APS Blog

Case Study: From Technical Experts to Engaged People Leaders

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 12:00:00 Z

Since 2023 APS have been working with a prominent healthcare organisation to unlock hidden leadership potential —driving engagement, performance and retention.

Background:

In many healthcare and professional services contexts, teams generally expect their leaders to have technical expertise - typically resulting from years of direct application experience - in order to be seen as credible. Such roles often call for sensitive communication with patients and an ability to cope with the pressure of high demand, limited resources, and tension. Morale levels and attrition are often effects of such situations, which adds further pressure - challenging clinical leaders to work on their teams in addition to the demands of their core professional calling.

An effective development programme typically starts with helping participants become aware of what their strengths are and why they should work on any development to help gain more effective results personally, for the teams and for the organisation. As you would expect, PhD level leaders are smart and deal with complex issues day to day – they expect evidence-based diagnostic tools and approaches that are backed up with significant research and scientific grounding.

Feedback following previous participant experiences indicated a disappointment with tools used, comments suggested they seemed shallow, generic and technically superficial. As a result, participants saw little value and impact on their day to day work. Despite best intentions by HR, this didn’t help them to help their colleagues.

Our Approach

1. Assess and Reflect

Provide Hogan Assessment tools to help participants understand their reputation at work – what drives them, likely every-day behaviour in the workplace, how they react to pressure and how all this compares to other adults.

Help the HR team to acquire the knowledge of such tools to support deployment and build collective insight and buy-in regarding strengths, focus and skill development areas - both individually and collectively.

Rapid Deployment of Hogan Assessments: Delivered within four weeks of first contact. In-house certification workshops enabled HR to own and interpret the data—predicted to cut recurring assessment costs by over 50%.

2. Exposure and Experience

Ongoing expert support: APS advisors worked alongside the cohort to guide initial debriefs and continue to maximise the value they were getting from the tools. APS consulted with the organisation about the benefit of understanding collective characteristics for cohorts of leaders, and agreed with the client to provide a bespoke “Team Insights Masterclass©” synthesising individual profiles into collective leadership dynamics.

3. Skills Development & Performance Tracking

Hands-on group development: Interactive workshops to translate assessment insights into real-world peer-to-peer strategies. Key focus areas included on self-awareness, communication styles and the ripple effect of senior leaders’ behaviours.

This approach provided insights about some of the frequently identified strengths of leaders within the organisation and also emphasised the challenges arising as a result of some ‘over-played’ characteristics. This opened the door for collective discussions about how to drive change and have a positive impact on the culture of the organisation and placed more focus on self-development, people leadership and organisational influence.

The “Aha” Moment

During the Masterclass, leaders realised that understanding their own tendencies wasn’t just “nice to have”—it was the linchpin to building team morale and sustaining high performance. That shift from technical command to people-centred leadership sparked genuine curiosity: “What else could we achieve if we channelled this insight across the organisation?”

Potential Outcomes

Psychometrics become indispensable: Hogan Assessments are becoming the go-to tool for leadership programmes in the teams we have worked with so far, anticipated to boost HR-led engagement.
Leadership pipeline: Advanced Leaders, Future CEOs and Medical Directors receive Hogan Assessments, executive coaching and targeted masterclasses—a closed loop from assessment to measurable growth.
Behavioural agility unlocked: Senior leaders are expected to develop heightened self-awareness, adapting their styles for diverse team needs and carving out time for strategic planning.
Data-driven talent decisions: HR are predicted to identify emerging leaders with greater accuracy, accelerating promotions and slashing time-to-fill critical roles.

Accelerating the Onboarding of Newly Promoted Senior Leaders

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 11:28:32 Z

How to Apply Evidence-Based HR to Hone Leadership Skills

We start learning about leadership from the moment we are born. Babies observe their caregivers and older siblings; children are taught to respect authority figures; athletes take instruction from coaches. As we grow up, we’re constantly placed in situations where we are expected to either lead or follow, and these experiences shape our definitions of leadership before we enter the workplace. Although society might have reached conclusions on what leadership skills are, individuals arrive in leadership roles with their own perceptions. How do you begin a conversation about improving someone’s ability to lead when we’re all so diverse?

Evidence-based HR is ultimately about making informed decisions. Approaching business issues related to leadership begins with establishing context and gathering data: which set of skills does the organisation need from their leaders, and how are those individuals currently performing in those areas?

Imagine a national telecommunications organisation, Teledo*, have promoted some internal talented managers to senior positions and want to accelerate their performance in the new roles. Teledo have identified that their departments function best with leaders who are skilled in decision-making, relationship-building and creativity. How do they support their Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to excel in these areas?

Starting with baseline assessments is key. Teledo’s HR business partner must determine how the SLT are currently performing before devising an action plan. Running a bespoke 360-feedback survey for each of the Senior Leaders would generate valuable quantitative and qualitative data regarding how each individual is regarded by self and others. Such data is even more powerful if combined with the robust scientific insights provided by completing psychometric assessments. In addition to diagnostic methods, HR should review any relevant organisational data relating to the SLT, such as operational metrics and customer satisfaction scores.

Consulting a range of sources will allow the HR team to identify trends and patterns and make evidence-based recommendations regarding Teledo’s next steps. Click below to see the recommendations the HR business partner prepared for one of Teledo's SLT employees.

Download our action plan example:

Find out more about how Evidence-Based HR could help your organisation.
Contact us now to continue the conversation.

*Teledo is a fictional organisation

Isn’t HR already evidence-based?

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:05:00 Z

In your team, can you admit when things don’t work?

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:04:00 Z

How are you Identifying potential problems in your organisation?

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:02:00 Z

What to do with Contradictory Evidence?

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:01:00 Z

Defining Evidence Based HR

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:00:00 Z

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.

Better Decisions: Making Sense of Complexity - Key Takeaways

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 12:00:00 Z

It’s events like today that remind me just how challenging it is for leaders in our complex and complicated world. Juggling decisions and achieving goals with so much ambiguity, considering consequences, process, information, and politics.

As CRF program partners I got to hear insights from keynote speaker Dave Snowden, Director of Cynefin, who opened with points around not having end goals. Small fluid movements in the right kind of direction lead to doing the next best thing. Focusing on the next best decision avoids aiming for the wrong goal and keeps organisations flexible and agile in times of crisis, and fast-moving market trends.

Naturally, I’m considering the impact of layering personality on top of this theory - how do our values play in here? If we are driven by security, traditional and long-term goals, how comfortable will this feel? If decisions should be made to keep options open rather than to solve a problem, how do people who value results and success feel about this fluidity? Self-awareness as well as team data around collective values and motivations would help to identify areas to support strategies for those who might need more energy to change their ways of working.

I really loved the concept around informal networking to solve problems with small groups of 3 cross-functional people sharing ideas to make decisions. Psychological safety is a hot topic with our clients and creating these networks of mini teams would help to increase trust within organisations, reduce politics, speed up decisions and increase relevant information flow.

Embracing the benefits of positive conflict

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 12:00:00 Z

Conflict can be the catalyst for progress, growth, and innovation

It may not feel like it at times, but conflict can be a hugely important factor in successful organisations and effective teams. The notion that not all conflict is negative or unhelpful is an important one. Without conflicting ideas, opinions, and motives the world and our organisations would stagnate and become stale.

Creating an environment where people feel empowered to challenge and share their opinions is a crucial step towards creating the psychological safety that is needed in order for conflict to be seen as a positive contribution rather than a nuisance factor. This may not be easy, but it is certainly productive as it will foster open dialogue and trust amongst people, which in turn can lead to the richness of ideas and diversity of opinion that help to solve problems, make effective decisions, and create innovation.

Managing negative conflict

‘Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.’

Ronald Regan

The first step on the road to handling negative conflict and difficult conversations in a productive way is to understand the cause of the issue. Here are some examples of common causes of conflict;

Clashes in behaviour and communication styles
Conflicting priorities and motives
Confusion and misunderstanding
Stressful, pressurised situations.

Raising self-awareness is a great way to help people to manage and moderate these interpersonal conflict-causers. Personality assessments are a proven way of identifying communication styles, motives, and coping mechanisms when under stress, which then pave way for effective feedback and coaching conversations.

Turning difficult conversations into effective conversations

Start with the intention…..

Before engaging in, or encouraging others to engage in a difficult conversation it is crucial to establish what the intended outcome is, and what the motive behind that is.

If the motive doesn’t come from a positive place, then the outcome is unlikely to be a productive one. Begin with a positive, productive intention.

Align the impact with the intention…..

This is where planning and preparation become even more important. Often, conflict can be caused due to ‘tone of voice’ or ‘selection of language’ issue, which wasn’t helpful. For the conversation to be effective, the person initiating it will need to be able to put their positive intention across without causing offense and creating defensive behaviour.

This isn’t easy, it takes time, planning, and practice. It is a skill that can be refined though. Finding a suitable way to prepare and practice managing difficult conversations can be the key to resolving conflict.

Effective Succession Management: Latest Research

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:00:00 Z

Recent CRF research co-sponsored by APS culminated in a full day’s event “Effective Succession Management” held in London UK, the imagery used to brand the event was a Rubik's Cube. Much like the infamous puzzle, HR professionals consider succession management a challenge. But also like the puzzle, once the keys to success become clearer, the solution seems obvious. The recommendations coming out of the research should come as no surprise – of course, there should be clarity around purpose, alignment with business strategy, “thoughtful transparency” and so on. We inherently know these things work.

It is surprising, however, that only 14% of CRF research respondents currently use diagnostic testing, and only 26% use a high-potential framework. When there is so much at stake with leadership choices and talent development, the results may be a sign that not enough is known about available evidence-based methodologies. Reliable data, from inputs such as psychometrics, development centres and multi-rater feedback offset the inherent bias of self-reporting and manager ratings, and when used professionally, add value to an organisation’s talent review process.

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.

Potential, Performance and Promises

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 12:00:00 Z

Traditionally, succession planning has been the process of identifying internal people to move into business-critical positions and leadership roles, often with a confidential, top-down, highly structured approach. Today, organisations are looking for simpler, faster and scientifically valid ways to identify successors; in essence, creating a more efficient talent “pipeline”.

Succession planning is often driven by senior executives seeking to reassure their boards (think classic “what if they get hit by a bus” scenarios) and entrusted to HR leaders to make it work. Creating a successful succession programme is not a simple task and HR leaders face numerous challenges. Organisational politics may influence who gets put on the fast track for promotion, creating disillusionment for those who are equally competent but less skilled at making themselves known. Long-term leaders may feel entitled to that next move up the ladder and be dismayed when external change agents are parachuted in to take the lead. Key talent may have been promised future opportunities that dissipate when business requirements shift or mentors leave.

Trying to ensure fairness and mindful of employee engagement, HR leaders have long sought to instil rigour in succession planning; giving rise to the popularity of nine-box grids and talent reviews. However, the time, money and effort put into assessing potential and reviewing performance often creates mixed results; for all the reasons we associate with the realities of a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous).

Past performance is not predictive of future success if the role changes in scope, scale, or complexity and it may be time to add more rigour to the traditional nine-box framework. Adding inputs from reliable and valid personality-based and cognitive assessments, coupled with real-life performance data (multi-rater assessments , portfolio examples, performance reviews) can create more assurance. Technological innovations have also made it possible to assess skills in virtual environments, adding even more opportunities to identify the strengths and opportunities of future leaders.

High-Potential Capability Case Study

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 12:00:00 Z

A HR director of a rapidly growing manufacturing business wanted to identify high-potentials, at the request of the new CEO. They needed to review capability and identify the key skills needed to support their specific business strategy.

Starting with 12 members of the senior executive group, Hogan personality and cognitive assessments were used to identify key drivers as well as the likely everyday behaviours and potential for career derailers under pressure. This along with individual feedback helped the senior team create personal insights for their own performance goals as well as the desire to further define leadership expectations (what does good look like?). Additionally, the senior team undertook a Leadership programme of events using SkillsPilot, a Next-Gen cloud-based Assessment and Development platform, typically used to optimise leadership capability; led by a facilitator, leaders were assessed through relevant online business scenarios that tested the following 10 competencies:

Accountability
Decision Making
Driving for Results
Driving Performance
Driving Strategy
Inspiring Others
Integrity
Leading Others
Managing Resources
Teamwork

These competencies were used to identify appropriate exercises for their customised programme, ultimately resulting in 4 team - based scenarios (i.e. dealing with crisis management) and 3 individual ones (i.e. negotiating with a key flight risk ). Sessions were recorded and participants invited to self-assess against the competencies. Professional feedback reports were generated based on the ratings and commentary from trained observers, accompanied by targeted development suggestions. Overall results were further analysed against organisational metrics.

As we started with the senior executive and then moved through the next two levels of leadership, this process paved the way for significant outcomes – leaders were able to agree on what good performance looked like and used the data to cascade a unified vision throughout the organisation, ultimately establishing a more robust approach for succession planning. They also gained insights into how their leaders might derail, what engages them and what climate they need to create around their leaders to get the most out of their teams. Conducting these assessments virtually meant they could maintain business-as-usual activities, whilst gathering observable evidence around their skills profile, helping them to balance workloads and development needs.

Assessments conducted throughout three levels of management helped them further refine what they were looking for in terms of succession.
The online assessment/development programme provided opportunities to demonstrate leadership skills in different scenarios that could be observed and reviewed by the participant as well as other key stakeholders.
Professional feedback on leadership behaviour coupled with personality and cognitive results. generated powerful insights for individuals.

For HR directors tasked with the responsibility of finding a reliable process for identifying potential in the organisation, this project ticked a number of boxes; it combined the rigour of personality data with virtual assessment and development with the following benefits:

The company were able to identify business-critical skills
Natural strengths were benchmarked to guide their talent pipeline
Identification of skill gaps led to more targeted budget allocation for talent development.

CRF - Future of Learning Conference

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 12:00:00 Z

Advanced People Strategies, leadership and talent development specialists. Authorised Hogan Distributor UK & Ireland, joined Corporate Research Forum (CRF) at the ‘Future of Learning Conference’, in London on the 10^th of November 2022.

Held at Church House, Westminster, HR Directors, Senior L&D and Talent Specialists attended this unique location that combines historical charm and cutting-edge technology. With attendees also joining parts of the conference online, the ripples of the recent pandemic stretched far and wide shaping some of the themes of the day:

Assessing how the pandemic impacted learning, the business context that is driving today’s agenda, and the learning challenges that organisations are facing.
Discovering the future of learning – it's strategic, collaborative and continuous, and evidence-based. What does it mean to have a more strategic learning strategy, and how are leading organisations linking learning strategy to business strategy?
How can a learning mindset, new (and old) technologies, and managers support the new imperative of connected, constant learning?
What is the value of using evidence to inform learning, and what is the gap between where many organisations are and where it would benefit them to be?
Understanding how the future of learning poses an existential threat for learning functions – they must evolve, or risk becoming extinct. What new capabilities are required?

The Future of Learning - Round up

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 12:00:00 Z

There are several factors that make The Corporate Research Forum’s (CRF) latest research significant. With recession looming, organisations will inevitably review budgets yet, learning can make a significant contribution if it has the right approach and focus. Understanding the organisation and the strategy allows L&D to focus on outcomes.

What is keeping business leaders awake at night?

Certainly not what leadership programmes are being offered! 87% of executives report skills gaps in their organisations! Knowing their issues and helping solve real business problems gets people’s attention and adds measurable value. Seeking out data and being able to consider the measurement of the intervention allows for the alignment of resources and a focus on the skills or behaviours required to drive improvement.

How would L&D reduce error rates that lead to customer dissatisfaction for example?

Measuring the real cost of not fixing the problem versus an intervention can generate support and ensure that where skills are developed, people can see the relevance of building and developing them. A recent McKinsey survey found that only 25% of respondents believe that training measurably improved performance.

This isn’t to say that L&D departments need to be removed, rather about shifting to how the function adds value and clearly talking to the organisation in those terms.

What is the story about how investment is measured and how the activity and energy in development will make the organisation stronger or more able to keep up with the demands of the market or customers?

Getting outside the function and being curious about the organisation and how it works and provides products or services is essential. What experiences can L&D provide to develop skills? At APS we have been focused on skills development rather than knowledge for a long time. We developed SkillsPilot for this reason.

Download event insights

Accelerate Leaders’ skills and readiness

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:00:00 Z

Building and nurturing a leader talent pipeline is easier said than done and way beyond a simple list of step-in names for disaster recovery planning! Evidence for readiness to step up to the next level is more than a qualification and current role performance. Preparing and supporting the right people to create vision and strategy, and enthuse others in today’s volatile world is surely an imperative.

Understanding individual aspirations and values is the first step to exploring: fit to roles, potential career paths, work climate, or cultural impact. As this translates to natural behaviours, skills and signature strengths emerge. We thus know the ingredients for success.

Readiness to take on bigger roles is typically gained through experience, the pace of this can be planned placement in various business areas or simply left to chance. Placement can definitely help and such exposure certainly helps with the understanding of different channels and cultures. This of course can take significant time, upheaval, and frustrations of tuning in, not just to the participant themselves but to others around them. Also, Leaders may still not have sufficient exposure to the broader pressures, issues and decisions dealt with at the next level up.

Hogan can provide validated evidence around, reasoning ability, motivational values, and natural behaviours to predict success in senior leadership roles. This can help objectively identify possible stars of the future.

The new SkillsPilot platform provides participants with exposure to typical problems for the next level of Leader to address in real-time. It can even include custom issues aligned to a business context. Such challenges are scheduled as a meeting and fit in calendars just like other meetings, minimising disruption and emulating the real-world.

So objectively identifying and accelerating talent readiness for the next role is much easier, more time, and cost-effective using today’s technology.

Discounts are available to trial Hogan Assessments and SkillsPilot, contact us for a chat and more details.

Practise Makes Perfect?

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 12:00:00 Z

Watching the Lionesses and England Ladies Hockey Teams win their respective trophies and gold medals has been a great addition to the summer sunshine this year.

Seeing successful sports teams in action always prompts me to think about what takeaways we can learn from when applied to business teams.

Of course, there are some similarities between successful sports teams and business teams – drive, the right expertise and skills, an effective plan, hard work, effort and leadership, to name but a few, are all key to team achievement in any environment.

Elite athletes, similar to business people, are also often members of multiple teams and might play slightly different roles in each one.

What about the differences?

Although the recent wins on sports pitches have been great to keep the diversity and equality debates alive, it strikes me that there is often less diversity in a national sports team than in business teams.

Why do I say that? National teams usually are made up of individuals from a single gender and culture and, while there is still a lot of work to do, most leadership and business teams I engage with are made up of people from different backgrounds and genders.

However, there are two critical differences that always stand out for me:

Sports teams spend significantly more time practising together, as well as individual training, compared to business teams. I do not know any business team that spends even 10% of their working time practising and training together – they are rarely not in action, save for strategic planning meetings or team workshops.

Elite sports teams engage specialist coaches, measure multiple performance data points and receive constant feedback on their performance both in training and in competition. Most business teams have important KPI information but how much of this is focused on their ability to work effectively as a unit? In some circles, support from a coach is seen as remedial training rather than elite performance training.

While it is not realistic for business teams to spend as much time practising together as elite sports teams, and the good news is that neither can the competition, it is possible to bridge the gap on point 2.

Making the best use of the limited time teams have together to reflect on and practise skills to be more effective is possible. Using quality metrics such as SkillsPilot Exercises, Hogan Team Analysis, High Performing Team Assessment and, as a team, practising skills application with an accredited coach can all help to make a difference – and who does not want their team to be high performing in any setting?

Is your organisation using technology to support leadership development?

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 10:22:18 Z

Two years in and the Covid-19 pandemic continues to have a significant impact on our lives, not least in the way we now work. It is likely that the changes we have had to make to our working practices are here to stay. We hear a lot about the ‘New Normal’: how going forward we will work more flexibly and more virtually, splitting our working time between home and the office.

How will this new way of working impact leadership development?

We still need to focus our attention on developing leaders and, given the considerable challenges leaders face in the early 2020's such as managing and developing a flexible workforce, perhaps now more than ever. Current and future leaders must be even more agile, quick to evolve, implement new strategies and tap into the digital world – alongside the business as usual of building and maintaining an effective team.

Our rapidly changing working practices are presenting new challenges when it comes to leadership. How do leaders influence others, tackle challenging situations and keep our people motivated when much of the time we rarely see each other face-to-face? What new and enhanced skills and behaviours are required to ensure leaders can do this?

‘Zoom’ and ‘Teams’ meetings as well as ‘chat’ have now become synonymous with normal business practice for so many with people now accelerating their competence and awareness of such technology. So how can leadership development tap further into this? eLearning has been successfully used for many years: although the learner is typically learning passively on their own, it has been very successful in disseminating, building and assessing knowledge - particularly useful for consistent and compliant content.

360 survey results seem to suggest that knowledge and understanding is not translated into applied skills. Being great at, working with different people in meetings to identify and solve collective problems and agree actions, noticing and surfacing skills gaps with direct reports and then discussing them in such a way that engages them are critical skills for most Leaders. Practicing and honing such skills has always been important and in truth, many Leaders are left to figure it out and learn as they go. After all – traditional skills development has generally been in a training room which has a cost, in terms of venue, accommodation and travel expenses, Powerful development but exposure is often constrained understandably by budget. If more than 60% of leaders derail – we obviously need to do something!

Stealthy paradigm shifts are already happening.

Is your organisation tapping into technology providing immersive leadership development?

Can learners practice skills based on experiences that reflect real situations and challenges they are likely to face as leaders, both in 1:1 settings and in groups? Can they receive timely, meaningful feedback from other business leaders and professionals and learn over time – rather than a concentrated session where retention often quickly fades on return to work?

Two things are certain: the New Normal is here to stay and, if anything, developing effective leadership is more important now than it has ever been. Given that, blending online skills development with real people face-to-face in the classroom to support leadership development, seems to be the way ahead.

In the New Normal, can you afford to let your focus on leadership development slip?

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.

Preparing Leaders For The New World Order: Developing skills in a virtual environment

Tue, 19 May 2020 12:00:00 Z

Advanced People Strategies launch their on-line Skills Development System to enable organisations to assess and develop critical leadership skills.

Going beyond knowledge-focused learning, the system enables leaders to participate in challenging, interactive scenarios in a safe environment to accelerate their performance.

Chris Humphreys, APS Managing Director commented,

“Elite sports and military personnel regularly invest time and energy to practise the skills they need to outperform their competition and give them an edge. At a time, when leaders face unprecedented challenges, we are pleased to bring the latest technology to help overcome barriers that are preventing leaders and their teams from honing their skills for the future”.

APS’s latest virtual Skills Development System (vSDS) technology allows HR/L&D sponsors to choose business situations appropriate to the audience. Practising with real business challenges such as restructuring, downsizing, dealing with challenging people and driving change and receiving appropriate feedback from a professional to accelerate learning. Next-generation virtual master-class programmes and coaching will be added this summer, providing a unique blended learning offer.

The current environment has challenged Learning and Development professionals to innovate and the vSDS offers the following advantages from the usual approaches organisations take:

Fast deployment – there is no need to wait for cohort numbers or availability
Involvement and benchmarking across borders
No travel and accommodation costs vs traditional classroom
Targeted support for HR Business Partners
30-60 minute, focused learning events with minimal business disruption
Customised case studies to stretch leaders’ ability and understanding
Automatically recorded exercises for future review
Easily blended with other development interventions, psychometrics or reporting

APS are UK distributors for Hogan Assessment Systems, providers of world-class psychometric assessments used by over two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies. The virtual Skills Development System allows users to validate insights from their Hogan Assessments against observable behaviour and hone their skills in a safe environment.

With over 20 years of experience helping organisations implement people development strategies, APS has become established as a trusted partner with their clients. Drawing on world-class psychometric assessments and partnering with highly respected academic leaders, APS create and implement talent management solutions built on scientific principles.

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.

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.

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?