Work style alignment means finding people whose natural way of working matches how your business actually operates. It has six components: pace (fast and urgent vs. steady and methodical), structure (defined SOPs vs. flexible and adaptive), collaboration (team-driven vs. independent), autonomy (self-directed vs. closely supported), communication (direct and informal vs. documented and measured), and decision making (quick and decisive vs. consensus-driven). You don't create your work style, it already exists in how your business runs. Your job is to define it clearly enough to communicate it to candidates and use it as a filter in hiring. When people work in an environment that matches how they're wired, they produce more and disengage less. When they don't, no amount of values alignment or right-seat fit will prevent the friction.
The remote vs. on-site debate misses the actual point. The question isn't which way of working is better. It's whether the people on your team are wired to thrive in the environment your business actually requires. You can hire someone whose values align and who is excellent in their role, and still watch them slowly burn out if the pace, structure, autonomy, and communication style of your business runs against how they naturally operate.
This is part three of the seven-part alignment series. I cover the six components of work style, walk through my own decade of working in the wrong environments before discovering how I actually work best, and we return to the tale of Precision Builders and Vision Builders to show how work style shows up concretely. Precision Builders is structured, methodical, and SOP-driven. Vision Builders is fast-moving, ambiguity-comfortable, and experiment-first. Neither is wrong. Both are disastrous for the person wired for the other.
- Shared values are necessary but not sufficient. You also need work style alignment. Someone can believe everything you believe and still be miserable in your environment.
- Work style isn't something you create. It already exists in how your business operates. Your job is to define it clearly enough to use it as a hiring filter.
- There are six components of work style: pace, structure, collaboration, autonomy, communication, and decision making. Define where your business falls on each one.
- When someone is in a work environment that matches their natural rhythm, they enter flow. The work feels energizing rather than draining. That's when you get their best contribution.
- When work style is misaligned, burnout isn't a discipline problem. It's an environment problem. The person is working hard in a way that costs them more energy than it generates.
- The SOP person and the figure-it-out person are both excellent employees. Put them in each other's environments and you get friction, frustration, and eventual turnover.
- Clarity about your work style protects your culture. When candidates know what they're walking into, the right ones self-select in and the wrong ones self-select out.
Why do good employees keep burning out in my company even when they seem like a good fit?
Because fit isn't only about values and skills. It also depends on whether their natural working rhythm matches your environment. An employee can believe everything you believe, be excellent at their job, and still slowly deplete themselves if the pace, structure, and communication style of your business runs against how they're wired to work.
I saw this firsthand in a company where people shared the values, were in the right seats for their skills, and still burned out. The environment was fast-paced, ambiguous, constantly shifting. Some people thrived in it. Others were overwhelmed from day one. Same company, same values, same role structure. The difference was work style.
The cause is often invisible until you name it, because most businesses never define their work style. They just operate. And when someone struggles in an environment that should work for them on paper, the tendency is to blame attitude or commitment, when the actual issue is that the environment is drawing on a kind of energy the person doesn't naturally have to give.
You could have great people who believe what you believe. But if the environment doesn't align with how they're wired to work, they won't thrive. And when the employee doesn't thrive, the business doesn't thrive, because you're not getting the maximum contribution and value they're capable of delivering.
Amy Dardis, Episode 14What are the components of work style and how do I define mine?
There are six to work through for your business.
To define yours, start by looking at your own work style as the leader. Then step back and ask: what does the business need to operate at its highest potential? Work backwards from there across each of the six components.
How is work style different from company values in terms of culture fit?
Values and work style are both part of culture, but they're different layers. Values are about what you believe: the convictions and principles that guide decisions and behavior. Work style is about how work actually gets done: the pace, structure, autonomy, and rhythm of daily operations.
You can have complete alignment on values and significant misalignment on work style. I experienced this directly. When I went to work for a client organization, I shared many of their values. But my natural way of working, creative flow, flexible timing, autonomy-dependent productivity, created friction in an environment with a different rhythm. The values aligned. The work style didn't, not fully. And that friction was real.
This matters for hiring because most conversations about culture fit focus only on values. Wickman's EOS framework, for example, defines culture fit as sharing core values. My experience taught me that's necessary but not complete. Without work style alignment, you can have the right person with the wrong rhythm for the environment, and the result is a slower, lower-quality version of what that person could contribute somewhere else.
You could share the same values, you could be aligned in that area. But if you don't share the same working style, it's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it does create tension and friction. And if you have enough of that, it can create obstacles and problems within your organization.
Amy Dardis, Episode 14How does work style show up differently in Precision Builders vs. Vision Builders?
Precision Builders is structured, steady, and process-driven. They document everything: change orders, procedures, checklists, SOPs. Their decisions are thoughtful and risk-aware. Communication is clear and documented, and that standard is expected from everyone. When a system works, it's protected and refined, not questioned. Stability isn't just tolerated, it's valued.
Vision Builders is fast-moving, flexible, and innovation-driven. They focus on creative problem-solving rather than rigid adherence to process. They're comfortable with ambiguity, learn by testing and adjusting, and celebrate experimentation rather than fear it. Communication is open and often informal. The destination matters more than the specific route.
If you're a project manager candidate who needs an SOP to feel settled, Precision Builders will give you peace. Vision Builders will stress you out. If you're someone who finds detailed checklists constraining and wants to find your own path to the goal, Vision Builders will energize you. Precision Builders will feel like a cage.
Neither company is wrong. Neither candidate is wrong. The misalignment is. And the earlier you surface it in the hiring process, the more of everyone's time and energy you save.
Resources mentioned
- Free Hiring Resources — Downloads to help you define your work style and build it into your hiring process
- Ep 13 — Why Defining What You Believe Is Key to Team Alignment — Previous episode in this series: values alignment
- Ep 15 — Traits Alignment — Next episode in this series
- Ep 12 — Creating Alignment With Your People — Series overview: the three dimensions of alignment
Full transcript
Welcome back to the Build a Clear Authentic Brand podcast. I'm your host, Amy Dardis. And today we're continuing our seven-part series on creating alignment with your people. We're in part three of our seven series arc. In this series, we're exploring the three dimensions of alignment, the three Cs: culture, capacity, and contribution. We're currently breaking down the first dimension of culture. Within culture, that includes values, work style, traits, and non-negotiables. In our last episode, we talked about aligning values, defining what we believe and how those beliefs shape our decisions. Today we're focusing on work style alignment.
This is a popular debate, if not even controversial. We hear things all the time like remote work versus on-site work, autonomy versus oversight, flexibility versus structure. And people can get very passionate about what's right and what's wrong. But I feel like this debate kind of misses the point of what really matters. It's not about which one is better, because there's honestly no single right way to work. Despite a business's best efforts and intentions, even a business that's open to all kinds of different work styles, a business will never be able to provide the most ideal working space for everybody. The question is really what is right for your business at this place in time. What working style supports the greater good of the company for your goals and objectives? And then work style alignment is about finding people who are naturally wired to thrive within your environment.
There are two aspects to work style alignment. One is individuals thriving in environments that align with their unique work style. And the second is teams thriving together when that alignment exists. This concept took me a long time to realize and fully understand how and why it came into play. But when it did, it was a huge light bulb moment to realize the magnitude of this concept and how significant it is in alignment.
I'm going to break this down through my own story. Within the first ten years of my career, I was mainly in admin and finance type jobs. Throughout those ten years, I was never passionate about work. I would consider myself a mediocre employee. I was not terrible. I did my job. But within this phase of my career, I was working in businesses that valued structure. That was the style in which work got done, the environment of the work. When you showed up each day, there were certain procedures that needed to be followed. There were controls in place to mitigate risk and mistakes. There was a lot of black and white. There wasn't a lot of creativity or freedom or innovation or flexibility, because that's not what the business required. I was working in finance and admin businesses where you want processes and controls, and you want things to be done a certain way each time. Lots of routine, lots of showing up and doing these things at the beginning of the month, these things in the middle, these things at the end. Everything needs to balance and check out down to the last penny. Then we repeat for the next month.
That was what the business needed, and it made them successful and served their clients well. The problem for me is that it conflicted with my own unique work style, which at the time I had not developed, not fully realized, didn't understand the concept, nor did I realize that it didn't align with me, much less what my work style actually was.
I learned about my own work style once I was thrown into entrepreneurship and became my own boss. I had to figure out how I worked best. That was a process of trial and error with no one telling me what to do and no specific guidelines on how I needed to work, only what are the deliverables, what are the results, what outcomes am I trying to achieve. And then me figuring out how I operated best.
And it was in this world of entrepreneurship that I started to realize my work style. Freedom, flexibility, autonomy. Getting up and working in spurts versus continuous routine blocks. I liked to follow my creativity. I liked to get up and work when the inspiration hit. I liked to be in flow and creative momentum, and that didn't fall within the lines of an eight to five structure. But I realized that when I was in my flow, when I was hit with inspiration and creativity and momentum, the results that came out of it were amazing. I was completely focused, not distracted, not procrastinating. I was 100% focused and productive. I was like, what is this feeling? I've never felt like this before when I've worked.
I realized that for me, this flow didn't last all day every day. It wasn't a pattern, but it was a rhythm. Certain circumstances or environments promoted more of it: being able to sit down and focus without distractions, light music in the background, no phone calls or meetings. On days where I had to do deep thought work, I couldn't have anything else on my calendar because that created a distraction. I learned how to time block my schedule to promote the most productive work environment that matched how I worked.
When I went to work for one of my clients, because I had learned this about myself, one of the things I told him was: if you want my best work and best contribution, I have to be able to work within this work style. I have to have some freedom and autonomy. I want to be hybrid. I will be at the office, I will build relationships, I will be present, but I need time in my schedule. I need freedom and flexibility to have this creative work time.
What I realized through this process was that my work style didn't match the work style of this company I had gone to work for. And so it created friction. It wasn't that this company's work style was as rigid as the finance and admin jobs. There was a lot of flexibility, freedom, autonomy, relationship and collaboration. Lots of thinking on your feet. So there were things about their work style that did match mine and created some alignment. However, at the end of the day, there ended up being enough friction and enough tension that it did create misalignment.
And I realized, wow, this work style is a part of this understanding of culture and alignment and the way that a business operates. At the time I was studying EOS and implementing EOS into the company, and I understood culture fit as simply sharing core values. What I came to discover is that it's more than that. You could share the same values, you could be aligned in that area. But if you don't share the same working style, it's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it does create tension and friction. And if you have enough of that, it can create obstacles and problems within your organization.
Creating your work style or understanding your work style first starts with understanding how does the business need to run. What's the environment, what's the pace, what's the communication style? That makes up how the business does its best work. Once you have that figured out, you can clarify it, communicate it, align people around it, and hold people accountable. There's the clarity, alignment, accountability framework. We want to attract people who will naturally thrive within your work style.
When I worked for this organization, I started to notice something in hiring. I couldn't put words to it at the time. But what I did know was that the way our business operated was fast-paced. Think on your feet. Ten things coming at you all the time. You had to be able to multitask, pivot, prioritize. And that had to excite you, thrill you, challenge and motivate you. But what I saw was we would hire employees who did share our values and who were in the right seat for their skill set, but the pace at which we operated was overwhelming and stressful for some. It ended up leading to burnout. And I realized there was something here.
So I started bringing work style into the hiring process and interview process. Hey, do you like fast-paced things? Do you like some ambiguity, some gray area? Because if you don't, you won't enjoy working here. You will feel overwhelmed, stressed out, and you will burn out and leave. I had seen it happen. It wasn't until afterward that I was able to put terms around what I was observing: every business has their own environment. It just exists. You don't create it. What we do is we clarify it, understand what it is so we can communicate it to people, let them know what they're getting into, and also make decisions about whether a person is going to thrive working in this environment.
So if you can have great people who believe what you believe, but the environment doesn't align with how they're wired to work, they won't thrive. And when the employee doesn't thrive, the business doesn't thrive, because you're not getting the maximum contribution and value they're capable of delivering.
Work style isn't about who's right and who's wrong. It's understanding that everybody works differently. When we create clarity around how the business works, it helps people find environments where they can flourish. When someone is in flow, in a flourishing environment, based on how they're hardwired, they can deliver a higher value and higher contribution. And as individuals, they find more meaning, more engagement in their work. When work style is misaligned, we see friction, frustration, burnout, tension because their natural rhythm doesn't match the company's rhythm.
When this alignment is present, people are energized by the pace and the structure. They're like yes, this is exciting, this motivates me, this inspires me to be more creative. We see more innovation, more growth. It's a flow state of work where all the cylinders are going off the way they need to. To get there, we have to know how our business needs to operate and then find people who thrive naturally within that.
When looking at work style, there are six components to consider. The first is pace: the overall speed and urgency of how work gets done. Are you fast-moving and high-energy, or steady and methodical? The second is structure: the amount of organization, systems, and process control that exists. Is this a business that operates with a lot of defined systems and SOPs, or is it more flexible and adaptive? Third is collaboration: the level of teamwork and shared decision-making expected. Is this a very team-focused and interactive environment, or more independent and task-driven? Fourth is autonomy: the degree of freedom and ownership individuals have in how they work. Is it more self-directed and empowered, or more guided and closely supported? Fifth is communication: how information is shared, discussed, and resolved. Is it direct and informal, or thoughtful and measured? Does everything get documented, or is it mostly verbal and informal? Sixth is decision making: how choices are made and who has authority. Is it quick and decisive versus careful and consensus-driven? Is this a chain of command environment, or are people empowered to make their own decisions as long as they can back them up?
Some quick examples. You could be fast-paced and high energy, a company that moves quickly, adapts fast, and is always go, go, go. Or the opposite: methodical and detail-oriented, planning carefully and protecting quality through precision. You could be highly collaborative, promoting people being together in the office or on calls, having fun, being creative together. Or completely the opposite: very autonomous and self-driven, where each person has their mission and executes it independently. Flexible and adaptive, open to change and pivoting and learning as you go. Or process-driven and structured, relying on clear systems and SOPs for consistency.
Now back to our tale of two brands. We have Precision Builders and Vision Builders. Last episode we talked about their values. Precision Builders is very much focused on doing what's right, being safe, being consistent. Their work style is structured, steady, and process-driven. Lots of plans, procedures, checklist documentation. An SOP for everything, a checklist for everything. Their decisions are thoughtful and risk-aware. They communicate clearly and document everything and expect the same from others. Every change order, every procedure, every process is documented. They value stability. Once a system works, it's protected and refined.
Vision Builders is all about innovation, adaptability, and creating better ways to build. Their work style is fast-moving, flexible, and innovation-driven. Lots of creative problem-solving versus rigid adherence to process. Very comfortable with ambiguity. They learn by trying, testing, adjusting. Not everything is documented, or if it is, it's more of a high-level guide: this is the roadmap, but how we get there isn't as rigid. Experimentation is celebrated, not feared. Versus Precision Builders, where experimentation would be stressful, looked down upon, because they celebrate consistency and proven methods that get consistent results.
So you want to find the person who, looking at these two open positions, can self-identify which one is going to be a better fit. And as the employer, when you're going through your interview process, you are clear about the type of person who's going to thrive in your environment, who will find peace and security and comfort, or who will value freedom and flexibility, whatever the combination is.
The beauty of it is every business is unique. There will never be a business that has the same values, the same work style, the same traits, the same non-negotiables. There's nuances to all of it. That's where we get this clear, authentic brand. You are unique. Your brand is unique. We want to embrace that, lean into that, clarify it as clearly and tangibly as we can, and then live it out. Build this brand that really does align with everything we believe in, that is the experience people have. Our customers and employees are going to value that, believe in that, because it's so clear and so authentic.
A quick recap: clarity around your work style really does help the right people thrive and protect your culture from unnecessary and avoidable friction. This is about owning your authentic identity, understanding what needs to happen for your people to thrive, and then finding people who specifically want to work in that type of environment. Next episode, we're going to continue this series and explore traits alignment: identifying the inherent characteristics of the people who are going to thrive in your business. As always, you can learn more at clearauthenticbrands.com. That's all for this episode. See you next time.