APS Blog

Do Values Matter

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 12:00:00 Z

It’s 07:36 on a crowded platform and it’s just been announced that all morning trains into the city have been cancelled due to a signalling issue. There’s a ripple of movement as hundreds of passengers react to the news.

We’ve all been in similar situations. Cancelled trains, missed buses, a car that won’t start. How do people tend to respond in those moments? Do they immediately email the office? Open journey apps, scanning for alternative transport? Pace up and down, venting their frustration aloud?

Sometimes we’re not alone when disruption hits. What happens when you’re in a group—colleagues, friends, family—and everyone responds differently? The planner clashes with the panicker. The joker annoys the worrier. The pragmatist tries to rally the team, while someone else just wants to be left alone. Individual reactions collide. Tensions surface. What started out as one shared problem sparks a series of relationship conflicts.

And it’s not just on train platforms or neighbourhood streets. The same thing happens in meeting rooms, in project kick-offs, during any moment of sudden change at work - A key client postpones. Budgets are unexpectedly cut. New regulations land overnight. The plan everyone agreed on yesterday is thrown up in the air. Any disruption triggers ripples of reactions.

So, what if it’s not the disruption itself that derails high-performing teams, but the clash of what each person is naturally inclined to protect, prove or prioritise? What’s really at play in these moments are individual values—what Hogan describe as “the interests, motives, and drivers that shape what a person strives to attain in life.” Values set the agenda for what each person feels urged to defend or restore during disruption. They’re often unconscious, internalised early and rarely spoken aloud, but they govern the decisions people make—whether to stand firm, compromise, seek harmony, or push forward.

What it can look like

A manager driven by Security pushes to pause all non-essential activity when budgets tighten. If colleagues who value Aesthetics see their work deprioritised without discussion, this could lead to frustration and a drop in visible creative energy.
As a commercial opportunity emerges, a leader motivated by Commerce lobbies for a fast pivot toward high-value clients. Others, focused on Altruism, might actively resist, citing values misalignment. The impasse becomes a flashpoint for previously unspoken tensions—and focus drifts from execution to internal disagreement.
In urgent discussions, someone with a strong Power drive makes rapid, unilateral calls. Team members who favour Affiliation or Hedonism could disengage, pulling back from the conversation and shifting concerns to private side channels rather than addressing them upfront.

If leaders don’t know what really drives them, or those around them, are they likely to explore ways to explain the driving forces behind their decisions? Will they be equipped to understand why some people applaud their behaviour, whilst others barely tolerate it? And what’s at stake if they don’t develop these skills? Hogan notes, “Misaligned values between organisations and leaders, organisations and teams, or organisations and individuals can all cause workplace conflict.” In practice, this means projects stall, talented people move on, and energy gets lost to workarounds or silent disengagement. The cost isn’t always visible in the moment, but shows up through missed opportunities, hard-to-explain turnover, and outcomes that don’t match the team’s real potential.

What might help?

If these situations resonate, here’s some strategies we’ve seen move the needle:

Share individual leader MVPI profiles 1:1: Bring hidden drivers into awareness; give leaders language for their own instincts and blind spots, supporting better decision accountability in high-pressure moments.
Share anonymised MVPI profiles with teams: Make underlying team dynamics discussable in the open, diffusing personal judgement and helping uncover where value clashes explain recurring friction or misfires.
Map MVPI profiles against future team needs in recruitment and succession decisions: Surface where current values coverage is robust—or missing—so you can avoid reinforcing blind spots, build intentional diversity of drivers, and make sure appointments align with strategic direction.

Reference
Robinson, E. (2024). The Importance of Values | Hogan Assessments. [online] Hogan Assessments. Available at: https://www.hoganassessments.com/blog/the-importance-of-values/.

Under the Surface: Spot Risks With Hogan

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:00:00 Z

Some of a team’s biggest setbacks happen beneath the surface: behaviours that quietly undermine trust or momentum without obvious warning. With 61% of employees citing culture as their reason for leaving (Percy, 2024), it’s clear that the real cost of inaction is steep.

“You would have to hire four superstar performers to make up for the value destroyed by a single toxic employee,” warns Hogan’s Chief Science Officer, Ryne Sherman (2025).

This is why early risk-spotting matters - practitioners who can detect issues before they escalate help protect both business results and workplace wellbeing.

What (and Who) is ‘Toxic’?

Hogan’s research makes it clear: there’s no single “type” that creates toxicity. As Sherman puts it, “People aren’t toxic, but bad behaviour at work is.” These behaviours can range from discrimination and manipulation to impulsivity or aggression - and they often go unnoticed until the damage is done. Hogan’s data doesn’t just describe these problems after the fact; it offers specific pattern signals that let you predict where toxic behaviours could emerge next, even in high performing teams that appear successful on the surface.

Predicting Risks

Hogan’s research points to several scale patterns that may signal increased potential for the kinds of behaviours that undermine culture:

Manipulation: Sometimes observed with higher Mischievous scores.
Impulsivity: May be more likely with low Prudence, high Mischievous, or low Adjustment scores.
Aggression/Hostility: Can be associated with low Adjustment or low Prudence.

Spotting these patterns, especially in team data, gives practitioners a chance to raise awareness and introduce safeguards before behaviours become a problem for the team or organisation.

Insights to Action

Here’s how you can use Hogan data to take preventative action:

Scan for potential risk clusters: Identify if more than one team member scores high on Mischievous or low on Prudence, or if several individuals share patterns linked to impulsivity or aggression. Make note of these clusters, even if the team’s results are generally strong.
Highlight possible future impact: Clearly outline what these patterns might mean if left unaddressed. For example: “Current data suggests a tendency towards risk-taking or testing boundaries: valuable for innovation, but more structured decision-making or defining of roles could help.”.
Prompt reflection and ownership: Invite those receiving feedback to share their own examples or observations. For example: “Are there times when you’ve seen the strengths of a ‘high mischievous’ profile start to tip into risk?”.

Final Thoughts

Every Hogan debrief, report, or data summary offers an opportunity to make risk visible, prompt reflection, and reset habits before issues take root. By inviting your senior leaders to complete Hogan, and sharing both individual and team-level insights, you’re helping build a high-trust, resilient workplace.

References

Robinson, E. (2025, September 19). The hidden cost of a toxic workplace environment. Hogan Assessments. https://www.hoganassessments.com/blog/cost-of-toxic-workplace-toxic-employees

Percy, S. (2024, August 1). Safe to speak up? 4 Ways to build Psychological Safety at work. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypercy/2024/07/24/safe-to-speak-up-4-ways-to-build-psychological-safety-at-work/

How are personality tests made?

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 11:25:27 Z

Original post

How are personality tests made?

Hogan Assessments spend a great deal of time thinking about the difference between identity and reputation when they build their personality assessments.

Identity, or how we think about ourselves, is frequently changing and often self-serving, and that makes it a poor basis for building personality assessments.

Reputation, or how others think about us, is often more stable and a more useful way to build personality assessments that predict job performance. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Because reputation reflects past behavior, reputation is the best predictor of future behavior.

Hogan validate their assessments by having people take those assessments. Then ask other people who know them, such as peers, direct reports, and managers, to describe what they’re like. The assessment data and observer ratings—along with job performance review data, objective performance data, and 360-degree data—are stored in a database with personality data from several million people. Once someone has taken Hogan Assessments, Hogan can use the information from their database to predict whether the person will be able to do a job, how they will behave on the job, and even whether they will like the job.

How do personality tests predict job performance?

Personality assessments should measure personality from the perspective of reputation, which is how others are likely to describe or experience us. Reputation is a collection of past and present behaviors described by others, and we know it to be the best predictor of future job performance. We have found that personality helps us to describe the characteristics and behaviors that are required for or important to job performance—things like resiliency and strategic self-awareness and collaboration.

Hogan’s personality tests are based on decades of research on personality psychology and measurement, and they have been validated against external criteria, including job performance and peer ratings. This allows us to describe the reputation that a job candidate likely has in the workplace.

Hogan also compare the way a job candidate scores to thousands of other people to determine how that person will likely behave at work. Using custom research involving job analysis, Hogan can also create personality profiles to determine how well candidates will fit into a particular job role or organisational culture.

The Future Is Here: AI, Personality, and the Impact

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:00:00 Z

Original post: Hogan Assessments

Before we start catastrophizing about our future AI rulers, we should stop and appreciate the potential good that artificial intelligence can offer. The impact of AI on personality assessment and workplace communication will likely be positive—and extensive.

Recently on The Science of Personality Live, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, chief science officer, and Blake Loepp, PR manager, spoke with Michal Kosinski, PhD, associate professor in organizational behavior at Stanford University, about the evolving technology of artificial intelligence.

Michal’s primary research focus is studying humans in a digital environment using cutting-edge computational methods, artificial intelligence, and big data. He was also behind the first press article warning against Cambridge Analytica, the privacy risks they exploited, and the efficiency of the methods they use.

Let’s look at how AI language models have evolved, what AI-assisted communication might become, how AI affects the future of personality assessment, and whether AI language models can be creative.

The Evolution of AI-Language Models

Within the next few months (as of March 2023), AI language models will become exponentially more capable and ingenious. How does that explosive growth happen?

The approach to the development of AI language models started with chess. At first, software engineers and data scientists fed AI chess programs with archives of chess games played by humans. Then they equipped two AI programs with a virtual chessboard and instructions for how to play without any human intervention. “For the first few million games, those models were completely stupid,” Michal said, explaining that the rate of play was millions of games per second. “But soon, after a few hours, what emerged was this alien, superhuman software that could play chess at a level completely unachievable to human players.”

Software developers and artificial intelligence specialists used the same adaptive strategy to teach AI models how to craft language. Humans learn language through conversation, context, and correction. They make mistakes, learn, and make mistakes more rarely over time. “At some point they stop making mistakes and reach new levels of language. The same approach was used to train ChatGPT and similar models,” Michal said. The AI programs were given sentences with one word missing, failed millions of times to fill in the blank correctly, and then began to get it right. After a few million dollars of electricity and a few billion sentences, Michal quipped, the programs showed language mastery at an extraordinary level.

The AI revolution originated by teaching machines to solve problems using the same strategies that we use to teach humans: reinforcement and feedback. At first, the machines make obvious logical mistakes, but then they don’t. “The AI is responding to you as if as if it’s another person, which is the most incredible thing,” added Ryne. Because computers can exceed humans in logical ability, they are well suited to both playing chess and using language.

AI-Assisted Communication

“AI is a revolution comparable with the invention of written language,” Michal said. Manual writing gave humans the ability to communicate across time, sometimes thousands of years in the past. Knowing how to use a stylus, quill, or pencil was an essential method for communication before computers. Now, knowing how to use a keyboard is essential. Very shortly, the same fundamental change will happen with AI language models, Michal predicted.

“I think that GPT is potentially a new language for humanity to communicate at speed and convenience unheard of and impossible before,” Michal said.

An AI language model won’t just help humans write emails. It will craft the perfect message in the language that is most readily understood for the recipient. Here’s how.

Imagine that Michal wants to send Ryne an email. An AI language model knows and remembers all the events of each person’s life and has consumed every piece of digital communication each has produced. If Michal asked the AI to send a message to Ryne, he could make the request in very few words as if speaking to a good friend with intimate knowledge of him. But because the AI knew Ryne at that same level, it could “translate” Michal’s message into the perfect form for Ryne. The AI could use not only Ryne’s preferred language, such as English or Mandarin, but also a highly personalized form of that language unique to Ryne.

“In terms of the potential for translation, it knows the meaning of what you’re trying to say. It can translate that into a meaning that somebody else can understand in the way they understand,” Ryne said.

Another sense of AI-assisted communication is searching the internet. You wouldn’t ask the AI language model to find a website for you; you’d ask it the question you wanted to learn. It would search all websites and tailor its answer to any length or depth for your individual understanding of the world.

AI in Personality Assessment

Artificial intelligence is great at knowing and remembering what has been written, both words and data. For an AI language model to predict personality based on language, you’d need to first collect a lot of quality data. Michal pointed out that AI language models already understand language, of course, and can translate words into analyzable numbers. “They already understand psychological concepts like personality,” he said. These models have read texts written by introverts and extroverts and could theoretically detect, based on a fragment of a text, whether a person is introverted or extroverted.

Ryne imagined whether personality assessments of the future would have questionnaires and self-reporting. “One of the big questions surrounding this topic is to what degree I’m a willing participant in this endeavor,” he said. The quality of publicly available information versus data gained from individuals intentionally taking a personality assessment will differ substantially. The AI-assisted analysis would likely be higher quality in the latter case. Voluntary participation would also address questions of ethics.

Using big data models to predict personality characteristics is not a new notion. It has positives: it can analyze millions of people in a minute, and it can match people with compatible work or suggest workplace training and development. It also has negatives: it can be used to invade privacy or manipulate people. “As with many other technologies, we focus on the risks of the technology itself, completely forgetting that the real risk is in the intentions of the users,” Michal responded.

Artificial Intelligence and Creativity

A new fronter in AI language models is innovation and creativity. Humanity has taken generations to refine speech and writing. Individual humans spend over a decade learning to speak and write. AI language models have mastered written communication in a few years at a high level that continues to increase.

Michal compared AI creativity to human creativity in that most of us learn and combine elements of what we know or have experienced in new, creative ways. Perceiving computers as nothing but glorified calculators is short-sighted thinking, he said. That computers can incorporate and build elements into new results makes them fundamentally creative too.

“Many other animals are also creative in their own ways that we do not always recognize because it’s just not our type of art. The same applies to computers,” Michal said. “They learn from us, they learn from each other, and they become extremely creative with what they are good at—and they’re increasingly good at anything we ask them to do.”

Note: When ChatGPT (March 23 version) was asked to provide a quote in fewer than 120 characters about how it learned language, this was its response: “Words woven, sounds spoken, meanings grasped. A symphony of curiosity, immersion, and connection. Language learned, world unlocked.”

Listen to this conversation in full, and find the whole library of episodes at The Science of Personality.

The Easy Way to Increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Your Organization

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:00:00 Z

Original Post: Hogan Assessments

Diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you work in human resources, or a related field, you’ve heard these terms before and, odds are, you have some idea of what they mean. But just so that we are all on the same page, I’ll use the following, heavily borrowed, definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion:

Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
Equity concerns fair treatment, access, and opportunity for all people. Equity is about providing recognition, promotion, and compensation that is consistent with one’s work and qualifications. No one should be provided special treatment or privileges based on anything but performance.
Inclusion concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

There are at least three reasons organizations should care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. The first is moral. Basic standards of human decency tell us that all people are of value and have something to contribute to society. Moreover, all people – regardless of background – deserve to be treated fairly, sharing equally in the benefits and burdens of society.

The second reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is legal. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The act also established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which further expanded Title VII to include discrimination based on age, gender, and disability. Ultimately, organizations found to be in violation of the laws are subject to legal ramifications including fines.

The third reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is to do better business. Solving business problems like growing market share, understanding clients for different markets, and ensuring your advertising isn’t off-putting to certain groups is easier and more efficient with people from a diverse set of backgrounds. In 2015, Bud Light added the tag line “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night” to their label. The advertising was immediately criticized. One cannot help but think that if the marketing team had included just one woman, they would have immediately realized this was a really bad idea.

The good news is that many organizations today get it. In 2005, fewer than 20% of the Fortune 500 had officers/programs for diversity and inclusion. In 2016, that number was closer to 60% and is poised to climb even higher. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are good for the organization and they are here to stay. But many organizations still struggle to increase their diversity and inclusion. The purpose of this essay is to make the scientific case for the use of personality assessments as a direct way to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Making Personnel Decisions

When it comes time to hire someone, or to promote someone to a higher role, there are lots of valid ways organizations can go about doing this. Obvious options include asking for referrals, looking at resumes, and conducting an interview. All these methods, to various degrees, are valid predictors of workplace performance. Unfortunately, all these methods are also heavily subject to bias. Referrals practically guarantee that you will reduce diversity (i.e., people tend to only refer people with whom they are familiar, and we tend to be most familiar with people who are similar to us). While resumes may appear to be unbiased, they frequently include opportunities for implicit bias to occur. For example, some names may reflect ethnicity (e.g., John Logan vs. Juan Lopez) and even educational experiences may be a better reflection of parental socioeconomic status than ability to perform on the job. And, of course, interviews are full of opportunities for bias to creep in. The data are clear, with classic methods of making personnel decisions, you get increased workplace performance, but also increased bias. Ultimately, this reduces diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The good news is that it is easy to eliminate bias from personnel decisions: just make decisions at random. That is, if you decide to hire or promote people on a completely random basis (i.e., rolling dice, drawing names out of hat), it is guaranteed that you will not be making biased decisions. Unfortunately, it is also guaranteed that you will not be making the most effective decisions in terms of your organization’s long-term performance.

But there is still one more alternative, one way that you can increase both long-term performance and increase your organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion: scientifically validated personality assessments. Decades of research on personality assessment (broadly speaking) show effectively zero differences in scores due to race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, language, physical appearance, education level, or disability. (There are age differences, but these reflect maturity and are not biased against older adults.) At Hogan, we gather personality data from millions of people – from virtually every ethnic background – all over the world on an annual basis. Our own data show no meaningful differences in test scores as a function of group status. As just one example, the figures below show average scores on our three core assessments – the HPI, the HDS, and the MVPI – for different U.S. racial categories. The scores are so close that they are virtually identical.

But with personality assessments, you don’t just get diversity, equity, and inclusion. As already mentioned, you can do that simply by choosing people at random. With scientifically-validated personality assessments, you also get a track record of predicting workplace performance. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

TL; DR

The point here is simple: If all personnel decisions were made using scientifically-validated personality assessments, unfair discrimination in the workplace would cease to exist. Personality assessments lead to increased productivity and engagement, as well as increased diversity, equity and inclusion. If you are serious about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organization, using scientifically-validated personality assessments is an easy way to do that.

Improving Diversity and Inclusion: Practical, Evidence-based Recommendations

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:00:00 Z

Original Post: Hogan Assessments

The protests against systemic patterns of racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death, the success of female heads of state leading their countries through the global pandemic, and the recent United States Supreme Court decision prohibiting workplace discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation are just a few of the topics that are spurring discussions about diversity and inclusion (D&I) right now.

Although these current events have brought D&I to the forefront, this topic should not be new in the workplace — addressing D&I concerns should be a critical priority for all organizations. However, many organizations struggle to create diverse workplaces, especially at the highest levels, and to promote cultures that allow all employees to feel heard and included.¹Fortunately, organizations can leverage Hogan assessments to help address these concerns and create a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Defining Diversity and Inclusion

There are different ways to define D&I in the context of the workplace. These borrowed definitions are helpful ways for us to better understand what we are referencing when discussing diversity and inclusion²:

Diversity concerns all the ways people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
Inclusion concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

Why Should We Care about Diversity and Inclusion?

Both diversity and inclusion should be important to organizations as they seek to do the right thing, avoid legal recourse, and deliver key business outcomes. Given these reasons, it’s not surprising that the majority of survey respondents (75%) in a recent study by Pew Research consider it important for their organizations to promote diversity in the workplace.³

Even if there were no moral imperative or risk of legal challenges, organizations could not ignore the strong business case for creating a diverse workplace. As one example, some estimates suggest that organizations with higher levels of gender diversity can outperform organizations that lack female representation by up to 58%.⁴

The positive impact does not stop there. Organizations with more D&I practices tend to have lower levels of absenteeism and turnover and higher levels of organizational innovation and performance. However, even with these notable outcomes, many employees still say their organizations are not doing enough to create inclusive environments.

How Can Hogan Help Your Diversity and Inclusion Goals?

There are a few reasons you should consider using Hogan’s personality assessments in your D&I efforts. First, personality assessment promotes fairness in selection. Our research shows that personality is a strong predictor of performance without producing meaningful subgroup differences. This means we recommend solutions that can help you identify the best talent without discriminating against any group, thereby preserving diversity in applicant pools. Contrary to popular misconception, using personality for selection does not create a workforce of people who have the same personality profile. Hogan creates selection profiles that are specific for each job and would vary across jobs within the same organization. Within a job, we typically only screen on a few personality characteristics for which people will have diverse scores on scales in the profile range and even more so across other personality characteristics.

Second, you can use Hogan’s personality tools to identify and develop leaders who will promote diversity and inclusion. We analyzed data from more than 5,000 individuals to explore the components of Hogan’s personality inventories that predict supervisor ratings on behaviors, such as

discouraging discrimination and prejudice;
relating well to a variety of people;
recognizing the unique potential of each person;
showing respect, tolerance, and open-mindedness;
respecting views different from one’s own;
treating others with respect regardless of race, gender, appearance, religion, and beliefs;
valuing diverse perspectives;
displaying sensitivity to issues related to diversity and culture;
having the ability to see the world through the eyes of others; and
displaying sensitivity to the needs of others.

We meta-analyzed within-study correlations across 47 organizations and found that Adjustment, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Prudence, and Altruism had positive relationships with behaviors related to diversity and inclusion. Additionally, Excitable, Skeptical, Bold, Mischievous, Recognition, and Power had negative relationships with D&I behaviors. This suggests that people who are optimistic, perceptive, warm, conscientious, tolerant, open-minded, not defensive, trusting, modest, humble, honest, sympathetic, and concerned about helping others will work to foster an environment of inclusivity, regardless of race, age, gender, background, and ideas.

Implications

The importance of diversity and inclusion and the steps you need to take to make your workplace more diverse and inclusive cannot be outlined in a short blog. In fact, half-baked attempts at improving D&I initiatives can have negative impacts. An appropriate organizational culture is necessary to nurture diversity and inclusion. Some research suggests that organizational diversity structures alone, such as diversity policies, diversity training, and diversity awards, can cause white males to have illusory perceptions of fair decision-making procedures impacting minorities (i.e., a “we checked the box” attitude).⁵ This can lead to white males reacting harshly to claims of discrimination because they might assume all D&I issues have been addressed. Further, we haven’t even touched on the complexity of thinking about diversity in a global context.

While we cannot give you a silver bullet, we do provide these practical recommendations for consideration in your larger D&I initiatives:

First, use the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) to select and promote all employees to increase diversity, hire qualified candidates, and promote fairness in hiring. Using assessments that do not discriminate will lead to more diversity at all levels.
Second, use the HPI, HDS, and MVPI to select, promote, and develop leaders who will create a diverse and inclusive environment.
Finally, use the HPI, HDS, and MVPI to provide feedback to employees and enhance their awareness of biases they might have that could stifle D&I efforts.

For more information, make sure you check out our webinar on the topic. You can also listen to our recent The Science of Personality podcast episodes, “Women in Leadership” and “SCOTUS LGBTQ Decision and What It Means for Your Organization.”

*This post was authored by Amber Burkhart, Kimberly Nei, Chase Winterberg, and Jessica Walker.

References

Jones, S. (2017, June 9). White Men Account for 72% of Corporate Leadership at 16 of the Fortune 500 Companies. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/
Kapila, M., Hines, E., Searby, M. (2016, October 6). Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter. Independent Sector. https://independentsector.org/resource/why-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-matter/
Horowitz, J. M. (2019, May 8). Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country’s Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/05/08/americans-see-advantages-and-challenges-in-countrys-growing-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/
Moran, G. (2017, January 23). How These Top Companies Are Getting Inclusion Right. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/3067346/how-these-top-companies-are-getting-inclusion-right
Kaiser, C. R., Major, B., Jurcevic, I., Dover, T. L., Brady, L. M., & Shapiro, J. R. (2013). Presumed fair: Ironic effects of organizational diversity structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(3), 504–519. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030838

Hogan Norms Update 2023

Fri, 05 May 2023 12:00:00 Z

Hogan Local and Global Norms Update: Effective: 1^st June 2023

Number of countries/territories increased by 11 from 179 to 190

Languages and dialects: 48

Global Norm Size:

HPI 153,223 | HDS, 115,793 | MVPI 99,568

UK Norm Size

HPI 7,342 | HDS, 5,991 | MVPI 5,409

Background

Why update norms?

Improved validity & reliability – The question item response scale provides the potential for a wider distribution, internal consistency and thus more accurate results and interpretation.

Better representation of work-relevant demographic groups.

Scale update

For HPI and HDS only, up to 2018 participant responses to question items were limited to True or False. In September 2018, Hogan introduced a 4-point agreement response scale and started to collect response data for analysis.

strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree.

Response analysis across participants has been completed and sub-scale results are more accurate for country and global norms.

Data Stratification

New releases of the global norm enables inclusion of country data when sufficient assessments are completed. Countries included in the norm are equally represented in numbers.

Interpretation of results

Continue to interpret sub-scale and main-scale results as before.

Technical Resources

Please contact us if you have any questions or for further resources and full technical documentation.

Faking and Authenticity in the Workplace

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 12:00:00 Z

Although the UK and Ireland are seen as relatively mature populations when it comes to using psychometrics, and similar assessments to support selection and development, from time to time, we still get asked about whether people try to fake their profiles and the knock-on implications.

From a development perspective, we aim to help individuals create more strategic self-awareness, and the range of Hogan Assessments and 360s we supply are designed to provide individuals with indicators of how their natural tendencies and behaviours show up as strengths or detract from their performance and reputation. In these circumstances, there is little real benefit of trying to play the system, but people still appear to try.

It is particularly apparent when we review how 360 participants rate themselves, compared to how their manager, peers, and direct reports score them. Sometimes we will see an individual rate themselves consistently higher against a range of skills than their colleagues do. However, is this someone trying to make themselves look good or is it simply someone whose self-perception is out of kilter with the reality of how others experience them?

In these cases, what some might see as hubris, or trying to make themselves look good in the questionnaire, is often a blind spot that a qualified practitioner will be able to bring alive in the feedback for the individual. Equally, these insights can also apply to someone who seems overly self-critical or modest and consistently rates themselves lower than colleagues. Both situations offer powerful opportunities to create meaningful learning for individuals.

What about the implications for selection though – what if someone purposefully goes out of their way to try to make themselves look good in psychometric assessments they complete? I suspect if someone really wants a job, they will also go out of their way to present themselves in the most favourable way in an interview too? Fortunately, using Hogan Assessments, we are able to predict if someone is trying to create an overly positive perspective of themselves – impression management. This can then be explored in the interview process and used to validate the individual’s relative potential strengths and risks for a role.

Professor Adrian Furnham wrote a very insightful article recently for The European Business Review on the wider topic of being authentic in the workplace. Adrian highlights the benefits and pitfalls of both being authentic or being a high self-monitor, where we adapt to the social cues around us.

The Politics of Potential

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 12:00:00 Z

HR professionals typically agree that a more integrated, transparent, and strategic response to succession management is needed. Identifying high-potentials is part of that need and now, more than ever, succession management requires a reliable yet delicate approach. As outlined in 'The Politics of Potential - how organisational politics are poking holes in your high-potential programme', the old ways of selecting and developing leadership talent needs a shake-up; and the skills necessary to emerge as a leader aren’t the same as those required to perform effectively as one.

Adding a data-driven approach, based on reliable psychometrics and a verified high-potential framework can add value to a company’s succession planning toolkit. This e-book discusses the risk organisations take if they only focus on politically savvy 'go-getters'.

As a way to reliably assess the strengths and challenges, values and drivers, and possible career derailers of each person as a unique individual, Hogan’s model offers a comprehensive application along these three leadership dimensions:

1) Foundations

2) Emergence

3) Effectiveness

For more information please contact heather@advancedpeoplestrategies.co.uk

HR’s Biggest Challenge: Succession Planning

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 12:00:00 Z

In the 1970s, only 8 percent of S&P 500 CEOs were recruited externally. That number grew to 22 percent in 2014. Yet, outsiders are almost 7 times more likely to be dismissed within a short tenure than homegrown CEOs. No matter how much a board learns about an outside candidate, executive stakeholders simply have a better understanding of an internal contender’s strengths and weaknesses, especially as they relate to the specifics of the current business landscape and strategic objectives. As a result of the inherent “information misalignment,” the chance of making a mistake is much higher for a CEO hired from outside the company.

Most stakeholders will admit that they know this already. But what they won’t admit is that the expressed need to bring in an outside CEO is evidence that neither the board, the current (or previous) CEO nor the chief of human resources successfully performed one of their most crucial, shared responsibilities: building a sustainable leadership pipeline that readies executives and potential executives to advance at all levels of the organisation.

There is good reason effective succession planning eludes so many otherwise functional companies. Making inferences about future performance, the variance of organisational politics and a tendency to devote limited (if any) focus to assessing “hidden potential” often hinder otherwise valiant efforts. For example, there are several reasons an individual may be nominated to participate in a succession plan, but far too often these individuals are identified because they are socially skilled, confident and interested in influencing others and moving up the corporate ladder. However, just because an individual is rewarding to deal with, doesn’t mean that the organisation should devote resources to his/her development.

When it comes to desired leadership outcomes, emergence does not necessarily equal effectiveness. If beating the competition remains the ultimate goal, an organisation’s leadership pipeline needs to be filled with those who can successfully lead high-performing teams. Accurately identifying top talent must involve science in the form of objective, relevant validated data. Despite guidance from the academic and business literature, some companies still base these important decisions on politically fraught processes or confound successful emergence with effective leadership. But clarity is not unattainable. According to various studies, successful managers tend to spend their time managing up by networking and politicking, whereas effective managers spend their time managing down by taking care of subordinates and driving team performance. Rarely do the two groups overlap.

What’s more, there is a common misunderstanding amongst most executives that all individuals considered for a succession plan should be able to effectively lead people, as opposed to advancing as a leader of processes or thought (i.e. subject matter expert), for example. Tech companies in the Fortune 100 have pioneered the notion that not everyone makes a great people leader. In addition to the typical “high potential” evaluation models, organizations like Microsoft and Cisco smartly consider other “leadership” skill sets that lend themselves to domains such as operational efficiency or innovation. In other words, insisting on professional people-leadership development for an individual who lacks the interest or compulsion to guide others toward stretch goals only sets up that valued employee for inevitable failure.

Well-validated personality assessments give a preview into which path forward is most conducive to an individual’s inherent behavioral patterns and latent interests. Those who have the proclivity to impose structure and the drive to keep things predictable will demonstrate behaviors conducive to process leadership. Those who have the propensity to seek inspirational ideas and who also emphasize the importance of imagination will likely have an easier time in a thought leadership role. And the working styles of those compelled to stay knowledgeably up-to-date as well as demand sound rationales to determine courses of action will be more conducive to data-dependent jobs. Having such information available in easy-to-understand terminology can help stakeholders vested in the organizational well-being leverage employees’ natural tendencies for more informed and specific succession planning.

Our business landscape continues to shift and evolve at an ever-faster rate. People represent the difference between an organization’s success and failure. The stakes of correctly identifying and developing the next generation of leaders could not be higher. Focusing on specific, differentiating options for advancement early in the careers of valued employees will only serve to benefit the organization. Basing the related evaluations of potential on objective data-driven metrics will help HR overcome the ultimate challenge: keeping the pipeline from entry level all the way to the CEO flush with options for filling vacancies.

This article originally appeared in Human Resource Executive.

Advanced People Strategies Appointed Hogan Distributor for Ireland

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 12:00:00 Z

Advanced People Strategies are proud to announce they have been appointed as an authorised Hogan distributor for Ireland, having successfully represented Hogan for 18 years in the UK.

APS have experienced significant growth in recent years, providing supporting tools and services to maximise practical people development opportunities, including custom 360 solutions, individual coaching, team development, and their innovative SkillsPilot platform focused on quick and effective skills assessment and feedback.

“Our friends at APS have been a tremendous member of our international distributors network for nearly two decades, providing first-class services to clients across a wide range of industries,” said Hogan CEO Scott Gregory, PhD. “With so much potential in the Irish market, we anticipate further growth and success for them moving forward.”

Despite the impact of the global pandemic and recent economic uncertainties, APS has trained and certified more than 1,000 practitioners in the last three years.

“The APS team has years of experience helping organisations implement successful people development strategies,” said APS CEO Chris Humphreys. “We are looking forward to supporting our expanding network of clients in Ireland with access and experience to make the most of the added value Hogan can bring for business leaders and HR practitioners.”

APS will celebrate the appointment with an in-person event, “Make or Break Your Organisation's Future? Talented Leaders, Teams, and an Enabling Culture,” featuring Robert Hogan as keynote speaker. The event will be held at the Teeling Whiskey Distillery, Dublin 8, Ireland on Thursday, 2^nd March 2023. The conference will focus on critical people insights for business leaders, HR directors, and talent specialists in Ireland. Register today!

Advanced People Strategies (APS)

APS are leadership & talent development specialists, and Authorised Hogan Assessments Distributors for the UK & Ireland, providing Certification, Coaching, Masterclasses, & Team/Leadership Development programmes, supporting HR, L&D, talent specialists, and coaches looking for validated, data-driven people development tools.

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Who wants to be a game changer and what might get in the way?

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 12:00:00 Z

It was encouraging to hear from so many attendees about their existing experience of using Hogan Assessments to support executive recruitment, at the AESC 'Sustaining Growth' Global Conference, London 2022, reflecting the growing awareness of Hogan to support talent identification and placement.

The themes of the conference provided an ideal platform to discuss the impact of personality, values and ‘dark-side’ risk behaviours on the approach to sustainable growth at board level as well as other strategic applications using Hogan Assessments.

Dr Annalisa Jenkins, when addressing key questions around equality, diversity and inclusion, spoke about the importance of culture and leadership as well as highlighting the key question – ‘how do you ensure a high-performing, effective team’.

In his keynote speech, futurist, Gerd Leonhard, highlighted some of the elements of what he called a Key Human Index for future success including such elements as flexibility, empathy, resilience, intuition and imagination as well as values.

Reflecting on some of these critical behaviours, which experts expect to see in the leaders of the future, and their boardrooms, Hogan Assessments can provide key insights into all of them. Providing clear perspectives as to how natural tendencies, behaviours and values are likely to show up or get in the way, is a key element not only to help support those who want to be the game changer leaders, but also those whose mission is to identify and place them in the right roles.

Five Things To Know About Employee Engagement in 2021

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 12:00:00 Z

Original Post HR News 28th January 2021

Employee engagement refers to the commitment and connection employees have to their organisation and is critical for business unit performance.

For business and HR leaders in 2021, employee engagement will be a top priority as many companies continue to operate remotely for the foreseeable future. Scott Gregory, CEO at Hogan Assessments, has outlined the five things leaders need to know about improving employee engagement this year.

Leadership shapes engagement
For some employees, working remotely can be lonely and isolating, especially for more dependant team members like new hires and junior executives. Ensuring that staff are supported and set up for success while working remotely is key to maintaining employee engagement in 2021.

Employee engagement is predominantly shaped by leadership effectiveness, with effective leaders defined as those who can successfully lead a high-performing and engaged team. To boost engagement, companies need to focus on how their managers behave, and that is true whether in “normal” times or in our current circumstance. While effective leaders will devote their time to supporting their team and forming relationships of trust with employees, ineffective – or emergent – leaders will waste their time building political capital and promoting their own accomplishments.

When organizations are suffering with a poorly engaged staff force, the first place they should look is at their managers and how they are behaving. That is, are they behaving as emergent or effective leaders? To determine this, companies must pay closer attention to personality.

Personality matters
When identifying effective leaders that support team members and improve employee engagement, it is imperative that companies look at personality. Decades of research show that well-validated measures of personality predict every consequential life outcome, and leadership effectiveness is no exception. Personality predicts leadership performance better than any other alternative indicator, including IQ. And because valid personality assessments promote fairness in selection and do not discriminate – that is, women perform the same as men, ethnic minorities perform the same as ethnic majorities – companies that leverage the science of personality can find strong leadership anywhere from a diverse pool of talent.

Hogan’s leadership value chain – based on over 30 years of data on job performance and leadership effectiveness – states that personality drives leadership, leadership drives employee engagement, and engagement ultimately drives organizational performance. Personality also influences how managers interact with their employees, and how teams interact with each other, which sets the company culture – another key ingredient for engagement.

To improve engagement and maintain high performing teams in 2021, business and HR leaders must be strategic at the source by using valid personality assessment to select better leaders who are well-adjusted, strong communicators, and deeply compassionate when it comes to supporting employees.

Spotting burnout is crucial
Perhaps the second biggest challenge to maintaining engagement and a high performing remote team is identifying which team members are becoming disengaged. Anyone can appear engaged and motivated during weekly calls or Zoom parties, but it is harder to spot who is really struggling with the challenges of remote work. It is important for managers to gain the trust of their employees so that they can have open and honest conversations about engagement and what can be done to keep them motivated.

One advantage of remote work is that there is less room to confuse activity with productivity. Some employees are great at being ‘seen’ in the traditional workplace without accomplishing much, so remote work will require these employees to produce tangible results, as their political skill will not be as effective. For all employees, leaders should double down on regular goal setting that involves targets and deadlines, just as they would in face-to-face settings, but be careful not ‘micro-manage’! This way, employees with discretionary effort who are engaged and meeting objectives will be easier to spot.

Engagement cannot be ‘done’, it must be earned
With the shift to remote work, companies are now adapting to deliver several employee engagement and wellbeing initiatives, designed to make working life easier for staff and to maintain cohesive and engaged teams. Actions that employers are taking to boost employee engagement in 2021 tend to fall into three categories: technology, social, and employee wellbeing. Whether these actions really increase engagement is an open question, but they likely do make employees’ work and non-work lives easier to manage, which may lessen stress and burnout potential.

Employee wellbeing initiatives include stipends for home-office equipment – to assist productivity and ergonomic-related health – and schedule flexibility. Some companies have adopted a culture of relaxed protocol, making it known to employees that every day at-home interruptions need not be apologized for. Other companies directly offer employees the chance to tailor their work schedules/online availability to accommodate their non-work responsibilities while working remotely. This flexibility to designed to support staff as they navigate the transition to remote work and ultimately maintain employee engagement.

Examples of social initiatives that companies are putting into place include ‘Humpday hangouts’ and virtual happy ours – held with the intention of fostering a connection amongst team members while working remotely. Paired one-on-one virtual coffee breaks, such as Coffee Ninja, are also prevalent – the goal being to foster employee relationships informally, much like what might happen when running into someone in the lunchroom in a physical office.

It is important for companies to note, however, that these initiatives are not enough to boost employee engagement on their own. If there is poor communication between managers and employees, and pre-existing feelings of resentment brewing amongst team members, virtual social gatherings and coffee-breaks will likely fall on deaf ears and could further contribute to ‘WFH burnout’. Engagement is not something that is ‘done’ for employees, but rather something that is earned from them through continued support and strong leadership. The single most powerful step a company can take to boost engagement is to ensure that managers are communicating and collaborating effectively with their teams, with wellbeing initiatives like the above re-enforcing this support structure.

The picture is brighter than it seems
Finally, while the conversation surrounding employee engagement in 2021 may seem daunting, companies will be pleased to know that remote work does not necessarily translate into ‘bad engagement’. A recent survey carried out by Hogan Assessments, which consisted predominantly of mid-level managers from mid to large-sized companies across Europe, revealed that, although 60% of professionals find remote work mentally challenging, 86% report that they are engaged with their organization, and a further 42% claim to be highly engaged. These latest findings indicate that while challenges arose for workers following the shift to remote work, attitudes towards leadership and engagement remained stable and positive throughout Europe.

Many employees understand that the challenges of remote work are not the result of their employer’s incompetence, but rather the result of a global pandemic. Employees also know that everyone is going through the same challenges – managers included – and as a result, their emotional commitment to their organizations remains as high as, or perhaps even higher, than it was before working from home.

Scott Gregory, CEO at Hogan Assessments, adds:

“The global shift to remote work following COVID-19 has presented several key challenges for business and HR leaders, many of which stem from communication obstacles and the disruption of daily social activities. With teams suffering interpersonally right now due to remote work and lack of in-person interaction, leaders now more than ever must pay close attention to employee engagement. Employees are engaged when their work and company’s culture aligns with their motives and values, which in turn motivates them to exercise discretionary effort.

While wellbeing initiatives like Zoom parties and increased flexibility can make remote work easier for employees, companies must go beyond these remedies to select leaders that are well-adjusted, strong communicators, and deeply compassionate when it comes to their teams. While some evidence suggests that the picture across Europe is positive for employee engagement, companies that are struggling with a poorly engaged team must be strategic when selecting leaders and examine closely how their managers are behaving with employees.”

Virtual - Hogan Certification Workshops

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 16:40:05 Z

Hogan Assessment Certification Workshops are now offered Virtually.

Authorised distributor APS was the first to run a Virtual Hogan Certification Workshop, and the feedback from participants has been 'excellent'.

Each virtual UK-based Hogan workshop will be delivered over 2-days, starting at 9.30 am both days. The cost to attend the UK Hogan Certification is £1995+VAT.

The Hogan Certification workshop is required for use of the Hogan Assessment suite.

This course teaches professionals to interpret and apply Hogan’s three core personality-based assessments:

Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI): measures the “bright side” of personality; strengths that facilitate successful performance
Hogan Development Survey (HDS): measures the “dark side” of personality; potential career derailers that impede performance
Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI): measures the “inside” of personality; values and drivers that powerfully influence organizational fit and leadership style

Participants who successfully complete the workshop will be certified to use and interpret the Hogan inventories. Insights acquired during this intensive workshop will challenge and change the way you think about human nature, leadership and performance.

Find out more and book today

Revisiting Hogan Results

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:00:00 Z

Many of our clients use Hogan Assessments to support selection programmes and development activity, both individual and collective.

In the current environment, understandably, selection has been dramatically cut back and HR teams are having to focus their attention on more difficult people issues while, perhaps, learning and development programmes are pushed back.

However, we still speak to HR professionals and coaches on a daily basis about support for different types of people initiatives. As one might expect, at a time when leaders of organisations are having to make decisions in extremely pressured circumstances, with budgets tighter than ever, our clients are forced to limit their choices in a number of areas, so we are keen to encourage the use of valuable resources they may already have available at their disposal.

To some, the following might seem obvious, but we know from our conversations that many have not thought about using existing resources to support pressing interventions which, although most of us may prefer to avoid, are often unavoidable in the present environment. Here are three of the most common examples where we have been able to recommend organisations take another look at the Hogan Assessment data they already hold.

Leaders under pressure: There is no doubt that the last three months have been unprecedented in terms of additional stress for those in senior positions, balancing the future survival of their organisation with the welfare and motivation of their workforce. Many will be showing signs of derailing risks which are starting to impede their effectiveness or creating problems with relationships. We also see many cases of leaders who appear to thrive despite what is happening – seeing present problems as a new and interesting challenge. Revisiting Hogan HDS scores can provide real insight for leaders about how their natural coping mechanisms may be showing up as well as helping to identify strategies to manage them.

Virtual Teams: While there was already a push to more remote working and less travel, there has been an exponential rise in teams meeting virtually with little or no face to face contact. Some will enjoy independence while others miss the close collaboration. Some teams must completely adapt the way they work to stand still let alone become a high performing team. Collective Hogan data can help understand the strengths and skills gaps across the team, how they are likely to communicate, innovate and adapt, and how the culture and values of the team may influence their approach.

Organisational Restructure: Inevitably we are hearing more cases where downsizing or mergers of departments and functions mean people are displaced and roles disappear. Existing Hogan results provide information to help identify candidates who will be best placed to succeed in new roles with changed responsibilities and requirements – additional objective data at a time of difficult decisions. For those who find themselves in the really unfortunate position of losing their jobs, Hogan profiles are being used to support outplacement – helping to identify how people work through the emotional rollercoaster, highlighting roles and environments that are likely to play to their strengths and values in future.

While the dynamics and focus may have changed, HR professionals and coaches are still supporting people on a daily basis. The Hogan Suite of tools identifies how people are likely to show up at their best and, in times of pressure, at their worst - providing insights during difficult, ambiguous and potentially emotive times. Maybe it is worth taking another look at those existing Hogan reports!

Hogan Assessments Virtual Certification

Fri, 15 May 2020 12:00:00 Z

Hogan Assessment Certification Workshops are now offered Virtually.

In the wake of the pandemic, the team at APS quickly transitioned its previously face to face workshops to the virtual platform.

A Global First

Authorised distributor APS was the first to run a Virtual Hogan Certification Workshop, and the feedback from participants has been 'excellent'. Here are some of the responses APS has received via post-workshop surveys:

"The webinar worked well, with lots of engagement and sharing. What I preferred was the clarity around the 3 assessments and how they are inter-connected."

"Great content, really accessible doing it online, delivered well on it's objectives, good to have real opportunity to practice, excellent materials."

"That it was intellectually stimulating and being able to do this from home was actually really wonderful."

Each virtual UK-based Hogan workshop will be delivered over 2-days, starting at 9.30 am both days. The cost to attend the UK Hogan Certification is £1995+VAT.

The Hogan Certification workshop is required for use of the Hogan Assessment suite.

This course teaches professionals to interpret and apply Hogan’s three core personality-based assessments:

Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI): measures the “bright side” of personality; strengths that facilitate successful performance
Hogan Development Survey (HDS): measures the “dark side” of personality; potential career derailers that impede performance
Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI): measures the “inside” of personality; values and drivers that powerfully influence organizational fit and leadership style

Click here to book the Official UK Hogan Certification Workshop

HRD SUMMIT – Birmingham 2020

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 12:00:00 Z

Advanced People Strategies were proud to represent Hogan Assessments at one of the leading UK annual HR events.

In its eighteenth year, the prestigious event was attended by over 1500 senior HR practitioners and business leaders in Birmingham on 4^th and 5^th February 2020.

Rob Field, APS Learning and Development Director delivered a presentation on – Selecting and Developing Talent in a Digital World. The presentation considered how Humility and Charisma need to be considered in leadership and how in today's digital world we can, and should gather various data sets that can give a view of performance, personality and predicted job success. Highlighting the use of Hogan Configure the session provided attendees with practical case studies to help quickly identify talent potential and skills gaps. The session then introduced the opportunity to develop in new ways and introduced APS’s new virtual platform that can enable more focused skill development and practice online.

At their stand, APS showcased Hogan’s research on Charisma and Humility to a wider audience creating some interesting discussions on how these behaviours are widely perceived in the real world and opportunities for HR to look at new applications using Hogan tools.

“It was great to share our experience of how we can support organisations to a wide range of people including those new to Hogan Assessments, as well as being able to catch up with existing clients in an environment promoting the latest thought leadership” said Rob.

Unconscious Bias, Real-world impact

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 00:00:00 Z

I was recently asked to support a successful senior leader – Chris - with some personal development insights from a recent 360 and set of Hogan Assessment results. Chris works in a fast-paced retail environment and has very high expectations for business success.

Having quickly achieved senior roles, at a younger age than most colleagues, Chris finds it hard to understand why the broader management team and staff do not seem to respond to stretching targets. Very concerned about the potential negative impact on results, Chris recently ruled out an idea that emerged from a staff survey suggesting people who achieve their targets should be able to take time off as an incentive, rather than take a bonus.

Chris’s 360 feedback indicates an autocratic and inflexible style of leadership; demanding and somewhat intimidating. Chris’s thoughts on the 360 feedback…

“I’d prefer it if they started to take responsibility and challenge me back if they think I am wrong”.

It may seem obvious to an outside observer that Chris is motivated by personal and material success. While no one wants to fail, a lack of a challenge is more demotivating to Chris than a target that others might see as unrealistic or unachievable.

What Chris does not grasp, or prefers not to acknowledge, is that some of the most talented managers and salespeople in the organisation do not wake up in the morning wanting to be the next CEO like Chris does. Unfortunately, Chris’s behaviours reflect this bias and, rather than inspire others to perform better, the relentless focus on pushing aggressively for results is having a negative impact on performance.

The Hogan Assessments have been helpful to raise Chris’s awareness about why others might react differently to what Chris believes is ‘normal behaviour’. It has also provided some key insights for Chris about how to motivate others as their leader.

However, what made me smile the most is when someone, hearing about Chris’s bias in this instance, said “typical alpha male”. Interestingly Chris, in this case, is a woman. As professionals supporting the development of others, how many of us really understand and acknowledge our own biases - how easily they show up and how they impact on our behaviour?

When Personality Counts

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 00:00:00 Z

The debate about the usefulness of using personality tests in selection waxes and wanes.

Cynics and sceptics complain about consultant greed and test costs and others about the fact that people tend to lie on the tests. Supporters and apologists point to the costs of making bad decisions and the validity evidence of tests.

A central feature of the argument is about how much personality counts in explaining business success and failure. Robert Hogan in his book Personality and the Fate of Organisations makes a very strong case for the personality of leaders being extremely influential factors in business success and failure.

One of the oldest debates in psychology is called the person-situation debate. I investigated it for my PhD over 40 years ago. It is the question of the major determinants of behaviour: the sort of person you are, or the situation in which you find yourself.

In a brilliant paper in the Academy of Management Journal in 2015, Tim Judge and Cindy Zapata made some simple but important points about the role of personality at work. They suggested a dozen factors where personality makes all the difference

(1) The impact of decisions on coworkers/results, or “whether the decisions an employee makes impact the results of coworkers, clients, or the company”. Thus in some jobs (aviation inspector), the way they do the job (as a function of their personality) can make all the difference

(2) The consequences of error, or “how serious the results would be if the worker made a mistake that was not readily correctable”. Not so important for the librarian or language teacher, all important for the surgeon and ships captain.

(3) The responsibility for health/safety of others, or “the degree to which the employee is responsible for the health and safety of others”. Of little relevance to a proofreader but all important for a dentist or ambulance driver

(4) The unstructured (vs. structured) work, or “the extent to which the job allows the worker to determine tasks, priorities, and goals” (unstructured work) versus “the degree to which the job is structured for the worker” (structured work)

(5) The freedom to make decisions, defined as “the degree to which the job offers considerable decision-making freedom, without supervision”

(6) The variety, which refers to “the extent to which the job requires the employee to do many different things at work, using a variety of skills and talents” (low scores reflect little variety, high scores reflect significant variety).

(7) The independence in completing work, where “the job requires developing one’s own ways of doing things, guiding oneself with little or no supervision, and depending on oneself to get things done,” as opposed to working under a predetermined set of rules, under close supervision, or in dependency on others for guidance

(8) The attention to detail requirement, or “the extent to which the job requires being careful about detail and thoroughness in completing work tasks”

(9) The social skills requirement, defined as “the degree to which an occupation frequently involves working with, communicating with, and teaching people”

(10) The level of competition requirement, referring to “the extent to which the job requires the worker to compete or to be aware of competitive pressures”

(11) The innovation/creativity requirement, which is “the extent to which the job requires creativity and alternative thinking to develop new ideas for and answers to work-related problems”

(12) When dealing with unpleasant or angry people, or “how frequently employees have to deal with unpleasant, angry, or discourteous individuals”

12 Questions to ask about assessments

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 00:00:00 Z

12 QUESTION ASSESSMENT EVALUATION GUIDE

1. Are the assessments locally supported?

To ensure that our assessments are locally supported wherever we operate, Hogan works with a global network of authorised distributors and partner organisations. From our earliest partnerships in Europe and Australia to more recent alliances in Asia and Africa, Hogan works to ensure that our clients receive all the support they need from trusted local agencies. Hogan’s global network includes nearly 30 distributors operating in over 40 countries across 6 continents, and this network continues to grow each year.

2. Have the assessments been reviewed by professional representative bodies around the world?

Hogan’s assessments have been examined by agencies across several continents. The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) received favourable reviews in the U.S. and U.K. from the Buros Institute of Mental Measurements and the British Psychological Society (BPS), respectively. Hogan’s assessments continue to receive similar reviews in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, and Sweden among other locations.

3. Have the assessments been translated for use in other cultures?

Hogan’s assessments have been translated for use in over 40 different languages worldwide. In these efforts, we partner with qualified professionals and use a combination of forward and back-translation to ensure congruence between the original and translated forms of our assessments.

4. Does the assessment provider adapt their assessment content to ensure cultural relevance?

Hogan’s primary goal in translation is to maintain the integrity and content of the original assessment while ensuring cultural sensitivity and relevance to the local audience. Other assessment providers implement literal translations, ignoring the impact of language and culture in the comprehension and relevance of their assessment content. Hogan, however, adapts our assessment content by focusing on congruence with the original assessment, but allowing local language and cultural issues to inform adaptations to ensure relevance to the local audience.

5. Can the assessment provider ensure that translated assessments are equivalent to the original forms?

Research indicates that nuances in languages, cultural differences, and other factors make perfect measurement equivalence impossible. Some assessment providers tout perfect measurement equivalence, but these results distort real construct differences across cultures as well as the cultural relevance of adapted forms. Nevertheless, global test publishers are responsible for ensuring the comparability of assessments across cultures and languages. Hogan takes this responsibility seriously, using a combination of techniques to ensure functional equivalence of items, scales, and factors while maintaining cultural sensitivity and relevance in adapted forms. Once sufficient data are available for adapted assessments, we examine item- and scale-level statistics to identify any content that may require revisions. We also review the overall factor structures of the adapted assessments to ensure that they are congruent with those from the original assessments. These analyses ensure that adapted Hogan assessments are equivalent to the original assessments across all levels of analysis.

6. How are assessment scores interpreted within a local culture?

Assessment scores mean little without norms to guide interpretation. However, even norms hold little meaning unless a person is compared to an appropriate comparison group. For example, organisations interested in selecting job applicants inside the Czech Republic would be interested in how applicant scores compare to other Czechs instead of Americans or other groups. As such, within cultures, we develop local norms by collecting assessment data on adapted forms of our assessments. Once sufficient data are available, we use these data to calculate itinerant norms, which summarise the local population. However, because these norms are based on the first available data, these norms may not accurately reflect proportions of occupational or demographic groups in the local population. Once additional data are available, Hogan calculates a stratified local norm to replace the itinerant norm, ensuring that the local norm reflects the demographic and workforce characteristics of the target culture.

7. How are assessment scores interpreted across cultures?

Interpreting assessment scores across cultures can be a delicate issue, as norms based on scores from one culture may not accurately reflect individuals from a different culture. For example, a multi-national organisation would need a common comparison group to interpret assessment scores of job applicants from multiple locations. To provide an apples-to-apples metric for these comparisons, Hogan uses a multi-language norm comprised of data representing many languages and cultures. These norms are useful for comparing individuals in applications where the scores of participants from diverse locations should be compared using a common metric.

8. Have the assessments been proven to consistently and accurately predict performance across cultures?

Hogan has conducted in-depth validation studies to illustrate the validity of the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) in predicting job performance across occupations, job levels, and industry sectors around the world. These studies cross six continents and numerous countries, client organisations, and occupations. Supporting these studies, Hogan provides Return on Investment (ROI) results to clearly illustrate the impact of using Hogan assessments for making applied personnel decisions.

9. Can the assessment provider supply technical documentation to support the use of translated
assessments?

Once translation, equivalence, and local norming efforts are complete, Hogan provides comprehensive technical documentation to support the use of the translated assessments. These materials describe the results of these processes in detail and present psychometric properties and available local validity evidence to support the use of the translated assessments. In addition, every Hogan research study concludes with the delivery of technical reports documenting validation results and providing support for the use of translated Hogan assessments for specific applications.

10. Does the assessment provider offer any global off-the-shelf solutions?

Hogan offers a number of off-the-shelf solutions for our global clients interested in using personality-based assessment solutions without going through the rigour of local validation. These solutions include selection recommendations of job candidates based on job family profiles, selection recommendations of candidates into entry-level jobs, identification of high-potential employees, and evaluation of employee safety. These products provide our global client base with efficient solutions for selecting applicants into a variety of jobs across the labour force and evaluating current employees against metrics that can facilitate future organisational performance.

11. Does the assessment provider maintain a global research archive that can be accessed to confirm the
results of individual validity studies?

The Hogan archive contains information from hundreds of research studies including Criterion-Related (CR) validation studies, Validity Generalisation (VG) studies, content validation studies, job analysis research, and competency mapping studies. Our ability to deliver selection and development solutions using data from similar jobs and industries previously studied hinges on the breadth and depth of validity evidence currently available in the Hogan archive. As this global research archive increases, so does our ability to accurately predict job performance across a range of jobs.

12. Do the assessments comply with local laws and regulations?

Hogan works closely with our international network of partners and distributors to understand any applicable laws or regulations that apply to the use of psychological assessments in organisations. Hogan routinely provides analyses, documentation, and other support services such as adverse impact analyses, participant access to results, and data privacy and archiving rules to address these needs. In addition, we work with our partners to comply with the requirements for becoming approved assessment providers in accordance with local testing commissions and other governing bodies.

Leadership and Humility

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:00:00 Z

Leadership... A pretty vast topic.

The debates around effective leadership always evoke some pretty heated debate and numerous perspectives. We all have our stories of the successful and inspirational leaders we have worked for and with, the qualities they possess and how they have engaged those around them.

In leadership it can be easy to become caught up in status, power and control, however, for leaders, focus on those around them and within their teams is crucial to success. Cheryl Williamson wrote in Forbes ‘You cannot be an effective leader if you feel you are better than your subordinates’. Teams with these types of leaders tend to have higher turnover and experience lower productivity.

So for me, the question is – How engaged are your employees and teams? Would your business benefit from higher engagement?

With organisations constantly changing, the support for leaders can often be about developing the skills to remain agile, deal with change and remain effective. Research is indicating that humble leaders are more effective. They give credit to the team, share success and are more coachable. A Catalyst survey in 2014 showed that humility is one of four critical leadership factors for creating an environment where employees feel included. It found that when employees observed altruistic or selfless behaviour in their managers — a style characterised by 1) acts of humility, such as learning from criticism and admitting mistakes; 2) empowering followers to learn and develop; 3) acts of courage, such as taking personal risks for the greater good; and 4) holding employees responsible for results — they were more likely to report feeling included. This was true for both women and men.

There is also a connection, and evidence, demonstrating that employees who perceive altruistic behaviour from their managers are more innovative, suggesting new products or ways of working. They were also more likely to be more engaged.

So what's the issue? Finding the humble! In an age of self-promotion, humble people will be hidden among the many. They aren’t charming their way to the front, regaling tales of their achievements to anyone who will listen. Humble leaders may get overlooked. They are more likely giving credit to the team for a job well done, sharing the success and being a good organisational citizen.

With all the upside, they are worth finding and investing in. Whether internal promotion or external hiring, it is possible to measure altruism and humility. Curious? You should be. It could add real value.