Hot Takes: Quiet Quitting Begins with Overachievement

Feeling the weight of leadership? You’re not alone. In this Soul Dive, Benj Miller and McKenzie Decker break down the 3 levels of leadership (leading yourself, leading others, and leading leaders) and why everything starts with being inwardly sound and others focused.

They unpack the hidden costs of control, the tension between trust and accountability, and how real influence comes from becoming someone others want to follow.

Perfect for founders, COOs, and growth-stage leaders ready to lead with clarity, not just authority.

Sessions is hosted by Benj Miller and McKenzie Decker

The best businesses aren’t just built on strategy, they’re built on soul.

If delegation is something you’re wrestling with, the System & Soul network has more than 50 certified coaches across the country ready to help founders and teams delegate with clarity and confidence.

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Sponsored by Fist Bump

Chapters

• 0:00 Accidental Leadership: When the Role Finds You
• 4:36 Leading Yourself: Inward Soundness and Others Focused
• 10:36 The Cost of Avoiding the Inner Work
• 14:36 Balancing Relationships and Results
• 20:36 Developing Leaders, Not Just Managing People
• 27:36 Letting Go of Control to Multiply Impact

Transcript

Benj Miller: [00:00:00] Hey, welcome to Sessions Mackenzie and I here together in person. Today we're doing one of our sessions on Hot Takes and usually we play a little clip or something and get the other person's reaction to it. But we've actually been talking about something and so we were like, hold up, let's just turn it into a hot takes and have this conversation with you because we would love to get your thoughts on this as well.

Benj Miller: But it's a turn that we're seeing. Set it up for us, Mackenzie. 

McKenzie Decker: We were so traditionally with Hot Takes, Ben will bring some clip or some quote or something that I have no idea what he's gonna show me. Same with me. I'm finding stuff on Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever in a book I'm reading and we bring together something to react to.

McKenzie Decker: But while we were preparing for that, our producer for this session. She sent some clips to us and they were all about this. It's a 10 a trend on TikTok. I might be the last person to know about it. I am like an elder millennial it's probably two years old, but no, but really it's a trend that over the [00:01:00] last year at least, it's this idea of becoming too important network.

McKenzie Decker: And so you see video after a video of like young people in their twenties who are. Lamenting the idea of gosh, I became too efficient. I became too productive, I became too reliable, and now I have too much responsibility. And of course, like it's TikTok, it's all positioned as this kind of like big joke.

McKenzie Decker: But we started talking about it because it's man, like it's funny, but it, because it, I think we all relate to that time of life, but also it's like. That feels like a problem that needs to be solved. And especially as we started looking at the comments, there's on some of these videos, there's 2000 comments of people being like, oh my gosh, I have PTSD from my notifications on my calendar going off, or my team huddle going off all the time.

McKenzie Decker: Or they're just like, yeah, I am basically sandbagging. I'm trying, I'm not trying as hard as I used to because I'm don't wanna get more responsibility. And I think. I think if you're running a business like this is a [00:02:00] problem that you may be dealing with and you're already aware of it or you're not aware of it, and it's something that we need to talk about, and especially if you're one of these people in your twenties, I think it's fun to be part of a trend, whatever, but like this is an issue that we can, this is an issue that can be addressed, something that we can deal with, and we have a couple of tips that we can share on how to do that well.

Benj Miller: What do you think is the root of the problem that they're experiencing? 

McKenzie Decker: So I think it's two things. Because I, I think there's two responsible parties in this. I think there's the leaders of an organization, and I think there's that employee, or that, I shouldn't even say young person, I should just say that employee.

McKenzie Decker: So with the leader, I think they're at the root of that. There's a lack of clarity going on. So they are seeing someone who is invested and engaged and reliable. So they're like. Absolutely. We have plenty to do here. Let me give them more things. But they're not doing that in such a way that's really clear for the responsibilities of that person and what they've already been told that they are there to do.

McKenzie Decker: Likely. A lot of those things are not aligned with what [00:03:00] that person is really great at. If I had to guess, like we're not looking at that person's areas of genius or skill. They're just getting handed more and more things. And so I think there is a clarity and a communication issue there on the side of the leader.

McKenzie Decker: The side of the employee. I think there's a self-advocacy piece that's missing, like they are sitting back letting things happen to them and. Accepting the state of I'm in my twenties, or I'm in my, I'm early in my career. I don't really have the authority to change the story, but I think people, we often have more authority than we think we do.

McKenzie Decker: And so I think that's probably it's the dynamic that formed in both of those things are outta sync. Yeah. What do you think, as you saw those kinds of videos and you hear all this, 

Benj Miller: I wondered if there was a third party at Blame, which is the organization and what. If you have a somebody who's super important like that, right?

Benj Miller: Or all the work is flowing to them, is it also a sign that there's under performers on the team [00:04:00] because everything's funneling this direction and not being spread out across other people? So that to me is a culture problem. It's performance problem. We're not clear on our roles, our measurables, wherever it might be, but it does pain me for the sake of the.

Benj Miller: The person that figures out how to mail it in and check out, because ultimately that's not gonna play out in their favor. They're gonna become one, they're either gonna leave the organization which is a loss for the organization if they quiet quit or resign or I'm gonna mail it in and not really live into my fullness.

Benj Miller: Their purpose. 

McKenzie Decker: Yeah. 

Benj Miller: Of contribution. Tied to their vocation is in trouble. And we know that when people don't find some purpose in their vocation and be able to leverage their skills, like their overall joy in life is gonna plummet. 

McKenzie Decker: Yeah. And I think that's really important. If you are that person and you're [00:05:00] like, I do mail it in, I, I sign in at 10:00 AM I leave at three.

McKenzie Decker: And. I think it's important to think about how much of the time, how much time you spend avoiding the work and the purpose that's potentially there for you. But we spend, I know everybody's heard this, like we spend what, like a third of our life at work. Sure. So are you really gonna spend it, half-hearted?

McKenzie Decker: And I think that's a decision for everybody and how much they want their work to matter in the life that they have. There's a lot of benefits to being able, and I'm not trying to promote that everybody should step in and take all this responsibility and be the most reliable person. Like I think you have to decide for yourself what you want that to look like.

McKenzie Decker: But I think for myself, I can say as someone who was the, became an important person at work over time, like there's a lot of fulfillment in being part of a greater mission. There's a lot of fulfillment in. Especially for me, like I love that I've gotten to a point where [00:06:00] I get to contribute my ideas and I get to carry them out, and I have the ownership over that.

McKenzie Decker: And I think that's one thing that if you can do this well and you work inside of an organization that honors your contribution, you get to start being a decision maker. And that is, that's a very fulfilling thing. One, 

Benj Miller: one of those first decisions might be going to the boss and saying, Hey, I can continue to take.

Benj Miller: All this work or all these odds and ends, but I'm gonna need some leverage to keep doing this. 

McKenzie Decker: Yeah. 

Benj Miller: What is leverage? I'm gonna need to be able to delegate. I'm gonna need some people, I'm gonna need some resources, I'm gonna need some tools, whatever that might be. Yeah. And that's a way of elevating your own skillset.

Benj Miller: So it's not just more, but it's more and better, more and smarter and more and growing for whatever's next for you in that season versus just. Piecing out and going to try the same thing somewhere else. 

McKenzie Decker: Yeah. Piecing out and or just bearing the burden. 

Benj Miller: Yeah. 

McKenzie Decker: And I've seen that. I've probably seen that just as much as I see the [00:07:00] kind of quiet quitting thing.

McKenzie Decker: It's like you just see people who are so defeated, they roll their eyes. They're like, it's just how it is. It's just, yeah, it is. It's how it is. Like I don't have the authority. And we're gonna give you like a concept to think about this. If you're on, we've talked about three variables. It's if you are.

McKenzie Decker: The leader of someone if you are this person or maybe you're the head of the organization. So those are like the three things that I think we can talk about that maybe there's some doors here we can open. Yeah. Before we do that though, I do wanna say this is not a new problem. This is not a problem for Gen Z.

McKenzie Decker: This is a problem for anyone who has ever been great in their job and then gets recognized for it and gets promoted. And I think everybody listening is probably nodding their head because. Anytime you do a great job, you show up well and you are consistent and reliable. Oftentimes that ends up earning you the responsibility of leading other people.

McKenzie Decker: So you go from being an individual contributor to a manager overnight and very rarely maybe never. I [00:08:00] don't know, maybe there's someone out there, but very rarely does do we get trained. As soon as you become a people leader, it's oh my gosh, congratulations. You, maybe you got a pay raise, maybe you got a bigger office, but no one's like also, and here is the manual for how to do this.

McKenzie Decker: I think what we've talked about this before, like the gap is what, like 12 or 15 years, right? But you get promoted from the time you get trained into leadership. And so that totals to 15 years can be a long slog to navigate and probably unnecessarily frustrating. We see that we've seen it, it's been true for a long time.

McKenzie Decker: And so we're doing a workshop series this fall through, so October through January to really write the playbook and hand it over to leaders at any level. So if that's something you wanna be a part of. Sign your team up, sign yourself up. We're gonna spend, and we're gonna be getting stuff done. Like this is not gonna be information in theory.

McKenzie Decker: This is you're gonna bring your piece of paper and we're gonna work on these problems and we're gonna answer your questions. So if that's something that's interesting to you, highly recommend joining [00:09:00] us. Again, leaders at any level. And it's gonna help with some of this kind of becoming too important network and not really knowing what to do with that.

McKenzie Decker: So again we talked about the organization as a place for improvement. We talked about. The leaders as a place for improvement. And we talked about the employee as someone who has some agency in this. Yes. And you as a coach, speak to the organization piece and like how do you see they could easily address this.

McKenzie Decker: Maybe not easily, but 

Benj Miller: Yeah, it's not easily because what we're talking about is all the, like the stuff that doesn't fit nicely into a job description. It's nobody has on their job description to be in other departments meetings and help them make sure that they're making the right decision or have your own meetings or lead meetings like respond to email.

Benj Miller: Some companies have done the research and their employees spend half of their time replying to Oh, yes. D with email. So like, where's that on the job description? So [00:10:00] a lot of this falls into the stuff that doesn't, it's not nicely organized. It falls through the cracks. So it is on a conversation between the employee and the manager to know yeah, how, from the manager's viewpoint, like, where are we spending time that we don't need to from the employee's time?

Benj Miller: Hey boss, here's the five things that I find myself doing. Little things I've heard little things being in session rooms. Could that meeting be every other week instead of every week? Yeah. I had one client, this is gonna make no sense, but they'd been, they had moved all this technology online, but they still had all these clients that used Blue Forms, and they were like, what if we told our clients no more blue forms?

Benj Miller: Which was really scary to them because they had done it for 25 years. They had zero, zero pushback when they said no more blue forms, right? Yeah. So a lot of the things that we're afraid to stop doing every company I've worked in the last decade, we've had a rule of no [00:11:00] internal email.

Benj Miller: Emails for external use. We have Slack or some people at the teams, whatever for internal use. That's great 'cause now I don't have to deal with this and I have very little, some roles within an organization don't have external emails 'cause they're not dealing with customers or prospects or troubleshooting, whatever.

Benj Miller: So how can we eliminate the noise? How can we eliminate the things that are falling through the cracks, taking time that aren't well defined and then. If you are becoming that important, then what help and resources do you need so you can, delegate some of the lower level work so that you are living into the importance of the value that you've created in that role.

McKenzie Decker: And sounds like it, honestly, to simplify what you said, what I heard is having an open dialogue with lots of questions and the ability to ask them. Yeah. Like a total permission to ask whatever question and not feel like. You're gonna say the wrong thing. You're gonna qu Yeah. God forbid we question the [00:12:00] link of the meeting or how the frequency, but I think that is so pivotal to maybe it's being as obvious as giving the team the permission to be like, for the next quarter, I wanna hear once a week from everybody.

McKenzie Decker: What made the most noise in your week? What was the most sideways energy? Yeah, what's one thing that you wished you could eliminate or that we could do faster? There's probably a handful of questions that are gonna start unlocking some of that and creating that new pathway for the honesty and the surfacing of the reality.

Benj Miller: What's going on inside of me is that all of this goes to what are we doing to mature the business? These are all questions of how do we do the business better? How do we work on the business? And most people are heads down doing the business, doing the email, doing the thing, instead of asking a question.

Benj Miller: Yeah, do we have to do this? Is there a better way? Is there a faster way? Could somebody else do it? Could we offshore it? Could we automate it? Could we, whatever. Yeah. [00:13:00] And if we're going to build businesses, part of having a vision for the business is. Having a vision for how to improve certain things within, like we get to design this thing and if we're not taking that agency over it to be the creator of the thing, then we all get demoralized.

Benj Miller: 'cause we all feel victims to the chaos that has the machine. Yeah. So a lot, even that conversation, yes, you need safety and permission and creative problem solving. But we also just need like an awareness with a culture in the organization that says, we're creating this thing together.

McKenzie Decker: Yeah. 

Benj Miller: We want it to be as efficient as possible. We want it to be as effective as possible, so how are we always continually trying to make that happen? 

McKenzie Decker: Yeah, and I think from what I've seen with teens, it's like you honestly just need to make the time to do that. You 

Benj Miller: have to make the time and space. It's 

McKenzie Decker: like it's not gonna present itself to just magically we're gonna.

McKenzie Decker: We, oh, we have a spare seven hours today. No, [00:14:00] it's, there's gotta be intentional time for that. Maybe like at a workshop. I don't know. But that's 

Benj Miller: a good time. Yeah. That, but that's exactly why you would do a workshop. Yeah. Because you're going to commit and invest. And improving the things that are already there, not just heads down grinding.

McKenzie Decker: Absolutely. It's all about working on the business. So the other kind of tool I have in mind is a simple acronym. And maybe it's a little cheesy, but you're gonna remember it. So if you're a leader of people or if you're someone who is being led, who is mailing it in maybe, or you're getting a little bit.

McKenzie Decker: Frustrated with how much responsibility you've been given. This simple acronym to keep in mind is car. And so in at System and Soul, we say you need to drive your car. So between, it's a relationship between every leader and every direct report. And so the car is the thing that sits between the two of them.

McKenzie Decker: And what that means is clarity, autonomy, and results. So when we say clarity, we're talking about. [00:15:00] If I'm the leader, I'm thinking about my teammate. Have I given this person the clarity of what their mission is, where they need to be spending their time? What matters most in our organization, maybe even what the budget is and what you know, who's on their team.

McKenzie Decker: Have I given them that clarity? The autonomy is really about have I given them the, have I given them enough clarity that they can have the autonomy and. My being clear with them about the decision making process and where they have decision rights. So we could do a whole episode on this one, but there's a number of things a number of steps that have to happen for someone to feel like they're not just having to go from zero to a hundred and figure something out on their own, which I think is part of that becoming too important at work piece, but it's like.

McKenzie Decker: I have been walked through this and exactly how you want it done, or I understand the ultimate goal, the outcome that we're looking for, and now I feel confident that I can take this over or I've been given the resources to figure it out. So there is this sort of like spectrum of [00:16:00] autonomy we have to clarify for our teammates.

McKenzie Decker: And if you are a teammate and you're. Feeling the struggle with that, then you need to ask your leader for that clarity and that autonomy. So you need to go to them and feel the permission to say, Hey, I don't have this. I'm missing this in some way. Can you sort this out for me? So that clarity, you've got autonomy in the last piece is results.

McKenzie Decker: So it's being really clear on, on how we measure our team members results and helping them feel like they're winning. So if they understand like. These are the metrics that are gonna be measured at the end of the day, the quarter, the year. And this is gonna help me know if I am on board, on, on track with what I need to be doing and how I'm performing.

McKenzie Decker: Then it gives so much dignity to that person to not only be able to check the scoreboard and say, okay, cool I'm on track. I can show up with confidence. But it's also like they can start thinking about their job in terms of how they can affect those numbers. And what leverage they have to.[00:17:00] 

McKenzie Decker: Improve the position that they hold. Those three things, clarity, autonomy, results. It's a two-way conversation. So as a leader, if you aren't sure if your team members have that, you need to be asking yourself that question. Sit down with them and clarify it. If you are being led by someone, you're like, man, I wish I had that.

McKenzie Decker: Don't sit back and wait for someone to come to you and make it happen. You've gotta go. I would highly encourage you. The most respectful way possible, go to your leader and say, Hey, these are some things that feel unclear to me and I would really love to have these conversations so I can show up well.

McKenzie Decker: So I think that's the surface of of what I think can help this conversation. Anything else Sad before you go? 

Benj Miller: You did a great job breaking that down. I think the thing that always convicts me is when I. Embrace that car analogy. Yeah. I realize that the reason that I have failed to hold people accountable is because I haven't given them the clarity that they've needed to be able to hold them accountable to the results.

Benj Miller: Yeah. [00:18:00] Call that clarity guilt. So if we can get clear the conversation around the results and then it's a mutual thing oh, I wasn't clear on that result. Okay, now you are. Yeah. It's a never ending thing. I think just to wrap this topic, there's also this emotional component to this.

Benj Miller: If you're that important person and you're frustrated or you, maybe you've even already quit please don't like we were created as humans to contribute. To create and contribute and create value. And the minute you turn that off, you are turning off your own life force and your ability to contribute to the world around you.

Benj Miller: Please don't do that. Please. This game is a game where we're continually trying to. Elevate the value that we're creating for the world around us, not minimize it. So whether it takes a move, whether it takes a conversation, whether it takes just a re-engagement into your role right now please don't check out on us.

McKenzie Decker: Yeah. Although, one more thing on that, 'cause I think [00:19:00] there's a lot of people that quit and they're like, I'm gonna go do my own thing. Just wait. 'cause there be people working for you at some point. If you do that, this will find you. That's a dope boy. Guys, thanks for joining us again. If you want help with this kind of thing, if you're on either side of that table, you're the leader and you really need some help in getting your team organized, aligned, and clarity around their roles.

McKenzie Decker: You just need better systems inside of your business. Or if you're that team member that's I have been put in this position of responsibility, but I don't have the playbook or the tools. We got you. We're doing a workshop. We'd love for you to join us, check out the details. Before we go, I wanna thank fist bumps, so fist bumps and our producer floor who gave us this amazing idea.

McKenzie Decker: They help us put on a great show every week. 

Benj Miller: We're glad you're here. See you later here. Thanks, 

McKenzie Decker: Flo. All right, have a good week everybody.