Understanding Company Culture During Interviews

8 signs you’re in a healthy workplace culture (not just surviving, but actually growing): Most people can name the red flags. But the green ones?  They’re just as important. Here are 8 that give careers a huge boost: 1. You can question ideas without fear    ↳ Teams aren’t meant to agree on everything.    ↳ Healthy challenge leads to sharper thinking. 2. No one gets away with bad behavior    ↳ Gossip, favoritism, and poor conduct aren’t ignored.    ↳ Everyone is held to the same standard.    3. Leaders expect more, and help you get there    ↳ The bar is high, but so is the support.    ↳ Set clear goals. Provide the tools to succeed. 4. You’re trusted to own the work    ↳ You’re not just executing tasks.    ↳ You’re shaping outcomes.    5. Feedback flows freely, and helps you grow   ↳ It’s part of how people work together.    ↳ Early, honest, and focused on growth.    6. Recognition is real, and earned   ↳ Effort is seen. Impact is acknowledged.    ↳ And not just once a year.    7. Your career is a shared priority   ↳ You’re not left to figure it out alone.    ↳ Leaders care about where you’re heading next.    8. Everyone takes pride in their work   ↳ Not because they have to. Because they want to.   ↳ That energy is hard to fake.    A high-performance culture doesn’t mean perfect. It means working in a place where people  challenge, support, and respect each other. If you’ve found that, it’s worth holding onto. And if you haven’t, now you know what to look for. What would you add to the list? Reshare ♻️ to help someone in your network. And give me a follow for more posts like this.

If you want to understand a company’s real culture during an interview, ask better questions. Titles, perks, and mission statements do not tell you the truth. People’s answers do. Here are the top five questions that reveal more about a company’s values, leadership mindset, and psychological safety than any website or brochure ever will: 1. What behaviors get rewarded here and what behaviors get quietly tolerated? This tells you the real culture, not the aspirational one. 2. Tell me about a time someone spoke up, disagreed, or challenged a decision. What happened next? If they have no example, there is no psychological safety. 3. When your best people leave, what are the most common reasons? The answer reveals retention issues, leadership blind spots, and the company’s willingness to own the truth. 4. How do leaders show that people are valued beyond their performance? If the answer is all metrics, the culture is transactional. If it is about growth, support, and well-being, the culture is human. 5. If I joined and you looked back a year from now, what would make you say I was a strong culture add? This shows expectations, values in action, and what success really looks like. Bonus question worth asking every time: How do you handle someone who is a high performer but toxic to the culture? The answer to this one tells you everything. The right questions protect you. They reveal misalignment early. And they help you choose the environment where you can actually thrive. Which of these would you ask in your next interview?

I was recently brought in to help a company fill a senior leadership position. The client had their eye on a highly impressive candidate—an executive with years of experience leading teams in major corporations. But as we dove deeper into the conversation, it became clear that the candidate’s polished resume was just the surface. We decided to take a different approach—using behavioral interviewing to explore how this candidate truly operated in leadership scenarios. Instead of focusing on "What have you achieved?" we asked, "Tell me about a time you faced a crisis, and how did you lead your team through it?" What followed was eye-opening. The candidate shared a story of how they navigated a massive company-wide disruption, not just by implementing strategy, but by engaging with every level of the team, being transparent, and ensuring collaboration across departments. This wasn’t something you could find on their resume. It was the true essence of leadership, and it was the kind of insight I now always prioritize when consulting for executive roles. Why Behavioral Event Interviewing Are a Game-Changer in Executive Consulting: 1. Beyond the Resume: We’re not hiring for what someone has done; we’re hiring for how they do it. 2. Real Leadership Qualities: Behavioral interviews highlight traits like resilience, empathy, problem-solving, and decision making which are vital in top executives. 3. Authentic Responses: By asking about specific past experiences, we avoid generic, rehearsed answers that don’t truly reflect a candidate’s leadership abilities. 4. Cultural Fit: The way a candidate responds to pressure, failure, or success shows if they align with your organization’s values and culture. 5. Predicting Future Success: Past behavior is often the best predictor of how someone will perform in similar situations in the future. As I continue consulting for top-tier executives, behavioral interviews have become my key strategy for assessing true leadership potential. It’s not just about the position they held or the titles they’ve earned—it’s about how they lead when no one’s watching. Have you ever relied on behavioral event interviews for executive hiring? What was your experience? Let’s discuss this in the comments! #ExecutiveHiring #LeadershipInsights #BehavioralInterviewing #HiringStrategies #LeadershipDevelopment #TalentAcquisition #ExecutiveConsulting #LeadershipQualities #CulturalFit

Pay attention to how you're treated in the interview process. Because if it’s bad now, it won’t get better later. It might sound obvious, but it needs repeating: the interview process is a two-way street. And when a recruiter is involved? It’s a throuple. I still hear too many stories of hiring processes that are disorganised, disrespectful, or just plain lazy. Here’s the thing: applying for a role isn’t just the employer’s chance to assess you, it’s your chance to assess them. Their commitment to communication, preparation, and respect says a lot about how they treat people once they’re on the inside. And if a recruiter is involved, make sure your prospective employer knows (good or bad) the experience. (1) Communication sets the tone From the first email to the final outcome, how they engage tells you everything you need to know. Clear and timely? That’s a good sign. Ghosting, vague updates, and long delays? Big red flag. Abort. And it’s not just a rare misstep. It’s endemic. To such an extent that companies now exist to benchmark who consistently gets this wrong. (2) The interview is their culture in micro. How you’re treated during the interview often mirrors the company’s culture. Do interviewers show up on time? Are they engaged and prepared? Do they ask thoughtful questions and give you time to respond in kind? If it’s disorganised or impersonal now, it’s probably not going to change once you’re in the door. (3) It's not just courtesy, it's good business. Let’s be clear: returning calls and being respectful shouldn’t be revolutionary. It’s basic decency. But it’s also smart business. Why would someone want to join your team if you can’t be bothered to follow through? (4) It helps you decide. Paying attention to how you’re treated gives you confidence in accepting an offer or walking away. A strong interview experience fosters trust that the company can deliver on its promises. So what should you watch out for? -- Punctuality: Are they prepared and respectful of your time? -- Engagement: Are the questions meaningful or just box-ticking? -- Communication: Are timelines and expectations clear? -- Environment: Does the culture match what’s being sold? -- Feedback: Are you learning something, or just being assessed? An interview isn’t just about being chosen, it’s about choosing well. How they treat you during the process reveals a great deal about how they lead, manage, and support their people. So ask questions. Take note. Trust your gut. Because your time and energy matter too.

I can predict your turnover rate just by watching one sales meeting. Toxic cultures have tells. They're not obvious, but they're always there. Watch for these red flags: → The meeting starts with the leader hammering the team because results are down. → Questions about struggling deals get defensive responses from leadership. Nobody wants honest feedback. → Success stories focus on individual heroics, not team collaboration. "Sarah closed a huge deal" instead of "here's what Sarah did that we can all learn from." → Top performers get asked to share their "secrets" but never get time to actually teach others. Knowledge hoarding is encouraged through competition. → Missed targets trigger immediate blame sessions about effort levels. Market feedback never reaches product teams. → The hero worship is suffocating. Everything revolves around the one rep hitting 200% while everyone else struggles. I've seen this movie before. Your best people are already interviewing elsewhere. Here's what healthy sales cultures look like: ✅Deal reviews focus on lessons, not blame. Losses become learning opportunities. ✅Best practices get documented and systematized. Success becomes repeatable, not miraculous. ✅Leadership admits mistakes publicly. Psychological safety allows honest communication. ✅Individual wins celebrate team support. "Sarah closed a huge deal with help from marketing's new case study and Steve's technical expertise." ✅Investment in development is visible and consistent. People see career paths, not just quotas. The difference in results is dramatic: Toxic cultures: 40%+ annual turnover, inconsistent performance, constant recruiting Healthy cultures: 15-20% turnover, predictable growth, internal promotion pipeline Your culture isn't determined by your values poster in the lobby. It's determined by what behavior gets rewarded, what problems get addressed, and how you treat people when things go wrong. Great reps have options. They choose environments that invest in their success. Energy without substance is just noise. Build systems that make great people want to stay. — Want to see how I built culture in a 110+ sales org? Check this interview out: https://lnkd.in/gFdrrP8q

𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐫 AI may be reshaping the architecture of work. But when disruption accelerates, the real shield isn’t technology. It’s culture. The WEF Chief People Officers Outlook (Sept 2025) points to this unmistakably: after revising structures and job design, the second most prioritized action for CPOs worldwide is strengthening workplace culture and articulating purpose. More than half of the surveyed leaders put it in their top three. Why? Because in fragmented, digitally mediated workplaces, culture and purpose are not nice to have. They are armor. Think about what’s happening in the workforce today. Employees — especially younger generations — are unapologetically selective. They are not shy about walking away from what doesn’t serve them. Rising mental health concerns, polarization of values, and digital overload have made belonging fragile. In that context, culture is no longer “the vibe” of the workplace. It’s the glue that holds performance, engagement, and resilience together. And history has already proven the point. In the darkest days of WWII, Britain’s “Keep Calm and Carry On” campaign was designed to boost morale — but it wasn’t the posters that built resilience. It was the lived culture of solidarity, rationing, and collective sacrifice that carried people through. In the 2008 recession, companies that kept purpose alive and invested in people — even modestly — bounced back stronger, with higher loyalty and faster growth. Those who only focused on cost-cutting eroded trust that still hasn’t fully recovered. Fast forward to the pandemic: we all saw which organizations had cultures of care, empathy, and adaptability — and which ones just had glossy values statements. So here’s the question for us as leaders: 👉 Is your culture a poster… or is it a practice? 👉 Does your purpose show up in how you make decisions under pressure, or just in your annual report? 👉 If employees had to define your culture in five words, would they match what’s written on the wall? Because culture isn’t tested on “values day.” It’s tested when layoffs are announced, when AI tools are rolled out, when the business is under siege. The WEF report reminds us that empowering the next generation of leaders is one of the key ways to evolve culture — because culture isn’t inherited, it’s reinterpreted every day by the people who lead. Posters on walls don’t build culture. They just decorate silence. If your culture is soft, you’re naked in the storm. #KavitaWrites #FutureFelt #FutureOfWork #CPOPerspective #PeopleStrategy #CultureAsArmor #PurposeDrivenWork #OrganizationalResilience

Do you wonder how you stack up as a people manager, as a leader? I do! Whether you’re leading a team at work, managing a household, or parenting, you’ve probably doubted how well you’re balancing empathy with accountability.  This hit home for me recently when I hosted 37 members of The Stanford Club for lunch, a parenting/leadership talk, and an opening weekend screening of Disney’s ”Moana 2.“  The experience gave me space to reflect on my own doubts about my people management style:  👉 Am I too gentle in my parenting, overcorrecting for the strict, top-down style many of us grew up with in “traditional culture” families?  👉 Am I setting firm enough boundaries to inspire growth—or am I being too demanding? These questions reminded me of my early days managing a team at Capital Group. There, I learned the hard way that leadership isn’t just about setting goals and expecting results. I could’ve used a framework back then—like the one I shared at The Stanford Club.  Here’s the model we explored, based on Diana Baumrind’s groundbreaking developmental psychology research:  📊 Leadership operates along two key dimensions:  - Responsiveness: Warmth, empathy, and emotional availability.  - DemandingnessSetting expectations, structure, and boundaries.  These dimensions shape four leadership styles:  ✨ Authoritative: High warmth, high expectations—yields the BEST outcomes. It fosters independence, resilience, and collaboration.  ✨ Authoritarian: High expectations, low warmth—often creates compliance but limits creativity, independence, and self-expression.  ✨ Permissive: High warmth, low boundaries—can lead to struggles with self-discipline and accountability.  ✨ Uninvolved: Low warmth, low expectations—produces the poorest outcomes, such as low self-esteem and weak social skills.  When I start doubting my approach, I ask:  ✔️ How responsive am I right now to someone’s needs?  ✔️ How demanding am I in encouraging their growth, discipline, and independence? Offering the people you lead high levels of warmth and responsiveness, as well as high expectations is a proven way to build trust, foster collaboration, and develop emotional resilience in others.  💡 Sharing select slides from the talk to help you reflect on your leadership style!  ❓ How do you balance responsiveness and demandingness in your leadership—at home or at work?  ---   👉 Repost if this helped you 🔔 To read more, Follow me Qi Zhai-McCartney #EmotionalIntelligence #PeopleManagement #LeadershipStyles #ProfessionalGrowth

Culture problems are rarely just morale problems. They are operational strain signals. When your teams feel disconnected, disengaged or disorganised, that's data. It's telling you something is broken in: → How decisions get made → How information flows (or doesn't) → How leaders model the values they claim to hold → How accountability is held (or avoided) Too many leadership teams respond to culture issues with events, away days, and values posters. But you can't wallpaper over structural friction. The question isn't "how do we boost morale?" The real question is: "What is the morale telling us about our systems?" That reframe changes everything. #CultureChange #PeopleAndCulture #HRLeadership #OrganisationalHealth #TheMaverickGroup

It takes months of dedicated effort to build an energized, high-performing team—but a leader can dismantle it in a single afternoon. Are your daily management habits inspiring your people, or quietly driving them out the door? Morale is a fragile thing. It’s not destroyed by a single bad day or an unexpected market shift... Constant, small leadership failures erode it. We’ve all experienced that shift in the office atmosphere. The moment a manager decides to look over your shoulder at every keystroke... Or when they stand under the spotlight to take credit for a project you stayed up until midnight finishing. It happens in the patterns that become culture: 🎖️ Watching favorites get promoted while hard work is ignored. 🧱 Sitting through meetings where feedback is met with a defensive wall. 🏋️ Pushing through unrealistic goals with zero support from the top. When you undermine a team member publicly, or hide behind a lack of transparency, you don't just lose their productivity. You lose their loyalty. People don't stay where they feel managed like a machine; they stay where they are treated like human partners. Great leadership is less about protecting your ego and more about protecting the psychological safety of the people who run the business. High team morale is the byproduct of trust, clear communication, and mutual respect. When a leader prioritizes power over empowerment, they trade long-term success for short-term control. Which of these 12 red flags is the biggest culture-killer in a workplace? Share your thoughts below! 👇🛑📉