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 Robert Hogan: Engagement and Workaholics

Posted by Robert Hogan on Mon, Aug 19, 2013

QA quick search for the word engagement yields more than 6 million websites, thousands of books, and myriad articles. Yet, a Gallup poll showed that more than 71% of American employees are disengaged at their jobs, indicating that although most companies recognize employee engagement as important, many still struggle to understand it. Dr. Robert Hogan discusses the concept of engagement, work-life balance, and workaholics in this Q&A.

Q: What is engagement?
A: Engagement refers to how employees perceive their jobs and employers. It is an ideal state rarely fully achieved. It is the opposite of alienation. When employees are engaged, they like their jobs, they work hard at their jobs, they take initiative, and they show loyalty. When employees are alienated, they hate their jobs, they don’t work very hard, they never take initiative or show loyalty. The data are perfectly clear, when employees are engaged, their employers make more money. And engagement is easy to measure.

Q: What are some of the hallmarks of an engaged employee?
A: Positive attitudes, hard work, loyalty, low absenteeism, low turnover, high productivity, and high customer service ratings.

Q: Most people have 24/7 access to their phones and email accounts. Although that gives most people added freedom, it also comes with the expectation of constant availability. Do you think this blurring of the line between work life and family/home life makes people more engaged or less engaged at their job?
A: You have the question backwards. How people react to constant availability depends on how engaged they are. The more engaged an employee, the more he or she will be willing to bring work into their family/home life.

Q: How would you define a workaholic in the typical negative context? Are there certain characteristics or derailers that you would see in a typical workaholic?
A: A workaholic is someone who works constantly to defend him or herself against anxiety and the threat of being criticized or rejected. There is neurotic propulsion to their work efforts – they are driven, rigid, inflexible, and afraid of innovation or change.

Q: What is the difference between a workaholic and an engaged workaholic? What kind of characteristics are you likely to see in an engaged workaholic?
A: For a workaholic, engagement would be therapeutic. Engaged people find their work meaningful. A big problem for workaholics is that they are seeking meaning and purpose and can’t find it. An engaged workaholic would be a terrific employee.

Q: What are the different reasons these two types of people are likely to burn out?
A: A disengaged workaholic is already burnt out. They live in a state of psychological burn out. Workaholics are fragile by definition. An engaged workaholic will burn out by taking on too much work.

Q: How can companies build engagement in their workforce and prevent burnout?
A: First, assess the current level of engagement to identify pockets of alienation. Second, fire the managers who run the operations that are alienated. Third, train the remaining managers on how to be good managers. Fourth, follow up with successive assessments of employee engagement. Fifth, some employees are impossible to engage, so don’t hire any more of them.

Topics: employee engagement, workaholics

3 Ways to Brand for Engagement

Posted by Eva Manole on Tue, Jan 22, 2013

BrandingTalk of personal branding on social platforms is rampant. Rarely, however is there mention of how a personal brand can affect engagement at work.

Employee engagement refers to the rational and emotional commitment one has to various aspects associated with the organization where he or she works. An employee’s commitment level translates into discretionary effort and intent to stay, which both affect organizational performance. Additionally, employee engagement is associated with job commitment, lack of burnout and well being. As Dr. Robert Hogan attests, “when employees are engaged, they like their jobs, they work hard at their jobs, they take initiative, and they show loyalty.”

When you brand yourself effectively within a company culture, co-workers and supervisors will have a clearer and more concise understanding of what it takes for you to be successful. Accurately projecting who you are to others will give them the necessary information to help you along the way. Even if they're well-intentioned, peers and supervisors cannot contribute to your engagement or success if they do not have a clear picture of your personality traits and motives. 

How can one take control of one’s personal brand and intentionally portray it favorably every day? It all starts with self-knowledge, which is a basic necessity to building your personal brand. Managing your reputation within an organization can only arise from strategic self-awareness.

Here are 3 ways to accurately define and project your personal brand at work.

Define it Simply

Identify what your three core brand attributes are. You should be able to fit them on a Post-it. Start by collecting feedback on how co-workers describe you, your strengths, your development opportunities and some of your top drivers.

Convey it Clearly

Project yourself in a concise manner. Mixed messages will confuse others. Focus on sending out a clear message of how you like to get things done, what makes you get those things done and why you do the things you do in a compact way.

Project it Confidently

Establish yourself as an expert in a relevant field. Once you show competence, you can more easily create a confident presence and build credibility. Become a good source of knowledge for others in a specific area and take control of disseminating that information. By sharing your expertise others will become more aware of what engages you.

If you are not feeling engaged at work, consider what image you are projecting to others.  Sharply defining your personal brand could be a step in the right direction.

 

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Topics: employee engagement, engagement, culture

Hot HR Issues of 2012

Posted by Jennifer Lowe on Thu, Dec 20, 2012

2012Over the past 12 months, Hogan has discussed a number of hot topics in the talent management arena. We’ve introduced you to an interesting, entertaining, and derailing cast of characters with howdoyouderail.com, and we’ve provided insight about engagement, team building, and organizational culture with our series on The Rocket Model. After reviewing the blog entries for this year, I compiled a list of Hogan’s Hottest, Hot Topics in 2012. 

1. The Dark Side: Derailment and the Hogan Development Survey
This topic makes the top of the list because it is a real phenomenon. It is estimated that at least half of the individuals who are currently in leadership roles are failing or nearly derailing. The Dark Side (i.e. behaviors that emerge when we are under stress, pressure, or simply not self-monitoring) can rear its ugly head in a number of ways. We’ve all met the Loose Cannon, worked with the Show Off, or tried to deliver feedback to the Skeptic. These derailing behaviors can be career killers…literally. So it’s important that we focus on our reputation and self-awareness.

2. Self-Awareness: The value of understanding one’s reputation
One of the largest debates in the area of personality is that of identity and reputation. Identity relates to our values, goals, hopes, and dreams while reputation represents the behaviors that other people see that can either help or impede goal attainment. Reputation is what matters. It is what helps you climb the corporate ladder or go down the chute of derailment. We cannot modify our reputations without understanding why we do the things we do. Self-Awareness is the key to reconciling the differences between identity and reputation. Self-Awareness is the key to leadership success. 

3. The Talent Management Gap: Building a high potential pipeline in a Millennial world
If you have doubts about the generational differences in the reliance on technology or the importance of social networking just ask any 10-year-old who wants an iPhone for Christmas, or consult the children’s toy aisle at your local big box store and you will find an assortment of Kindles, Nooks, and even iPad look-a-likes for babies. I can personally attest to this because my five-month-old received one from our friends for Christmas. There are differences in the way Millenials and eventually Generation Z will approach the work world. These groups have a significant reliance on technology, are highly affiliative, and require immediate and regular feedback. Jackie VanBroekhoven’s blog, The Generational Workforce of the Future, is a great illustration of the need to understand each of the generations representing the workforce in order to build the talent bench of the future.

4. Engagement: Focusing on the employee and the team
Employee engagement has been a hot topic for a number of years and it will likely become increasingly important as we see a shift in the make-up of the workforce. Engaged employees tend to be more satisfied and more productive, and productivity ties directly to the financial bottom line. The moral to the story is that morale and engagement matter and an employee’s engagement is largely driven by his/her boss. That being said, we need to focus on developing leaders who can empower and foster engagement in their staff.

What’s in store for 2013? We have a number of new and interesting topics to address next year, so stay tuned for more information from The Science of Personality. Until then, Happy Holidays from all of us at Hogan!

Topics: Millennials, employee engagement, derailment, self awareness

Good Managers

Posted by Hogan News on Thu, Sep 20, 2012

Good Managers

Ever heard the phrase, “employees leave their bosses, not their jobs”? Bad managers are easy to spot, but good managers are more difficult to identify. Because staff engagement is most strongly linked to the behavior of leaders, it is paramount that we recognize what makes a good manager good and a bad manager bad.

Download Good Managers and learn the tipping point that distinguishes a good leader from a bad leader.

Topics: leadership, employee engagement

The Rocket Model: Teaching Teams How to Win

Posted by Hogan Assessments on Mon, Sep 17, 2012

Rocket ModelResults are the what of teamwork, whereas the seven components of the Rocket Model© are the how of teamwork. The relationship between Results and the components of the Rocket Model© is not perfect—some teams do well when they shouldn’t and vice versa. For example, a team may be dysfunctional but have great products or face weak competitors. Such teams, however, will fail when faced with strong competition. Other teams may lose even though they do everything right. Still others may achieve poor Results due to a single, underperforming component of the Rocket Model© (e.g. a team killer, the lack of resources, or poor accountability may prevent a team from winning). We believe that teams need to have at least moderate scores on all seven components of the Rocket Model© if they are to compete successfully.

Effective and ineffective leaders differ in their ability to obtain superior Results. Most organizations are staffed with managers who don’t achieve Results; poor leaders are the biggest obstacles to team or group performance. A critical but often overlooked role of a leader is to teach the team how to win. Athletic team coaches and heads of military combat units tend to do this well – they evaluate the competition and devise strategies and tactics to defeat them. They define team member roles and responsibilities, make members practice, provide feedback and coaching, upgrade talent, and hold members accountable for performance.

Leaders can use three mechanisms to teach their teams how to win. First, set clear metrics and goals that are benchmarked against the competition. These goals might include market share, survey results, analysts’ recommendations, and customer complaints. Given the amount of data available to modern organizations, it is usually easy to find benchmarking information that teams can use to set winning goals.

Second, review team performance regularly. Periodic team scorecard reviews will help members understand where they are succeeding and where they are falling short. These reviews should include discussions about how to improve performance; leaders can also use this time to provide feedback and coaching on proposed solutions.

Third, teach members how to win by creating action plans. These action plans need to state the steps members must take to implement solutions, steps that eventually become roadmaps for winning. The best leaders capitalize on all three techniques to drive team performance.

Topics: leadership, teams, employee engagement, The Rocket Model, team performance, Groups, Team Facilitation, Curphy Consulting Corporation, Followership

The Rocket Model: Team Morale and Conflict

Posted by Hogan Assessments on Mon, Sep 10, 2012

Rocket ModelMorale can be defined as a group or team’s cohesiveness or esprit de corps. Strong emotional ties, close relationships, and high levels of trust between members are the mark of high Morale. Members of high Morale teams often say they would do anything for their teammates; in some cases (combat teams or firefighting crews), members are willing to die for their units. Conversely, low Morale groups and teams contain members who will easily sabotage others if doing so furthers their own careers.

Morale is the component of the Rocket Model© that is most easily observed by outsiders; it is also the primary reason consultants are asked to do team building. However, team leaders are often unable to assess Morale because teams may appear cohesive, but have high levels of covert conflict. This covert conflict is due to norms that require employees to be team players even though they despise one another. The members of these teams smile, nod their heads, and endorse team decisions but secretly resent the process. Leaders need to recognize and deal with this mismatch between members’ private thoughts and public actions if they want functional teams.  

It is important to distinguish between engagement, cohesiveness, and conflict. Engagement concerns members’ willingness to put effort towards team and group tasks.  Members with high levels of engagement take their roles seriously and go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to getting things done. Engagement is quite different than cohesiveness. Members can all get along but not exert any effort towards team tasks, and highly engaged employees may not particularly like each other. Conflict is related to, but somewhat distinct from, cohesiveness. Teams with low or high levels of conflict may not be particularly cohesive. Often the most cohesive teams are those that experience modest amounts of conflict and have developed ways to get issues successfully resolved.

Unfortunately, many leaders are unable to resolve intra-team conflict. Some hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest. Others know that their teams are riddled with conflict but hope it will just go away. Still others may ask team members to go through team building activities such as sharing personality test results, golf outings, ropes courses, white-water rafting excursions, etc. We know a CEO who asked his dysfunctional team to go on a one-day sailboat cruise and bring ten objects with personal significance. During the cruise, they were to talk about the objects. However, many of these personal stories were leaked back to the larger organization and became sources of mockery for certain team members. This story is fairly typical—most team-building events fail to identify and resolve the sources of intra-team conflict, and have little if any impact on team cohesiveness.  

Topics: leadership, teams, employee engagement, The Rocket Model, team performance, Groups, Team Facilitation, Curphy Consulting Corporation, Followership

Rethinking Leadership Training

Posted by Robert Hogan on Wed, Sep 05, 2012

leadershipLeadership training is a big industry. It is estimated that businesses spent approximately $60 billion on such training in 2011. This raises two questions.

1. Why is so much money spent on leadership training?
2. Is the money well spent?

Leadership training is more about showing respect to certain employees than it is about improving their leadership performance. Being sent to a leadership training course seems to be more of a perk than a response to a perceived need. As to whether the money is well spent, the answer is, “Who knows?” The literature regarding the evaluation of leadership training is sparse, and that is no accident. 

In the absence of empirical data, the issue of leadership trainability can be analyzed logically. Leadership is typically defined in terms of the people in charge. This is the place holder theory of leadership. Because, in most organizations, people are promoted into leadership positions primarily based on politics and only sometimes based on demonstrated leadership, the lessons learned from a study of leadership concern how to climb a hierarchy, not how to run an organization. Moreover, defining leadership in terms of place holder theories is the reason there is so much variability in leadership training curricula. 

Drawing on the study of human origins, Van Vugt, Hogan, and Kaiser propose that leadership is a resource for a group, not a source of privilege for incumbents; in this view, leadership concerns building and maintaining a team that can outperform the competition. Leadership should be defined and evaluated in terms of the performance of the followers; in business this performance is usually specified in terms of profitability. A person can rapidly climb the hierarchy of an organization while ruining the teams he/she leads—and still be called a leader—but a person who leads a team to victory is, in fact, a leader. 

Leadership is a skilled performance. Leadership performance involves building a team by creating team member engagement. A person must behave so as to be perceived by the team members as having:

  • Integrity
  • Good judgment
  • Competence in the activity in which the team is engaged
  • An attractive vision for the future of the team

How do potential leaders persuade their teams that they have integrity, good judgment, competence, and an attractive vision? They do this by putting on a consistent and credible performance that displays probity and astute decision making, demonstrates competence, and explains the vision. However, team members will watch closely for signs that potential leaders lack these characteristics and every lie, bad decision, operational oopsie, and sign of self-serving behavior will undermine their claim to legitimate leadership and alienate the team.

A major factor in the development of any talent concerns coachability - it is the one thing that all professional athletes and good leaders have in common. Coachability can be conceptualized in terms of two components: (1) a desire to improve one’s performance; and (2) being responsive to critical feedback.

Leadership training should follow from one’s theory of leadership. The place holder theory of leadership suggests that we should train people to lie and steal ideas, to bully and humiliate subordinates, or to plunder and bankrupt organizations. In contrast, the team builder theory of leadership suggests we should train people to act with integrity, exercise good judgment, become experts in the business, and be able to persuade the team that their goals are worthy. This analysis also suggests that training money is best spent on people who have talent for leadership and are coachable.

Topics: leadership, employee engagement, leadership performance, leadership training, building a team, executive coaching

The Rocket Model: Team Power

Posted by Hogan Assessments on Mon, Sep 03, 2012

Rocket Model

Team power can be defined as the quantity and quality of resources available to a team. Resources include facilities, office space, computers, telecommunication systems, specialized equipment, software systems, budgets, and the level of authority granted to teams. Executive leadership teams often have many resources and wide discretion in decision-making—for example, the authority to spend billions to acquire other companies. In contrast, task forces such as the 9/11 Commission or the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reformcan only make recommendations and have little authority to make final decisions.


All groups and teams need resources in order to succeed. However, the resources that they need will depend on their goals. Account executives who are part of a regional sales group will need computers, customer resource management software, sales collateral, and travel budgets. A professional hockey team needs training facilities, hockey equipment, chartered aircraft, etc., to successfully compete. A lack of physical resources or the authority to acquire them will impede team and group success. For example, we know a manager of a talent acquisition team for a major retailer who had to have all staffing decisions approved by three layers of management. Virtually every decision, no matter how small, needed the blessing of the Senior Vice President of Human Resources. This bureaucratic structure significantly reduced the team’s ability to make timely hiring offers, and they routinely lost highly qualified candidates.

Leaders need to clarify their team or group’s purpose before worrying about the resources they need to succeed. Is the team to be held accountable for making recommendations or achieving results? If it is the latter, then how do these results impact the larger organization? Teams that make big contributions need more power than those that make few contributions. Clarifying who makes the decisions about physical assets, budgets, and authority can help improve commitment and cohesiveness; nothing will disempower a group or team faster than discovering that upper management will make all the calls.

The default position for most leaders and teams is to ask for more resources, yet research shows that most teams squander what they are given. More often than not, teams have all they need to succeed, but for many it is easier to acquire more rather than change how they could use their existing resources differently. One hallmark of good leaders is that they get results in spite of budget, equipment, or facilities shortcomings.  

Topics: leadership, teams, employee engagement, The Rocket Model, team performance, Groups, Team Facilitation, Curphy Consulting Corporation, Followership

The Rocket Model: Three Ways to Improve Buy-In

Posted by Hogan Assessments on Mon, Aug 27, 2012

Rocket ModelThe current thinking about employee engagement is somewhat misguided since leaders tend to get all of the blame for having disengaged employees. Missing from this perspective is the fact that team members also bear some responsibility for where they fall on the disengagement-engagement continuum. All leaders can do is create an environment conducive to team member Buy-In; after that, it is up to each team member to decide to become fully engaged and committed to team success. There are three things that leaders can do to foster Buy-in: 1) establish credibility, 2) paint a compelling picture of the future, and 3) empower team members.

Establish Credibility. Interviews with thousands of people and over a million 360-degree feedback ratings show that credibility is a critical component of leader effectiveness and team success. Credibility can be defined as the degree to which members believe in the leader; it has two components—trust and expertise. Trust concerns building strong relationships with others, and expertise concerns having the relevant knowledge and skills. Because trust and expertise are independent, leaders and members can have a variety of high and low combinations.

The fact that trust and expertise are both needed to establish credibility leads to interesting group dynamics. For example, teams often recruit new leaders and members because they possess needed expertise, but they may not be listened to until the other members begin to trust them. If seasoned veterans have the required knowledge and skill set, but are difficult to work with, they will not influence decision-making. Leaders who want to improve their credibility need (at least) moderate levels of relevant expertise and team members must be able to trust them.

Leaders must then persuade the team that each member has the expertise needed to perform in their respective roles. This will build trust between team members and enhance group cohesiveness. If any team member lacks credibility, then Buy-In will suffer and the team may fail.  Leaders can help those players who lack credibility by gaining the trust of other team members and providing additional coaching or training.

Paint a Compelling Vision of the Future. Some people are gifted orators who can inspire others. Research shows that leaders who paint powerful visions of the future have subordinates who exert extra effort towards team and group goals. However, few leaders provide clear visions for their teams or groups. When asked to describe their vision for their teams, most leaders are stumped but may make lengthy presentations. It is somewhat ironic that people work hard to attain leadership positions but cannot explain why anyone should join their teams. When President George H. W. Bush was running for a second term in office, his staff asked him what his vision was for his second term.  He responded, “Vision, vision, what is this vision thing?”  Most observers believe that is what cost him the election.

Most leaders would communicate persuasive visions for their teams if they knew how to do it properly—the “vision gap” is a function of knowledge not motivation. Leaders need to keep five factors in mind when creating and explaining their visions for the future: 1) honor the past, 2) be realistic about the present, 3) provide hope for the future, 4) capitalize on stories and metaphors, and 5) use emotional energy during delivery.

Empower Team Members. Empowerment stands on two legs: delegation and development. Team members feel empowered when they have the freedom to make decisions that fall within their roles and responsibilities. Team members feel dispirited when they are micromanaged. Leaders can do several things to empower team members. The first step is to ensure that team members have clear roles—this will define the needed knowledge, skills, and decision-making responsibilities. Involving members in team decisions also improves empowerment, as members who contribute to the decision-making and create the action plans will have higher levels of Buy-In than those who do not participate in these activities. Involved team members are those most committed to and engaged in team success. 

Topics: leadership, teams, employee engagement, The Rocket Model, team performance, Groups, Team Facilitation, Curphy Consulting Corporation, Followership

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