Narrative Violations and Narrative Affirmations

On Quiet Quitting, The Employer-Employee Relationship, and Revisiting Our Own Narratives on Career and Work

Aug 28, 2022

Welcome to This Week’s Edition of the Work In Progress Newsletter. This week, we’ll tackle:

Narrative Violations and Narrative Affirmations
Career and Workplace News
A round up of resources on Quiet Quitting

🔊Narrative Violations and Narrative Affirmations🔊

I got my first job when I was 12 years old, working as a caddie at a country club. About the same time, I started really engaging with broader learning about careers and professions, and eventually heard the phrase make sure to find a job that you love. This narrative struck a chord with me, mostly because I felt like it affirmed my thinking about my job.

I loved being a caddie, the work I was doing, and the people that I was working with, and how it enabled me to develop and grow as an awkward and curious teenager. More than anything, hearing this phrase was an affirmation of a belief that shaped and aligned to my decision making about my job, which gave me the confidence that I was pursuing a path that was right for me.

Until one day, when I had a conversation with my Mother. Growing up, I respected and looked up to (still do!) my parents. As the son of Asian immigrants, education, family, hard work, and taking care of others were values that were espoused to both my sister and I. Somehow, between raising two kids, both of my parents were exceptional at their jobs and careers and still made time to be great parents.

One day, after coming home from the golf course, I remember having a conversation with my mom and telling her about how much I loved my job, and asking her if she loved her job in the same way. I’m paraphrasing, but her response was something along the lines of, “I don’t love my job. I like it, but I love what it enables me to do, which is to support you and your sister, spend time with our family and live a life that is meaningful, but no, I don’t love my job..”

I was shocked! How could someone not love their job?! Afterall, I loved my job, and look how “successful” I was. Shouldn’t everyone else love their job?! I thought to myself.

What I experienced then, was a narrative violation - when we get told, or come across something that’s new or different and that goes counter to a core belief of our life, it often triggers our mindset and actions.

In my example with my Mom, I initially got angry and upset, because hearing that not all people wanted to do a job they loved seemed to invalidate my viewpoint that it was a noble narrative to see the world and make decisions related to my career. But, over time and through lived experience, my view on this began to evolve and while I still believe in elements of what I did as a 14 year old my narrative and core beliefs around this topic are different today than they were 20 years ago.

I suspect that a narrative violation (and the opposite, a narrative affirmation) are at the core of the quiet quitting that has made its way from Tiktok to the broader work and career dialogue. A narrative violation is when you learn a new idea, script, or viewpoint that violates a viewpoint or worldview that you’ve knowingly or unknowingly held that causes you to react strongly upon learning it.

I can understand why quiet quitting can cause such reactions to all types of people. Either because when you learn about something that violates a narrative that you've longly held onto or perhaps even us as your own framework for how you see the world and make decisions, it can feel pretty attacked, or when you learn about something that you have always thought but could never articulate yourself (ex: the expressions “I feel seen, “all of this” “it me in the photo..”)

This is also why some are pushing back that this is actually not a trend, and just a way for employers to force their affirmed narrative onto their employees

If you're someone who has always had a narrative around hard work and success means always going above and beyond and giving your all to your company I can understand how you would resent the notion that someone else would not want that or want to strive in that way.

Furthermore, if you’re someone who has been passed over for promotions, overextended themselves and as a result faced stress and well-being issues and wants to redefine your relationship with your job by setting boundaries, it’s understandable how out of self-preservation that you would want to redraw the boundaries of what you give to your job and career.

Terms and trends that start on social media and make it to the mainstream are not new. I think what makes quiet quitting so virtal is that it hits to a core topic and issue that is so central to so many of us - regardless of what you think about the term, work and career are central part to so many of us and our lives, and at the core of what quiet quitting is a central question of what do we want out of our job, and what do we owe to our employer-employee?

This is a deeply personal question, but for many of us, the narratives and worldviews around these central questions were mostly uniform, and for which our views or ideas around them were not talked about so openly and transparently. So why is this the case, and why is it coming out in the open right now?

Some of this is how culture and society in the United States has evolved toward talking about these topics. Technology has certainly played a hand, as TikTok and a 24/7/365 media culture wasn’t around in the late 1900s or early 2000s.

Furthermore, a desire for more transparency around key organizational and workplace data, such as compensation and benefits, culture, DE&I, and other workplace policies has spawned companies like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Levels, Fishbowl and a plethora of data driven startups and products that aim to level the information asymmetry between employers and employees.

But between these two things as well as a multigenerational workforce that views things differently, opens the opportunity to lay bare the viewpoints and mindsets of how we as individuals believe in how we want work to work for us as individuals and how we see the relationship between ourselves and our employer, and we are seeing this play out in real time with quiet quitting.

So what happens from here? No easy answers, but here are a few suggestions from different viewpoints

Leaders - As my colleague and fellow Workplace and Career Expert Lindsey Pollak points out, at the core of quiet quitting is centered around expectations. This is something within your control, as you have the ability not only to decide on what they are, but actually clarify them and ensure that what you communicate is aligned to the policies and actions that bear out within your organization.
Managers - Your job as a manager is to get your team to achieve business outcomes. It’s hard to do that if you don’t know where your employees stand on their relationship with their job. If you aren’t sure where people are at, you need to start talking to them more and getting a pulse check of how they see things and how they are doing. This is one of those “simple but not easy” ideas, because simply asking your employees how they are doing and if they are going to quiet quit is not effective. Your ability to deeply understand as well as get feedback from your employees is equal to the trust and psychological safety you’ve created in the relationship. You need to start there
Employees - I think it's important to deeply reflect on some of the narratives and constructs that are influencing your decisions around the relationship you have with your job and your career. To be clear, not everyone is in a position to quiet quit, or has the luxury of really having a choice about these things, but for the ones that do, many of our narratives shaping us come from the world we are in, and part of your own career and personal development is understanding which narratives serve you and what doesn’t, and then evolving them so you can make better decisions that align with your actions.

As longtime industry analyst Charlene Li points out, as the world of work is changing, so is the relationship between employers and employees. In my aspirational hope for the future of work, I hope that we can create a workplace that works for more people and in more ways.

Now more than ever is a great time to start evaluating what we want out of work, and what we want our organizations to stand for, and I think reflecting on some of our own narratives that drive our thinking and worldviews around work and career is a great place to start.

💼 Career and Workplace News💼

This week, I wanted to highlight a number of companies and organizations that provide data, insights, and services that are changing the relationship between employers and employees.

Candor - Professional network that provides profiles and insights on employees and hiring managers in a more holistic and accurate way, favoring insights that show how you work versus just profile data
Levels FYI - Salary data and information that is sortable by level, function, role, and company
81 Cents - Helping women navigate career, negotiation and equity conversations
Flexa - Company that certifies companies who say they offer remote/flexible working arrangements
Textio - Software that helps companies who want to communicate in more inclusive and open ways
Scholars - Helps companies who want to improve communication and connection with early in career talent that they hire and onboard

Share Work In Progress

🔦A Roundup on Quiet Quitting🔦

TLDR: I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Quiet Quitting so you don’t have to! If you’re curious about learning more about quiet quitting or perhaps some of it’s adjacent trends (lie flat, 9/9/6) and what it entails either for yourself or your organization, I encourage you to check out the curated list of articles and podcasts in this section.

Let me know what articles you enjoy reading.

Have a great week!

Work In Progress

Narrative Violations and Narrative Affirmations

On Quiet Quitting, The Employer-Employee Relationship, and Revisiting Our Own Narratives on Career and Work

🔊Narrative Violations and Narrative Affirmations🔊

💼 Career and Workplace News💼

🔦A Roundup on Quiet Quitting🔦

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