Offer them the job if they pass these 6 Belonging Culture affirmations

The pressure’s on to get somebody into the role so you get the critical thing done and set yourself up to scale. The problem is, if you skipped vetting for belonging across these 6 areas, you’re probably setting your company up to fail.

1. Do they mesh with the ways you belong at your company, in the ways that you live out your company core values? Yes/No? (Scoring: Yes = 1, No=-1, Oh, and Maybe = 0)

If they don’t belong, the “doing” of the technical operational ways by the team will run into impasse after impasse. Belonging anchors itself into the core values of the company tribe. And if the candidate’s core values run counter to the company core values, the ensuing conflicts will interrupt any set of practices you’ve set up to get the job done. Think about it this way. The values mismatch at the core level prevents belonging. The very belonging that our brains require to do the company purpose for each other, superseding the need for things to be safe enough. Employee personal core values + company core values = bidirectional stacking! That’s a force multiplier.

If they do belong, you’ve created a place where they can tap into an incredible reserve of resilience, motivation, and innovation. They can move from parallel purpose into shared purpose in a company Us-Story.

2. Do they believe in the purpose that your company works to accomplish? Yes/No?

Belonging enables the potential for shared belief in purpose. It doesn’t guarantee it. So, you’ve got to inquire and find out if they really care about what your company does. That means probing into the impacted spaces where the potential new employee is willing to share their nuanced appreciation of how the world gets better because of what your company does. If they don’t really care, you run a high risk of having them align with somebody that they like in the company as opposed to doing the right thing in a given moment to achieve the company purpose.

If they belong and believe, now you’ve got a stacked space of employee motivation. Our company + Our purpose = the highest-performing teams on earth.

3. Can they work from their own core values and strengths in your company? Yes/No?

There’s two sides, 1, their side: they have an established drive and pattern to function from their guiding values and strengths to figure things out. If their core guiding value runs counter to a guiding company value, they’ll be starting from a place of internal conflict. Second, on the company side, your teams are a dynamic of unique humans choosing each other in remarkable potential chemistry to do amazing work. Say, your company values adaptability, and the new hire’s primary guiding core value is structure and control. While you might want more structure and control to fine-tune your adaptability, odds are, you might be setting yourself up for an oil and water moment. If you know anything about engines, mixing oil and water creates a frozen engine.

Best to have some real clear talk and pay attention to whether or not their core values are compatible with the company’s. They don’t have to be the same, and as a matter of statistical fact for high-performing teams, it’s good not to.

4. Will they join their personal strategic story with the company strategic story? Yes/No?

There’s a massive performance difference between asking somebody to attain results for a job and asking them to commit personally to their company’s people and purpose. Without this commitment where they’ve joined their personal strategic story with the company’s, a hedge exists that prevents the motivational stacking to make things happen! The employee narrative follows like this: “I have to do this for the company strategic story, but I’m not good at it (the opposite of the strategic story). That means I’m at risk.” Self-preservation competes with their drive for the company purpose, lowering potential output.

Having identified their personal strategic story, they’re feeling positive and good, and then when added to the company strategic story that they’re also feeling positive and good about, the new employee’s potential outcome gets stacked!

5. Do they take ownership of their workplace practices and how they are measured to help the company tribe succeed? Yes/No?

It’s a funny thing, we care and work hard for the things that are ours. The same thing applies to our practices and how we measure ourselves. We all know what it’s like to bring somebody on and they avoid ownership of the responsibilities they’ve signed on for. So, you gotta get into the conversation with them where it’s about the easy stuff they’d happily take ownership of. But don’t stop there. Now, you want to get into a discussion about the gritty stuff whether mistakes could, or did hurt. It’s here where you find the nuances and the depths of accountability that someone will apply in owning their own practices and how they will measure themselves to succeed. We all know the outcome of, “I’m just doing what they tell me.”

You want to hear somebody say, “This was my thing to figure out, and I missed something {curse word of your choice!}. If I did X + Y + Z, success for me should = Alpha for the company for a happy customer outcome.”

6. Do they take ownership of their personal growth as part of the company’s growth, and, as part of your customer’s growth? Yes/No?

Them saying, “I love to learn and grow,” isn’t clear enough. Sure, they own a growth mindset. But that doesn’t mean their heart-set’s driving the company growth also. You run the risk of inquiring later, “I hear a lot growing happening, but things aren’t getting better for our company and clients?”

As you interview, and interact, you gotta get into their story and hear them genuinely express ownership of their own growth, that’s personal to them, that they’ll extend in belonging with the company growth “Us-Story. It might sound something like this, “I’d love to learn and grow in this area, X. I’ve always had an interest in that. You mentioned that, in the role, there’s this need for X, so that we can Y, for customer Z. If I work here, can I do that!?” You hear that, find a way to help them.

Did they score 6xYes! You might want to hire them.

If you get 6 yeses for these belonging culture affirmations during your hiring process, your new hire is probably gonna bring about incredible things as a new member of your company. I encourage you to not settle! Aim for 6 out of 6!

And if you want to start them off strong in belonging to really help your company perform at a higher level, give this a read:

Onboarding for a High-Performing Belonging Culture