Identity Vs. Reputation

Posted by Jesse Whitsett on Wed, Jun 04, 2014

StageHere at Hogan we have a lot of conversations about pretty complicated stuff, and odds are, if you are reading this, you have at some point been on the other end of one of those conversations. It is always our goal to simplify concepts into language that is more readily understood. It’s not that we are more intelligent than those with whom we speak, but we live and breathe personality assessment and the vast majority of people (read: normal people) don’t. One concept that seems frequently misunderstood is identity vs. reputation. Identity is how we view ourselves, reputation is how others view us.

The easiest way to explain this concept is in terms of American Idol. Even if you don’t typically watch the show, you have probably seen at least one audition from someone who either blew the judges away with their talent, or their horrendous lack thereof. Let’s focus on the latter: the people we’ve watched get crushed by the judges’ words. What’s fascinating is that at some point those poor souls decided that they possessed the vocal vigor to become a star. According to their identity, they could actually do something great. Their reputation is what the judges perceived, and as we’ve all seen, there is often a significant disparity between the two.

Why is this so important? If the contest were to be based on performers’ own perceptions of their talent, the show would need to be called “American Idols,” as everyone would be a star. The truth is that performers’ assessment of their own talent is largely irrelevant – success depends on how others rate their ability to sing and perform. The same can be said for the vast majority of our daily activities and interactions, particularly in occupational settings. Business success depends on results, not sense of self. Challenges to getting along and getting ahead emerge when we fail to realize that our internal story is trivial to others; it is the external perception of our behavior that truly matters. As harsh as it sounds, unless you are on a first date or sitting around a table of drinks with friends, the story that makes you you just doesn’t matter.

Now, I can see your wheels turning and hear the words formulating in your head: “But wait a minute…I have seen a Hogan assessment and it asks people to answer questions about themselves. If reputation is more important, then why do you ask someone about their identity?” It’s an excellent question and the answer is much more straight forward than the means through which it was accomplished. The Drs. Hogan found that, although relatively irrelevant, identity is a very reliable means of predicting reputation. The assessments do ask identity based questions, however, the results report how others generally perceive people who answer the questions in that way. To make that simple, we are not going to tell you about yourself, as you know a lot more about you than anyone else. We will, however, tell you how others are likely to describe you based on how you describe yourself. Furthermore, we will help to provide you with the wisdom to become an American Idol, or perhaps to know when you should walk away from the stage.

Topics: reputation, identity

EQ and Healthcare

Posted by Natalie O'Neal on Thu, May 22, 2014

High EQPatient safety is a major concern for the medical industry. A study in the Journal of Patient Safety found between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, and a separate study found that nearly one third of medical injuries were due to error, costing patients and hospitals more than $1 billion each year.

Although hospitals and medical systems have put in place increasingly advanced systems to monitor and improve patient safety, these numbers have remained stagnant because these systems largely ignore one of the largest drivers of patient safety: emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can improve patient outcomes by:

        1. IMPROVING DOCTOR-PATIENT COMMUNICATION
        2. IMPROVING HANDOFFS AND TRANSITIONS
        3. IMPROVING OFFICE STAFF AND ADMINISTRATORS

Learn how EQ makes such an impact on healthcare employee/patient safety in our complimentary ebook High EQ Can Save Your Life.

The Glorification of Busy

Posted by Cheryl Oxley on Mon, May 19, 2014

Busy resized 600
Why is everyone so damn busy? It seems that the response to "How are you?" on conference calls or conversations with friends results in my least favorite word - busy. Most of the insanely busy people I know aren't working multiple jobs or balancing family and work. The full calendar is a result of choice rather than sheer workload. Busyness isn't a badge of honor anymore… it just makes you look self-important (and self-loathing).

Stop the madness, people. Learn the power of no, find some work/life balance, and, for the love of all things holy, unplug from your email. If you're not too busy, read "The Busy Trap." It will make you think twice about using this dreadful word ever again.

Does My Team Have My Back? Yes, Indeed.

Posted by Heather Bolen on Mon, May 12, 2014

In preparation for my upcoming maternity leave, I have been thinking a lot about the benefits of working as a part of a high functioning team. The stress and uncertainty of stepping away from my job and leaving my duties in the hands of others has the potential to bring out my derailers in full force….Hello, Bold and Diligent. However, working in a high-functioning, team-based environment has assuaged my dark side and I am feeling pretty good about shutting down for a bit. So what is so great about my team?

First, we are very aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses; we are open and honest about our Hogan scores. While this often presents opportunities to joke around with one another when, for instance, someone’s Skeptical or Bold side makes an appearance, it also presents an opportunity to understand where each team member is coming from, where and why they might need some extra support, and what is driving their behavior. Second, we are focused on collaboratively achieving common goals; we succeed or we fail. Working in an environment where collective responsibility is an everyday reality allows this new mom (with a tendency to be a bit of a control freak) to have confidence in, and feel assured, that my team has my back.

For more information about teams, download our complimentary ebook, The Truth About Teams, which breaks from traditional team building models to help leaders balance team members’ personalities, identify shared values, and avoid shared performance risks.

Topics: teams

Women in Leadership Series: Part II

Posted by Jennifer Lowe on Fri, May 09, 2014

Women in Leadership Positions resized 600In the previous blog in this series my colleague, Miranda Hanes, discussed the percentage of women moving into leadership roles and the decidedly lower representation of women at the highest ranks in the organization. She posed the question, “Where are they?” I would like to expand upon Miranda’s blog by posing another question, “Where did they go?” We know that women comprise about 50 percent of the workforce and approximately 30 percent of managerial and supervisory roles, but very few women ascend to the C-suite in organizations. So the question, in my opinion, becomes what happens during women’s career progression that causes them to break the glass ceiling and ascend the career ladder, and why do so many women go over the glass cliff? Is it due to a lack of skill and competence, a matter of cultural fit, the need for work/life balance, or is it simply burnout and frustration with the need to work smarter and harder to reach the top spots.

A recent case study in the Business Insider titled “Why Women Are More Effective Leaders Than Men” helps answer some of these questions through its exploration of the effectiveness of male and female leaders at various points in their career. In this article, men were rated more effective early in career, whereas women were rated more effective mid-to-late in career, with effectiveness ratings having minimal mean differences beyond the age of 60. Some key differences as to what may contribute to this trend relates to behavioral characteristics such as: openness to feedback, willingness to change one’s leadership style, and a strong focus on professional development. Or in Hogan speak, a strong focus on strategic self-awareness.  

When thinking more broadly about how female leaders are typically characterized and perceived, there is a strong emphasis on competencies like collaboration, motivating and inspiring others, and team development. What is often left out of these conversations are competencies such as: delivers results and takes initiatives. Recent research has shown that women tend to fair equally well, if not better in some cases, on these competencies. However, very few organizations have women leading at the top of the house. So the question is why aren’t we promoting women more rapidly? Or even in many cases, where did they go or why did they opt out? In order to more directly answer these questions I think we need to go to the source. We need to spend more time talking to women in these high profile leadership roles to better understand their journey, their struggles, and what gets them out of bed in the morning and motivated to lead others.

Until we can have these conversations, our best strategy is to continue focusing efforts on leadership development programs geared specifically for women, and allowing women more access to strong female leaders earlier in their careers. Research suggests that women are interested and motivated by opportunities to develop, so these programs are likely working, and could be a great way to engage and retain high performing female leaders.

I might also add that we need to encourage both men and women to capitalize on their strengths. Although created equally, we know that men and women do not lead in the same way. Therefore, my advice for organizations is to stop focusing on leadership development in a vacuum. If women and men take a different approach and style to leadership, then create programs that focus on this difference and leverage it to bring diverse styles to the C-Suite. And for all of the aspiring female leaders out there, don’t try to lead like a man. We bring a different set of strengths and interpersonal style to the table. Let’s focus on that—even if it does mean we climb the ladder one rung at a time.

SIOP 2014 Symposium: From Leader's Personality to Employee Engagement

Posted by Hogan News on Tue, May 06, 2014

SIOP Hawaii
Extensive research highlights the importance of work engagement – employees’ morale and involvement with work – as determinant of individual and organizational performance. Large-scale studies show that engagement is positively correlated with a wide range of important business outcomes, such as organizational commitment, citizenship, innovation, and team performance, and negatively correlated with turnover intentions, strain, and burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Seibert, Wang, & Courtright, 2011). Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence indicates that higher engagement levels are directly translated into higher business revenues and profits (Harter et al, 2009). These findings have prompted organizations to monitor engagement levels via regular employee surveys. According to Gallup, who surveys millions of employees every year, only 30% of Americans are engaged at work, and the most common reason for disengagement is employees’ direct boss or line manager. Thus leadership is a critical antecedent of engagement (Wollard & Shuck, 2011).

Leadership is typically defined as the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams (Hogan, 2007). As engagement is a key driver of individual-, team-, and unit-level performance, it has been argued that leaders influence organizational effectiveness by engaging employees, or failing to do so (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007). Meta-analyses suggest that leadership effectiveness increases employees’ job satisfaction and commitment (Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002; Fuller, Patterson, Hester, & Stringer, 1996; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996), while independent studies report strong correlations between transformational leadership and employee engagement (Zhu, Avolio, & Walumbwa, 2009), where engagement mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ turnover intentions (Wefaltd et al, 2011). Although these findings support the idea that leadership is a major cause of employee engagement, an important unaddressed questions remains, namely what causes performance differences in leadership?  

To this end, this symposium includes four integrated presentations that highlight the role of leaders’ personality as determinant of subordinates’ engagement levels and discuss how this knowledge can be translated into actionable organizational recommendations.

First, SIOP Fellow Robert Hogan, who pioneered the use of personality assessments in organizational settings, presents a causal model for understanding the relationship between personality, leadership, and engagement. This model posits that personality characteristics drive individual differences in leadership effectiveness because they impact on employee engagement.

Then, Justin Black, Strategic Advisor at Sirota Survey Intelligence, puts Hogan’s model to the test by examining longitudinal effects of managers’ personality on their direct reports’ engagement in a multinational technology firm. Results highlight causal paths between managers’ reputation – how others’ evaluate them – and subordinates’ engagement: prudent and empathic managers engage; passive-aggressive and volatile managers disengage.

Next, Christine Fernandez, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Starwood, discusses linkages between CEO’s competencies, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction in 398 worldwide hotels. Results show strong associations between CEOs interpersonal skills, multisource feedback, employee engagement, and guest loyalty, as well as providing a detailed account on the personality of successful hotel CEOs.

The final presentation, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of I-O Psychology at University College London and VP of Innovation at Hogan, examines the role of managers’ and employees’ emotional intelligence as determinant of employee engagement and job performance in a large retail chain, integrating both top-down and bottom-up perspectives on engagement.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

Topics: personality, employee engagement, SIOP

Q&A with Dr. Hogan | The Role Personality Plays at Work

Posted by Hogan News on Tue, May 06, 2014

Dr. Robert Hogan spent his career working to prove that personality predicts workplace performance and helps businesses dramatically reduce turnover and increase productivity by hiring the right people, developing key talent, and evaluating leadership potential. Here, he discusses what role personality plays at work.

What role does personality play in an employee's performance at work?

An overwhelming amount of data support the claim that WELL VALIDATED personality measures predict job performance better than any other known evaluation method, including interviews and IQ tests.  But unlike interviews and IQ tests, well validated personality measures do not discriminate against women, minorities, or older people.   In addition, an overwhelming amount of data support the claim that, when employers use well validated personality measures to hire employees, they make more money because they hire more productive employees, reduce turnover, absenteeism, and shrinkage, and increase productivity and customer satisfaction.

How much of a factor should personality be when an employer is considering who to hire, fire and/or promote?

Using well validated personality measures to hire, fire, and promote employees has two advantages.  First, the decisions will be objective—often they are politically biased.  Second, the decisions will be based on data and not personal intuition.  Persuading business to make personnel decisions based on empirically defensible methods is, curiously, a hard sell.  To answer your question directly, personality should be the major single factor used to make personnel decisions—if you believe in data.

Are there any specific personality types that employers should avoid hiring?

Employers should avoid hiring “team killers”—highly talented people who also destroy morale, by quarreling with subordinates, complaining, testing the limits, and performing erratically.  Such people are hired because they are smart and attractive, and seem to have a lot of potential.  Employers give them a lot of slack because they are so obviously talented, but over time, their negative impact on the rest of the team cripples the performance of the entire group.  This is a well-known phenomena in athletics, hence the term “team killer”.

Are there any specific personality types that are more likely to earn a promotion?

People who are more  likely to earn promotions are called high potentials in contemporary HR parlance.  Vast amounts of empirical data support the view that high potentials are characterized by three personality attributes.  First, they are pleasant, charming, and rewarding to deal with; clients, colleagues, and bosses all like them.  Second, they are smart enough to learn the job quickly.  And third, they are willing to do the job—the come to work regularly and work hard while there.  We call this the “RAW model”, where RAW stands for:  (1) Rewarding (to deal with); (2) Able (to learn the job); and (3) Willing (to do the job).   

Miami Workshop Will Advance the Assessment and Interpretive Skills of Spanish-Speaking HR Professionals

Posted by Hogan News on Mon, May 05, 2014

Hosted by Compass Consulting, one of Hogan’s network of partners and distributors, the two-day Spanish-language certification workshop will take place from Tuesday, May 20, through Wednesday, May 21, 2014, at the Kovens Convention Center in Miami. Participants will learn to use three Hogan inventories:

  • The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), which evaluates personality characteristics that people need to ensure job fit and a successful career path.
  • The Hogan Development Survey (HDS), which identifies interpersonal behaviors that can impede career success.
  • The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI), which assesses business drivers and core values to determine a person's individual fit within a corporate culture.

Workshop participants will conduct detailed interpretation and analysis of assessment results and give comprehensive feedback on the HPI, HDS and MVPI inventories in group and individual settings. They will also learn best practices concerning assessment use and interpretation.

Participants attending both days and successfully completing the workshop will be certified to use the Hogan inventories. Additionally for HR professionals, the program has been approved for 13 (general) credit hours toward PHR, SPHR, and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute. The workshop has also been approved by the International Coach Federation for 13 Continuing Coaching Education units.

For more information, download the workshop brochure, or to register, contact Compass Consulting at contacto@compasslatam.com. There is a 10 percent discount for those registering two or more participants.

Topics: distributors

SIOP 2014 Symposium: A Critical Review of Mechanical Turk as a Research Tool

Posted by Hogan News on Thu, May 01, 2014

SIOP Hawaii
As the pace of innovation increases, so does the need to test innovations to determine their worth.  Items enhancing quality of life are widely adopted.  For example, software such as SAS and SPSS allow us to instantly run analyses that would have previously taken days or weeks.  More recently, online data collection has replaced paper-and-pencil data collection and manual entry (Horton, Rand, & Zeckhauser, 2010).  Similarly, websites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) may allow quick and inexpensive access to hundreds of thousands of participants, but a critical review is needed to determine its worth as an innovative data collection resource.

MTurk is an example of a crowdsourcing website where researchers outsource data collection to online participants rather than using laboratory and other samples (Chandler, Mueller, & Paolacci, in press).  Websites such as Crowd Cloud and Crowd Flower also facilitate crowdsourcing (Gaggioli & Riva, 2008), but we focus on MTurk because it is currently the dominant crowdsourcing application for social scientists.  In fact, research conducted using MTurk has already appeared in peer-reviewed journals (Holden, Dennie, & Hicks, 2013; Jonason, Luevano, & Adams, 2012; Jones & Paulhus, 2011).

Using MTurk, participants called “workers” browse Human Intelligence Tasks (“HITs”) posted by “requesters” conducting research.  After selecting and completing HITs, workers are paid a pre-determined fee.  Because MTurk offers access to a large and diverse pool of over 500,000 participants from over 190 countries, researchers’ interest in MTurk as a potential new data collection resource is understandable (Bohannon, 2011; Mason & Suri, 2011).

The goal of this symposium is to bring professionals together to conduct a critical review of MTurk as an avenue for conducting psychological research.  Before turning our session over to our discussant, presenters will share data to evaluate MTurk against other samples.

The Gaddis and Foster paper uses MTurk to test items for developing and maintaining assessments.  The authors compare MTurk data to samples of students as well as applicants and incumbents from organizations.  This paper also includes lessons learned and recommendations for professionals interested in using MTurk.

The Harms and DeSimone paper explores a data cleaning approach to assessing the quality of MTurk data.  Using seven statistical data screens, the authors investigate the prevalence of low-quality data in a large sample of MTurk data.  Results from this paper differ with those from the existing research literature.

The Woolsey and Jones paper recounts a first-time user’s experience using MTurk to conduct international research.  The authors detail practical, methodological, and ethical issues they encountered using MTurk to collect data in the U.S. and Japan.  The paper concludes with questions about the future of crowdsourcing as a means of collecting data.

The Cavanaugh, Callan, and Landers paper reviews a research study comparing MTurk workers to undergraduates on individual difference variables and an online training task.  This paper fills a gap in the existing literature by examining the feasibility of MTurk as an avenue for conducting research on training processes and outcomes.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

 


 

Topics: SIOP

How to Deal with a Jerk Boss

Posted by Natalie O'Neal on Thu, Apr 24, 2014

Deal with a jerk resized 600
“The Jerk Store called, and they’re running out of you.” - George Costanza (1997)

Seinfeld fans will recall George’s ill-fated attempt to deliver the perfect comeback to a smart-ass coworker. Rather than trying to outdo them, the key to dealing with jerks, or any other kind of difficult manager, is to understand them.

“Bosses are just like any other human: unique but predictable,” said Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, vice president of Research and Innovation at Hogan. “The best way to manage your manager is to figure out who they are, what they want, and why they do what they do. Then, adjust your behavior to fit their personality.” For example,

  • Is your boss impulsive? Impulsive bosses are driven by feeling rather than reason, so tune into their moods. Share your ideas when they are already feeling excited.
  • Is your boss creative? Creative bosses jump from one idea to the next, so avoid any discussion of admin details, bureaucratic processes, and rules. Admire their ideas and show interest in their eccentric suggestions.

Check out more personality types and what you can do to counteract the jerk in your boss in our new eBook So, Your Boss is a Jerk.

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