#15 - When Your Best Person Goes Quiet: Spotting "Quiet Cracking" Before You Lose Them

One of your best people is quietly checking out — and it won't show up as a resignation until it's too late. In this video I break down the five signals of "quiet cracking" and the simple Notice, Name, Ask conversation that pulls someone back before you lose them. If you're a first-time manager, this is the stuff no one trained you for.

If you want the exact scripts and want to work through the real conversations managers actually face, come join us inside my Skool community, Lead With Brenden.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When your best person decides to start quietly cracking. So what I mean by that is the best analogy I can think about is a pothole on the road. So this is gonna sound silly, but just give it a chance. When you see a pothole on the road, it's likely been forming for weeks and months before it. Starts off small, gets progressively worse. Compounding effect of external things hitting it, and so on and so on. It gets worse to the point where it has to be fixed, has to be fully repaired. So this analogy I connect to your best worker. So when your best worker is starting to show signs of cracking in terms of not doing the extra one percenters anymore, not offering suggestions anymore, not being very verbal, verbally involved with the management meetings or offering suggestions, doing the extra sort of work outside of hours, things like that, or offering to at least. They're very quiet, come to work, they're technically they're not doing anything wrong because they're doing their job still, but ultimately they're not the same as they were. So when they're at this point, it's started way before that. It started months before that because really good quality people that are invested in what they're doing as a career, they take things personal when they don't think that they're developing, they don't feel that they're progressing anymore, so that it really affects them mentally. And I can relate to this dramatically because I felt like this. When I made a couple of decisions where I felt that I was going backwards, really now looking back, they actually showed me a lot more learnings than if I was to continue to just go forward all the time. So it's really important to catch this as a leader, it's really important to be really attentive to your team enough to catch it and realize that there's patterns starting to form. And I know the conversations are difficult to have because ultimately it's gonna do a couple of things. The first thing it's gonna do is it's gonna probably expose you as a leader because ultimately they're probably not happy with how you're doing things. And if you respect them enough to take on their opinion and take on their feedback, then this conversation must be had and needs to happen, and it's gonna put you on the spot, it's probably gonna make you look inward and realize that you're not doing certain things correctly, or you're not giving your best worker enough effort, and you're not valuing them enough. So it's really important to initiate the conversation. The other thing that you can do is nothing, and that's not gonna result in a good outcome at all for anyone. Probably it's gonna be work out better for the person that's feeling a bit left out or they're not really feeling valued anymore because they'll just leave, and then you're stuck with that hole there. So it's really important to understand the crossroads. So when you're at the crossroads, you've got two decisions that you can make. You can own it, have the conversation with somebody, and fix the problem before it gets bigger, or you can leave it, do nothing, and they leave and you're stuck with a bigger problem down the track. So this is where it becomes really difficult if you're new to management or you're new to leadership because you may not see this, you may not see that, and people may leave and you take it personal, you go, is it because of me? Or you get into the mindset of okay, well, if you don't like it here, then you can go. Yes, there is times where you've got to say that and you've got to be like that. But I think you've got to be a lot more attentive to your team and you've got to be a lot more involved in the way that their demeanour is and the way they handle themselves each day. So if you notice a dramatic change or little micro changes, you've got to address it. And I can guarantee, more often than not, they will actually respect you more because you've made the effort to put time into them to ask them how you're going. You don't have to ask, is everything okay with work? Why aren't you doing the job? Take the other avenue first. Ask the person, hey, I know that I'm your boss or whatever position that you're in, but I've actually got I just actually want to know if you're okay. Is everything okay outside of work? And if it is, if it's all good, okay, let's move on to the next step, which is okay, I'm just noticing these little things in work hours. Is there a reason for that? You know, needing something extra, and so on. That's how the conversation can start. Doesn't always have to be just a barrel in going, you're not doing this, you're not doing that. You've got to be able to take a step back and something that I use personally when I'm about to go into a situation that I know could potentially result in a bit of conflict or bring up certain topics that people don't want to talk about. Why say to myself in my head, okay, what would a good leader do here? What would a good letter do? And nine times out of ten, a good leader would take an assertive conversation, respectful conversation, and allow the person to speak, and you've got to be able to listen. So a lot of the time you start the conversation and then it's your job just to shut up and listen to the person. Listen to their concerns. Whether you agree with them or not, you've got to be able to sit there and listen. And then you action it after that. So I would like to just outline a bit of a solution or patterns to notice before it gets to the point of someone wanting to leave. The first signal that I look for is they stop doing the one percenters. The things that made them a special worker, they stop doing those little things. Number two, they go extremely quiet in group settings. So you may notice a really interactive person or informative, verbally involved, things like that in your management meeting, and all of a sudden, they're not speaking anymore. There's something going on inside their mind. So it's really important to address that and notice that change. Number three, a big one for me, they stop talking about what they want to develop into. One day I want to do this, one day I want to be a super. If you're sitting there asking yourself, what do you want to achieve in the next five years? Generally, they've lost their passion or they've lost their way a little bit, or they've lost their path of direction. So it's up to you as a leader to make sure that you're allowing them the platform to continue on that path. So really important. And the first step of that is having the conversation with them. Signal number four, their questions dry up. So questions are one of the major things that drive a good organization forward. Constant questioning. And that can be in a way of questioning you as a leader. If your direction isn't up to scratch or your ideas aren't up to scratch, people are more than welcome to question you. Questioning is a really healthy trait of a good system-based organization. Sequenal number five, the little things they used to help with after work, or if there's a in my situation, if there's a big irrigation blowout or something like that, the expectation is the management team are all going to offer to help us out. They're always going to, we're all going to come together, band together. The weather's warm, hot, there's extra stress on the turf, things like that, they're that everyone's going to band together and help each other. So the first one of the signals, one signal to look for in that situation is if they used to help and they now don't help, there's a problem there. There's a problem starting to fester, and you've got to get on top of it. And if you are noticing two or three of these, it's important not to start building a case. Just have the conversation with someone. Just start the conversation with, hey, I've just noticed a couple of things lacking in these areas over the past couple of weeks. I just want to check on you. I just want to see if you're okay. Let's put work aside for it for a second, as I said, and let's talk about you for a minute. And then listen to them. I've had a bad habit in the past of assuming things, assuming that they're not invested in what we're doing or they're not on track with our culture, they're not invested with delivering standards like other people are. I've been this in the past, and I will I can put my hand up and say, yeah, this is something I've really tried to work on and give people benefit of the doubt. A lot of the time, people are wanting to do their best they can, but there are things that happen in life that hold people back, and that's just reality, and you're not and you are prone to it as well as a leader. So it's important to understand that we're all human, but it's your job to keep everything steered in the right direction. So I guess the key takeaway to all of this is your job as a leader isn't always to have all the answers. You don't need to solve everyone's problems, right? Say if you start that conversation with that person and they say, Hey, I'm just not really not doing too well at work. Have the conversation be there for them and actually, okay, was there anything that we can do for work-wise, do you need time off, do you need something, this and that, whatever the case is, at least offer it and be there and show support. And I guarantee, probably nine times out of ten, it's actually nothing to do with work. It's more so a personal issue that they've got and they're bringing it to work because it's actually really affecting them, and they want you to support them. So if they feel supported by you, they will be more inclined to come and talk to you about it. If they don't feel supported by you, they will retreat. People will retreat and they won't talk to you about it because they think, okay, they're just going to judge me anyway. So what's the point? It's not going to get anywhere, which is a toxic trait of leadership. You need to be able to be open door policy, so to speak, and you need to be able to willing to talk to people one-on-one and have a conversation with them. I do cover these topics quite extensively in my school community. So my school community is essentially like a container, keeps all my leadership stuff in in more detailed leadership stuff in there, and it actually really helps people, it resonates with people. And it's real life situations, it's not the corporate jargon stuff. I'm sitting here in a hoodie and a hat recording a video because it doesn't it shouldn't matter what I wear. It's about the messaging that I get across. So I like to keep it pretty, pretty low key and natural, and this is what I do in my school community as well.