And so I think the first thing I would tell talent to do is not
to start a job search by looking for jobs, to really start a job
search by understanding at a deeper level who you are, what
you value, how you like to work, what type of career you're
building. And most important, like what
are you solving for right now? Hey everyone, my name is Henry
Surya Viravan. And you're listening to the
Technical Journal Podcast, the show where I'll be bringing you,
the greatest technical leaders, practitioners and thought
leaders in the industry to discuss about their journey,
ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a
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My guest for today's episode is Andre Martin.
Dr. Andre is the author of Wrong Fit Right Fit.
In this episode he shared the importance of finding the right
fit company for us in our work. Dr. Andre used the analogy of
writing with a non dominant hand to explain working in a wrong
fit company. He shared some of the common
misalignments such as the modern hiring practices, infinite
browsing and company cultured act trend.
Dr. Andre then explained how we can work towards finding our
right fit company by doing more self reflection using some fit
excursions shared in his book. He also touched on the important
concept of buffers and the role of leaders and managers in the
workplace towards the end. Dr. Andre shared some practical
tips on how companies can create a better right fit culture in
the organizations. I hope you enjoy listening to
this episode and find some useful tips to finding the right
fit, company and work. And if you think someone else
will benefit from this episode, please help Share it with your
colleagues, your friends and communities and leave a 5 star
rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
It will help me a lot in getting more people discover and listen
to this podcast. And I really appreciate it.
Let's go to my conversation with Dr. Andre after quick words from
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those swags. Hello everyone.
Welcome to the new episode of the Tech Digital Podcast.
Today, I'm very happy to have Doctor Andre Martin here.
He is the author of Wrong Fit, Right Fit.
Why How we work matters more than ever.
So Doctor Andre Martin is an organizational psychologist.
So I always love to talk with authors in this kind of area so
that we can learn how to build. A high performing organization
where people are thriving and happy and engaged as well.
So Dr. Andre, welcome to the show.
Really happy to have you here. Thank you, Henry.
It's great to be here. Dr. Andre, I love to ask my
guests to first share about themselves, right?
Talking more about maybe career highlights or major turning
points so that we can all learn from you.
Fantastic. So I'm currently living here in
Portland OR with my wife. I have two kids, 2 English labs
and my career started back in grad school and I became an
organizational psychologist and my first job was in a small
consulting firm working in steel mills and factories in the
Midwest doing team based leader assessments.
And then I went to a place called the Center for Creative
Leadership, which is one of the top executive development firms
in the world, and really got to work with Coach, train some of
the best leaders in the world and learned a ton about what it
means to run a company and how to be a leader and build a great
culture. And I had these series of roles
either as the Chief Learning Officer or Chief Talent Officer
at renowned companies like Mars, Nike, Target and Google.
And since leaving Google, I've really started working with VC
and growth equity firms, doing human capital operating work for
them. So really, helping founders to
just build better companies, and I'd say all of those experiences
have just been fantastic. I've learned a ton about
culture, around how to build a great work environment, and
really how to help talent grow faster than the company.
Thanks for sharing your story. So one thing that we're going to
learn today is from your experience, right, having work
in all these great companies and also from your experience how to
build talents and having people more thriving in the companies.
So let's start with your book. Right.
Wrong fit. Right fit.
The title itself sounds very intriguing, right?
I'm sure in the past few years people have been experiencing
this kind of maybe personal challenges, right?
How to find the right fit company to work with?
And you say that there is a right fit company waiting for
everyone. So let us talk maybe a little
bit more about why do you see this as a problem or what kind
of challenges that people are seeing at this time.
Yeah, Henry. So I'd start with just the
reason that I started writing the book.
Originally, I thought I was going to write a book about
culture in this new era of work, the post COVID, hybrid ways of
working, the great resignation, all the things.
And so I went into the book writing starting with this idea
that it's really about good or bad culture.
And if you can figure out the keys to building a great
culture, you can get talent to come and they'll stay there for
their career. And I think what happened is
that early in the conversations, I started by just talking to
everyone in my network, CE O's, Chr, O's, great leaders,
aspiring talent. And what became really clear
really fast was there's not one way to build a great culture,
There's not one great company, And I take my own experience.
Target is very different than Mars, is very different than
Nike, is very different than Google.
And so that got me on this place of, hey, maybe it isn't about
good or bad culture or one right way to build a company.
Maybe it's around right or wrong fit.
So how can we help companies get clearer about how they work, how
they collaborate, how they solve problems, manage conflict,
socialize, develop people, give feedback, all the things that
make up work. And what if we could help talent
figure out their work preferences?
What do I value and how I like to work?
And then if we can put those two things together, more talent
will land in companies that allow them to just do their best
every day. Right.
So I think it's what you're saying is like it's not just
about great culture, great companies, right.
So everyone has a place in any kind of companies as long as it
fits their preference right, either way of working or the
kind of people that were there. Maybe the job itself whether
it's challenging or not. So I think the key message first
is about finding the right fit, right?
But one thing that I want to highlight is that you say that
if we work at a wrong fit company, right, the metaphor is
like writing with our non dominant hand.
So maybe elaborate a little bit more about this metaphor.
Yeah. So Henry, let me start with just
a stat that sort of got me really motivated to write the
book. And it's a Gallup statistic that
says we have $7.8 trillion of lost productivity in our
companies due to disengagement due to the idea that people
don't feel connected to their company, connected to their job.
And so they're just not doing their best work.
And so because our talents not doing their best work, then
we're not delivering the best for our customers.
And so when I think about engagement, an easy way to think
about that is when you're in an engaging environment, a place
that makes sense to you, that works the way that you work.
Work feels easy, It's effortless, you're putting in
the hours, but it doesn't feel hard.
And when you're in a wrong fit environment, it's stressful, you
feel less productive, you feel less competent, you have less
confidence in your work. And all those things from a
metaphor standpoint sort of became really clear in this
metaphor about writing with your dominant or non dominant hand.
When we write with their dominant hand, it's easy, it's
fluid, it's high quality. We don't even have to think
about it right. We're just writing whatever
poetry or great novel or great work that we're we're working
on. When you work with your non
dominant hand, if you ever tried it, it's really hard.
Your quality is terrible, it's stressful, it takes a lot of
effort and concentration and in the end you walk out not feeling
like it's your best work. And so that was sort of a
metaphor that everyone could relate to, and you could have a
real visceral feeling of what it feels like if you're not in a
highly engaged environment that fits you.
I did give it a try to write with a non dominant hand before,
right? It is like what you said, it's
really hard. I mean we can produce the
output. Maybe other people can still
read what you wrote. But yeah, it's like a lot of
effort. We need to focus and
concentrate, right, and try to be conscious with the movement
of our hands. I think similar things when we
work in a company that is a wrong fit for us, right?
We try to adapt. We try our best to work hard.
And I think like what you said in the beginning, right, I
personally also experienced it myself.
It's not about the companies. So I work in big companies,
great companies as well. But sometimes when you just
didn't feel that is the right place for you, I think you will
feel these kind of things as well.
So what do you think are some of the misalignment so to speak
where even though the person works in a great companies but
they still don't feel it's the right fit for them.
Maybe you can share a little bit more what kind of misalignments
that people have normally in their working environment.
Yeah, I'd be happy to. I think it's important for the
listeners, first Henry, to realize that the book is based
on about 100 interviews with talent from all over the world,
from CE O's and founders down to aspiring talent just entering
the workplace. And the one thing that was
really cool for me and holding those interviews was everybody's
had a right fit and a wrong fit experience.
And when they talk about the wrong fit experience, they talk
about feeling like they weren't at home, they couldn't be
themselves. And one of the my favorites is
they talked about this idea of it felt like everyone had the
secret decoder ring of success except for me.
And they would look out in the world and say there's people
that look like me, there's people that work like me,
there's people that have the same experiences, knowledge and
education that I have. And it looks like every day that
this is just easy for them, that success comes to them every time
they pick up a pin or go to a meeting.
And for the person talking, it still felt really hard.
And I think what that tells you is that, you know, it's not as
simple as just having the right set of skills or the right
values that the way we work there's a lot of really
important elements. And if you don't fit, the other
thing that a lot of the folks in wrong fit environments told me
is when they didn't fit, you know what they did, Henry, they
worked harder. They tried to change their ways
of working, they tried to alter who they are.
They effectively tried to work with their non dominant hand and
it just cost them energy, cost them engagement, cost them
confidence and in many cases almost cost them their careers.
And why do you think people? I mean, the first preference for
them is to work harder, right? I think sometimes this is quite
intriguing. So we know that we are not happy
doing that kind of job or being in that environment.
But why people? The first preference is always
to work harder, try to learn more, do more and things like
that. Yeah, I think here it comes down
to a couple things. First is the way our HR systems
are set up. We're sort of made to feel like
we're not performing well. Like we're not doing the job
we're supposed to do. Because you think about your
performance reviews, right? If you're not in a right fit
environment, there's a chance you're getting a three instead
of A5. And so someone's telling you
you're not doing a good enough job when in fact it's not that
you're not doing it, it's that the system, the way the company
works, doesn't make it easy for you.
And so I think the first thing is many of our HR systems make
us feel like it's our fault that were flawed or incapable or not
good enough. And that's just not true.
A number of my interviewers left these wrong fit experiences
where they felt that way. And they've gone on to have
exceptional careers. They've built companies.
They're the CEO, the CHRO, the head of technology for all these
great places. And they look back at those
wrong fit stories and they're like people were telling that I
wasn't good and it wasn't that they weren't good, they just
didn't fit. And so I think that's one issue.
I think the second thing is we all want to succeed.
We all want to be great. We all want to do a good job.
I believe that about most people.
And so when we're not feeling like we're doing our best work,
we tend to just want to try harder, stay longer hours, put
in more effort. And in the end, that just gets
us more stressed, more frustrated, and it also has a
profound impact on our life outside of work.
Yeah. So I think the profound impact,
like you said, outside work, right?
I think that really, really is important for people to realize,
right? So you may be frustrated at work
and you think you can switch off at home, but most of the times,
from my personal experience, you can't, right?
It will just affect you. Sometimes it's about negativity,
sometimes the mood that you bring to other people.
So do realize that And I think what you said just now when you
explain the HR system the way like the performance management
is done, right. So I think people have to
realize sometimes if you didn't perform well in that particular
cycle in that particular company, it doesn't mean that
you are not good, right. So I think that's a key message
that I just want to highlight as well.
So you mentioned about way of working and in your book you
mentioned a lot of times about way of working.
First of all, what is way of working and why is it so
important for people to find the right fit way of working?
Yeah, when you think about it, we assume that when we go to our
job, no matter what company that we work in, it's the same job,
right? Engineer.
One company's the same job as an engineer in another.
But what's really interesting is when you break down how
companies work. When you think about how a
company sets strategy, prioritizes, collaborates,
solves problems, brainstorms, socializes, gives feedback,
develops people, how they gather the relationship with time, how
they think about rest and recovery.
All these things are very different depending on the
company you work in. And companies aren't very good
at defining those. That is, they don't tell people
overtly on their first day. Here's the road map, the
playbook for how our company works going be great.
What they do instead is they kind of let those grow
organically. They just let them sort of be
created over time by leaders who come in and take positions and
do these new things. And so two things happen on one
side. There's not really that recipe
for success anymore. It's more of just a bunch of
different leaders ways of preferring to work.
And the other thing that happens is we actually ask talent to
bump into those. So because we're not really
clear and consistent about how we work in a company, we say,
Henry on your second day, get out there and you'll figure it
out. But The thing is every time I
have to try to figure out how to be great, my creative energy is
going to coordination as opposed to my craft or what I do really
well. So we're bleeding engagement and
creative energy on really great people trying to figure out how
to be really great inside the company.
And so I guess the thesis is if companies were a little bit
clearer about how they worked, how they did all those things I
talked about and they were consistent in asking any leader
that joins the company to learn how work gets done here.
And then if they told talent on their first day how to get it
done, imagine how much faster you are to productivity and how
much a better chance you have of being successful.
Right. So I think I read some parts of
your book where you mentioned when the company was small,
maybe they did define like what kind of culture, what kind of
values they want. But as the company grows and
they hire more outsiders, right, the leaders, the managers, they
all bring their own way of working, right?
But you as a company don't actually ask them to change the
way of working so that it follows what the company values.
So I think that's also a great thing as well for leaders here
to understand that you cannot just let the culture of the
values grow organically because there's so many people.
And it can bring you to either positive for sure, there's a
chance for that, but mostly negative, right, because there's
just too many perspectives at one time.
First of all, thank you for reading it.
I mean, I couldn't have done a better job of talking about that
if I tried. But I do want to underline a
point that you made in there, which is every company has a
secret sauce. It has a a unique way that it
works. Think of it as a playbook or as
an operating model for success and it usually originates way
back in the founding. And then as we continue to do
work, because we're in close proximity to each other, we
model the way we want other people to work.
So they see it, they pick it up, they work like we work.
But then what tends to happen is imagine if you're let's say 100
person organization and you add 200 people to your company.
Those 200 people are coming from somewhere else that has a
different way of working that models different things.
So they're all bring a backpack full of ways that work gets done
from principals work is based on to practices and tools that we
use to even the platforms that we have.
And so what's really interesting about this is because we haven't
really done our due diligence on keeping a hold of our secret way
of doing, working our, you know, our secret sauce.
We end up creating 3 versions of the company.
The first version of the company is the one that recruiters give
us in hiring. It's sort of this aspirational
version of the company, either who it was when it was young or
what we wish it was every day. And we're going to present this
to you like the greatest brand campaign ever.
And so I think, wow, what a great place to work.
I can't wait to join. I'm meeting my leaders on their
best day. I'm getting introduced to people
who have all this energy and excitement because they want to
impress me. They want me to come join,
right. And then you get there the first
day and you get sort of the best version of the real company.
They put the best leaders into your orientation program.
They show you the products, they tell you all these great
customer stories. They introduce you to the work
platforms that actually work and they have.
You sort of use those things like e-mail or our insurance
systems when you pick your insurance.
And then the last version of the company is the company you work
in every day. And often that's where we
actually run into the reality of what it's going to feel like any
given Tuesday. And think about it, if we start
here with this aspirational version and by the time we're in
our second week, we're working basically an entirely different
company. And we just eroded the
engagement and excitement that a new joiner has.
And that's why we're seeing statistics like 30% of new
joiners are leaving their companies within the first three
months, citing a lack of development and unclear
expectations. We're also seeing that about 50
some percent of employees, if they do stay six months, they
continue to look for a job. That means that they're not
actually committed. And in the other staff that
stays with me is from MIT, which they did a big sort of research
project looking at the espouse values of the company, what the
company says they are versus how it feels to work in the company
based on review sites like in the Comparably and Glass door.
And you know what they found. 0 correlation between the espouse
values and the values that are actually in the company
day-to-day. And in some places, Henry,
there's a negative correlation, which means they'll stand up and
say innovation matters to us. And in fact, the employees are
saying this isn't an innovative company at all.
So you think about that. Think about what that does to
engagement and commitment and my ability to sort of feel like I
can be a success. You started to unpack so many
things I want to cover, but let's start one by one, right.
So I think I left. And when you explained that and
when I read parts of your book about this as well, right, there
are three versions of the company, right.
So when we recruit, we always picture the best or sometimes
even too much aspirational, right?
So we want to be X. We are not there, but we aspire
to be that kind of a company, right.
I think that is the first kind of like false version, because
talents will. Tend to think that is true.
And also the glass door thing, the review websites.
I know that I read from some sources that sometimes the
company actually deleted negative comments, asked
employees to write good comments.
So all these are like good kind of projections so that talents
want to work with them. So I think it goes back to what
you mentioned as a culture deck kind of a trend it started by
the startups. So why do you think this kind of
culture deck, aspirational kind of values of a company are
dangerous? So maybe if you can elaborate a
little bit more on that. Well, here's the things I talked
about some of these trends, things like the rise of the
culture deck, right, which you know Netflix was the first, but
many of the tech based companies have used them where they sort
of show. I think what they were meaning
to do, hoping to do is to say, hey, we run our company
differently eventually. What that turned into though was
instead of being honest and authentic about here's how the
company runs today and so come here if you work this way and
here's where we're trying to get.
Instead they just started presenting where we're trying to
get often. And so the culture deck, which
was meant to teach people the secret sauce turned into really
brand marketing campaigns. When you think about, I mean go
to any career site, almost of any company out there and it's
filled with poetry and inspiring languages and great leaders,
stories and happy employees. And I think for a lot of folks
that's true. But in all the companies I've
been in, about 60% and Gallup would say it's probably 32% on
average. But often the brands I've been
about 60% of people are really happy they're content and then
40% are struggling, they're riding with their non dominant
hand. And although the brand marketing
and recruiting isn't the only problem, it's a big one, right,
because it's our first and only set of information allows us to
make a good decision. And so I think the culture that
started this idea of just turning companies into brand
campaigns and so whoever can look the coolest is bound to get
the best employees. Yeah.
I think that's the current trend in the hiring world, I would
say. Which leads to what you said in
the earlier conversation that you mentioned, like some
percentage of these new joiners, right after six months they are
still looking for other jobs, right?
They are still browsing. So you call this infinite
browsing, the lack of commitment, right?
So this is a new trend for me, a new insight.
So maybe if you can explain the danger of this infinite browsing
for employees, why do you think they are still looking for new
jobs even though they have been there for like 6 months?
Well, Henry have to start by giving credit for the term
infinite browsing from a book that I think everyone should
read called Dedicated. It's by an author named Pete
Davis and he's talking about this crisis of commitment, not
just in jobs but all over the world.
You know, whether you look at divorce rates for marriage, how
often people leave their hometowns to the groups we join
and leave to the companies. And his thesis is really one
that, you know, really is a a trend that's important to me,
which is because of things like social media, because of
marketing campaigns by companies, no one really has a
clear version of the truth. All of a sudden we have a
million stories of where the grass is greener.
You pick up your phone, you get on TikTok or Facebook,
somebody's doing something really cool and you think, God,
I want to do that. And so we end up chasing this
idea of FOMO or the fear of missing out.
And so in almost every pursuit, we're kind of keeping 1 foot in
and 1 foot out. Maybe there's something better,
maybe there's a better job, a better partner, a better best
friend, a better city to live in.
And so we're not committing fully.
And so, you know, I look at that trend, I think, man, if
companies could be a little bit more authentic and talent could
be a little bit clearer about what they want, not what
everyone else is up to, but what they want, maybe we could
rebuild commitment. And with it, I think you just
see an upswing in productivity, morale, engagement, innovation,
all those things. So I think this kind of
distraction, right, social media marketing campaign.
So we all are aware about that danger and it also seeps to the
employment world as well, right? So even when you have started a
new job, sometimes you think, oh, maybe this is not the right
one. There's another better job out
there and you keep looking, right?
That's so that kind of like brings you to a lack of
commitment. It's a good segue for us to talk
about individuals, right. So if we now know that there's a
right fit company for all of us, how shall we prepare ourselves
so that we are not being tricked by the marketing campaign or the
culture deck, right. So how can individuals start
looking for the right fit company?
You know, throughout the interviews, a lot of the book is
based on the insights of talent, just like you and me who've gone
through this and have some words of wisdom for us.
And one of the things that came up often, I always ask the
interviewees, when did you know it was a wrong fit?
When did you know you were going to a company that didn't work
the way you worked? And a lot of you know, they said
it was really interesting here. They said, if I'm being totally
honest, I knew it in the interview.
I just chose not to pay attention to it.
I chose not to pay attention to information that was going to
keep me from taking this job at this cool brand, at this great
company for better pay, a bigger title, all those things that we
worry about. And so I think the first thing I
would tell talent to do is not to start a job search by looking
for jobs, To really start a job search by understanding at a
deeper level who you are, what you value, how you like to work,
what type of career you're building, what you're solving
for for the next 10 years, where you want your life to be.
And most important, like what are you solving for right now.
And in all the interviews, the one consistent piece of feedback
to anyone looking for a job is we got to do more self
reflection, know ourselves and what we're looking for and then
start doing the job search. And if we don't do that piece of
work first, we just get caught in a manipulated environment
that you're not getting version of the truth.
So it's harder to make a good decision.
So yeah, I think this part of the book I find is like the
socalled the best part of your book, right.
So you invite people to actually do self reflection.
So you're saying that's not start finding the job by looking
for the job or the role that you want, right?
Let's start looking internally inside, right.
So what are your values? What kind of people you want to
work, What are you solving for, right?
And sometimes it's also different for different stages
of life. So I think the first key thing
is about self reflection. So maybe, if you don't mind,
let's go through, I know you have maybe eight or nine kind of
self reflection questions. Maybe if you can pick some
favorites. What are some of these questions
that people should ponder about before they look for a new job?
The first thing I'd say here, you kind of brought it up is the
cool thing about these excursions is you should do them
every year, right? You should do them every time
you transition a job. You should do it every time you
get a new leader or your company goes through transformation.
Because nothing's static. Our companies aren't static.
The ways of working aren't static, and who we are isn't
static. So they're built in a way that
says, hey, it'd be really smart to do them once a year, if not
more. A few of my favorites.
So the first one is one of the ones I think about a lot
personally, which is this excursion that helps you get
clear about what you value in big decisions.
And so often when you ask someone what they value, they
give you the greatest hits. Oh, I value innovation, I value
relationships, I value curiosity.
And those are probably true. But the real difference in this
excursion is I have you think about the big decisions in life
1st, and then I ask you in those decisions, what were the factors
that weighed most heavily on you?
And then I have people look at a list of values and have them
sort of do a value ladder, which is a for sort of which values
matter. And the reason I find this
exercise compelling is I would love to think about myself as a
risk taker. I would love to think of myself
as someone who values creativity and innovation.
But the truth is, when I look at the big decisions I make in
life, Henry, I value financial security above all else, right?
And I comes from, I grew up in a really unstable environment as a
kid. My dad wasn't good with money,
didn't always kind of do the best by the family.
So we kind of had this up and down sort of childhood.
And I think growing up that way has me hold this value of
financial security in every big decision I make.
And I think being honest about that helps me think about the
jobs and the places I join. I'm probably not the startup
guy, too much risk and so that's probably why I worked for a lot
of these big companies overtime. So that's one that I really
like. Another one that I'm really
compelled by is an excursion that has you sort of determine
what your career is about. Is your career about company?
That is. Do I love this brand and this
product so much that I can't imagine working anywhere else?
Are you of craft, which is I have this deep expertise or
knowledge that I want to be the best in the world at?
Or are you of cause where I have a big injustice or problem in
the world that I just have to solve?
And I think what's been really compelling about this excursion
is, depending on your answer, you create an entirely different
career with entirely different choices.
And I don't know that talent really recognizes those
trade-offs. I'll give you an example, and
then we can move on. I'm a craft person, right?
I've been about organizational psychology and culture and
leadership, and it's the only thing I care about.
It's everything. I'm obsessed by it.
If I stayed at one company my whole career, I could never be
best in class. Because in order to be great in
culture, you have to see a lot of different cultures.
And so that means that no matter how much I love the companies I
was at, I couldn't stay because there's no way I could gain the
sort of depth of knowledge in that area if I did.
And so I had to make some sacrifices and choices around
what my career is going to look. Like, yeah, so I think company,
craft and cost is also one of my favorite excursion, right?
So I think that's really, really great that you brought it up so
that people can ponder, right? So when you look for a job, do
you want to be associated with a good company, right?
And hence you probably stay longer there or you want to
improve your craft or what? Maybe Daniel Pink says mustry or
do you want to work on a cause, right?
Maybe it could be poverty, sustainability or those kind of
things, right. So I think that's really a good
question. And I also love the first thing,
the first excursion that you mentioned right is about knowing
yourself in big decisions because sometimes we think we
are you know this kind of characteristic, but looking back
on all the big decisions that we made, we actually think
differently, right. So our thoughts and our actions
are totally different. So I think that's a really good
insights as well for people look for your big decisions.
I think this. Excursions to me is one of the
great things that people can start doing maybe in their
current job as well, right? Assess where you are at the
moment, are you in the right fit and also for the next job.
So I think this is really, really key do yourself
reflection. So maybe let's move on to the
next thing that I want to discuss.
Right, You mentioned that. When you interviewed all these
people, they kind of like realized that they may go into a
wrong fit company in the interview itself, right?
So maybe if you can maybe give some advice, the gotchas that
you think people should avoid when they experience this in the
interview so that they don't pick the wrong choice.
And sometimes it's also about, you know, job description,
career page and all those kinds of brand of marketing as well,
right? That may lead us to think that
this is still the right company for me.
So maybe if you can explain that, that would be great, yes.
And here I'll start with just the experience of interviewing,
right? And if you stand back from the
process of interviewing for a job, there's some real
interesting elements to it, right?
The first one is that as a talent, I show up as the
absolute best version of myself. I've studied the company, I've
got all the answers to the interview questions.
I'm dressed the best you'll ever see me dressed in my life.
And the same's true for the company.
The company's showing up on their best day in their best
moment. And The thing is, when we all
show up on our best behavior, it's not reality.
And I always think about that idea of, hey, if you've ever
dated, you know this feeling, first dates tend to go really
well, but then almost every relationship, by the second or
third or fourth date, you can't stand the person.
And the same's true for interviewing.
So we act like it's a first date when we're actually making a
commitment that could last a lifetime.
It's like the second biggest commitment we'll make behind
marriage. I think I saw a stat, and it's
in the book, that we'll spend 13.5 full years every moment,
every second, every day of our adult lives at work.
It's second only to sleeping. And yet we make the choice on a
really incomplete set of data with only a few touch points
when people are on their best behavior.
Like, how can you ever make a great decision?
And then the other interesting, Henry, is that there's some
parts of our brain that get in our way, right.
One of them is sort of the biases that we create.
And there's a great bias we talked about earlier called
confirmation bias. And confirmation bias is sort of
this sense of when we're motivated to make a certain
decision like wanting to join a company, we will pay more
attention to confirming information and less or almost
no attention to disconfirming information.
And so I guess my insight to anyone who's interviewing is,
first, do the excursions, know yourself really well.
Secondly is be really careful of the source of the information
and where you're getting it right.
So we often will hear from recruiters, we'll talk to our
hiring manager, we'll go through an interviewing process.
We might be on site for a short amount of time.
All those are company produced assets.
And so make sure you're balancing what you're picking up
in the interview process with external and objective sources
of information. Great.
One is the employee review sites, right?
All those places where employees go and they give reviews of
companies, they're often disgruntled employees, but
there's some patterns and themes that you can see clearly there
or at least questions you can ask.
I think secondly is annual reports, ESG reports videos.
Most leaders in most companies do videos.
And so you can see them interacting, get a sense on who
they are and how they show up. And then I think third is really
make sure that you're using your network.
One of my favorite sources of information in an interview
process is to find people on LinkedIn that work for the
company. I'm interviewing out for a long
time, but recently left. And I reach out to them and say,
hey, I want to hear about your experience and I want to hear
why you left. And most people that have left
the company are willing to talk and share the honest feeling
that you're going to have when you work there.
So those are a few pieces of advice in the book.
There's a ton more. Yeah, I love all your advices,
right? Sometimes we didn't exercise all
these options even though we do have it.
Like for example in your LinkedIn network, find people
who have worked in that company, that's the first thing.
Or people who have worked there and left the company.
So I think those are really great factual information I
would say. And the other thing that you
mentioned, which I find people sometimes not doing in the
interview itself, you can ask critical questions, right?
Critical questions like how are the best performers in the
company doing right? What kind of values?
How do you make big decisions in the company and things like
that? So I think you can also ask that
during the interview, not just like ask shallow questions like
what are the technology or what kind of things that people are
drawn into day-to-day and things like that.
So I think thanks for all these insights.
So when we do an interview, let's put up more effort so that
we don't. Choose the wrong fit company
right? So the other section of your
book is You mentioned this concept of buffers.
I don't know much what buffer means, but if you can elaborate
a little bit more. Why do you think buffers is also
important for people to choose the right fit company?
Yeah. It starts here, Henry, is that
most companies are growing and changing and shifting and moving
and altering the way they work and what they value.
And so with that, I think one of the insights from the interview
interviewees is that right fit is pretty tenuous.
That means that if you have it, you're really lucky and there's
a chance that it might go away. You get a new leader, you change
jobs, you go through a big transformation as the company.
And so the whole chapter on buffers was really meant to say,
hey, if you're in a right fit experience, there's things you
can do to strengthen and guarantee that that right fit
stays. If you're in a wrong fit or a
hard fit experiences, these buffers can make it feel easier,
make it better, and give you a fighting chance to sort of turn
it into right fit. Because the last thing I want
for people to do is to say, Oh my God, I don't fit.
I should just leave and it's like maybe, but that's not the
only answer. And so these buffers really give
people a set of tools and tricks and tips on how to create a
stronger relationship with the company.
And there's two types, right? There's the inspirational
buffers, these things that connect us to meaning and
purpose and impact, and those things that are sort of higher
level. And then there's a set of
relational buffers. So the people we surround
ourselves with make a difference in how sort of connected and
committed we are to the companies we're part of.
And so there's a set of buffers that are about the relationships
we have and how we think about them that are helpful to talent
to keep right fit or to find it if you don't have it.
Yeah. Thanks for elaborating.
These two types of buffers, the inspirational buffers, things
like meaningful work, growth opportunities.
Or maybe the cost that the company is fighting for, right,
that those kind of things can also help.
Even though you think that the way of working probably is a bit
frustrating, but you have this kind of inspirational buffers to
actually motivate you. The other aspect is the
relational buffer, right? So this is another question
related to relational buffer. You mentioned that the impact of
a manager is actually very crucial for any kind of company
to figure out that that is the right fit company for them,
right? Also, we know the saying that
people don't quit their jobs, they quit their managers, right?
So manager is really, really important.
So tell us a little bit more about the role of the leader of
manager in the company. Yeah.
So I'll say a couple things to start, Henry is in this sort of
age of horizontal working or more agile ways of working, I
actually think the concept of a manager mattering is shifting
slightly, right? So Gallup will tell you 70% of
your engagement is dictated by your direct manager.
And when I look at the way organizations are set up today,
I actually think that management is more of a collective act and
we probably have two or three managers at any given time.
They're impacting our engagement.
And so thinking about not just the person you report to, but
the people that you're doing work for and who they are and
what they value and how they come to work.
And you know, I think that the second part of that is that,
hey, we need to start seeing our managers as team leaders.
And we also have to realize that as talent, you make your manager
right. The thing that I always hear
people say is I don't have a good manager.
So I left them like, hey, I don't think you know this, but
you as a team you can shape your manager.
Like one of the greatest tools we have is positive
reinforcement. BF Skinner in my area of
psychology sort of started this work of positive reinforcement.
And one of the insights I would give any talent to say, hey, if
you want a great manager, make them great.
And how do you do that? You do that by first knowing
what you need out of your manager in order for you to be
at your best. So who is your ideal leader?
What do they value? How do they come to work?
How do they support you as an employee?
And then be really clear with your manager about what you
need. Most managers want to be great,
they just don't know how. And so if you tell them this is
what I need from you, many are going to come towards it.
The other thing you can do is when you see your manager do
something that is sort of on your list of things that you
need, give them feedback. Not feedback of hey Bosh did a
good job, give them feedback about the thing that they did.
Because the truth is, the higher you go in a company, the less
feedback you get. It's odd, but it's true.
And so anytime someone's willing to say hey in this meeting when
you open up the meeting and you asked everyone what was the best
part of their weekend. That really mattered to me
because it made me feel valued 9 times out of 10.
You know what's gonna happen at the next meeting?
Manager's gonna do that again. And so I think the most
important thing about a manager is, yes, they will dictate your
engagement, but you have the ability to shape them and so you
should try to do that. Yeah, this is another great
insights that I think people should learn, right?
So don't just get resigned to what the type of manager you
have, right? You can also make your manager
like you said, right? So sometimes positive
reinforcements tell them that they are doing the things that
you like and also if there are any kind of feedback, right,
please do give them. So I also realize as you rise
through the ranks, right, people tend to probably hesitate when
they want to give critical feedback because of via, you
know, hierarchies and performance management and
things like that. So I think giving critical
feedback is also useful and many leaders actually are looking
forward for that, right, because there's no better way of
learning how to improve rather than the people that you're
working with. So I think that's really great
insights. So thank you for mentioning that
we can also make an impact to our managers.
So we've been talking a lot from the employee perspective, right.
So the people who work, how about the company's side, right.
So what are the responsibilities so that they can create the
better right fit culture for talents to come in to them?
I'd say first and foremost, Henry, you know, companies need
to sort of take three steps back, open their eyes really
wide and think harder about how we work when we're at our best,
right. And there's sort of three big
categories of work that I believe the company needs to get
really clear and authentic about.
First, is the work principles, right?
So these are ground rules or norms that we use to define how
work gets done. So I'll give you one that's, you
know, sort of pithy, but when you think about selling an idea.
Some people will say, hey, you know, we work in full sentences,
not in poetry. That's a work principle.
That's saying, hey, when you make a pitch you need to write
it out. And so that's a principle.
And then a work practices. What are the tools and models
and assets we use in technical teams?
You use Agile and scrums. In other places we use certain
brainstorming techniques or certain ways to prioritize and
set strategy and and I think we need to be really clear about
what tools we use in our company.
And then last but not least is the work platforms, what are the
technology we're going to use to do work together.
And a couple of just anecdotes I'll share.
Henry the First was from an interviewee who said, hey, I
used to work at a company that was unbelievably gifted at being
clear and consistent and how work got done.
That, she said. The greatest part about working
there is I didn't have to worry about how to create a deck or
presentation. They gave you the format.
I just had to worry about getting my best content in there
so I could get folks to see the opportunity I was excited about.
And she's like the coolest part of that is I didn't have to put
creative energy into building a deck.
I could put all my creative energy into my craft.
Into what I did really well and show how I could help the
consumer. And that's just one small
example, right, but a really powerful one.
A second one is I was at a company in my career that we did
an audit of all the technology and learning just in learning
development, not all the technology we used.
And we had like 21 Lms's and like 90 different API's around
that technology. And it was because every leader
that came in had their favorite LMS, they had their favorite
project management technology, they had their favorite way to
communicate, whether it's SLAP or base camp, whatever it is,
and the company just let them all come in.
And so the reason I bring that up, Henry, is because God, are
the days where we work in verticals, right?
Everything is done on the horizontal.
Work is really connected. And if we're all working from
different project management software, think about how hard
it is to manage projects. Because every time I'm working
with a different leader, I got to put it on a different
platform, I got to do it in a different way.
And you just end up eating all your productivity and creative
energy on the coordination of work.
Thanks for sharing these anecdotes.
I think those are really, really great to hear, right.
So especially what you mentioned the lady right sharing about you
know I just need to figure out the best content that I can do.
So I think work principles, practices and also the
platforms. So when I read that chapter, I
think maybe companies should start putting those in their job
description or career page so that people get more insights on
what kind of way of working that they are getting into if they
join the company, right. So most of the job description
is all about the roles, the skills, right.
A little bit of values maybe, right.
But some are aspirational as well.
They don't tell you the exact way of working that the company
is doing. So I think really thank you for
sharing all of that. So as we reached the end of our
conversation, Dr. Andre, I really love this conversation.
By the way, I have one last question that I would like to
ask you, which I asked to all of my guests which I call the three
technical leadership ISM. You can think of it just like
advice that you want to give to the listeners here.
So maybe if you can share your version of three technical
leadership wisdom, it's a great question.
So. You know, I'll start kind of
small and then sort of get bigger as we go.
I think the first lesson I would share is that culture is simply
the aggregation of all of our collective behaviors.
If you want to change culture, change how you show up every
day. It's really that simple.
And if you get 5 buddies to do it?
You can change a team. If you get 100 people to do it,
you can change the department, you get 1000 people to do it,
you can change a company. And so I think, just realize
that culture isn't set on high, it's not written down and then
magically happens. It's just how we decide to show
up every day. I think the second thing I'd say
is that, you know, the second piece of feedback is life short.
It's impossibly short and we're going to spend 13.5 years of our
adult life at work. Do your best to get to a place
where you can do your best work. It'll not only serve you
becoming better at your craft and having a better career, but
you'll have a better life. And I would tell you kind of the
third piece of advice is when you're struggling, don't work
harder. Because the only place you're
pulling from is you're pulling from your life outside of work.
And the best thing the best leaders do is.
They remember 1 fundamental truth is that my first
responsibility is to make life outside of work magic.
Make it great. Because if life outside of work
is great, you know what happens to my job?
It becomes a smaller part of my identity and B there's a
exponentially better chance that I'm happy there.
And so those would be the three piece of advice I'd share
tonight well. Really lovely.
All of them. So I I do love the last one as
well. We talked about it as well.
So if you feel that you're struggling, right, don't work
harder, maybe you do more self reflection, maybe you put more
investment into other aspects of your life outside of work,
right. So working harder is never the
solution, right. So I think thanks for sharing
that. Really beautiful.
So Dr. Andre, people love this conversation.
They would want to continue this or maybe ask you questions.
Is there a place where they can find you online?
They sure can. They can finally get LinkedIn.
So I'm I'm easy to spot there. My handle on the end of my
LinkedIn is Doc Martin PDX. And the other way you can find
me is through websites. So my websites
www.wrongfitrightfit.com and there you can find my e-mail,
you can find my LinkedIn profile.
You can even sign up for the newsletter goes out about once
or twice a month and then soon we're going to have some text
based courses up there that you can take to kind of learn about
these concepts and. A little bit more deeply.
So come see me there. And I'm always looking for
people to share their stories of right and wrong fit, to tell me
about their experiences, because I just think the more we talk
about them, the better they're going to get.
Awesome. So I'll make sure to share that
in the show notes. So Dr. Andre, really pleasure to
talk to you today. So really great book.
So I encourage people to also at least check out the excursions.
To me those are the gist of the books that people should do, at
least to figure out what kind of right fit job that is out there
for everyone. So thank you again Doctor Andre.
Appreciate you, Henry, and appreciate.
You creating a space for myself and others to come have this
kind of conversation. It's super important right now.
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