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.

Applying Social Science to Behavioural Change

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 12:00:00 Z

Many organisations are focused on behaviour change as they consider the leadership requirements in the new hybrid working environment that is emerging from the pandemic.

With remote working, the need for agility, coupled with strong levels of engagement, means that the status quo is not the answer. Getting people to let go of existing ways of operating and embrace new ones can be challenging. Leaders who understand and consider the motivations that people have will help accelerate this behaviour change.

There needs to be a motivation to change. There also needs to be self-awareness!

Understanding what behaviour, the organisation needs from leaders is essential for effective recruitment, and in promoting and developing the right people. The challenge is to shift away from overly charismatic leadership and instead spot talented people who may be more humble; these are the people who can help drive engagement and productivity in those they lead. Those more humble leaders may be hiding in plain sight.

HR leaders should understand the science behind behaviour. They have a key role in creating the right culture and conditions for change within the organisation. Knowing what good looks like and then being able to objectively assess this is essential. Providing effective feedback is also critical. Do leaders fully appreciate the impact they are having on the culture and climate around them? Disruptive, or overly self-oriented, behaviour may be easier to spot than ‘laissez-faire’ leaders who simply let their teams and others get on with it, avoiding performance discussions, failing to offer feedback and/or failing to provide clear direction.

Both disruptive and absentee leadership have negative implications for behaviour change, organisational culture, and performance.

Assessing and measuring motivations and behaviours and providing leaders with clear feedback and development helps drive change. Systems, processes and tools that are connected and utilised effectively add value. Engagement surveys, 360 feedback, reward systems and performance management can help to provide insights and to spot challenges early. This in turn can lead to earlier intervention and support that can help leaders thrive.

The CRF Research Paper: ‘Applying Social Science to Behavioural Change’, looks at behaviour change and its obstacles. Change is never easy. Sharing tools, case studies and examples, CRF have taken a practical approach to help enable this.

The two-day immersive workshop hosted by Corporate Research Forum (CRF), with contribution from Advanced People Strategies explored the science behind behaviour change and uncovered HR’s role in creating the conditions for change.

During the online session, CRF’s Carmen von Rohr, PhD led the conversation with Dr. Grace Lordan, Founding Director of The Inclusion Initiative and Associate Professor at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to explore the key considerations for approaching behavioural change. These included:

✅ Do you understand the organisation and have clarity about what it wants to achieve?
✅ Are people aware of their own behaviour?
✅ Is feedback being given effectively?
✅ Are strategies in place to support the behaviour change?

Read the Full Paper Here

Access the Video Session on the CRF Website

APS Blog