Episode: 512

Episode Title: Why Legacy Behavior Doesn’t Change

Legacy behavior is the pattern of how a worker treats colleagues—and it’s almost impossible to change. Here’s why, next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 512 show:

You’re now in The Perna Syndicate—hello and welcome! As a basic rule, every job has a level of technical skill requirements. For instance, it would be unreasonable to fill a position for an electrical engineer with a person who has no experience, education, or knowledge of electrical engineering.  

But today, hard skills (like electrical engineering) aren’t enough by themselves. We need to move away from simply finding people with the right skills, to finding people who also exhibit the right behaviors. Your company culture depends on it. 

In fact, in many cases I would argue that you should hire the person, not the skills. Think about it: often times, you can train a person on the skills they need to thrive in the role. But what is harder to train is legacy behavior, or the attitude and perspectives that are an intrinsic part of that person. 

Legacy behavior is the pattern of habits built over the course of a person’s professional life: how they speak to colleagues, handle tense situations, deal with stress, and many other seemingly small things that add up to something big. And legacy behavior is almost impossible to change. 

Legacy behavior is especially critical when you’re hiring a new leader. That person’s approach can set the tone for the entire culture. The only thing worse than working with a jerk, is working for one.  

So in this tumultuous hiring market, how can managers make sure they don’t hire any bad apples? On the next episode of The Perna Syndicate, we’ll talk about how it all starts at the interview. See you then!