And those projects got jettisoned. And now I'm training AI. Yeah, and now I'm training

AI or I'm just working on the core search product that I'm not that excited about instead of these really big ideas. And so I think as a leader sensing, like, this is a high performer and they're intrinsically driven by this challenging work. And if the restructuring has switched the actual work that they're doing, or that's exactly right, if AI is taking away the parts of their job that they like, there's a big risk here. And how do I work with them to craft their work such that I maintain high intrinsic motivation? So really be able to. And really be able to, you. And I'm sensitive to has the work itself changed for them? And has that change been for the better or worse?

It can also go a positive way, right? And then, of course, the relationships as well. So whenever, you know, we've known about survivor guilt around layoffs for a long time. The people who are left, many of them, if they're good people, are going to experience some level of guilt and confusion and be expecting that more layoffs. could potentially come. So there's been research that essentially argues that layoffs create a more quit-friendly workforce because it affects the commitment not just of those who have left, but also the commitment of those who are there. So it's a really tough situation for a leader. But I think

it's individually with each person in your span of control, figuring out how the work tasks have changed and the relationships have changed and saying, okay, how do we, how do I work with you? How do we craft to get those back where they need to be. I really appreciate the elegance of, look, top level, it's the tasks and the people. Yeah. And then we can go to second order, but just always go back to the work and the people, the actual tasks and the people that you're interacting with. It just feels manageable in that way.

What also resonates with what you just said, Anthony, is this idea that the way people are going to respond is very personal. And so part of your job as a manager in that situation is to go and have one-on-one conversations with people about this is, I mean, to your research, a layoff is going to be a jolt for most of the people on your team in some form. And so getting in there and having a very direct conversation. And you know what? You might as well start with your high performers, the people that you want, you really want to keep on your team. Yeah. You know, leaders are often privy to or are the source of employees jolts. And with just a little more leadership courtesy, we can understand here are the team members who are going to be impacted by

this most and experienced as jolts. Let's give them a heads up or let's do something so that they make it through this process with the least amount of stress and disruption to their lives. Yeah, the research you highlight in your book that I think is super provocative is, you know, Even spending, I think you can correct us here, but, you know, a minute more explaining why a layoff occurred or what's the process we went through to make this decision that is disruptive and painful for a lot of people staying. You know, here's why we did it. Here's how the process was made. Even a very small amount of time made a big difference in terms of outcomes for the team. That's exactly right. Just spending literally an extra minute or, or,

or two, to express empathy. Like, we're all in this together. I know it hurts. And here's how we made the decision, and it was a fair decision, even though it's a bad situation. Employees react far more positively to that. All right, Anthony,

what's one thing our listeners can do tomorrow to improve their relationship with work? Just realize that these jolts are going to happen, these moments that cause you to rethink your relationship with work. And they happen fairly often. And what you don't want to get into the habit of is ruminating on your relationship with work every time one of these events happens. So I would suggest setting up what I referred to as a date night with your relationship with work every six months. So maybe pick one time in the summer and one time at the top of the year and say, I'm going to sit down and really think about, you know, in a moment of clarity, in a moment of calmness, what's going well, what's not going well with my relationship with work.

that way in two weeks from now when something unfair happens, you can acknowledge that unfairness, but also say I'm going to deal with it in two months during my work check-in during when I check-in with my relationship with work. So essentially what I'm talking about is putting some sort of system in place so that you're not having to make decisions right after these sort of emotional events happen, that you have a system for setting them aside,

saying I'm going to deal with them when I have a clear mind and I'm ready to deal with them. I love that. Get super practical with us on this one. I'm having a date night related to work. Is someone else come, am I dining alone? Am I dining alone at the bar? What am I doing, Anthony? How am I? Tell me about this date. So I guess the other partner is work. And I, you know, keep just a note open on my phone and just will make a note when something happens that, sort of, I feel like I've had a jolt or something like that. And so what I do is probably on a Saturday morning is sit down and I walk through. You open up your jolt file. I open up that file. And, you know, time does heal a lot of wounds. A lot of the stuff is just like it felt good to

write it down at the time, but it doesn't matter. But it is just good time for me to check in, you know, going back to the people who I'm working with, the tasks. And then of course, the other things as well, the career development, the pay, all the different elements. that make up our relationship with work and just checking in with them and saying, you know, am I happy with those? And then am I performing well? Am I investing as much of myself as I want to in my work? Yeah. Now I'm just thinking about marketing every one of your ideas. I don't have a good name for it yet. On Anthony Klutz, work date night, playbook, workbook. I think this is your next artifact.

Okay. Anthony, question we ask all our guests. What's one thing you're fixated on outside of work? At the moment, it's figuring out how to drive on the other side of the road. So I've lived here for four years now, and it seemed like I could hold on to my U.S. driver's license forever, but then all of a sudden it crept up and expired on me. So for the first time, since I was 16 years old, I'm driver license list right now. So yeah, a couple times a week I get in the car and drive around London going around the roundabouts incorrectly and being taught how. to do it properly. So that's really like short term. Oh, it's so good though. It's so visceral. It's so visceral. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Nebraska. Yeah. I'm from Ohio. So being an adult

without a license is just is too much cognitive friction. Like it is a huge part of adulthood if you grow up in the Middle West. It means freedom. It means everything. I can't wait to be an adult without a license. I can't wait. Well, it's normal. I mean, a lot of people here, you know, Never get a license, but the thought of like going back to Nebraska or going back to the Midwest and having like to have my parents drive me around or get Uber's everywhere. It all goes back to autonomy. And yeah, that's too much has been taken from me. So, yeah. Awesome.

Anthony, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. If you're enjoying this show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and tell a friend to check us out. Fixable is a podcast brought to you by. by Ted and Pushkin Industries.

It's hosted by me, Ann Morris. And me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Trina Menino. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Ban Ban-Ban-Chang, Daniela Baloreso, and Roxanne Highlash. Our show is mixed by Louis at Storyard.