jen briggs

Stop hiring for “culture fit”, hire for the mindset to be a great organizational citizen.

I’ve said, “hire for culture fit” for years and I’m reversing my opinion. It is clear that we don’t always share the same meaning when talking about culture.  It is also clear that we have aspirational cultures and current cultures. If culture is the pattern of actions and attitudes of a given group, then this could be a concern if these patterns are unhealthy or negative.

In the much talked about “bro” culture, you can see how hiring for culture fit has hindered these companies. Hiring for culture fit has perpetuated negative bias – conscious and unconscious. In less dramatic examples, culture fit can still lead to driving habits that were once permitted in the past but perhaps are no longer needed at a different business lifecycle. In high growth cycles, there is there is the risk of cultural dilution and the emergence of subcultures that don’t necessarily mesh with the intended system. Unification and alignment require daily attention. Simply “fitting” into a given group should be questioned.

The reality is that in strong, value-driven companies there is a certain level of homogeneity that you want to build. You are designing a social system to support the purpose, mission, values, and business plan that will drive future economic success. You want to design a healthy system absent bias and full of talent. If you have an open culture where there is freedom from fear-based, dictatorial management, you cannot hire a dictator who has no desire to empathize or value the human element. If you want to drive an ownership culture, you cannot hire people who need lots of rules and do not have a desire to see the bigger picture of the business. You can have both – a homogeneity of positive mindsets and a diversity of personalities, races, nationalities, and world-cultures. Will you develop a company of contributors and creators or one of takers and dividers?

When I work with hiring managers, it’s like nails on a chalkboard when I hear “he’s not a cultural fit”. My response – get more specific. What do you mean?

Hire for mindset. No, not according to a personality test. Diversity in personalities is a good thing. (Again, another reason to not hire for “fit”). Think bigger. Think psychographics – the dictionary definition is the study and classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations, and other psychological criteria. This thinking is prominent with market research and brand building. Now, use it to build your work-community.

Futurecast your company and imagine it three years from now. What will people be doing? How will they interact? How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to accomplish? Think about your aspirational culture with a healthy pattern of attitudes and actions.

If you want a work-community that is free of bias you need to hire people who are keen to speak out when they see bias in the workplace. Ask candidates for lived examples of a time where they saw something that wasn’t right at work or school and what did they do about it? Being unbiased is very difficult to interview for because, let’s face it, most of us are smart and know how to answer those questions. There can also be the seeping in of unconscious bias so the key is to find people who are identifiers and graceful-fixers who want to see themselves and their colleagues at their best.

If you want a highly driven, hyper-competitive environment – interview for those people who love to win and don’t feel that they need to worry about the people they leave behind. (Don’t forget to throw in highly individualized bonus programs!).  But, if you want a highly driven person who helps raise the bar for themselves, their team and sees performance as more than a singular metric – hire for team players. The people that are positively infectious and help us all aspire to be a better version of ourselves. They challenge us to reach a bit higher and jump a bit further.

Don’t confuse this organizational citizen mindset selection process with hiring for certain job attributes. Hire for both –  potential or ability to do great work in the job and to be a great, contributing organizational citizen.

A few mindset traits for you to consider

• Pragmatically optimistic – sees excitement and potential in challenges and change and yet isn’t so overly optimistic as to not be a critical thinker and work on solving problems.
• Ambitious – Drives to a win. Makes smart investments of one’s time in pursuit of the prize. Knows what a win means – there are hard goals (numbers – the what) and soft goals (behaviors- the how). These people see the entire company as winning not only their team or themselves. The goal is to grow organizational value through the contributions of the many. Not grow functional efficiency that doesn’t add significance to the broader value chain.
• Warmth and empathy – Helps people, clients, consumers and others feel welcome. Generally, feels like the glass is half full and even refillable. Abundance. Thinks and acts with the human element as part of the decision process. Be careful here, don’t inadvertently discount introverts. Introverts can be incredible and have great depth of feeling. Don’t confuse being talkative and/or having charisma with warmth and empathy. Listening is a key part of building relationships.
• Aspiring and diligent – Self-led, self-driven. Takes experiences as an opportunity to learn. Has smart failures. Grows deeper or broader in skill and helps inspire others to do the same.
• Appreciative and trusting – Centered, trusting and trusted. Comes from a place of good intent and assumes the same in others. Appreciates how lucky we all are and brings humility with pride to people he or she interacts with. Loves the consumer, the products, the brand, the company and the people. Trust, learning, and caring are instinctual.
• Head up and culturally sensitive. Literally and figuratively. Greets people with a smile, looks people in the eye, approachable. Also, heads up to the future, has an eye for the bigger, broader picture vs. only individual short-term tasks and results. Enjoys playing a part, no matter how small or big, in building for the future. Also, is exhibits cultural awareness and can flex personal style and approach to demonstrate respect for other cultures.

Many companies have ethical in this list. Of course, I feel like ethical is a general expectation of being. I feel that this is so foundational that any concerns would show in other answers and background checks. Ethical behavior is the baseline for all of us. If you are just trying to be ethical, you need to set the bar higher.

Sample questions

Tell me about a time when you saw something that just wasn’t right happening. What was going on? What did you do? What were the consequences?

Will he or she stand up when faced with a concern? What made them decide to intervene? Were they able to intervene and build stronger relationships as a result or did the situation further devolve? Did they know where to draw the line and get others involved?

When you make complex decisions how do you make them? Give an example.

You are looking for someone who isn’t simply coin, rule or manager operated. You are looking for answers around factors like impact to fellow employees, the environment, long-term impacts, support of purpose, choice of higher triple-bottom line value proposition, personal values, etc. You want someone who can take multiple factors into account and can do so with relative quickness (not analysis paralysis). What motivates their decision making?

Give an example of a time where you had a smart or praiseworthy failure and a time where you had a failure that deserved criticism.

Again, you are looking into how someone makes decisions and how they learn. You want someone who is a critical thinker and can be open. You don’t want someone who needs to reference a rule book to make a good decision. You also want someone who has some perseverance and can get back on his or her feet after making an error.

Have you been in a situation where you had to have a conversation about a contentious, tense matter? What happened? What was your role? What was the resolution? Did the result affect how you might deal with a comparable situation in the future?

You are looking for someone who can have graceful disputes, not endless quarrels. Watch out for I-must-win attitude vs. thoughtful, meaningful exchanges.

Who inspires you? What have you learned from these role models and how do you apply it in your work-life?

Do you believe in trust earned or trust given? Why?

This is a tough question and you should be clear on how you feel before you ask a candidate. I believe there are different forms of trust and that trust is built one interaction at a time. However, I believe trust starts in each of us and if people believe trust must be earned, they may be setting people up for no-wins and there is a big risk for unconscious behaviors and actions.

Regardless of their direct answer, you are looking for people who will have faith in their new coworkers and come in and give the new system a chance. Their answer should yield some comfort that they will be a positive employee and will foster team and community vs. divisiveness. Do they start with their emotional bank account in the positive? Or, do they start with a negative emotional bank account and expect others to increase it for them?

What are your top two best experiences of your professional life … A time where you felt your best at work – what was happening? What makes the experiences possible?

You want to look for company pride, team synchronicity, pride in product, passion for the customer and customer satisfaction. Most people will answer with some sense of accomplishment, but you want to dig in deeper – why? Accomplishment for whom, for what benefit? You are looking for pride with a humble appreciation for the people and environments that enabled them to be their best.

I believe the key to being a great interviewer is not simply the questions asked, but how well you listen and inquire. The aspect of organizational citizenship is not a check-the-box interview; it is a what makes you tick interview.

If you hear hints about:

• Gossiping
• Pessimistic to the point of bringing others down
• Resistant to change (any change)
• Distrusts first (starts with emotional bank account in the negative vs. neutral or positive
• Not centered or grounded in their own values.
• A yes or no person. You want considerate thinkers.
• Overly positive. There is a lot of validity to positivity and there is also health of thoughtful skepticism, wonder, and inquiry.
• Having a closed mindset. Seeing the world as limited and inadequate.
• Always being a victim. A victim mindset is one of my least favorite things. Certainly, there are many times where many of us have been in very poor circumstances. It’s how you chose to react to your situation that is key.

One of my favorite books is FYI – For Your Improvement by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger. The framework for their book is that any trait can be underused or overused. The same goes with everything listed above. We all have strengths and sometimes those strengths overused can become a weakness. This is something to listen for with every candidate and observe with current employees. It is the very centered person who has their own internal navigation system calibrated so well that they sense where the line of being skilled is in a given context.

We want to surround ourselves with talent. And we should include being a great organizational citizen as a key criterion in how we measure the depth of our talent pool.