APS Blog

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/

When work suddenly becomes remote, what happens to learning?

Wed, 20 May 2020 12:00:00 Z

The last 6 weeks have seen some pretty seismic shifts in the world of work.

Large parts of the workforce have been uprooted from office environments and are now suddenly forced to adapt to working from home, sometimes in less than ideal conditions.

How has L&D responded? What opportunities are there to continue and to adapt to this new world? I have heard multiple times that this is the moment for leaders to lead and make their mark. But how? What support are they being offered? What exists to help engage them and rapidly develop the skills they may use to not just cope but the thrive?

Elizabeth Howlett has published a couple of recent articles in People Management on how to manage remotely. Interesting reading. Underperforming employees and Learning and Development are two areas of focus.

My question is how much focus is there presently on supporting managers and leaders during this highly important time? How will their behaviour, focus and engagement of others help to increase productivity, keep those around them motivated and maximise the impact this can have for the organisation. Most organisations have a limited capability to deliver effective online development. Of course, we all use Zoom, WebEx and other tools to communicate, but how much is learning-focused? And of that, how much is skills-focused rather than knowledge itself? There is some excellent content out there, however, much is passive and knowledge-based as opposed to having to apply a skill in real-time with real people. Effective leaders must make good decisions quickly, often based on limited information. They must serve as a rallying force that keeps employees on track and be able to have the conversations necessary to engage those around them. Organisations with the strongest leaders are the ones that will survive and thrive.

Harvard Business Review suggests that leaders need to receive feedback, engage in self-observation and practice self-management as part of the development process. Knowing what feedback is needed is critical. Who is observing is also massively important and how and when to practice needs thought and consideration.

Imagine a world where individuals could have a specific development programme that was designed for them. Coaching, individual activities and exercises designed to develop and practice specific skills, feedback and the chance to watch back. What about a small cluster of managers, four or five perhaps, but not enough to make up the normal size of a cohort that would warrant a programme? Maybe even a larger number of managers but with a specific issue and skill to practice in order to consistently execute a particular approach. Challenging…Yes. Impossible…No. Already available.

The ability to effectively blend all these approaches is the key to getting the maximum value from any learning intervention. Of course, there will always be areas that we would prefer to do face to face and perhaps should do face to face. With planning and consideration, most can be adapted to still be engaging and supportive.

With travel retracted and organisations seeing how well many have adapted, the question is likely to be ‘do we need to travel?’ and of course with the economic impact organisations will be looking for cost savings.

We have had some interesting conversations with clients and already piloting programmes with live, virtual skills learning with both groups and individuals focused on a series of short 30-45 minute exercises, aimed at developing specific skills to enhance manager effectiveness.

What support is there to ensure manager and leader success at this critical moment? Virtual development isn’t the future, it is now and with 2020 looking like a pretty tough economic year virtual needs to finds its place and make its mark.

New quantitative research provides support for executive coaching being particularly useful for the leadership shadow

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 00:00:00 Z

The modern executive can no longer leave their personality and emotions at home. He or she needs to draw on all of their senses, sensitivity and intuition; and have the courage to speak to others with full conviction, as well as deeply listen to them whilst reading between the lines.

Addressing emotions, handling stress and staying open and receptive under pressure has become, perhaps, the most important success criteria in the 21^st century; arguably, leaders need to be creative, receptive, flexible and strong-willed all at the same time.

I am proud that the Dutch version of my book The Leadership Shadow is having a reprint now, five years after it was first published. It is certainly a sign of our times that the hidden and highly personal aspects of leadership are receiving more attention. As argued in this book, leadership is now under much more pressure and scrutiny than it was, say, twenty years ago: positions are no longer fixed and predictable, replacing executives in changing circumstances is the order of the day, and as long as you are “in post” you are under immense pressure. Markets and products are constantly changing, customer expectations are high, and processes are continuously undergoing a radical redesign. Work that was commonplace only a few years ago has now been automated out of existence, and new tasks have taken its place, arising from new products, new legislation, new networks and software, fluctuating markets and emerging opportunities.

Our highly personal responses to stress are much more important for our leadership contribution, and it is increasingly vital to understand how the leadership role slowly but inevitably corrupts us. This book is about these hidden reactions to stress and leadership, at the core of our being. It describes and details the phenomena that we find in leaders, and suggests what we can do about these risks caused by stress and hubris.

For readers of the book, there is important news this year. For the first time, we have found clear and statistically significant evidence that executive coaching really can help with the “shadow side” of leadership. In two meticulous experiments (randomised studies with control groups), we found statistically defensible evidence that coaching is not only appropriate for the resilient, tough, traditional leader but also specifically addresses and mitigates the leadership shadow.

One experiment involved around a hundred business school students who were coached by accredited executive coaches (and another hundred students in the control group). Together with their coaches, they completed extensive questionnaires before and after each of six sessions, and again three months after the end of coaching. Like many other researchers, we found that coaching was an effective intervention, but we also found that it was mainly the students’ “resilience” that was a good predictor of the final outcome and the change effected through coaching. The more resilient, tougher and stronger a leader, therefore, the more likely it is that coaching will really help. And as The Leadership Shadow shows, it is often the more resilient leaders who rise to the top. Coaching works especially well for this type of leader.

The other experiment (De Haan et al., 2019) was carried out with a group of over a hundred senior managers in an international pharmaceutical company, who were coached by recognised internal coaches. Once again, there was an equally sized control group that was not coached, and again we found clear effectiveness of the intervention in comparison with the control group. This time we also decided to use the Hogan Insight Series to measure the personality of the leaders being coached. This was done both before the coaching and after six months (around six sessions) of coaching. As expected, the leader’s personality remained entirely the same after the six months of coaching: most of the 28 personality dimensions were unchanged or fluctuated similarly in control and target group. However, we found that two dimensions were slightly but significantly altered after the coaching intervention (i.e. only in the group being coached). We can, therefore, assume that these two dimensions were influenced by the coaching.

These two personality aspects are related as well. The first, “Prudence” (self-discipline, responsibility and conscientiousness), had gone up significantly. The second, “Excitable” (moodiness, irritability and emotionality), had conversely gone down significantly. Two positive developments for leaders, which in our view may well have been part of the same effect of coaching. The managers appear to have become demonstrably both more responsible and more even-tempered. The second personality dimension (“Excitable”) is also described as a leadership dimension in this book, namely in Chapter 7 under the heading “borderline patterns in leaders”. The definition used in this book and in our experiment was exactly the same, i.e. derived from the Hogan Development Survey. This research, therefore, confirms what many coaches already believed, namely that executive coaching is an excellent intervention for leadership development that also takes into account the leader’s less visible “shadow side”. Coaching is, after all, made-to-measure, focused on the specific contract with this individual executive. Coaching is also safe, confidential and – within the carefully protected conversational space – challenging and confronting, enabling the shadow sides of leadership to be addressed robustly. This is unfortunately not the case with other forms of leadership development, for example, training programmes, MBAs or organisational focus groups, wherein my view it is never really safe enough, or tailored enough, to confront individual executives with their shadow.

It is high time we made sure that our modern executives are equipped for the stress and risks of leadership in a rapidly changing world, that they operate ethically and effectively, and that they do not cause damage within their teams and companies, as so many do. This research and the book on the shadow side of leadership provide us with some initial tools to grow leadership in a healthy way in modern organisations.

De Haan, E., Gray, D.E. & Bonneywell, S. (2019). Executive coaching outcome research in a field setting: A randomized controlled trial study in a global healthcare corporation. Academy of Management Learning and Education, August.

Coaching and Mentoring…Getting the returns you need!

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 Z

In organisations today, change is constant, rapid and relentless. Learning needs to follow this, but helping individuals and teams in this context is always challenging.

Coaching and mentoring have a key role to play in learning and development. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, they describe very different practices. Mentoring refers to learning from a more experienced person who shares their experience, which coaching is about being guided and supported to question and consider changes.

Solid mentoring relationships can create opportunities that otherwise would not exist. The sharing of knowledge, experience and advice that is inherent to the mentoring relationship is helpful as it can accelerate the learning process. However, there is also a risk that mentoring can perpetuate the use of already tried and tested approaches and create a feeling of obligation for the mentee to follow the advice of their more senior and experienced mentor.

Great coaching is designed to free one’s thinking, to stimulate much deeper reflection on motivations, and to increase self-awareness. Coaching allows time and space in which an individual can reflect on what energises and what drains him or her, in conjunction with values and beliefs. Coaching encourages individuals to identify their personal goals, create a vision for their future, and determine how they will move into that future space. The power of coaching comes from coachees themselves driving the agenda and making choices that they want to commit to.

Clarity of understanding and awareness are precursors to making impactful decisions. They assist with what to focus on and how, while supporting meaningful performance improvement. Developing awareness leads to building new skills and modifying behaviours. Using quality assessment techniques (those that are objective, pay attention to context, and are rooted in social science) can accelerate this process. Raising self-awareness and seeing clearly the enablers of and barriers to success are critical to performance improvement and/or to creating action and change.

In Hogan assessment terminology, knowing what can derail you is an advantage and a driver in creating the desire for change. Assessments are not about judging people; they are about surfacing an individual’s strengths, challenges and behavioural tendencies as quickly as possible so that the coaching time can really explore them. In simple terms, knowing what you are like at your best and knowing what happens to you under pressure is the first step in developing strategies to modify and limit the effect and impact of us at our worst!

Increasingly organisations are under pressure to deliver for their customers and the time for development is often heavily circumscribed. Developing talent is critical to business success so effective coaching can add real value. Performance, motivation and engagement go hand in hand.

How can organisations use coaching to add value?

Start by developing your managers’ and leaders’ coaching skills. If they are effective coaches themselves, they will better appreciate the benefits this style can bring. It will impact the culture of the organisation. It will drive engagement, ultimately adding to the bottom line through improved performance and discretionary effort.
Consider using external coaches. External coaches bring neutrality that can offer further benefits and can challenge coachees in ways that internal coaches may find difficult. This neutral element can also ensure that the coaching and the assessment remain non-judgemental.
Define the objectives of coaching and mentoring. Discuss these with the individual. Ensure that the coach, coachee and the organisation have alignment around what success looks like, what the current challenges are and the objectives of the intervention (a good coach should do this anyway!).

The context within which organisations operate is changing fast due to external factors, requiring new leadership qualities. Coaching and mentoring both have a place in developing these qualities. They can both be positive. But they are different and the difference matters.

Know the difference. Do both!

Why organisations have an executive coaching programme?

Because Leaders need to:

develop innovative strategies to evolve their business
progressively transform and align people with ever-changing market demands
adapt themselves quickly to changing role expectations and within 100 days!
demonstrate confidence and resolve in times of pressure and stress and lead from the front
be able to quickly build relationships with global stakeholders across cultural borders
increase productivity, efficiency and evolve innovative service
believe and assume the lead
effectively engage others
avoid derailment!

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