Norms are unwritten rules that guide human behavior. Examples include elevator and airport security line etiquette. Most people “know” what to do when entering an elevator full of strangers: enter the elevator, face the door, don’t make eye contact or engage in conversation, and leave quickly when reaching the desired floor. In airport security lines: take a bin; quickly fill it with shoes, jackets, laptops, liquids, etc.; put the bin and any luggage on the conveyor belt; walk through the body scanner; and then like Lucille Ball in the candy factory, reassemble everything as quickly as possible. Like all norms, those governing elevator and security line behavior are not written down but everyone is expected to abide by them. Those who don’t observe the norms are considered aberrant.

How do norms relate to building teams? Context describes what situations face the team; Mission, what the team is to accomplish; Talent, what roles team members’ play; and Norms, how the team gets things done. Norms develop as soon as a group of people gets together. Within an hour or so of first meeting, groups will develop rules for greeting and communicating, making decisions, and setting follow-up meetings. The longer a group has been together, the more entrenched its norms become. Some groups even develop their own language in the form of TLAs (three letter acronyms). Seating arrangements, pecking orders, meeting schedules and behaviors, dress codes, presentation formats and styles, decision-making processes, work hand-offs, and performance standards are all common team norms.  Norms are typically obvious to outsiders but often invisible to insiders. Unfortunately a team’s “rules of the road” are usually implicit, leading newbies to annoy more seasoned team members by wearing the “wrong” clothes, sitting in the “wrong” seats, or raising “forbidden” topics. 

Although they are implicit, norms potently affect team member behavior and represent a powerful lever that leaders can use to change team and group dynamics. Surprisingly, we find that Norms are often one of the lowest scoring components in the Rocket Model©, and many leaders are either oblivious to the norms that are in effect, or unaware of how to change them. It is critically important that leaders create explicit team norms that are aligned with team goals and roles.

She’s the idea woman, the visionary, the one with incense in her office and flowers in her hair. She doesn’t just think outside the box, she lives her life outside the box. Sure, her methods may be a bit unorthodox, but you have to dream big things to do big things.

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. Although her unique approach to problems may be an asset early in her career, it can result in a reputation as a bit of an eccentric.

Watch this video to see the dreamer at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiImaginative #howdoyouderail

Bad followership can destroy team performance. Followership concerns the level of engagement and critical thinking skills demonstrated by team and group members. A group member may have all the right skills and be in the right role, yet sit in the corner and pout rather than perform. Other members may have fewer skills but work hard and offer good ideas for improving processes which, ultimately, improves team functioning. 

As seen in the diagram, engagement and critical thinking are independent dimensions of followership. These two dimensions can be divided into four followership types: Self-Starters, Brown-Nosers, Slackers, and Criticizers. The power of the model becomes obvious when leaders use it to assess the follower types on their team or group. Knowing members’ types will provide leaders with insights on how best to manage them since each type should be approached differently. . 

Self-Starters, such as Bob and Vonda, are individuals who are passionate about working on the team and will try to make it successful. They constantly think of ways to improve team performance by raising issues, developing solutions, and showing enthusiasm. When they encounter problems, they resolve issues and then tell their leaders what they have done rather than waiting to be told what to do. This follower type will improve their leaders’ performance by offering opinions before, and providing constructive feedback after, bad decisions. Self-Starters are critical to the performance of teams and are the most effective follower type.

Brown-Nosers such as Ken and Sharon have a strong work ethic but lack critical thinking skills. Brown-Nosers are dutiful and conscientious, rarely point out problems, raise objections, or make waves, and do whatever they can to please their boss. Brown-Nosers constantly check with their leaders and operate by seeking permission rather than forgiveness. Leaders who feel entitled, think they are hot, or think they are the only ones capable of developing solutions, often surround themselves with Brown-Nosers because suck-ups constantly flatter their great bosses. Brown-Nosers often go far in organizations, particularly in those that lack objective performance metrics. Organizations lacking clear measures of performance often make personnel decisions based on politics, and Brown-Nosers play politics very well.

Slackers don’t work very hard, think they deserve a paycheck for just showing up, and believe it is the leader’s job to solve problems. Slackers are clever at avoiding work, often disappear for hours, look busy but get little done, have good excuses for not completing projects, and spend more effort finding ways to avoid finishing tasks than they would by just doing them. Slackers are “stealth employees” who are happy to spend their time surfing the Internet, shopping online, gossiping with co-workers, and taking breaks with no concern for their jobs.

Criticizers are followers with strong thinking skills who are disengaged. Rather than directing their analytical skills to productive outcomes, they find fault in anything their leaders and organizations do. Criticizers educate co-workers about their leaders’ shortcomings, how change efforts will fail, how poorly their organizations compare to the competition, and how management ignores their suggestions. In terms of their impact on team and organizational performance, they are the most dangerous of the four types because their personal mission is to create dissent. If not managed properly, these team killers can take over teams and entire departments!

Leaders can use the followership model to understand group dynamics and what they need to do to improve team talent within any team or group. These four follower types are dynamic—they can and do change over time. Members who were once Self-Starters can become Criticizers and vice-versa. Because follower types are dynamic, leaders should periodically assess their own behavior and use the followership model to evaluate the impact it is having on the people in their groups.

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and co-author of The Rocket Model

In the face of ever-shrinking budgets and less resources to devote to employee development, many companies face a similar problem: providing current and potential leadership with critical professional development opportunities.

Executive coaching programs often span more than a year, in which a coach helps the participant develop skills and augment behaviors necessary for future success. These engagements are known as skills coaching and are designed to enhance the skillset of the participants.

Yet, skills coaching fails to heighten one’s strategic self-awareness – the understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral tendencies and how these characteristics compare to those of others.

Awareness coaching, on the other hand, uses assessment results and a series of short coaching sessions that put the ownership of development on the participant. In such engagements, the employees receive a series of short coaching sessions supported by personality data, where they receive suggestions for behavior changes geared toward increasing workplace performance.

Finding cost-effective and impactful methods for leadership development is crucial to success. Using the power of assessments to make leaders aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, rather than teaching them new skills, or ways to improve their existing behaviors, employers can ensure they have a bench full of high-potential employees ready to step in to key leadership positions.

To learn more about awareness coaching and to see a case study of how one company experienced positive results through this method, review our white paper, Awareness Coaching.

We're excited to welcome new members to the Hogan family!

As our new senior accountant, Adrienne Horner is responsible for contract management, maintaining pricing set-up, tax support, and taking care of business.

Jenni Weldon is our new HR Generalist. She is responsible for the administration of HR programs and policies, recruiting and staffing logistics, employee relations, and everything that makes our company culture what it is.

Jocelyn Hays, our newest Corporate Solutions consultant, works with Hogan’s direct clients to design and implement solutions for employee selection, leadership development, and team development. 

As Brand Manager, Lindsey Morehead, the newest addition to our marketing team, is responsible for establishing, maintaining, and monitoring Hogan brand standards internally and through partner relationships.

Our new receptionist, Autumn Rigsbee, is keeping the lines of communication open and assisting with office management. We love it when she brings her English mastiff, Kuma (Japanese for “bear”), around for a visit!

Tony Dinelli has joined our IT team as Project Manager. You might talk to him if you’re working on integrating Hogan into your company and looking for technical support. He acts as the liaison between clients, Hogan consultants, and customer service.

Holly Lee joined our customer service team in June. She works to provide excellent service to our clients and their candidates.

To our Florida office, we welcome Megan Ludwick. Megan is the new Project Associate in the training division and she assists with project management, development, and launches.

Leigha Carter is our new Training Coordinator. Leigha is responsible for supporting administrative functions, certification workshops, web courses, and maintaining all training records.

Welcome to the Hogan Team!

Strong leadership is a crucial ingredient for a successful company. With highly qualified people at the top, the entire organization is more likely to outperform the competition and hold on to their most talented employees. Yet, many organizations lack a tried-and-true method for identifying and developing those employees who show leadership potential.

Current processes for identifying high-potential internal talent are often marred by bias and politics and rely on past performance as the main indicator of future performance. Such strategies reward bold, attention-grabbing behaviors that may be attractive in junior employees but become counterproductive at the upper levels.

As several recent high-profile stories suggest, companies don’t have much luck when hiring external C-level candidates either. Studies show that more than half of outside hires fail, many within the first 18 months on the job. As they are unfamiliar with the business, employees, culture, and unique challenges, it is no wonder why many external hires struggle to find success.

However, when hiring managers use the empirical data provided by personality assessment, rather than gut reactions influenced by politics or initial reactions in interviews, they can develop high-potential programs that ensure a stable of promising leaders. By using assessments, managers gain key insight into their high-potential employees in the following areas:

• Bright-side personality – the everyday personality that determines leadership style, judgment, and ability to get along and get ahead
• Dark-side personality – also called derailment personality, this consists of characteristics that under stress or boredom can become debilitating career derailers
• Values – the drivers, beliefs and interests that determine what candidates are willing to work for and in what type of job, position, and organizational culture they are likely to feel most satisfied
• Cognitive ability – a measure of candidates’ ability to think tactically and strategically

When personality assessments are at the center of a high-potential program, organizations have an empirical basis for identifying, selecting, and developing the next generation of leaders.

To learn more about how personality assessment can be used to identify, develop, and retain future leaders, download our complimentary white paper, From Potential to Performance.

He’s the charmer, the mischief-maker, the thrill-seeker. For him, spontaneity is the spice of life. Sure, his impulsiveness may occasionally find him climbing aboard a sinking ship, but you don’t mind bailing him out again, right?

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. The same charm and daring antics that helped the sweet talker early in his career can turn into manipulation and unwillingness to learn from his mistakes.

Watch this video to see the sweet talker at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiMischievous #howdoyouderail

Most organizations have something called an executive or senior leadership team that typically ranges in size from 6-15 people. It consists of the CEO,  COO, and functional and business unit heads. General responsibilities for top teams include setting strategy, defining organizational structure, determining key roles staffing , setting performance targets, making policy, and managing the business. Because of their unique membership and responsibilities there are some interesting observations about teams at the top that are worthy of additional discussion.

1.  Who is on the Team? Richard Hackman reported that only ten percent of the 120 top teams he researched had agreement on team membership. This finding fits in with our observations on senior leadership teams  -- inclusivity often trumps efficiency and effectiveness. These findings suggest that many top teams have “loose” boundaries and may not be as tightly aligned as one might think.

2. Top Teams are often too big to be Effective. Because top teams tend to be more inclusive than exclusive, most are too big to be effective. Since the number of relationships to manage increases exponentially with each member, top teams bigger than ten members typically suffer from efficiency, effectiveness, speed, alignment, and communication problems. Organizations tend to be more successful when CEOs use a top team of 5-7 key leaders to deal with key challenges, make decisions, and manage day-to-day affairs and a more extended team to help set strategy, review quarterly business results, etc.  

3. Should Teams at the Top Operate as a Group or a Team?  As described in The Rocket Model: A Practical Guide for Building High Performing Teams, the tasks should dictate if an individual, group, or team is the most effective way to operate. Yet top teams rarely if ever have this discussionsince the CEO usually dictates what he or she is comfortable with and leads accordingly).  Although it is well within the prerogative of CEOs to determine how they want to manage their top teams, team efficiency, effectiveness, and, ultimately, organizational performance suffers whenever there is a mismatch between the CEOs’ leadership approach and the tasks to be performed by their top teams.

4. How do Top Team Members Define Their “First Team”?  Because top team members have their own organizations to manage, oftentimes C-Suite executives define their “first team” and the function or business unit they manage. In other words, their primary loyalties lie with the HR function or EMEA business unit rather than with the top team. If the CEO is managing direct reports as a group then this is not a big deal, but these divided loyalties will cause major problems if the CEO wants to build a high performing top team. CEOs can minimize this problem by having an explicit discussion about whether direct reports should operate as a group or a team (or when it is appropriate to do so).

5. Artificial Harmony. Top team members rarely complain in team meetings, even thoughthey may suffer from divided loyalties, be unsure of who is or is not on the team, have a team too big to be effective, and/or be under a CEO using the wrong managing approach.  Many members come to meetings with “their lips sealed” and refuse to bring up controversial issues. As a result, top teams suffer from artificial harmony and talk about how wonderful everything is in meetings only to complain to their staffs. Rather than hashing out disagreements in team meetings, top team members often use proxies to fight their battles. Organizations whose top team members heap praise on their peers, yet suffer from a “silo mentality,” are often victims of artificial harmony.

6. The Cascade Effect. It is important to remember that top team dysfunction has a ripple effect across the rest of the organization. Open warfare between the heads of R&D and Marketing, Marketing and Sales, Sales and Operations, or Finance and IT will play out in major battles between the departments. CEOs need to explicitly manage artificial harmony and open warfare if they want to create a fully engaged workforce and a high performing organizational culture.

There is no universally accepted model for transforming collections of individuals into high performing teams. There are four more common models used to improve team performance, which include Tuckman’s Stage Model, Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model, Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. Although each of these frameworks offers unique insights into team dynamics, The Rocket Model has several distinct advantages over the others.

Tuckman’s Stage Model. Tuckman noted that leaderless discussion groups seemed to go through four distinct phases: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Groups do not become highly effective until they reach the performing stage. The model provides advice to leaders for helping groups transition through the four phases. Although these phases can readily be seen in volunteer groups, they rarely occur in corporate settings since work groups are usually brought together for some purpose, have better defined roles, and have some sort of pecking order.

Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model. According to Hackman, inputs are the raw materials available to a group or team, and include team members, raw materials, equipment, etc. Processes are the procedures or systems team members use to do work, and outputs are the end products. The inputs-processes-outputs model is based on sound research, but is too vague to be of much use.

Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni developed a team stage model that includes: (a) absence of trust; (b) fear of conflict; (c) lack of commitment; (d) avoidance of accountability; and (e) inattention to results. The model provides some useful insights into team dynamics, but is not based on sound research, and although it seems to make intuitive sense, in many cases it is simply wrong.

Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. The Rocket Model capitalizes on the advantages of the previous frameworks in that it is based on research from hundreds of teams and provides sound, practical advice for improving group and team performance. The Rocket Model consists of eight components, which include context, mission, talent, norms, buy-in, power, morale, and results. Context concerns gaining team member agreement on the challenges facing the team; mission is setting team goals and benchmarks; talent focuses on the number, roles, and skills of team members; norms pertain to the rules by which team members operate; buy-in is all about fostering employee engagement; power concerns acquiring needed authority and resources; morale pertains to the level of team esprit-de-corps and conflict, and the accomplishments attained fall in to the results component.

The Rocket Model can be used to diagnose current team functioning and launch brand new teams. It can also be applied to co-located and virtual teams and groups. Because it is based on a foundation of research and provides practical advice for improving team and group performance, we believe The Rocket Model is superior to the other three frameworks.

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and author of The Rocket Model

The terms team and group are often used interchangeably, but there are some differences between these two concepts.

We define teams as consisting of three to 25 people who:

• Work toward a common set of goals
• Work jointly
• Share common leadership
• Hold joint accountability for performance
• See themselves as being part of a team with common goals and shared fates

This definition of teams is somewhat different from the usual definition in three ways. First, according to this definition dyads are not teams. The dynamics between any two people are much simpler than those between three or more people. Second, this definition assumes people share a “mental model” about the teams to which they belong. In other words they identify themselves as being members of a particular team and tend to have common interpretations of events. And third, teams tend to be fairly small—usually less than 25 people. Larger groups may call themselves teams (such as a professional football team) but in reality they are usually groups made up of various sub-teams (the offensive unit, defensive unit, etc.). Common examples of teams might include commercial aircrews, crews of firefighters, United States Army platoons, product development teams, manufacturing shift workers, fast food restaurant crews, research and development teams, and soccer teams. The individuals in each of these examples share common goals, depend on the help of the other team members, share leadership and common fates, and most importantly, identify with their teams.

Groups are clusters of people that do not share these five characteristics to the same extent as teams. A regional sales team responsible for selling insurance and other financial services to local citizens would be a prototypical group. In this so-called team, each sales rep has individual revenue and profitability goals for an assigned geographic territory. An individual’s ability to achieve these goals does not depend on what the other sales reps do; instead it is completely dependent upon that person’s own performance. Although individual efforts contribute towards the region’s revenues and profitability goals, the region’s performance is merely the sum of each rep’s individual efforts. If a regional sales manager wants to increase revenues, then he or she could add reps, expand territories, increase prices, or change the product mix; requiring the reps to work more closely together would have little if any impact on the region’s financial performance.

This is not to say that leaders play passive roles when managing groups. In fact, far from it! Leaders in charge of groups need to ensure that the members operate under the same assumptions regarding customers and competitors, possess the right skills, stay motivated, share information, have adequate resources, achieve their individual goals, and get differences quickly resolved. Contrast these leadership demands with those of a head surgeon of a cardiovascular surgical team. The head surgeon would have many of these same leadership responsibilities but would also needs to ensure that their fellow surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants shared common goals, cooperated, used common work processes, had seamless task handoffs, shared a common fate, and identified with the team as they put stents and pacemakers into patients. Thus, the leadership demands on people in charge of teams are more extensive (and consequently more difficult to master) than the demands on people in charge of groups.  

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and author of The Rocket Model