How to Hire for Cultural Fit and Avoid Costly Mistakes

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by Bruce Eckfeldt

 

A bad cultural fit can erode trust, create friction, and even drive away top talent.

Having founded, scaled, and successfully exited a high-growth company, I’ve seen firsthand how hiring the right people can make or break an organization. As an Inc. 500 CEO-turned-business coach, I’ve helped countless leaders refine their hiring strategies to ensure strong individual performance and a thriving company culture.

While technical skills and experience are essential, hiring employees who align with your company’s values and mission is the key to long-term success. A bad cultural fit can erode trust, create friction, and even drive away top talent. However, with the right approach, you can build a team that performs and strengthens your organization from the inside out. Here’s how to do it.

1. Define and validate your company culture

Before assessing cultural fit, you need to be crystal clear on what your culture is. Many companies have aspirational values posted on their walls but fail to live them daily. To make culture a hiring tool, ensure your core values are more than just words—they should be consistently modeled and reinforced behaviors within your organization. Validate them by talking to employees, observing workplace interactions, and ensuring they align with business decisions. Culture isn’t what you wish it to be—it’s what happens when no one is watching.

2. Weave your values into job postings

Your hiring process should filter in candidates who align with your values and filter out those who don’t. Embedding your company’s culture into the job description is a great way to do this. Instead of using generic job postings, incorporate your values into how you describe the role and the work environment. Use language that reflects how your company operates, and be upfront about the expectations regarding collaboration, decision-making, and accountability. This will naturally attract candidates who resonate with your culture and deter those who don’t. Continue reading →

8 Ways Leaders with Emotional Intelligence Master Their Emotions

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Story by Marcel Schwantes

Leaders with high emotional intelligence are known to manage their emotions quite well. Start with any of these strategies.

Ever had a moment where your emotions nearly got the best of you? Maybe it came right before a big meeting, during a tough conversation, or when a teammate dropped the ball again?

Most of us have. And in leadership, those moments matter. They shape how people see us, how decisions get made, and how trust is built (or broken).

Managing your emotions doesn’t mean shutting them off. It means learning how to recognize what you’re feeling, pause before reacting, and choose a response that reflects your values—not just your stress.

Here are eight practical strategies to help you manage emotions with more clarity and confidence, even on the hard days.

1. Start with Self-Awareness

Managing your emotions begins with understanding them. That means noticing when you’re feeling irritated, anxious, disappointed, or overwhelmed—before those feelings drive your actions.

For example, if you’re leading a meeting and someone challenges your idea, you might feel defensive. Instead of snapping back, pause and ask yourself: What exactly am I feeling? And why?

Leaders who regularly check in with themselves—whether through journaling, quiet reflection, or even voice memos—begin to spot emotional patterns. Over time, this habit builds emotional intelligence and helps you recognize triggers before they turn into reactions. Continue reading →

Navigating the Jump from Manager to Executive

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by Melody Wilding

 

 

Moving from frontline management to becoming a leader of leaders is a huge professional milestone. The role often comes with broader scope, bigger expectations, and influence to shape strategy, culture, and the organization’s performance at the highest levels. Reaching this point can feel thrilling, even validating. After years of proving yourself, you’ve earned a seat at the table. Your input carries more weight. You’re probably excited about setting direction and solving more important problems. 

But here’s where things get tricky. While a senior role comes with nice rewards, the transition itself can be disorienting. Leading leaders isn’t “more of the same” just with bigger teams and budgets. In reality, you have to fundamentally shift how you think about your role, how you spend your time, and how you measure success. 

Claudia, an operations executive, discovered this the hard way. She had built her reputation on solving any problem, from late shipments and client complaints to staffing shortages. When she was promoted to oversee four regional managers, Claudia saw it as an extension of her previous role. She jumped in to offer guidance, sat in on team meetings, and weighed in on almost every decision, not realizing she was crowding out her managers in the process. They seemed frustrated, not grateful—and Claudia’s boss questioned why she was still in the weeds. She found herself working longer hours but feeling less effective than ever before. 

This was a wake-up call for Claudia. What had made her successful at the frontline level—behaviors like being hands-on and swooping in with solutions—was now holding her back. She was competent and capable, but she hadn’t updated her professional identity to match her new operating altitude.

Maybe you also find yourself in the middle of transitioning to leading leaders and trying to find your footing. If so, then like Claudia, you might be realizing that it requires rewiring beliefs you have about what makes you valuable and effective. Here are the three key shifts you need to make.   Continue reading →

How to Get Workplace Kindness Right

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by Nadav Klein , Eliot Gattegno , Athena; and Rachel Eva Lim ,

Kindness could be more than about doing nice things for others or making people happy.

Gone are the days when ruthlessness was synonymous with doing business. Today, kindness is extolled by many as an important virtue to bring into the workplace. Researchers have highlighted its potential to boost employee well-being in hybrid work settings and contribute to positive business outcomes, while numerous companies have expressed a commitment to kindness values and pledges. 

Defined simply as doing nice things for others, kindness is universally appreciated. However, without proper qualification, the recommendation to be kind is like the recommendation to exercise: Great in principle, but impractical without knowing the scope and dosage. How kind should one be at work? How often? Should we be kind to others to the point of self-immolation, or is it enough to be a little kind to reap the benefits of kindness for ourselves and others?

Broadening the definition

In an earlier article, I (Nadav Klein) discussed research which found that the reputational and social benefits of kindness top out at a certain point. This is usually the point at which actions and behaviours meet the acceptable norms in the workplace. Be a decent human being, and you have reached the optimal point at which the benefits of showing kindness exceed the personal costs. Go a bit over, and the equation flips. It’s not that people don’t appreciate “extreme” kindness – it’s just that they really appreciate others “just” being decent. All costs and benefits considered, it does no additional good to ask people to maximise kindness as currently defined.

If this sort of kindness has its limits, are there other potentially more beneficial ways that we can practise kindness at work? We (Klein and Eliot Gattegno) suggest that the answer lies in expanding the definition of the term to include leadership actions that benefit people in both the short and long run, which we outline below. Once this new definition is set, new opportunities to practice kindness arise.

Continue reading →

How to balance your priorities at work

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by Shanna A. Hocking

One of the most challenging parts of adjusting from being an individual contributor to becoming a leader is learning how to balance your team’s priorities and needs with your own projects and work.

When I first made this transition many years ago, I believed that always being available for my team was the best way to show team members I valued them. But I found myself getting further behind on my own work. So I would spend evenings at home catching up on my projects. I ended up feeling burned out and pulled in many directions. As I grappled with my own uncertainties about how to “do it all,” I also worried that senior management would determine I wasn’t ready to be a leader after all.

Though many managers feel uncertain about how to simultaneously support their team’s priorities and complete their own work, it’s not something that’s talked about openly. I often remind the senior leaders I coach that the purpose of a team is to achieve more than any one individual can, and that leaders should give themselves the same compassion they offer to their team members.

Learning how to balance your team’s priorities and your own sets you and the team up for success. Here’s what I recommend to effectively manage both aspects of your role:

Communicate consistently with your team

Start by developing a comprehensive understanding of what your team is working on and what they need from you. You can do this through one-on-one meetings with individual team members and collectively through team and project meetings.

Help your team thrive by communicating your vision, expectations, and ongoing support for them. They’ll feel better informed and more clear about how to do their best work, which will help them manage their projects and deadlines. Productive conversations can also help ensure that everyone is aligned toward the organization’s top priorities.

You may find that you need to support your team in how they’re balancing their own workloads. Prioritizing consistent, clear communication with your team may take more effort in the short term, which can be challenging when you’re already feeling overwhelmed. But it will ultimately be beneficial in the long term. And you can use these open lines of communication to share insights into your own work and projects to foster transparency and trust. Continue reading →