Absentee Management vs. Quiet Firing — What’s the Difference? 5 | 3

Radical Candor: Communication at Work

Radical Candor

Careers, Relationships, Society & Culture, Business

4.7 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kim, Jason and Amy discuss absentee management and quiet firing. While these two things can feel the same to the person experiencing them, the thing that makes them different is the intention behind the behavior. Quiet firing happens when managers allow employees to have toxic experiences at work as a way to get them to quit. On the other hand, a more pervasive problem is well-intentioned bosses who practice absentee management. They’re that ghost boss who is rarely seen or heard from by their direct reports. What can you do if you work in this kind of environment? Listen to the episode to learn more.Radical Candor Podcast Checklist Don’t hire people and never talk to them again. Being a hands-off manager is different than being an absentee manager. All managers should be having regular 1:1 meetings with their direct reports, actively soliciting feedback and having regular Career Conversations. Don’t be a jerk. Quiet firing is gaslighting at its worst and junior high behavior at its best. It’s is no way to build a business or a solid team and will most certainly come back to bite you (seriously, people, watch Office Space!) If you need to let someone go for whatever reason, you can do so with Radical Candor. If you are struggling with an absentee manager, a good way to engage them is by requesting a 1:1 meeting with your boss and sharing a challenge you are having and asking for their input, and letting them know when you will additional support from them. And setting some time on the calendar with them as a follow-up! Before you throw your bike helmet against the wall and "rage quit," don't forget to "rage apply" for that job you really want. Questions? Email us at podcast@radicalcandor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Radical Canter Podcast. I'm Kim Scott, co-founder of Radical
0:11.5	Candor, and author of Radical Cander and Just Work. I'm Jason Roseoff, CEO and co-founder
0:17.7	of Radical Cander. And I'm Amy Sandler, your host for the Radical Cander podcast.
0:23.6	And on our last episode, we talked about micromanagement. Today, we're going to talk about the
0:29.2	other side of that coin, absentee management. And we're going to explore the differences
0:35.5	between absentee management and quiet firing.
0:40.4	Because while these two things can feel the same to the person who's experiencing them,
0:44.6	the thing that makes them different is the intention behind the behavior.
0:50.5	According to Gallup, quiet firing happens when managers allow employees to have truly toxic or miserable
0:57.7	experiences at work as a way to squeeze them out. It's a form of gaslighting. Or, as we might say at
1:05.5	radical candor, a form of manipulative insincerity. That's a pretty strong form of manipulative insincerity. Kim, do you feel like that's manipulative insincerity. That's a pretty strong form of manipulative insincerity. Kim,
1:12.2	do you feel like that's manipulative insincerity at its outreach? Well, I mean, I think
1:17.4	manipulative insincerity can get even worse. But certainly if a manager is, for example,
1:24.1	not dealing with the fact that somebody is getting bullied at work because they're
1:30.2	hoping that the person will leave. That's pretty manipulatively insincere. A boss who wants to be a bully
1:37.7	is outsourcing their bullying to some other employee. Like, that's pretty toxic. That's terrible.
1:43.6	But I've seen it happen.
1:45.7	I feel like, Kim, you've seen it all. If you haven't seen it all, we do have another office space
1:50.8	example for you. Jason is our resident office space expert. Can you explain for our listeners,
1:57.4	Milton? Poor Milton. How was Milton quietly fired? So Milton was basically asked to move, to move his desk
2:07.0	over and over and over again to less and less desirable locations until in the movie,
2:13.9	his desk is actually in the basement, in like a boiler room. And as this is happening,
	...

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