Workplace bullies are skilled manipulators and politicians who harass others not out of social frustration but to fulfill their professional ambitions. Take Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, for example. His bullying and coercive tactics were so legendary that they were termed “the Johnson Treatment.” Below you can see Johnson effectively giving Senator Theodore Green of Rhode Island the Treatment.

On his somewhat irreverent Dead Presidents Tumblr, self-proclaimed presidential historian Anthony Bergen describes Johnson’s bullying tactics beyond physical intimidation: “Lyndon Johnson had an innate, often stunning ability to read the personalities of others and immediately understand exactly how to ingratiate himself with them...Johnson would tailor his strategy differently for everybody he approached, and his success rate was astonishing.” Johnson sought out those who would propel his career forward, often stating “Power is where power goes.”

While a president is a rather extreme example, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute, more than 50% of workers have witnessed workplace bullying. Read more about the characteristics and effects of a potential workplace bully in our ebook Bullying Their Way to the Top and avoid hiring employees who might dole out their own version of the Johnson Treatment.

There’s an old sales adage: the person who asks the questions controls the agenda. 

How well do you ask questions? Even though salespeople are very deliberate and strategic in their question-asking, most managers and leaders don't think about this issue. After all, you don't usually find "the ability to ask good questions" on any list of managerial competencies, but asking questions effectively is a major underlying part of a manager's job, which suggests that it might be worth giving this skill a little more focus.

Dan Black, in On Leadership , states that “Having and maintaining relationships is essential when it comes to leadership. One essential aspect to learning about, connecting with, and relating to the people in your life comes through the art of asking good questions.” This is an essential ingredient to becoming a relational leader.  

Two basic question-asking principles can be valuable tools for a leader: open-ended questions and clarifying questions.

1. Open-ended questions can lead to a better discussion and a deeper level of conversation. This is because they require more than a yes or no response. One example is: “What is your most pressing business challenge in taking on this project?” This question type keeps a conversation alive and flowing.

2. Clarifying questions show engagement and bring clarification to what the other person is saying. Some examples: “Can you be more specific?” or “Can you share an example?” An interesting consequence to asking a clarification question is that it spawns successive questions.

Socrates observed that you can tell how clever a person is by their answers, but you can tell how wise a person is by their questions. Most of us never think about how to frame our questions, but doing so not only improves a one’s inquiry skills, it can, as our sales adage reminds, help us gain something strategically. 

There once were two monks who lived an uncomplicated life of peace and devotion at the monastery. Both were exemplary individuals, but each also had one vice, that of cigarette-smoking. Smoking was a privilege rarely granted by the Monsignor, and permission had to be granted.

One day, both monks had an insatiable desire to smoke, so they each separately approached the monsignor to ask permission to smoke. One monk returned shortly with an anger he could barely control, saying the monsignor had denied him the opportunity to light up. The other monk returned to their dorm and immediately lit a cigarette.

The denied monk was furious. "How did you get to smoke and I didn't?" he queried. "I asked if I could smoke while I prayed in the chapel--I was flatly denied; what in providence did you ask?" The other monk smugly answered, "I merely asked the Monsignor if it would be all right if I continued to pray while I smoked!"

The art of asking good questions is essential in learning about, connecting with, and relating to the people in your life where relationships matter.

Gordon Ramsay, one of the most explosive personalities in the culinary industry, is widely known for his entrepreneurial genius as well as his bullying tactics and creative insults on TV shows Hell’s Kitchen and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. His verbally abusive outbursts have brought tears to many aspiring chefs’ eyes as he decimates their confidence with scathing derision. Back to your Easy-Bake Oven!

Studies show that, while Gordon Ramsay may be sensationalized by reality TV, boss bullies are quite real. According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, 35% of workers have experienced workplace bullying and that, alarmingly, the vast majority are managers, supervisors, and executives.

Many workplace bullies suffered from a turbulent childhood, not excluding Ramsay, and overcompensate later in life with a ruthless drive for power. Unfortunately, studies show that bullied employees have higher rates of turnover and lowered engagement.

Learn how to understand the bullies in your office and never hire another bully again in our complimentary ebook, Bullying Their Way to the Top.

Toxic Leadership Evening hosted by Vital Conversations and Peter Berry Consultancy

Bad bosses are all around, and if you’ve been in the workforce long, odds are you’ve worked for one. But what effect do they have on the workforce? Are they the morale-killing monsters we make them out to be? We asked 577 people. This is what they said.

What drives individuals to betray their coworkers,
and what companies can do to identify them?

Managers intuitively understand that achieving the right mix of skills, experience, and personality is key to ensuring a productive team and content workforce. Get that mix wrong – even by just one individual – and the result can be ruinous. Ryan Ross, Hogan vice president of Global Alliances, discusses personality and teams.

Q. How does personality affect team performance?
A. A team is made up of individuals, and personality can be the mortar that holds the team together or the chisel that tears it apart. The makeup of the team, the demands, and what is needed to be successful is dependent on the individuals. They have to be able to work together, and they have to be engaged with each other.

Q. What characteristics do high-performing teams share?
A. First, high-performing teams are self-aware of their collective strengths and their development needs as a team. They know where their blind spots are, and they’re willing to seek outside influence to help compensate. Second, they are focused on a mission. Individually, they have clear objectives to contribute to the team, and there’s also a desire to keep score. They want to know, “Are we winning as a team? If not, what are we going to do to fix that?” It creates a sense of accountability.

Q. What are the functional and psychological team roles?
A. Functional roles in a team are simply based on title, level in an organization, or past experience. It’s the old military example of just because they have stripes on their arms or stars on their lapel you have to call them a leader. Psychological roles are who we become in the team. Are we an antagonist or a creator? Are we focused on details and implementation or are we dedicated to team collaboration? Are we focused on results, relationships, pragmatics, process, or innovation?

Q. In terms of composition, what do teams need?
A. Teams need someone paying attention to the vision and goals, and they need someone paying attention – strategically – to how they’re going to get there. Teams need individuals who are driving the work and actually getting work done versus just talking about it. They also need someone who is paying attention to details, as well as someone to keep harmony and collaboration going in the team. If you think about societal roles, it’s basically the same thing. You need a mayor, you need a city council, and you need employees.

Q. Can too much dissimilarity in a team be problematic?
A. You bet it can. Too many dissimilar values can be problematic. You’re going to find that people gravitate towards each other in a team. Teams need to identify and understand their collective strengths and shortcomings. If you have a team that is on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to Adjustment (the HPI scale related to confidence and self-esteem) – meaning that half the team is rock-solid and nothing bothers them, and the other half of the team freaks out when the room is too warm – then those two groups are always going to be at odds. They have to recognize that shortcoming and meet somewhere in the middle. Values are a key challenge when you have dissimilarity in a team. We find that there are two or three common core values in a team and that the rest are free to vary, which is what gives you the uniqueness of individuals.

Q. How do shared group values impact team performance?
A. They help build cohesion. People who value the same things tend to be interested in performing work in similar ways. They focus on certain goals and share a common language, even though they may be new acquaintances. If I know you value winning, competing, and the way things look and feel, we could already have a relationship even if we just met. Shared values are especially important today because organizations are doing so much more virtual teamwork. Oftentimes, we don’t have an opportunity to sit down and have conversations anymore, but because we talk the same way or have the same values, those relationships are easier to make.

Q. What can shared derailers mean to a team?
A. Blind spots. Shared derailers create a culture of derailment where a certain derailer is seen as just the way we are. For example, say a retailer has a management team with very high scores on Bold (the HDS scale related to self-confidence and arrogance) and Mischievous (the HDS scale related to risk-taking and limit-testing); that would breed a culture where if you couldn’t stand up, take punches and push the envelope, then you wouldn’t fit in. It leads to the acceptance of things that cause the every day employee to suffer.

Q. How do we keep team members engaged?
A. Getting and keeping team members engaged starts with leadership. The definition of leadership is being able to build and sustain high-performing teams. The only way to do that is with individuals that are engaged. How do you get engagement? Through good leadership. How do you identify good leaders? By looking at their personality. It’s a building block – teams that are engaged will take action more quickly, and they’re more defensive when it comes to outside challenges because they want to protect each other. The functional head of the team must drive the engagement, or things get out of sync. It’s helping the leader understand how to drive and motivate a team by knowing who the players are, what they value, and how that fits with the mission they’re being asked to accomplish.

Follow Ryan Ross on Twitter @RRossHogan

Leadership is the most important single factor in determining success in business.

Developed in partnership by Denison Consulting and Hogan, the Denison Leadership Potential Report (DLPR) is a new product that provides a statistically valid prediction of leadership potential. This is accomplished by aligning an individual’s inherent leader attributes—as measured by Hogan assessment tools—to the twelve leadership competencies defined by the Denison Leadershhip Development Model.

The DLPR is generated from responses to the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory and depicts an individual’s potential to exhibit each of the twelve Denison leadership competencies based on his/her personality and values. Competencies are scored as either excellent, high, moderate or low potential and are grouped into the four traits of the Denison Model.

Read more and view a sample report

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a focus around corporate culture in many of my typical news sources – Fast Company, Fortune, Talent Management Magazine, and Harvard Business Review’s Blog. I’m sure the recent changes in Yahoo’s and Best Buy’s corporate work-from-home policies sparked the heated debates around corporate culture. Many of the discussions center around the impact these culture changes may have on the employees’ engagement, satisfaction, and overall commitment to the company. As covered in the New York Times, Yahoo explained the workplace policy change was made in an effort to boost employee morale. I’m not here to discuss whether this type of culture change was right or wrong, as I believe an argument for both is easily found in the media already.

However, it does have me thinking about how corporate culture affects employee engagement in general. A Gallup poll showed that more than 71% of Americans aren’t engaged in their jobs. We at Hogan believe this is more often a result of failed leadership or a bad boss, which Ryan Ross explains in an article by Adrienne Hedger and Dr. Robert Hogan discusses in “Why Engagement Matters.” I would argue that employee engagement is connected to organizational culture as well.

Perhaps the high rate of employee disengagement is a result of shifting views of how work environments should be structured. Companies are attempting to mitigate low employee engagement by creating a unique environment. We’re seeing examples of how top performing companies, especially those on the Fortune's “Best Places To Work” list, create a culture where employees want to be at work. Casual dress codes, free food, on-site gyms, ping-pong tables, pet-friendly policies, and many other non-traditional benefits are found in these types of cultures. Not surprisingly, Google is ranked as the #1 Best Place to Work by Forbes.

Of course, not all companies can provide what Google does in terms of free benefits. Fortunately, people want to work at places like Google for reasons besides the free food and rooms full of Legos. Fast Company’s recent article highlights how Google deliberately designs workplace satisfaction, not just around incredible perks, but also by creating a corporate culture that provides freedom, mutual respect, and transparency for all employees. According to the article, Google empowers its employees to have a say in topics ranging from how the company is run to the new design of its company-provided bicycles. This underlying philosophy of empowerment and transparency is the most attractive aspect of corporate culture, and the easiest to emulate.

As more companies begin to make the shift to a flat organizational structure, I bet employee engagement rates will also increase. Only time will tell.