The Quiet Quitting Leadership Crisis: When Your Best Performers Check Out Mentally
Your best performers are checking out. And the problem isn't them - it's you.
I'm watching it happen in real time with my clients. High performers who used to drive initiatives, mentor others, and push their teams toward excellence are now doing the bare minimum. They show up to meetings but don't contribute. They complete assignments but don't innovate. They're present but not engaged.
They haven't quit. But they've stopped caring. And honestly? The data on why this is happening should alarm every leader reading this.
When "quiet quitting" went viral in 2022, many leaders dismissed it as Gen Z laziness or entitled employees setting "boundaries." But here's what the research is now showing in 2025: This isn't about lazy employees or work-life balance. This is about leadership failure. And it's costing organizations $438 billion annually in lost productivity.
Even more concerning? The phenomenon has evolved. We're no longer just seeing quiet quitting - we're seeing "quiet cracking." And your best performers are breaking.
The Crisis Is Getting Worse, Not Better
Let me start with the numbers, because they're honestly alarming.
According to Gallup's 2025 global workforce data, employee engagement dropped from 23% to 21% - mirroring the decline we saw during COVID lockdowns. That might not sound dramatic until you understand what it represents: millions of employees globally who have mentally checked out.
Here's the breakdown:
59% of employees are quiet quitters - doing only the bare minimum required to keep their jobs
18% are "loud quitters" - actively disengaged and vocal about their dissatisfaction
Only 23% are actually engaged in their work
The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is now 1.8 to 1 - the lowest it's been in almost a decade.
In the United States alone, this disengagement costs approximately $2 trillion in lost productivity. Globally, that number reached $438 billion in just the past year.
But here's what concerns me most: Your high performers - the people who have been carrying your teams, driving your results, and compensating for everyone else's disengagement - are the ones checking out now.
From Quiet Quitting to Quiet Cracking
There's a new term that better captures what's actually happening to employees in 2025: "quiet cracking."
A recent report from TalentLMS found that 54% of employees report feeling unhappy at work - not occasionally, but ranging from frequently to constantly. These aren't people who are intentionally setting boundaries or consciously choosing to do less. These are people who are mentally and emotionally struggling while trying to maintain their professional responsibilities.
Here's the critical difference: Quiet quitting was often framed as an intentional choice - employees deciding to stop going above and beyond. Quiet cracking is what happens when that chronic disengagement becomes a mental health crisis.
Unlike burnout, which manifests as exhaustion, quiet cracking shows up as:
Lacking motivation and enthusiasm for work that used to energize you
Feeling useless or ineffective despite completing tasks
Experiencing anger and irritability that seems out of proportion
Gradual deterioration that gets worse over time
The telltale sign? People showing up and doing their jobs while internally breaking under the pressure of an unsustainable workplace dynamic.
And your best performers? They're often the first to crack because they've been carrying the heaviest loads.
Why Your High Performers Are Most at Risk
Here's what most leaders miss: Your star employees aren't immune to quiet quitting. They're actually more vulnerable to it.
Research shows that employees are 2.7 times more likely to quietly quit when they perceive an unfair exchange with their organization or leadership. And who's most likely to perceive that unfair exchange? Your high performers who are consistently giving 150% while receiving standard compensation, recognition, and development opportunities.
Let me explain the psychology behind this.
Conservation of Resources (COR) theory shows that when employees experience resource depletion - heavy workload combined with inadequate support - they find ways to reallocate whatever resources they have left by disengaging from aspects of their work they consider unrewarded or unnecessary.
Your high performers have been operating in resource depletion for years. They've been:
Taking on the projects no one else can handle
Mentoring struggling team members
Compensating for underperformers
Working extra hours to hit deadlines
Solving problems that should be leadership's responsibility
Maintaining quality standards while others do the minimum
And what have they gotten in return? Often, just more work. More responsibility without more authority. More expectations without more recognition or compensation. More reliance without more support.
So they do the math. They realize the exchange isn't fair. And they start protecting what's left of their energy, creativity, and commitment by withdrawing to what's actually required.
The cruel irony? The employees you've relied on most are the ones most likely to mentally check out first. And because they're high performers with strong track records, when they do check out mentally, they have the credibility and options to leave entirely.
The Leadership Failures Driving This Crisis
Gallup's research identified exactly what declined most in employee experience, and every single factor points directly to leadership failure:
Clarity of Expectations: Less than 4 in 10 remote or hybrid employees clearly know what is expected of them at work. Think about that. Your teams are showing up every day unclear about what they're actually supposed to accomplish. That's not a communication problem - that's a leadership failure.
Opportunities to Learn and Grow: Younger workers (under 35) experienced a 9-point drop in strongly agreeing that someone encourages their development. Your employees see stagnation, not growth. They see their careers plateauing while you tell them to "be patient."
Feeling Cared About: Employees, particularly younger ones, dropped significantly in feeling cared about by someone at work. You're treating people as resources to extract value from, not humans to invest in.
Connection to Mission or Purpose: People have lost sight of why their work matters. You're assigning tasks without connecting them to impact. You're managing activities instead of leading toward meaningful outcomes.
Here's the part that should really concern you: Only 1 in 3 managers are engaged at work themselves.
You're asking disengaged managers to engage their teams. You're expecting leaders who have mentally checked out to notice when their high performers are doing the same. It's not working.
The Contagion Effect: How Disengagement Spreads
Quiet quitting doesn't stay isolated to individual employees. It spreads through workplace networks like a virus.
Research tracking the social dynamics of employee disengagement found that withdrawal behaviors spread through teams. When your best performer starts mentally checking out, others notice. The standard of effort shifts. The culture changes.
But here's something important: High-cohesion work teams were nearly 2.3 times less likely to experience widespread disengagement than low-cohesion teams.
This means that investing in team relationships proactively serves as a protective mechanism against the contagious spread of quiet quitting. But how many organizations are actually doing that? How many leaders are prioritizing team cohesion over just pushing for results?
When disengagement spreads through your best performers, it doesn't just reduce productivity. It fundamentally changes your organizational culture from collaborative to self-protective. People stop helping each other. They stop sharing knowledge. They stop mentoring. Everyone retreats to doing exactly what's required and nothing more.
The Behaviors You're Missing
Your high performers aren't going to announce that they're mentally checking out. They're not going to have a conversation where they say, "I've decided to quietly quit." The signs are subtle, which is why most leaders miss them entirely.
Here's what to watch for in your previously engaged high performers:
Reduced Participation: They used to contribute ideas in meetings, challenge thinking, and push for better solutions. Now they're quiet. They respond when asked directly, but they've stopped volunteering their thinking.
Minimal Engagement Beyond Basics: They complete their assignments competently, but there's no excellence anymore. No going the extra mile. No proactive problem-solving. Just adequate execution.
Declining Performance Quality: They're still technically proficient, but the innovation is gone. The creativity has disappeared. The strategic thinking that made them valuable has been replaced by just getting tasks done.
Changed Communication Patterns: They're less responsive to messages. They avoid feedback conversations. They keep interactions transactional rather than relational.
Stopped Volunteering: They used to raise their hand for challenging projects. They used to offer to help struggling colleagues. They used to step up when things got difficult. Now they wait to be assigned and stick to their lane.
No Longer Mentoring: Your senior high performers used to naturally develop junior team members. They were the ones newer employees went to for guidance. That's stopped. They're protecting their time and energy.
Present But Not Present: They attend meetings but multitask. They're physically there but mentally checked out. You can see it in their body language, their engagement level, their energy.
If you're seeing these patterns in employees who used to be your stars, you have a quiet quitting problem. And the longer you ignore it, the closer you are to them actually quitting.
The Remote and Hybrid Work Complication
The shift to remote and hybrid work hasn't caused quiet quitting, but it has made it significantly easier for employees to mentally disengage without being noticed.
The data on younger workers is particularly concerning. Employees under 35 who work remotely or hybrid experienced:
A 9-point drop in feeling someone encourages their development
A 9-point drop in having opportunities to learn and grow
A 9-point drop in feeling someone cares about them
These aren't marginal changes. These are massive shifts in the employee experience that directly predict disengagement.
Here's what's happening: Remote and hybrid work removed the informal touchpoints where managers used to notice when something was off. The hallway conversations. The coffee break check-ins. The subtle shifts in energy and engagement that you could see when you worked in the same space.
Now? Your high performers can be mentally checked out for months before you realize something is wrong. They show up to video calls. They respond to emails. They complete their assignments. And you have no idea they've already mentally left.
The leaders who are successfully managing remote and hybrid teams aren't the ones micromanaging or demanding camera-on policies. They're the ones who have learned to have different conversations - deeper, more frequent, more intentional conversations about engagement, meaning, and support.
The AI and Automation Fear Factor
There's another layer to the 2025 quiet quitting crisis that didn't exist in 2022: widespread fear about AI and automation making roles redundant.
When employees feel their contributions are undervalued or potentially replaceable by technology, disengagement is the natural response. Why invest emotionally and cognitively in work that might not exist next year?
This fear particularly impacts high performers who have built their identity and value around expertise that AI is now replicating. The consultant who spent years developing analytical frameworks that AI can now generate. The creative professional whose specialized skills are being automated. The knowledge worker whose value came from information synthesis that AI does faster.
When people feel uncertain about their value in a rapidly changing organization, they don't double down on commitment. They hedge their bets by reducing their investment. They quietly quit because they're not sure there's a future worth being engaged in.
Leaders who are addressing this successfully aren't dismissing these fears or pretending AI won't change things. They're having honest conversations about transformation while clearly articulating what remains uniquely human and valuable about each person's contribution.
What Actually Works: Evidence-Based Solutions
Here's the good news: Organizations that have implemented comprehensive approaches to addressing quiet quitting have achieved a 32% reduction in disengagement behaviors within 12 months.
But notice the word "comprehensive." This isn't about pizza parties or casual Friday. This requires fundamental changes to both structural factors and relational dynamics.
Address YOUR Engagement First
You cannot give what you don't have. If you're a disengaged leader trying to engage your team, it won't work. Your team feels your energy - or lack thereof. They mirror your investment - or withdrawal.
Before you try to fix your team's engagement, get honest about your own. Are you genuinely engaged with your work and your leadership role? Or are you going through the motions while mentally checked out yourself?
The research is clear: Only 1 in 3 managers are engaged at work. If you're in the other two-thirds, your first responsibility is to address your own disengagement before expecting anything different from your team.
Reskill for the Hybrid Environment
The management playbook that worked in 2019 doesn't work in 2025. You need different skills for leading remote and hybrid teams effectively.
This means learning how to:
Have real conversations about disengagement and burnout
Recognize subtle warning signs virtually
Create connection and cohesion without physical proximity
Provide development and mentorship through digital channels
Build psychological safety in distributed teams
Senior leadership needs to invest in actually reskilling managers for this environment, not just expecting them to figure it out.
Create Structural Fairness
Your high performers are assessing whether the exchange is fair. Make sure it is.
Compensation Equity: Are your best performers paid appropriately for their contribution? Or are they getting standard raises while carrying exceptional loads?
Workload Distribution: Stop over-relying on your stars to compensate for underperformers. Distribute work fairly based on capacity, not just on who you trust to get it done.
Advancement Opportunities: Create clear pathways for growth. If your high performers see stagnation ahead, they'll disengage now.
Recognition That Matters: Not pizza parties. Real recognition that acknowledges specific contributions and their impact.
Invest in Relational Elements
Structure alone won't fix this. You need genuine human connection.
Communication Transparency: Be honest about challenges, changes, and decisions. When people feel kept in the dark, they assume the worst and disengage protectively.
Regular Meaningful Check-Ins: Not performance reviews. Real conversations about how people are doing, what support they need, what's energizing them, and what's depleting them.
Leadership Development Focused on Connection: Train your managers on emotional intelligence, active listening, and inclusive leadership. The technical skills matter less than the relational ones in preventing quiet quitting.
For High Performers Specifically
Your stars need different things than your average performers.
Connect Work to Impact: They need to see how their contributions matter. Give them visibility into the downstream effects of their work.
Provide Challenges, Not Just More Work: High performers want to grow and be stretched. Don't just pile on more tasks - give them meaningful challenges that develop new capabilities.
Create Space for Innovation and Autonomy: They don't need micromanagement. They need the freedom to solve problems in innovative ways.
Invest Visibly in Their Development: Show them you're committed to their growth. Not just lip service - actual investment in their continued learning and advancement.
The Cost of Ignoring This
Let me be blunt about what happens if you don't address this:
Your best performers leave. Not immediately - first they mentally check out, then they start looking, then they leave. By the time you realize you have a problem, your stars are already interviewing elsewhere.
When they leave, they take institutional knowledge with them. They take client relationships. They take the informal mentorship that was developing your next generation of talent. They take the quality standards and work ethic that were setting the bar for everyone else.
And here's what really happens: The best performers leave first because they have the most options. What you're left with is a workforce of people who are either disengaged or don't have better alternatives. Your talent pool gets weaker. Your culture deteriorates. Your results suffer.
Then you spend massive amounts on recruiting to replace the people you lost, only to onboard them into a culture of disengagement that will eventually make them quit too. The cycle continues.
The cost isn't just the $438 billion in lost productivity. It's the compounding effect of losing your best people while the disengagement spreads to everyone else.
This Is a Leadership Issue, Not an Employee Issue
I need you to hear this clearly: Quiet quitting is a symptom of poor management.
When Gallup analyzed the data, they found that employees whose managers helped them set goals and priorities were 2.5 times more likely to be engaged. Employees who had weekly conversations with their manager about their work were 3 times more likely to be engaged.
Your employees aren't the problem. Your leadership approach is.
Your best performers aren't asking for special treatment. They're asking for what you implicitly promised when you hired them: meaningful work, fair exchange, development opportunities, and leadership that actually cares about them as humans, not just as productivity units.
Engagement is a two-way street, but leaders set the terms of that street. You determine whether the culture rewards exceptional effort or just exploits it. You decide whether people feel valued or used. You create the conditions that either foster engagement or drive people to quietly quit.
The Choice You're Making Right Now
Every day you ignore the signs of quiet quitting in your high performers, you're making a choice.
You're choosing to lose your best people rather than address the leadership failures that are driving them away. You're choosing short-term convenience over long-term organizational health. You're choosing to blame "entitled employees" rather than looking at your own contribution to the problem.
Or you can make a different choice.
You can get honest about what's actually happening in your organization. You can address your own engagement before expecting others to be engaged. You can create structural fairness and invest in genuine relationships. You can learn new leadership skills for the hybrid environment. You can stop over-relying on your stars and start supporting them appropriately.
The data is clear: Organizations that take comprehensive action can reduce quiet quitting by 32% within a year. But it requires acknowledging that this is a leadership crisis, not an employee problem.
Your best performers are checking out mentally. The question is whether you're going to notice before they actually quit.
Ready to Address the Quiet Quitting Crisis in Your Organization?
Understanding quiet quitting is just the beginning. If you're recognizing these patterns in your high performers and you're ready to address the leadership failures driving disengagement, I can help.
Whether you're noticing declining engagement in previously strong performers, struggling to retain top talent in a hybrid environment, or wanting to build a culture that prevents quiet quitting before it starts, specialized leadership support can help you develop the skills and approaches necessary for sustainable engagement.
š© For leaders and organizations: Executive coaching focused on engagement and retention helps leaders understand what drives quiet quitting and implement evidence-based solutions that actually work. Schedule your Executive Leadership Consultation to explore how to rebuild engagement with your high performers before they actually quit.
š Explore more in the full resource library
Rae Francis is an executive coach and therapist specializing in helping leaders address organizational dynamics that drive disengagement. With 16+ years of clinical experience plus executive leadership background, she understands both the psychological factors behind quiet quitting and the practical leadership solutions that reverse it. Through individual executive coaching and organizational consulting, Rae helps leaders recognize early warning signs of disengagement, rebuild trust with high performers, and create cultures where exceptional talent actually wants to stay. Her approach integrates evidence-based insights on employee engagement with practical applications for the realities of hybrid work environments. Whether you're losing your best performers to quiet quitting, struggling to engage distributed teams, or wanting to build sustainable organizational health, Rae provides the specialized support that helps leaders turn disengagement into renewed commitment. Learn more about her integrative approach to leadership and organizational health at Rae Francis Consulting.
