“If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don’t particularly like.”
— Soichiro Honda (Japanese Engineer and Industrialist)
At first, the statement feels uncomfortable.
Most hiring decisions are expected to be objective. Organizations evaluate experience, leadership, business results, and technical expertise before making an offer.
Surely personal preference has little influence. Or does it?
Research in organizational psychology suggests that people naturally feel more comfortable with individuals who think similarly, communicate similarly, or simply feel familiar.
That is perfectly human. The challenge is that familiarity can quietly shape judgment without announcing itself. And comfort feels objective, even when it is not.
When Familiarity Feels Like Competence
Interviewers rarely choose candidates because they consciously “like” them more.
The influence is often far more subtle.
During an interview, familiarity creates ease. The conversation flows naturally. Ideas feel aligned. Responses make intuitive sense because they resemble the way we think, communicate, or solve problems ourselves.
That sense of comfort can quietly become a shortcut for evaluation.
Without realizing it, we begin interpreting a smooth interaction as evidence of stronger capability, even though the two are not necessarily connected.
A candidate who challenges assumptions, approaches problems differently, or communicates in an unfamiliar style may require more effort to understand. Yet that extra effort says very little about the candidate’s actual potential.
It may simply reflect the fact that different thinking is naturally less comfortable than familiar thinking.
The challenge is not that we prefer people we like. The challenge is that we sometimes mistake familiarity for capability.
The Cost of Hiring People Who Think Like Us
Similarity creates speed, alignment, and comfort.
But organizations rarely outperform their competitors by surrounding themselves with people who see the world in exactly the same way.
The strongest leadership teams often contain individuals who challenge assumptions, ask difficult questions, and introduce perspectives that initially feel unfamiliar.
Ironically, these are sometimes the very candidates who create the greatest discomfort during interviews.
Not because they lack capability. But because they think differently from the people evaluating them.
The discomfort is real.
The risk is assuming that discomfort is evidence of poor fit rather than evidence of different thinking.
What Executive Search Often Protects Against
One of the less visible roles of executive search is helping organizations recognize the difference between familiarity and long-term fit.
An external perspective brings distance from internal preferences, making it easier to evaluate candidates based on the value they are likely to create rather than how naturally they resemble the people already inside the organization.
The conversation gradually shifts from:
“Do we naturally like this executive?”
to a more strategic question:
“Will this executive strengthen the leadership team in ways we cannot today?”
The two answers are not always the same.
Final Thought
Hiring decisions should never ignore chemistry. But they should also never confuse chemistry with capability.
Because the leaders who expand an organization’s thinking do not always reinforce what it already believes.
Sometimes, they challenge it.
As Soichiro Honda reminded us, outstanding people are not always the ones we naturally gravitate toward. Sometimes, they are the ones who make us think differently.