Latest / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions / Why Hiring for Grit Backfires on Your Team
Transcript
- Lucas: So we have to talk about grit. Specifically, why hiring for grit might actually be hurting your team. Luna: I feel like grit has been this sacred cow in hiring for the last decade. Everyone wants that person who never gives up. Lucas: Right. And Angela Duckworth's work is genuinely impressive — but there's a gap between what the research says and how companies apply it. A 2024 study from Stanford looked at how grit scores correlate with actual job performance across fifty-five different roles, and the results were mixed. Luna: Mixed how? Lucas: Grit was a positive predictor for roles that are highly individual and have long feedback loops — think PhD students, elite athletes, solo entrepreneurs. But in team-based environments, especially fast-moving ones, high-grit employees actually underperformed compared to peers with moderate grit. Luna: Because they don't know when to pivot? Lucas: Exactly. The very persistence that defines grit can become a liability. They double down on a failing approach because quitting feels like a character flaw. We saw this play out at a mid-sized tech company in Austin. Luna: Let me guess — they hired a bunch of high-grit engineers and then couldn't get them to adopt new frameworks? Lucas: You nailed it. The CTO told me they explicitly tested for grit in interviews — 'tell me about a time you overcame a major obstacle' — and they hired people with incredible persistence. But when the product roadmap shifted, those same engineers resisted changing their approach. One guy spent three weeks optimizing a feature that the team had already decided to deprecate. Luna: Ouch. That's not grit, that's stubbornness. But how do you tell the difference in an interview? Lucas: That's the million-dollar question. The Stanford study suggests we should be looking at what they call 'learning agility' — the ability to persist when persistence is useful, and to adapt when the situation changes. In their model, learning agility predicted performance twice as well as grit did for collaborative roles. Luna: So instead of asking, 'Tell me about a time you pushed through,' you ask, 'Tell me about a time you realized you were wrong and changed course.' Lucas: Exactly. And it's not just about the interview question. The whole framing of 'we hire gritty people' can create a culture where admitting failure is taboo. If your identity is built on never giving up, you can't say, 'Hey, this project isn't working, we should stop.' Luna: There's also the diversity angle. The concept of grit is culturally loaded — it tends to reward people who have had to overcome hardship, which sounds fair on the surface, but it can penalize candidates from backgrounds where persistence looks different. For example, someone who navigated a toxic work environment by strategically choosing their battles might not have a heroic overcoming-story. Lucas: That's a really important point. The grit narrative often assumes that persistence is a solo virtue, but a lot of successful people persist by building coalitions, asking for help, and knowing when to step back. That's a different skill set. Luna: So what's the alternative? How do you actually assess for the right mix? Lucas: The companies that are doing this well use situational judgment tests. They present candidates with scenarios where the right answer isn't 'push through' or 'give up' — it's something in between. Like, you're leading a project that's six weeks behind schedule. The client is demanding results, but your team is exhausted. What do you do? Luna: And the high-grit candidate might say 'push harder,' while the high-learning-agility candidate might say 'renegotiate the timeline and restructure the team.' Lucas: Right. And the data shows that the second answer — in a team context — is far more predictive of long-term success. Another approach is to look at how candidates talk about failure. Do they only describe successes where they eventually won? Or do they describe a genuine failure where they changed their behavior afterward? Luna: I've noticed that in my own interviews. The best answers are the ones where the candidate says, 'I tried X, it didn't work, so I tried Y, and that also didn't work, and then I realized I needed to ask for help.' That's not grit — that's resourcefulness. Lucas: Resourcefulness is actually a better term. The Stanford researchers call it 'adaptive persistence.' And they found it correlates highly with something else: psychological safety. Teams where people feel safe admitting mistakes actually persist longer on hard problems because they can course-correct without ego. Luna: So if you hire for grit, you might actually be hiring someone who can't operate in a psychologically safe environment because they'll see asking for help as weakness. Lucas: Exactly. And that creates a self-reinforcing cycle. The high-grit person doesn't ask for help, so the team doesn't build trust, so others stop asking for help, and soon you have a culture where everyone is grinding alone. Luna: What about the Austin company? How did they fix it? Lucas: They actually redesigned their interview process. They dropped the grit-specific questions and replaced them with a structured behavioral interview focused on adaptability. They also started using a work-sample test where candidates had to collaborate on a simulated product pivot. Within six months, turnover dropped by thirty percent. Luna: That's a huge improvement. And it makes sense — if you're selecting for the wrong trait, you'll get the wrong people. Lucas: The thing is, grit isn't bad. It's just incomplete. You need persistence, but you also need flexibility, resourcefulness, and the wisdom to know which situation calls for which. Luna: Speaking of wisdom — I think a lot of listeners might be wondering, if they've already hired for grit, what can they do now? Is it fixable? Lucas: It is fixable, but it starts with leadership. Managers need to model adaptive persistence — publicly talking about times they changed course, celebrating smart pivots, not just heroic effort. And performance reviews should reward outcomes, not hours logged or obstacles overcome. Luna: So stop asking, 'How hard did you work?' and start asking, 'How effectively did you solve the problem?' Lucas: Exactly. And if you're in a hiring role, I'd encourage you to look at your current job descriptions. If you see phrases like 'never gives up' or 'thrives under pressure' without any mention of adaptability, you might be screening out the very people who would make your team better. Luna: That's a good takeaway. One more thing — if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, you know where to find us. Lucas: Yeah, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Seriously, it's the smallest possible ask, and it keeps the show ad-free and focused on what actually works. Luna: So don't be like the high-grit engineer who refuses to pivot — if you're finding this useful, a little support goes a long way. Lucas: Alright, back to it. Let's talk about one more study — this one from Google's people analytics team. They looked at what makes a high-performing team, and grit didn't even make the top five. Luna: What did? Lucas: Psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact. Grit is essentially a subset of dependability — but it's not the star of the show. And if you over-index on it, you can undermine the other four. Luna: So the takeaway for hiring managers: don't fall for the gritty narrative. Look for someone who knows when to push and when to pivot. Lucas: That's the episode. Thanks, Luna. Luna: Thanks, Lucas.