Is quiet quitting a consequence of leadership atavism?

If quiet quitting is a form of 'working to rule', 'working to a wage' or simply following orders, are we retrenching back to a more basic form of leadership as a consequence of remote working and changes to the workforce mentality. Has COVID and remote working abolished authentic leadership and reduced us again to a more primitive command and control culture?

If that is the case, we will face some paradoxical choices on how we run our businesses in the coming months and years. Simply retrenching back to a more command and control structure won't work for everyone and send leadership capability backwards. Whilst we may be over COVID or at the very least have a vaccine, we are just starting to understand the management and leadership challenges a two year pandemic has brought. Perhaps quiet quitting is here to stay for a while, or at least till we understand how to be authentic leaders remotely. As with evolutionary biology, leadership is never a straight forward path, it evolves but it can also relapse. Has your business become more command and control? Do you trust your remote workers? What is their workplace experience like today? Are we less curious working from home, is it simpler to just do what's necessary and then pack up and sit in the garden. Lots of questions to keep leadership teams on their toes.

Atavism in biology is the reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence. A survival reset that is built into the genetic code of the organism.

If you want to read a little more about biological Atavism and Ammonites, check out this page on Darwin's Loaded Dice https://lnkd.in/gbyiaBWq #leadership #management #remoteworking