Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever

Transcript

Rachel Salaman: Hello, I’m Rachel Salaman. When you feel like you’re thriving at work, like you’re motivated and creative and just generally happy, can you put your finger on why? Well, my guest today, organizational psychologist André Martin PhD, thinks it comes down to fit.

In his new book, “Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever,” he explains what fit is and offers lots of useful exercises and assessments to help individuals find a workplace or role that fits them, while helping organizations find fitting candidates for the job. André joins me now from Portland, Oregon. Hello, André.

André Martin: Hello, Rachel. How are you doing?

Rachel Salaman: Yes, very well, thank you. So, let’s be clear right at the start: What’s the difference between "fit" and "fitting in"?

André Martin: In the book, I define "fit" as a deep and authentic connection to how a company works day to day. And a metaphor we use in the book is that work feels easy. It’s the equivalent of writing with your dominant hand; it’s high quality, it takes little effort or thought, you feel confident and competent when you’re doing it.

"Fitting in" is when you change the way you do work or the way you show up at work in an effort to be successful, be seen, or belong. Now, marginalized groups have faced the pressure of fitting in for decades and many smarter people than me are trying to help organizations do much better in this regard through the efforts of diversity, equity and inclusion.

This book tackles "fit" and "fitting in" in a nuanced and narrow way, really around how we like to work day to day, all those things around collaboration, how we solve problems, prioritize, how we see time. And, if we get those right, if we can get "fit" there, we tend to write with our dominant hand as opposed to trying to write with our non-dominant hand, which, if you’ve ever done it, it’s really hard, it’s really low quality, it’s frustrating, and you end up, over time, feeling less competent at your craft.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, that’s an excellent metaphor. You say in your book that "fit" matters now more than ever. What changes have you seen in the workplace that led you to that conclusion?

André Martin: There have been quite a few trends and disruptions to the workplace and, Rachel, the most talked about is often COVID. Many like to point to COVID as the great disrupter of work. But COVID wasn’t the cause. It was an important accelerator to massive changes in the way that work gets done. But if you go back even before COVID, there were these trends that were already sort of seeping their way into the dialogue.

I think the first was, sort of, the rise of the culture deck and really this movement toward companies becoming brands and products themselves. And you see it in these wonderful career sites, in the ways recruiters reach out, in these beautiful stories of what it’s like to work in any given organization. And, although I think the intent is really good, often the messages are much more aspirational than they are a reflection of the day-to-day in the company.

A second really important trend has just been the decade of overall growth. And so in companies we sort of lost the muscle in some key areas of building "fit" and engaging employees because we became over-dependent on extrinsic motivators – things like beautiful offices, better pay, more vacation, all those things that when you’re growing you can give a little bit more easily and a little bit more generously.

I think a third one that’s been really intriguing to me comes from a book I read by Pete Davis, called “Dedicated,” and in it he cites this idea of infinite browsing. He says that we’re living in the age of infinite browsing with all of our access to information, all of the social media that’s happening, influencers in our world.

It’s created this phenomenon where we are constantly looking for the greener grass, the better experience, where we have this intense fear of missing out, and that sort of got in the way of us really, truly committing to our companies, to our craft. And so it’s really started to contribute to a lot of movement and questioning about fit.

Rachel Salaman: So, is this what led you to write this book, to help people move on from that, what sounds like, somewhat of a stalemate situation? Your book is there to guide them to a place where they will perhaps stop looking?

André Martin: I hope so. There are a few motivators for me, Rachel; the first one was this piece of data that I see Gallup post once in a while which is that there’s 7.8, now 8.1 trillion dollars of lost productivity in our companies, globally, due to disengagement. And, for all of our investment in human capital, all the things around leadership and development and better benefits and all those things, we haven’t moved the needle.

Engagement has stayed pretty steady and pretty low for 10, 15 straight years, and so, as a researcher, and someone who cares about the experience that talent is having in companies, I just sat there and was thinking there has to be a better way, there’s some conversation we’re not having. And so that led me to the start of the book.

And then it was through the interviews. I did about 100 interviews with talent from late in their career, super senior, to early in their career, just starting out, and there was just this ease for almost every talent to share this "right fit" experience and this "wrong fit" experience.

The "right fit" experiences were elusive and they were powerful. People were saying, “Work just felt easy. I could come in and practice my craft every day.” And then on the "wrong fit," these were the ones that became the real motivator, because really talented people who’ve arguably gone on to have fantastic, brilliant careers, had these moments where it was all in jeopardy, where because they were in the company that was a "wrong-fit company," they lost confidence, they lost competence.

They saw others who looked like them, had the same experiences like them, and they were succeeding every day. And for these people it felt like a slog. And so their way of absorbing that was, “I must not be good enough” or “I’m not working hard enough, so I have to try harder.”

And in trying harder in a "wrong-fit experience," they just end up producing more stress, more frustration, and then they start impacting life outside of work which is the worst outcome of all. And there are just some real easy, very practical ways to help them feel just a little bit better and that is ultimately my cause.

Rachel Salaman: Well, your book is very practical and it seems to be aimed at both individual talent and companies. So, could you talk about how that dual approach, if you like, is reflected throughout the book, for example with the company and talent insight boxes?

André Martin: Sure, let me start with just the overall reason that I wrote for both companies and talent, because I’m just a firm believer that relationships are 50/50. It would feel really incomplete not to write for both the parties in the relationship. If I just wrote for talent, yes it will help, it will help them be more ready, but they’ll be working with organizations that aren’t thinking in the same way.

And so the talent and company insights were really meant to, no matter who the reader is, they were really meant to help you connect to every part of the book or make a connection from an early part of the book to something that will come up later, so you continue reading.

The second benefit of writing for both is that careers evolve. You might read the book the first time as an early-stage talent, trying to just figure out how to find a place you can be happy. Then you might be a people leader, as a middle manager, really with your first chance to impact culture and climate in the day-to-day experience.

And then you might read it when you become CEO, CHRO or head of a function. And so I wanted to make sure that the book had staying power, that you could return to it, and that, as you progress your career, when you read it again, hopefully you find new insights.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, but there are lots of exercises in the book too, as I mentioned, and you call some of these “excursions.” So, how do those help readers?

André Martin: Well, the excursions or really the reflective exercises in the book were born out of those hundred-odd interviews. Much of the interviews ended up focusing on a couple of key questions: the first one was if you could go back and redo the search that ended you in a "wrong-fit experience," what would you have done differently, knowing what you know today and all your experience in finding "fit" in the workplace?

When talent talks about "wrong-fit experiences," the thing they wish they would have done, almost universally, was more self-reflection before they started looking for a job. So the excursions were really meant to get us to pause, take three steps back, open our eyes really wide, and ask the question of, “What are we looking for beyond a job title?”

What are we really looking for, and how can we get prepared so we pay attention to the right information that helps us make a little bit better decision about the next job we’re going to take?

Rachel Salaman: And the first excursion is about examining our values, which is really key to those questions. How does a person do that?

André Martin: So, I love this excursion, mostly because it’s one of the most powerful to me personally. And the excursion really asks you not to just list the values that you hold (because most of us will list values that we aspire to have), some that we hold, but many that we aspire to have or we want to have or we want people to think that we have.

And so the way that the excursion works is it actually says, "Think about the last three big decisions that you made – what school you went to, the place where you decided to live, the house you bought, the person you married – and take that decision and then look at what values you carried, from most important to least important, to make that decision in that way."

And I’ll give you a real example. So, I would love to believe that I value adventure, spontaneity, risk-taking. I would love to envision myself as a tremendous entrepreneur. But the truth is, when I look at my decisions in the biggest parts of my life, it’s super-clear what I value – I value financial security, I value stability, I value quality.

And all those are rooted in... I grew up with a really great childhood, but one that didn’t have a lot of those things in place, and they become defining characteristics to how I make my decisions. And I wouldn’t overtly carry them into a job interview, but now it’s kind of all I see and what I look for as I think about the places I work and the things that I do.

Rachel Salaman: Of the other seven excursions in your book, which ones do you think are the most helpful for people and why?

André Martin: That’s a great question, Rachel. The first thing that I think is really helpful is there’s an excursion in there that asks any talent to think about the main driver or motivator for their career. Are they a company, are they a craft, or are they a cause?

And so, if you’re a company, you care so much about the product and the place and the mission of a place that you couldn’t imagine yourself working anywhere else. Well, if that’s true, there’s a certain way you have to build your career.

And it’s very different than if you’re a craft, which means that you want to gain depth of expertise and be seen as a thought leader in a certain area. And that again is a very different career than if you’re a cause, which is that you see a giant problem or opportunity or big injustice in the world and you want to spend all of your days solving it.

And so, the reason this exercise is really important is because I think we’d love to think that we can do all three of those, or create a career that is at the center of all three, and it just isn’t true, right? That’s the unicorn of careers. Often you have to ask yourself, what’s primary out of those three, and therefore how do I build a career that allows that to be true?

And then the second one I really like is this excursion that’s all about what are you solving for right now in life. Careers have many different roles to play in our lives. Sometimes you just need a job because your spouse or partner has taken a new position and you are in a new city and you just need to continue to make income. Sometimes you make a choice because you’re trying to drive toward company, craft or cause.

Sometimes you’ve got two kids in college, like I have right now, and you need to make sure that you have stability over the next four years in your role as much as you can. So this exercise helps people step back and really think about, "What do you need from your career right now? And how do we make sure that our careers are helping to make life magic?"

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Rachel Salaman: So, if people do all of these eight excursions, which you encourage us to do, what will they end up with after they’ve gone through all of these eight excursions?

André Martin: Yeah, so, the last excursion is really meant to be a prompt to help you end with a cohesive narrative. It sort of summarizes all of the excursions into a narrative structure that you can use potentially at the top of your CV, you could use in a cover letter to describe who you are and how you work.

Or you could especially use it when someone in an interview asks that really hard to answer and often annoying question of, “Tell me about yourself” or “Tell me what you’re looking for,” and we stumble and we don’t know what to say. It’s because we haven’t stepped back to say, "What is my narrative?"

Because the narrative we tell is often what companies are actually buying, right? They want to hear about you and what you bring, and how you see a body of work. And so it’s important to really have that clear. And, frankly, the more authentic we can be about what we’re looking for, the more the company can help us choose whether or not this is the right or wrong place for us.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, that’s an excellent point and actually it leads us on to the section that you have in your book about interviews and onboarding. I thought it was really interesting that this part emphasizes that candidates need to interview the company in contrast to the usual way we think of things, which is the other way around. So, could you explain this idea?

André Martin: Sure, the truth about interviewing is that it is literally a giant first-aid, right. We will spend 13.5 years of our entire adult life at work. That’s only second to sleeping and more than basically everything else we do. And so the importance of getting that right, of really understanding where you’re going, what the company stands for, how it works, it’s imperative to the overall wellbeing and thriving that we’ll see over the course of our lives.

Rachel Salaman: It really is hard sometimes to get a true picture of an organization before you work there. What are some ways to do that research?

André Martin: So, first and foremost, I would just want everyone to be aware of confirmation bias. So, confirmation bias is this psychological hiccup in our brains where, if we’re motivated to make a choice, like we really want to work for a great brand, we will often over-emphasize information that is aligned to us being able to make that choice and undervalue information that might be pointing us in a different direction or moving us away from making that decision. So, first and foremost, just be really aware of confirmation bias.

And second is making sure that in your early research on the company, use both internal and external information. And that information is often both subjective and objective. So, when you think about internal information that’s available to you, there are career sites, they have wonderful profiles, they often list values, they talk about why people love to work there.

And a lot of that is subjective and often done by an internal comms or communications group, and so... really helpful, but treat that as aspirational, and look for "proof points" of that in places, like employee review sites or in annual reports or in videos that are shot by the leaders in the company.

One of my favorite things to tell talent to do is look for, when you’re interviewing with a company, look for talent that was at that company for a long time but have recently left that are in your network, because those are individuals who were there for a while and so they had success, they understand what it takes to be a success at the company, and they’ve left, so they’re probably going to be honest about what the reality is today.

Rachel Salaman: And I suppose if you don’t have someone like that that you can ask within your network, then is it appropriate to perhaps reach out on LinkedIn to someone you don’t know or what would you suggest?

André Martin: I would absolutely suggest to do that. One of the other red threads in all of the interviews I conducted for the book was everybody wants everybody else to be happy. The last thing I would want is for anyone to join a company that I’ve been at that isn’t the right company for them.

And so I almost feel like it’s our responsibility to each other collectively to get rid of this $8.1 trillion of lost productivity by being a little bit more authentic and honest about how companies work. It’s not a judgment, it’s just what it is. And so I often get that question from strangers and more often than not, when I have the time, I’m more than happy to have the conversation or at least shoot them a few thoughts on email.

Rachel Salaman: Well, hopefully, through that process, a candidate will join a company that is a good fit. How do you know if it really is, though, once you start?

André Martin: Well, I like to… this is a great question too. I like to answer this question via what the interviewee has told me. They told me that they knew it was a right fit because many of them felt more like themselves more days. It just feels familiar.

Another comment that was made that I found intriguing was... "You’re doing hard work but the work doesn’t feel hard." Again, it just speaks to that... you’re in a system that feels like you’re writing with your dominant hand.

Another one, and this is probably something that we hear more and more today, is they didn’t have the "Sunday scaries." And the "Sunday scaries" are that feeling many of us have in our gut when we hit Sunday night after dinner and we move and shift our attention toward Monday morning and the bottom drops out, right? We just feel discouraged and a little depressed and anxious and that’s a really great tell-tale sign.

And lastly, and this is probably my favorite quote of all, is a couple in the interview said, “I know it’s the right fit because I can just practice my craft, period. I get to do the thing I am really good at and I don’t have to worry about all the co-ordination costs of getting it done.”

Rachel Salaman: You include in your book some great tips for the first hundred days as people try to figure out whether it’s the right place for them, if perhaps they don’t have those immediate positive responses that you’ve just mentioned. What are some of your tips for the first hundred days?

André Martin: So, my first real piece of advice is to avoid snap judgments. It’s important to focus on patterns of behavior, not isolated incidents of it. And, sometimes, if we have a good or bad first experience or first couple of experiences, we can misattribute what the company actually is, so avoid those snap judgments.

Secondly, I suggest for people to keep a journal. I do this is in every job, every company that I join. My first 90 days, I religiously keep a journal. Sometimes it’s on my phone, sometimes it’s a paper journal, whatever your medium is. Write down what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing, what you’re feeling. Review it at day 10, day 30, day 60, day 90... for two reasons.

One, we often don’t see the distance that we’ve traveled and whether or not we’re actually feeling better, more connected, more committed, more engaged. The second thing is, it puts you in a learning orientation as opposed to a "fitting-in" orientation, right? So you’re learning about your fit to the company as opposed to immediately trying to change who you are in order to try to fit in.

And, I think the last one I would say to folks is focus on how the company works day to day, not necessarily those extrinsic factors or motivators around you, because it’s really the day-to-day work that’s going to drive the majority of your engagement.

And no matter where you land at 90 days, whether it’s a right fit or a wrong fit, commit or not. The worst thing you can do is sort of just sit on the fence or be idle. Always take a step in either a direction to commit or not to commit, because I think the worst thing you can do is to try to just be "fine," which is the answer of the disengaged employee, because over time that’s just not going to work.

Rachel Salaman: So, as we try and assess whether this place is a great fit for us or not, how can we prevent ourselves from getting caught up in the idea of the perfect fit when maybe we fit well enough and that’s okay?

André Martin: This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I see talent suffer from. Often what I’m seeing is we will mistake "right fit" for something that is boring, not exciting, and therefore we see it as potentially not fulfilling or ambitious enough. And so one of the things I encourage talent to do, and many of the talent in the interviews said, is, "Often I didn’t realize I had right fit or I took right fit for granted."

So that’s the first thing, just make sure you’re not over-revving on the excitement feeling and that you’re respecting that, if you are in a place that works the way you work, you have so much more potential to grow, to develop, to have a meaningful career.

The second thing I’d say is never forget that you will never fit on all factors. It's really an 80/20 game, right? If you fit 80 percent of the way a company works and you have to fit in around 20 percent, that’s fantastic. The majority of the time you are working with your dominant hand, you’re building confidence, you’re building competence, you’re performing well. And that 20 percent is actually just the learning space that you’re inhabiting.

And so it’s important to note that it’s never going to be perfect; it shouldn’t be perfect. If it was perfect, we’re not learning. And so having 20 percent of the places where you are picking up new skills is okay. But, if it’s the other way, 80 percent is like you writing with your non-dominant hand, it’s just going to be really hard to ever fully find your feet.

Rachel Salaman: So, let’s say that we’ve followed the process closely so far and after six months at a job we conclude that it is a good fit, what’s a helpful long-term strategy to make sure that the fit stays good?

André Martin: I would just start first by saying: enjoy the ride. We can keep getting more and more committed and we can keep getting more and more engaged. There’s no ceiling to it. And the reason that’s important is that invariably your company will change. They are living systems, built and run by human beings. They’re constantly evolving, and so you are going to see some transitions and transformations. You will have leaders who will change.

You, if you do a good job, if you’re in a "right-fit experience," you’re going to get more work. You’re going to have a bigger and more complex job. And so the reason that you want to deepen your commitment, your fit, as far as you can is because you’re going to need that energy someday.

And the last thing I would say to talent with right fit is you have a job to do in keeping the culture that you want. Culture is simply the aggregation of all of our behaviors. And so make sure you show up in the way that you want everyone else to show up because it is contagious.

And secondly, use positive reinforcement. Most managers and leaders who are creating culture don’t get enough feedback to really know whether or not they are doing a good job. It’s funny, the higher you go, the less feedback you get. And so I always tell people, make your leader great.

And do it by simply, they do something that you like, that you revere, that you think is good for the company or good for you, give them kudos. And don’t just say, “Hey, boss, good job” – tell them exactly what they did. Chances are, they’re going to repeat it. And so I think there’s this place of, be proactive in protecting the right fit that you have, and you’ll be okay.

Rachel Salaman: Now, we’ve really been focusing on the situation from the talent point of view but, as we discussed earlier, your book is also really helpful for employers looking for talent because they both benefit from the right fit. The last section of your book is aimed specifically at employers. What’s your top advice for hiring managers who want to prioritize "fit" in their talent search?

André Martin: There are two things I would say. The first thing is, try to get really clear about the reality of how the company works today. What are the work principles? What are the work practices? And what are the work platforms we use day in and day out? How does it feel to work there? And present that in an honest and authentic way.

Often I hear leaders that are fearful about, "Hey, if I really told people what it’s like to work here, I don’t think they would come." And the truth of it is, if they get the job, they’re going to have to work there. And, frankly, the myth there is... there are talent out there who work the way you work, who love what you love, who will do the things you want them to do because it’s how they like to work and so we shouldn’t be scared of being distinctive in the market.

I think the second thing I would say to them is move away from job descriptions and move toward realistic job previews. Job descriptions are sort of the bane of my existence, right, because what they do is they say, “Here are the 50 things that you might get to do over the lifetime of having this role.” And what we often find is that you look at that and you’re like, “Man, that role sounds great.”

And then you get into the role and actually the day-to-day, the next 12 months, 18 months of that role, you’re only doing two of those things, not all 20. And, on top of that, there are all these other things that you’re being asked to do that weren’t on the job description that now are part of your life.

I just think if we thought about the realistic job preview, “What does this job look like over the next 18 months?”, and we thought about it this way. "First off, does the candidate work the way we work? Secondly, do they have the capabilities we need? And third, can they do these three things that we need done as soon as they get here?"

And if so, like everything else, jobs evolve, and so if you get that right, then they can pick up all the things that come 18 months, 24 months, 36 months down the line.

Rachel Salaman: Such great advice. André Martin, thanks very much for joining us today.

André Martin: Rachel, it was a pleasure. Thanks for making the time and for asking these great questions about the book. I really appreciate it.

Rachel Salaman: The name of André’s book again is “Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever.” I’ll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.