Moment 154: The Truth About Quiet Quitting: Simon Sinek

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Simon Sinek?

  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? You know? And I'm a great believer that it's all about expectation management, you know? Like, 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, you know, we all hang out with 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.

• 0:45Simon Sinek?

  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, 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." 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."

• 1:27Simon Sinek?

  And look, no culture's 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

• 2:10Simon Sinek?

  hours, I'm willing to push my boundaries occasionally, but really, this is just to..." We would be like, "Well, you're not working here." You know?

• 2:21Simon Sinek?

  So it hasn't normalized yet. Yeah. 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.

• 2:41Simon Sinek?

  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 that 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, that she explains is you have to be very honest with everybody. So that everybody knows what the deal is. You know, we're thinking, well, 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.

• 3:24Simon Sinek?

  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 know, you're dating two or three people. And you're going to wait and see which one works out.

• 3:35Simon Sinek?

  This, 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 stand. You can, you can say, I'm not into this, I'm, 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. You know, I have two full-time jobs. You know, 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.

• 4:16Simon Sinek?

  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. It would have given you a different job and had different expectations and wouldn't have pushed you really hard. I would have given that work to someone else. Cause I, 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, a part of your CV and part

• 4:57Simon Sinek?

  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?

• 5:09Steven Bartlett?

  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 it 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, then, 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?

• 5:40Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 5:41Steven Bartlett?

  I came up with this thing called WWW dot 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.

• 6:04Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Steven Bartlett?

  Expectations, so sitting them down and saying, what do you want from your life? Because I've never asked that.

• 6:08Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Steven Bartlett?

  As you quite rightly identified, I'm presuming they want what I want.

• 6:12Simon Sinek?

  Exactly.

• 6:13Steven Bartlett?

  So, honestly, I wrote it here as a question to ask you, how do I get my employees to stay forever?

• 6:19Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so.

• 6:20Steven Bartlett?

  Not like a dictator, that sounds awful.

• 6:21Simon Sinek?

  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, you know, on a, on a, on a regular basis, so that they would, you know, with cost of living adjustments, et cetera, that they want to stay there, even if it's a middle level, like, not everybody aspires to like be a hard-driving, you know, owner, you know, and I think it's about making it a conversation. We, we, we never treated work like a conversation, you know? We treated it like a, like a speech. This is how it's gonna be.

• 7:04Simon Sinek?

  And I think, so one of the good things that's coming out of, you know, COVID and, and young people is they're, 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 gonna be a good fit for us. I, 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 just tell me you're gonna leave. That's how this will end, you know? Because of misaligned expectations. And so I think being honest about what you want and who you are and what your ambitions are,

• 7:49Simon Sinek?

  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, you know? And I know this from the military, you know? 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, 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 sisterhood and decided to stay, you know? And some people might have come in for the service and realized, this isn't for me. So work should be the same. But, uh, I, I think, I think there needs to be honest conversation about, and like I said, I, I've had debates even with my, my partners, my work partners, you know?

• 8:35Simon Sinek?

  You know, 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?

• 9:00Simon Sinek?

  But I think, again, there has to be honesty. Which is, we have an expectation that 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, alright, 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. You know, somebody asked me recently, how do I, you know, 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, you know, is X. My friend gets paid X. My friend gets paid X.

• 9:45Simon Sinek?

  I know somebody who I work with, you know, 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.

• 10:28Simon Sinek?

  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?

• 11:12Simon Sinek?

  Take bet, 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.

• 11:21Steven Bartlett?

  Amen.

• 11:21Simon Sinek?

  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, to 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. It was like, what? You just had to ask me, I would have given you a raise, you know?

• 11:48Simon Sinek?

  And I think part of it is also that, you know, 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? Right? 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 gonna 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.

• 12:32Simon Sinek?

  They, a work, a work relationship is a relationship like any other relationship. You know, there's, 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 at work as well. You know, there's slightly different standards of professionalism and emotional professionalism and things like that. But, but in terms of it's a relationship like any other relationships, you have to treat it like a relationship.