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/.

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.

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?