What's Most Important When Hiring: Performance or Culture?
Know matter how well they perform, don’t tolerate brilliant jerks at work.
What if the person ends up being a brilliant jerk? I got pulled into a debate on LinkedIn recently: If forced to choose just one; What’s most important: Hiring for performance or hiring for culture?
The discussion was split.
Most of us have, at some point, worked on a team with someone who did a great job and delivered results but didn’t collaborate effectively with others. By brilliant, I mean the person is exceptionally competent and driven and being a jerk, they lack empathy and humility or the desire to learn either of the two.
A brilliant jerk does a wonderful job delivering competent results, but can’t get along with others. They’re out of tune with understanding how their words and actions affect others or what author and work genius Kim Scott says acts with obnoxious aggression. This is why hiring for culture first is critical. When we don’t, we end up with brilliant jerks who:
Reduce the leaders’ credibility. By allowing the jerk to remain on the team, the leader and the team knows the behavior is, at best, annoying. As a result, the leader loses the team’s trust.
Morale is lowered. No one likes working with the jerk. When the leader tolerates the jerk it’s a sign of insecurity. Teams don’t want to follow an insecure leader. It sounds harsh but those of us who don’t make the right decision for the right reason like severing ties with a brilliant jerk get that poor reputation. Without a confident leader who puts the team first, the team’s morale is weakened.
Productivity erodes. People always talk. They waste time talking about the jerk. Telling themselves stories of why the jerk behaves the way they do. They’ll think about what the leader should have done or could do. Time and energy spent talking and thinking about people who create roadblocks to cohesion lead to frustration. Frustration is a productivity killer.
One of the secrets of Netflix's amazing success over the years.
Still we tolerate them all the time. Some leaders cling to them because they’re afraid to lose the numbers. As the Table Group’s leader, Patrick Lencioni, says, “Organizations can always get smarter.” This means we can always get better at performance. Aside from firing, there’s two key ways to deal with and prevent brilliant jerks:
Call out unproductive behavior in the moment: If we already have a brilliant jerk in the workplace, call out the behavior as soon as it happens. We have to be specific about the brilliant jerk’s action, specific on how it made us feel, and what we feel will happen if it continues. For example we might say, “When I gave my presentation on Tuesday and you laughed at the marketing materials, it made me feel humiliated and I feel that if it happens again, my confidence in working with you will erode and we won’t be a productive team." If we refuse to allow the jerk to make excuses and stick to calling out specific unproductive behavior, they will either take accountability for their actions or the leader of the team will have to make a choice between the team and the jerk.
Communicate Culture and Values: On my team, we talk about our culture and our values constantly. I’m confident that if you woke one of them up out of a sound sleep, they could tell you our values. What we say and what we actually show and the difference between the two matter. An organization’s culture is all the spoken and unspoken rules of behavior and the size of the gap between the two shows us the difference between a healthy or unhealthy culture. In other words, we need to communicate with our words and actions of what is expected of each of us on a team.
When we surround ourselves with stunning colleagues whose values match our own and the chemistry aligns with our team’s values and behaviors, not only are we set us up for success, but it makes the journey much more enjoyable and productive.
