"Stop hiring for culture fit" is popular advice right now. The logic: if everyone on the team thinks alike, nobody catches the bad ideas before they cause real damage. Jeremy agrees with the diagnosis but pushes back on the fix. In this episode, he argues that culture isn't the problem, the definition of culture is.

Most hiring managers use "culture fit" to mean someone who feels like a natural match, and that gut check quietly overrides the actual skills and experience on the checklist. Jeremy redefines culture as something closer to psychological safety: a place where disagreement is expected, differing ideas get real consideration, and managers are willing to be wrong. He backs it up with research from Ernst & Young, HP, and JPMorgan Chase, all of which found that cognitively diverse teams outperform homogenous ones on complex problems, not as a diversity initiative, but as a business decision.

He also covers what happens after the hire: cognitively diverse people who get overruled or ignored stop sharing ideas and disengage, which erases the advantage of hiring them in the first place.

Jeremy's running a free webinar on hiring practices on October 7th at noon Eastern, aimed at startup founders but relevant to any first-time manager. Email JDoran@NeuroConversantLeadership.com to reserve a spot.

Related reading on the shift away from "culture fit" hiring:

• Gallup: https://gallup.com/workplace/402503/move-beyond-hiring-culture-fit.aspx
• HR Brew: https://www.hr-brew.com/stories/2024/12/20/hr-2025-ditch-bad-recruiting-habits
• Haiilo: https://haiilo.com/blog/10-weird-hr-trends