Not long ago, quiet quitting dominated the headlines. It was a cultural shorthand for employees doing the bare minimum, disengaging from hustle culture, and protecting themselves from burnout. Leaders fretted that it was laziness in disguise or a generational lack of ambition.
But in 2025, the problem looks different. Quiet quitting has been replaced by something far more dangerous: quiet cracking.
Quiet cracking isn’t about disengagement. It’s about disintegration.
Employees and leaders are still turning up, logging in, and pushing through. They’re meeting deadlines and smiling in meetings. But beneath the polished exterior, they’re stretched to breaking point. The cracks are there — hidden behind professionalism — until one day, they’re not.
The numbers tell the story:
Quiet cracking is insidious because it’s silent. Unlike a resignation letter, you rarely see it coming. It shows up as sudden illness, disengagement that looks like “laziness,” or a team culture that slowly corrodes.
Here’s where neuroscience shines a light on what’s really happening.
When the brain is under chronic stress, the amygdala (the part responsible for threat detection) goes into overdrive. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex — the part we need for clear thinking, decision-making, and empathy — starts to go offline.
The result? Leaders under pressure are:
It’s not a character flaw. It’s brain science. You can’t out-hustle your neurobiology.
And when leaders are forced to operate in this state for weeks or months without support, the cracks spread: performance dips, relationships strain, and wellbeing nosedives.
Here’s the distinction that matters:
The scary part? Many people never actually “quit quietly.” They kept performing until they quietly cracked. Which means this isn’t about laziness. It’s about capacity.
As leaders, we can’t afford to dismiss this as another workplace trend. Quiet cracking is a symptom of systems that are out of balance — and it’s our job to reset them.
1. Normalise Real Conversations
Neuroscience tells us that psychological safety reduces cortisol levels in the brain. When people feel safe to say, “I’m not coping,” they activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the one that calms, restores, and resets.
As a leader, you create this safety. Start with genuine questions like: “How are you, really?” — and then stop talking. Let the silence do its work.
2. Build Capacity, Not Just Resilience
Resilience has its place, but it often gets overplayed. It assumes people can bounce back endlessly. The real leadership work is building capacity: reducing unnecessary load, prioritising effectively, and designing systems that don’t run people ragged.
Think about the human brain as a phone battery. Resilience is learning to recharge it quickly when it hits 5%. Capacity is designing the workload so it rarely drops below 40%.
3. Model Connected Leadership
Your managers and teams are watching you more than you realise. If you’re pushing through, hiding your cracks, or glamorising exhaustion, they’ll mirror it.
Connected leadership means showing you’re human, too. It’s choosing presence over performance, and connection over control. When you model that balance, you give others permission to do the same.
We’ve moved beyond the era of “working-to-rule.” We’re now in the era of “working-to-breaking-point.”
Quiet cracking is the loudest silent alarm we have. It’s telling us that leadership isn’t just about driving results — it’s about creating environments where the human brain can actually thrive.
Because when the brain cracks, so does the business.
The challenge for leaders is clear:
Because employees don’t just quit jobs. They quietly crack when leadership fails to catch them.
If you’re starting to notice the quiet cracks in your leadership team, this is the moment to act. My work helps CEOs, GMs, and HR leaders build connected leadership capability — so managers and teams don’t just perform, they thrive.
