The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 154: The Truth About Quiet Quitting: Simon Sinek

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

In this moment, bestselling author and business leadership speaker, Simon Sinek discusses quiet quitting and the importance of expectation management when it comes to work. Simon says that both employers and employees need to be more open and honest about what they want from their professional relationship. For instance, he says that Amazon is very open that it is a very tough and competitive culture, so people can choose whether they want to work in that sort of environment. Equally, employees need to be honest about how they want work to fit into their life, do they want an easy casual job or do they want to push hard and be ambitious. Simon believes we need to treat work like a conversation, previously it has been treated like a speech where workers were told what they were going to do, but now people can ask, why does work have to be that way? Listen to the full episode here - Apple- https://g2ul0.app.link/nv4jKFbt9Hb Spotify-  https://g2ul0.app.link/hZEYgPgt9Hb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Simon: https://simonsinek.com

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. There's this concept of quiet quitting where people are coming to work and they're just doing the minimum, doing their hours, doing their job, not volunteering or raising their hands or going, and that's it. And it raises the question, is that bad?

And I'm a great believer that it's all about expectation management. I get asked about Amazon a lot. Like, do I disagree with how Amazon is run? And my answer is always the same, which is they never lied. They didn't tell you it's a magical place to work where it's all kumbaya and we all like, you know, we all hang out with, you know,

unicorns every day. It's really amazing. They're very open about it, that it's very, very aggressive and very rough and very competitive. And even the people who love it only last two years because they burn out. And so because they don't lie, you know what you're going to get if you go work there. And if you like that kind of culture, then go work there.

If you don't like that kind of culture, then don't work there. But don't take the job and then say, I didn't know because you did. Like Apple, you know, people say, well, Steve Jobs used to drive his people really hard. Like, but you ask the people who loved working there, they will tell you, yes, it was hard. And there was a lot of pressure, but I did the best work of my life. And I'm glad I worked there because I never would have been able to work to that standard if I didn't work at Apple back in the day. Right. So the important thing is that companies are honest about the kinds of cultures that they have, right? It's the lying. It's the, look how everything's kumbaya.

And like, and look, no culture is perfect. Even good ones have problems and even bad ones have advantages, right? But I think it's about managing expectations. And I think it's okay for somebody to say of themselves, look, I'm not a careerist. I am okay with the fact that I will never be an owner or a senior manager. I want to be paid fairly. I want to do decent work, but I want work to fit neatly in my life

and not overwhelm it. And I'm going to look for a job where that is possible. And I don't think we're at the point where we have total honesty on both sides yet. I hope we can get to the point because there's still stigma because the older generations like you and me are looking at, if somebody were to say to us, I only want to work 40 hours, I'm willing to push my boundaries occasionally, but really this is just, we would be like, well, you're not working here. So it hasn't normalized yet. But I think it's just a question of being honest with oneself and you're allowed to change your mind as well like I've decided I do want to be a little

harder driving and I do want I do have more ambition than I thought you know or less but I think I think it's just about honesty um and this this this point of view is as true in personal relationships as it is in our professional relationships. So I had a conversation with somebody recently and I found absolutely fascinating and she is polyamorous. She has four boyfriends, right? And she's very open about it and one of the things that she explains is you have to be very honest with everybody so that everybody knows what the deal is I think what a lot of people do

is they're dating somebody, it's new, it's casual and they're dating somebody else that's new and casual but they don't tell them about each other so they both think that they're more special than they are, or they both are driving towards something that may or may not be true because you're dating two or three people and you're going to wait and see which one works out. In the poly world, what I'm learning is you tell everybody everything so everybody knows. And it's very open and honest and everybody knows where they're standing. You can say, I'm not into this.

I want to be the soul or I'm okay with this and maybe something will develop, maybe it won't. But the point is it's on the table and I admire the level of communication. What I'm hoping is that we do the same thing in our professional lives. So you sort of have poly work, if you will. I have two full-time jobs. I have, I have three things going, or I only want this kind of relationship.

And it works if both parties are really open and honest, because it's all about managing expectations. Hold on. I thought that you were going to give me all of your attention and all of your effort and all of your ambition. And you're telling me you only want to work, you want to treat my job as a casual job? Like just replace relationship with job. All the same rules seem to apply. But if I knew that, I would be fine with that. I would have given you a different job and had different expectations. I wouldn't have pushed you really hard. I would have given that work to someone else. Because I'm assuming you want to live your career like I live my career. Like, I assume that I'm getting into this relationship and you're getting into it

for the same reasons as me because we never had a conversation. We are nowhere near that in terms of social acceptance for that kind of conversation. But I aspire for that, that somebody sits down and says, part of your CV and part of your interview says, you know, what kind of work-life balance do you aspire for and how do you view work? Even if you change your mind? And then if expectations are managed, then what's the problem? You've answered one of the actual number one questions

I wanted to ask you about today, because when I read your book, The Infinite Game, one of the big things that changed in my life was, I remember I was on a plane, I read the book, started writing some stuff, came back to our office in the UK, and I did a big presentation to all my teams about how we create a sustainable company. Because if what

you're talking about in the book is true, and we're not playing a finite game here, how do we redesign the business from the ground up so that it is fundamentally sustainable? I came up with this thing called www.work, welfare, and world, which is the three reasons why we exist. We made 2020 goals. So this was in 2019, 20 goals before 2020 for each of these areas. And I'm thinking about it again a lot now, which is like, if I was to design my business in a way where my team members would stay working here forever, how would I go about that? You've just answered it by saying the point about honesty. Yeah. Expectations. So sitting them down and saying,

what do you want from your life? Because I've never asked that. Yeah. As you quite rightly identified, I'm presuming they want what I want. Exactly. So honestly, I wrote it here as a question to ask you, how do I get my employees to stay forever?

Okay, so why should- Not like a dictator, that sounds awful. I understand that. But why should, A, it's, you want to create a place in which if people want to stay, it'll be an enjoyable place that they can make a career

and grow within the organization, right? Like, and for some people who don't have aspirations for leadership, that they can come and do good work every day and sort of get fair raises on a regular basis so that they would, with cost of living adjustments, et cetera, that they want to stay there even if it's a middle level.

Not everybody aspires to be a hard driving owner. And I think it's about making it a conversation. We never treated work like a conversation. We treated it like a speech. This is how it's going to be.

And I think, so one of the good things that's coming out of, you know, COVID and young people is they're asking questions about why does work have to be that way? And employers are rebelling against it because it doesn't fit the way we grew up and doesn't fit our understanding of relationships, you know? And it's just a conversation. That's all it is. And by being honest upfront, then you can say, I don't think this is going to be a good fit for us. I don't think you'll enjoy working here. And so if I employ you,

knowing what I know now, we will both get frustrated and I will either ask you to leave or you will tell me you're going to leave. That's how this will end, because of misaligned expectations. And so I think being honest about what you want and who you are and what your ambitions are,

even if they change in the middle, you can knock on the door and say, I've changed my mind. I think I want to stay here forever. I told you I didn't, but I really love it here. And I know this from the military. Some people join the military because it's a steady job in a bad economy

or because the military will pay for you to get a college education and they didn't have the money to get it without it. So they join the military because it's a steady job in a bad economy or because the military will pay for you to get a college education and they didn't have the money to get it without it. So they joined the military. And then when there, they fall in love with it. They never came in for service. They discovered the service and the brotherhood and the sisters and decided to stay, you know? And some people might've come in for the service and realized this isn't for me. So work should be the same. But I think there needs to be honest conversation about, and like I said,

I've had debates even with my partners, my work partners, when they say, well, if we're paying them a full salary and giving them benefits, they shouldn't have another job. And my question is, why not? As long as our work product

doesn't suffer as a result. Like if they're phoning it in, missing all the meetings, then yes, absolutely. Right? Like we're paying for certain expectation of performance, but not necessarily of when they get it done. And so why shouldn't they have two jobs?

But I think, again, there has to be honesty, which is we have an expectation of X. And if somebody says, I don't want to meet that expectation because I want to have two jobs, then you can adjust for salary that way. You can be like, all right, then how about we pay you less and you can have all the freedom you want. And again, it's a conversation. We don't make these things conversations. We make them one way. And by the way, that's from the employee to the employer too.

I demand X. Somebody asked me recently, I want to ask my boss for a raise. How do I do it? And I said, the problem, the way most people ask for a raise is like, I want a 20% raise. I did my research and my job, the average salary on my job is X. My friend gets paid X. My friend gets paid X. My friend gets paid X. I know somebody who I work with.

I'm doing the same work as them. So I want to be compensated equally and I want a 20% raise, right? And so they're positioning the question that leaves the employer no choice but to say yes or no, right? And even if it's, I can help you get that, but this is how it's going to be, like,

you're going to have to have certain targets. It still comes across as a no, right? Because the request was binary, right? And so the advice that I gave to this person was, stop thinking of your job as an event and think of your job as a career. Think of your job as a continuum and go to your boss in the middle of this continuum. I've worked here for two and a half years. I've been here through high times and low times. You know, I'm loyal. And my aspiration is to stay here and grow with the organization. Can you help me figure out a path that gets me to this salary? It's not a yes or no now.

Now it's like, absolutely I can. I can give it to you today. No path necessary. Or absolutely I can. We're going to set some target goals that I want you to hit. And if you can hit them, then you'll absolutely work to that salary. But again, it's giving, it's allowing for conversation and it's allowing somebody to recognize that you view your own career with the organization as a continuum that I've been here and I want to continue to be here. So can you invest in me?

Can you take a bet on me rather than meet my demands? And so I think a lot of these things fail because they're poorly presented. Amen. they're poorly presented. And this goes once again to, you know, this younger generation who seem to lack the skills for coping with stress, not very good at asking for help, very confrontation avoidant. Like I said, so afraid sometimes to have the question, ask the boss, can I have a raise that they would rather just quit. And it's often with an email that says, you don't appreciate me. You don't pay me enough. I was like, what? You just had to ask me, I would have given you a raise. And I think part of it is also that when somebody is anxious about something,

they do poorly present. They do make things binary because there's fear or anxiety or stress or fear of rejection. What if my boss says no? Can I handle that? Like all of these things that come into these very sort of binary aggressive things. And I always equate all of these challenges at work to personal relationships. Like you can't go to the person you love in your relationship and say, I demand this. It's just not going to go well. Right? But you present a

situation, you say, I want us to move through this and how do we work through this together? And I think that's how these difficult work conversations need to happen. A work relationship is a relationship like any other relationship. You know, there's trust, there's anger, there's care, there's good days and bad days, and all of the same nonsense, messiness, in our personal relationships are at work as well. There's slightly different standards of professionalism and emotional professionalism and things like that.

But in terms of it's a relationship like any other relationship, so you have to treat it like a relationship.