August 25, 2022 | Read Online

The 4 Questions to Ask Before 'Quiet Quitting'

Before we set permanent boundaries about what we will not do, we need to be abundantly clear about the short- and long-term repercussions of our choices.

The 23-year-old was fresh out of college and desperately wanted to get his foot in the door.

So he walked into an office one day and told the man in charge he was willing to do anything he asked, even if it meant working 16 hours a day.

The boss thought he sounded sincere, so he decided to give him a shot. The kid was to drive him around, work the Xerox machine and analyze some video on occasion — except it would all be unpaid.

The hours were long, the work tedious, and the kid grew exhausted at times, but to him, it was essentially a graduate school education in the profession he wanted to pursue.

The young man was Bill Belichick, and 47 years after that experience with the Baltimore Colts, he’s widely considered the greatest coach football has ever seen.

Writer Ian O’Connor shared that anecdote in his book “Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Coach of All Time.”

Recently, the concept of “Quiet Quitting” has dominated social media and riled up overworked employees across the world. It doesn't mean walking off the job or throwing in the towel, but instead refers to the notion of clocking in, doing the minimum and setting clear boundaries about what your work duties are.

But while advice like “Stand up for yourself” and “Don’t ever become a guinea pig” absolutely has merit, the notion of never going above and beyond is dangerous if we really want to set ourselves up for long-term success.

Countless tremendously-accomplished leaders and coaches like Belichick have been shortchanged or overworked at one point or another in their careers. They likely had plenty of moments of frustration with their supervisors.

But had they refused to take on more responsibilities and grown overly cynical about their situations, there's a good chance they wouldn’t have gone on to forge the legacies they have.

Before we go down the slippery slope of “the quiet quit,” we need to seriously consider four questions:

What leverage do I have in this situation?
How might my choice actually hurt my long-term financial prospects and my relationships across the organization?
How does this set me up 5 years from now?
Can I live with ultimately being replaced?

This absolutely does not mean we stay in a hopeless situation and volunteer for additional tasks without extra compensation for years on end. And if we're in a hiring position, this is certainly is not a justification to pay our team members pennies on the dollar for their hard work.

But before we set permanent boundaries about what we will not do, we need to be abundantly clear about the short- and long-term repercussions of our choices.

Because that line we draw in the sand today can easily get swept up tomorrow — and if it blows into our eyes, it can be hard to see where we're going next.