Career success is full of inequalities. We don’t all start at the same place, and we don’t all end up at the same place. Some climb the corporate ladder and attain significant wealth, while others struggle to make ends meet in jobs with nearly unlivable wages. So what determines who gains career success and who does not?

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Rong Su, PhD, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship and Mahoney Fellow at the University of Iowa, about career successes and inequalities.

Rong is an organizational psychologist who studies individual differences that predict people’s job performance, satisfaction, and success. She discusses individual differences across five factors: (1) career interests, (2) gender, (3) socioeconomic status, (4) personality, and (5) intelligence.

Career Interests

Career interests are the preferences people have for different work activities, occupational fields, or environments. “Interest is a huge driver for people’s career choices,” Rong said. People tend to be attracted to jobs that overlap with their interests. Investigative, social, enterprising, and artistic are all categories of career interest.

Interests are a predictor of income and occupational prestige. Different careers have different levels of income, so interests do affect earnings. Interests drive choices within a career toward different activities, such as research or administration. They also serve as a source of intrinsic motivation that drives performance. “The fit between a person’s interest and their job predicts their level of performance,” Rong said.

For instance, engineers tend to have realistic interests, which include manipulating objects, doing hands-on activities, and solving problems with programming. Enjoyment of this work is likely to create a top performer. “Top individual contributors as an IT professional or as an engineer tend to be promoted to management,” Rong pointed out. “Transitioning from a things-oriented job to a people-oriented job that requires a lot of leading and influencing others creates a misfit and takes some adjustment.”

Gender

Gender roles affect what types of interests some people may have. “Men tend to gravitate towards things-oriented careers on average, and women tend to gravitate towards people-oriented careers on average,” Rong said. On the other hand, the enterprising interest dimension was historically male dominated but now shows no gender difference. (Data for these meta-analyses mainly came from North America within the last several decades.)

What causes these differences in interest across gender? Rong referenced Linda Gottfredson’s theory of circumscription and compromise.¹ The theory suggests that people may restrict their interests within the social, racial, and cultural norms of gender roles. Gender is likely an important factor in how people view what is and isn’t an acceptable interest.

Socioeconomic Status

Socioeconomic status (SES) has a strong influence on career success. “People from higher [socioeconomic] backgrounds do tend to have an advantage in terms of their grades, educational attainment, and career outcomes,” Rong said. SES affects career interests, which affect career choices.

Imagine a scenario in which two girls both have a things-oriented career interest. Now suppose the girls are exposed to different experiences based on socioeconomic status. One girl might visit science and technology museums and become a materials engineer. The other girl might spend time at the family auto body shop after school and become an automotive technician. Early experiences like these shape the work activities people might perform in adulthood.

“How do we cultivate interests so that we help individuals know what careers are possible?” Rong asked. Overcoming socioeconomic barriers involves early intervention. Role models and exposure to different activities help to spark and reinforce career interest across social classes.

Personality

Of course, personality also impacts career success. “Personality matters for job performance,” Rong said. One personality trait on the five-factor model that especially affects performance is conscientiousness. Having high conscientiousness—for instance, a high score on the Hogan Personality Inventory‘s Prudence scale—relates to being hardworking, reliable, organized, and compliant. The other factors also relate to performance, depending on the requirements of the job.

Personality is an important factor in emergent leadership and effective leadership. An emergent leader tends to seem charismatic, seek leadership roles, and be viewed as leaderlike. An effective leader builds and maintains a high-performing team, accomplishing work by means of team performance. Personality, along with career interest, can predict who is likely to gain a leadership role and who is likely to lead effectively.

Intelligence

Comparing intelligence, personality, and interest in predicting various career and educational outcomes, Rong found that intelligence tends to be the most influential factor. It helps predict academic performance, educational attainment, occupational prestige, and even income.

What are the implications in individual differences in intelligence for people of different socioeconomic statuses? There could be three possibilities: (1) Each of these factors could have an independent effect. Interest, gender, SES, personality, and intelligence would not really affect each other. (2) The factors could have a collective or cumulative effect. Intelligence and socioeconomic status, for example, would build on each other. (3) The factors could have an effect based on the resource substitution hypothesis. Intelligence and personality could substitute for or help people catch up from a lower socioeconomic status.

“For the most part, we have found support for the independent effect,” Rong said.² “Individual differences contribute to individuals’ future careers independently. The advantage of SES is always going to be there. Being intelligent and having desirable personality traits like consciousness also give people an advantage. But in some areas, we did find support for the resource substitution effect. For income, conscientiousness and intelligence help people catch up.”

Minimizing Inequalities in Career Success

Recognizing that these five dimensions may independently contribute to career success can foster a hopeful outlook. If personality and interest outweigh SES, for instance, then efforts such as early educational exposure to different activities may have a big impact. Introducing children to different occupational fields to show what careers are accessible to them is an intervention that truly matters. “We may never eliminate all the inequalities, but the key factor for changing or reducing the gaps is to help people view the world differently and show people what’s possible,” Rong said.

As for minimizing inequalities in career success, adverse impact is possible for certain groups when selection and admission decisions use cognitive tests. Rong suggested incorporating noncognitive evaluations—for example, using an interest assessment or personality assessment—to help reduce the likelihood of adverse impact and increase diversity.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 104 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

References

1. Gottfredson, L. S. (1981). Circumscription and Compromise: A Developmental Theory of Occupational Aspirations. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 28,545–579. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.28.6.545
2. Damian, R. I., Su, R., Shanahan, M., Trautwein, U., & Roberts, B. W. (2015). Can Personality Traits and Intelligence Compensate for Background Disadvantage? Predicting Status Attainment in Adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(3), 473–489. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000024

Leadership development is broken in seven specific ways. Hogan’s newest book, Coaching the Hogan Way: The Solution to Broken Leadership Development, explains how Hogan coaching can fix it.

Shortfalls of leadership development programs include overlooking the importance of context, ignoring the psychology of behavioral change, and using the wrong definition of leadership in the first place. Ouch! But the Hogan protocol addresses each shortfall with data-driven personality insights and a coaching approach designed for leadership development solutions.

Leadership development experts Trish Kellett, MBA, director of the Hogan Coaching Network, and Jackie Sahm, MS, vice president of integrated solutions, designed this coaching guide to help Hogan assessment users develop clients effectively and astound organizations with results. The book includes a foreword from Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president, explaining how the Hogan coaching approach differs from that of traditional leadership development.

“Many high-level executives have had other coaching experiences,” said Sahm. “They’ve been poked and prodded and assessed in many ways. But when they take Hogan’s assessments and have a capable coach, they understand this is not your run-of-the-mill executive coaching. How they understand themselves transforms. Then, if they’re willing to do a little bit of work, they can transform their relationships with other people.”

Coaching the Hogan Way covers everything coaches need to help leaders gain strategic self-awareness and implement behavioral change. Part one focuses on the seven leadership development shortfalls and provides a solution for each one. Part two covers the stages of the Hogan coaching protocol. To illustrate these, it includes a narrative executive case study with sample notes and questions for reference. “This is very much a how-to book. If you’re presented with a coaching case, you follow our protocol and—like magic—you will turbocharge your coaching initiative and be successful,” said Kellett.

Using this guide, Hogan-certified professionals can apply Hogan’s assessment-driven approach to solve what is broken in leadership development. Kellett emphasized that an initial assessment is crucial for effective development. “The development plan that’s part of our protocol focuses on specific, measurable results that enhance the leader’s individual effectiveness, their team’s performance, and more broadly, business results,” she said.

Coaching the Hogan Way demonstrates how to implement the protocol using personality assessments for successful outcomes. Grounded in executive leadership assessment data, the five phases of the coaching protocol empower leaders to implement meaningful, lasting behavioral change.

Order your copy today. Email the authors with questions or comments at pr@hoganassessments.com.

IQ and EQ have existed for as long as the human mind. IQ is short for intelligence quotient, and EQ is short for emotional quotient, more commonly called emotional intelligence. Though the concepts are well established, the specific terms have been in use only since the 1900s. Since then, many psychologists have researched how different types of intelligence develop and how to measure them.

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp discussed the definition, measurement, and impact of IQ and EQ.

Can we improve IQ or EQ? Read on to find out.

What Are IQ and EQ?

IQ is a long-studied topic built on the assumption that individual differences in intelligence are measurable. Early measurement was based on dividing a numeric test score by age, resulting in a quotient. This was intended to show how smart someone was relative to their age. “Modern IQ tests don’t have that quotient part to them,” Ryne said. “They are standardized to score on a normal distribution.” Broadly, scores between 85 and 115 are average, with 100 as the mean.

Intelligence tests differ in what they measure. Verbal knowledge, mathematical knowledge, spatial reasoning, logical reasoning, abstract problem-solving, and other metrics all contribute to a general factor of intelligence. Scores on intelligence tests are related to many different outcomes, such as longevity, social status, income, identity, and learning ability. (Not all IQ tests are equitable or scientifically validated, however. More on this later.)

Emotional intelligence is our ability to identify and manage our own and others’ emotions. Just as intelligence test scores are related to different outcomes, emotional intelligence test scores can predict many outcomes as well. EQ relates to longevity, academic achievement, career advancement, job performance, mental well-being, and leadership effectiveness.

What Factors Influence IQ and EQ?

Where does IQ come from? IQ develops during childhood and eventually stabilizes, similar to how our personalities develop. Intelligence is influenced by genetics, as well as childhood environmental factors that affect brain development. Environmental factors include our needs for physical well-being, safety, and attachment and belonging. Yet researchers haven’t identified exactly how intelligence develops or what causes individual differences in intelligence.

Where does EQ come from? As with most matters of personality, EQ has a genetic component. Second, a nurturing and structured environment during childhood also helps EQ develop. Finally, we learn emotional intelligence from feedback we receive in our social interactions. “We spend a huge amount of our lives in interpersonal situations trying to deal with interpersonal problems, understanding and evaluating other people’s emotions and motivations,” Ryne said. “All of that is putting EQ into practice.”

How Is Intelligence Measured?

Many different IQ tests were developed throughout the 20th and late 19th centuries. Among the best known are the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Raven’s Progressive Matrices, and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Unlike personality assessments, which have no right or wrong responses, problems on IQ tests usually have only one right answer out of multiple options.

Although intelligence itself can relate to job outcomes, IQ tests tend to show group differences across ethnicity, race, and gender. “Depending on the test that you use, certain groups tend to score higher than others,” Ryne explained. “What you’re faced with as an employer is the potential for adverse impact, the potential that you will be selecting one group unfairly over another group in a selection context.”

Tests to measure EQ tend to be based on either personality or behavior. On personality tests, test takers respond to statements with agreement or disagreement. For example, they might strongly agree that they try to see others’ points of view. Using scales from the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), we could describe someone with higher Adjustment and higher Interpersonal Sensitivity scores as likely to have higher emotional intelligence. In terms of the five-factor model (FFM), higher emotional stability and higher agreeableness would correspond to higher emotional intelligence.

On behavior-based EQ tests, test takers might identify emotions on a series of faces or in a video clip. They would be tested on which expression showed the most happiness or frustration. Although behavioral EQ tests can show positive prediction, this type of test might just tend to measure the degree to which people are good at taking tests, Ryne quipped. “With these behaviorally based measures of emotional intelligence, because they tend to be correlated with IQ, you often see adverse impact,” he added.

A Note on Adverse Impact

Local validation is necessary to ensure that an IQ test is predictive in its intended setting or context. Ryne explained the importance of local validity this way: “You need to do a local validation study, otherwise you run the risk of having adverse impact, which itself is not illegal. But if you have adverse impact and you can’t justify the test you’re using to make those selections, then that is illegal.”

Can You Improve IQ or EQ?

Whether it’s possible to improve IQ is a loaded question. You can certainly learn to perform better on an IQ test, but that may just mean you got a better score. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have become more intelligent.

Fortunately, people can improve EQ. “You can develop specific behavioral strategies for using your emotions, but it comes through practice, feedback, and coaching,” Ryne said. A leader who may mismanage their emotions during a meeting can get feedback, learn how to respond differently in the future, and try again.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 103 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Finding a fulfilling career is no small matter. The average adult will work for about 90,000 hours, or one-third of their life. Most of us would prefer to spend that time doing our ideal job. We say we have the greatest job satisfaction when our work feels purposeful and significant. But what is a dream job, anyway?

A dream job isn’t one-size-fits-all. Job satisfaction is as unique as the personality of every individual—and it’s rooted in values. Leaders’ values determine organizational values. Workers whose values align with those of the organization feel the greatest job satisfaction, engagement, and belonging. They are more likely to be productive organizational citizens. Meanwhile, those whose values differ will probably feel unfulfilled and may seek work elsewhere.

Before we explore the organizational implications of meaningful work, let’s look at why we can seem so driven to pursue a dream job.

Finding a Fulfilling Career

The human impulse to seek careers with the highest job satisfaction has an explanation in socioanalytic theory. According to socioanalytic theory, humans have always lived in groups and group dynamics affect our motivations and actions. Three universal motives direct human behavior: (1) getting ahead of others in the social hierarchy, (2) getting along with others in our group, and (3) finding meaning. Finding meaning relates to both our individual sense of purpose and our group’s purpose, especially our work group. Work is not exclusively how we find meaning in our lives, of course. Other ways include religion, philosophy, the arts, social causes, family legacy, and many more. But work can and does significantly contribute to our sense of fulfillment.

For groups in general, the shared values of the group members create the group’s values. For organizations, the shared values of the leadership team create the organization’s values—regardless of what may be stated on the website about the company culture. Leaders who value entertainment and having fun at work will schedule happy hours and other social events, believing their employees value pleasure as much as they do. An employee who shares this value will likely feel rewarded, while one who doesn’t may respond with indifference or aversion. The alignment or misalignment between an employee’s values and the organization’s values strongly affects employee satisfaction.

Most of us have an instinct about what we value. For example, we know if we’d view a social event with coworkers as a good reward. Personality assessment offers a science-based method for understanding how values affect personal and professional preferences, job satisfaction, and employee engagement.

How to Measure Values

We use a Hogan personality assessment called the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) to measure people’s values, interests, drivers, and even unconscious biases. Values explain what goals a person will actively strive to attain, such as belonging, quality, attention, or self-reliance. People tend to feel job satisfaction when a job meets some or most of their individual values. If a person’s work ever fulfills all of their values, they may feel they’ve found a dream job.

Someone who thinks a fulfilling career includes helping others might become an educator. Someone who gets job satisfaction from analytics and data might become an engineer. Similarly, someone motivated by both altruism and applied science might say engineering instructor is their dream job.

Ideally, a person’s values will align with those of their team, leaders, and organization. Humans prefer to share values within their groups in this way. Shared values simply make it easier to understand each other and get along. A team of cybersecurity professionals with low tolerance for risk might experience disruption or derailment if led by a manager who tests limits and embraces ambiguity. Likewise, that manager with high risk tolerance might not stay long in a cybersecurity company with a culture that emphasizes order and predictability. We humans tend to be happiest in environments that are consistent with our values.

While values matter to individuals, they are significant to organizations too. Next, we will consider how values impact organizations.

Organizational Impact of Job Satisfaction

Values impact organizations in four main ways: (1) individual motivations, (2) person-organization alignment, (3) leadership style, and (4) unconscious biases. Organizations that understand this and assess employee values can understand candidates’ likelihood of job satisfaction, motivate and engage employees, improve team cohesion, and describe their organizational culture.

Drivers

Drivers are values or preferences that motivate an employee. Drivers affect employee engagement because people want to feel that their work is important. Only 23% of global workers find their work meaningful and engaging.¹ Engaged employees drive organizational performance and innovation. For instance, someone who cares deeply about financial interests and growing wealth would likely be engaged as a fund manager at a private equity firm.

Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president of Hogan Assessments, described the impact of values this way: “Values come into play when people have to make a choice.” Values help individuals and teams decide what to say, how to behave, what goals to strive for, and how hard to work for them. Someone who seeks enjoyment will act differently from someone who seeks acknowledgement. Likewise, a team that values challenging the status quo will perform differently from a team that values cooperation.

Alignment

Values alignment refers to how similar an employee’s values are to an organization’s values. The degree to which employee values align with organizational values strongly affects talent acquisition and retention strategy. With all other things being equal, the optimal hire may be the candidate whose values most closely match the organization’s. Alignment also explains how an employee reacts to organizational culture—that is, their level of job satisfaction. When people don’t feel a strong sense of belonging in their work environment because their values are misaligned, they are more likely to turn over.

“If the culture is consistent with your values, you’ll like working there,” Dr. Hogan said. He described a serious mismatch on a marketing team for an engineering company. One individual highly valued creativity, innovation, and quality, while the other nine valued functionality and analytics. The creative employee left after four months—a significant cost for the company. “If the values don’t align, you’re done,” Dr. Hogan added.

Leadership Style

In the context of values, leadership style refers to the culture a leader creates. “Culture is about values,” said Dr. Hogan. A team’s culture is determined by a team leader’s values, just as an organization’s culture is created by its top leadership’s values. “Values determine what a manager rewards and punishes. What a manager rewards and punishes creates a culture for the organization.”

For example, a leader who values recognition will likely reward employees by praising them publicly. This leader will likely promote their team’s achievements throughout the organization. Given the right context, this leadership style can be excellent. Team members who desire public accolades would feel appreciated. But what about team members who are uncomfortable with or indifferent to public recognition? A development opportunity for the leader would be to adapt their typical leadership style to engage those employees. Without that insight, the culture the leader creates could contribute to turnover.

Unconscious Biases

“Values operate at an unconscious level,” Dr. Hogan explained. Unconscious bias occurs when we project our perceptions about what is desirable or undesirable onto others. This affects organizational culture. For instance, a leader who values competitiveness and self-reliance will assume others feel the same. They may have trouble understanding or appreciating those who prefer teamwork and building consensus.

Unconscious bias can also impact selection decisions. An interviewer who disapproves of nontraditional behavior might disqualify a candidate who is less conventional. The interviewer might even do this unconsciously. Although unconscious biases aren’t always destructive, they are always significant, especially when they come from a leader or a person in a position of power.

In Pursuit of Job Satisfaction

We all seek fulfilling careers because we want our work lives to be meaningful. People who understand their own values are more likely to find meaning in their work. But values aren’t only worth awareness and individual job satisfaction—they’re also good for making mindful, values-based decisions. For individuals, values provide development opportunities to help us relate to others and improve our leadership. For organizations, values affect the ability to identify and retain effective leaders and engaged employees who will be productive and get results. “Values are incredibly powerful,” Dr. Hogan observed. “Values are the vehicle of culture.”

Reference

1. Gallup. (2023). State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report. https://www.gallup.com

“I hope nobody finds out I’m really a fraud.” That’s an extremely common worry for high performers. Imposter syndrome haunts many of us despite (and sometimes because of) our successes. The three types of imposter syndrome all relate to anxiety. But the goal shouldn’t necessarily be to overcome it. Instead, we can benefit from it by allowing it to motivate us.

Recently on The Science of Personality, Michael Sanger, director of assessment solutions for Leadership Development Worldwide, spoke about the topic. Currently based in Atlanta, Michael has lived in New York, Amsterdam, and Shanghai. “I’ve always known how it feels to be secretly insecure,” he said, referring to his global experience.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t have to be bad, though. In this article, we’ll cover what it is, three types of imposter syndrome, the possible benefits, and how to use imposter syndrome to improve performance.

What Is Imposter Syndrome?

Many, many people who have met outward criteria for success have spoken or written about feeling like an imposter. Michael mentioned Sheryl Sandberg, former Meta executive; Maya Angelou, writer and activist; Howard Schultz, former Starbucks executive; and Sonia Sotomayor, US Supreme Court Justice, as feeling out of place, metaphorically looking over their shoulder, or worrying they will be exposed as a fraud.

“At its heart, imposter syndrome is a credibility tension,” Michael said. He pointed out that it doesn’t necessarily stem from low scores on the Hogan Personality Inventory scale Adjustment, which relates to tendency toward vigilance, self-awareness, and higher tension and stress. Instead, people who feel like imposters can have scores all along the Adjustment scale. They can show high stress tolerance, good self-regulation, and optimism. In other words, an absence of resilience doesn’t cause it.

The Psychology Behind It

Our current understanding of the psychology of imposter syndrome draws from the feminine psychology research of Karen Horney, MD, and research on the imposter phenomenon by Pauline Rose Clance, PhD. “Imposter syndrome develops when experiences in childhood are only selectively validated,” Michael explained. During childhood, humans try to gain support, develop a secure identity, and stabilize their self-esteem. When parents discriminate what aspects they value, children also become more selective in their self-regard.

Lingering feelings of inadequacy and abandonment can cause these individuals to feel concerned about how others perceive their work. These feelings may motivate them to try to meet expectations. Adults with this schema or worldview struggle to show growth tolerance, especially during increased responsibility, exposure, or success. That creates tension in their self-concept. That creates imposter syndrome.

Three Types of Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome falls into three broad categories: (1) guilt based, (2) success based, and (3) performance based.

The traditional type of imposter syndrome derives from guilt, pessimism, low emotional stability, and low Adjustment. The second type stems from anxiety about success. “Think of the early-career executive who’s managing an acquisition or the entrepreneur who finally makes some traction,” Michael said. A determined leader who achieves a new scope of responsibility might feel like an imposter because their success has outpaced their tolerance for change.

The third type relates to the requirements of performing the job itself. “If you suffer from recurring bouts of imposter syndrome, you are likely going to be a consultant,” Michael joked. A former consultant himself, he described consultancy as a performance. Consultants are not usually subject-matter experts but must nevertheless appear knowledgeable. The drive to seem competent and relevant can affect their self-image and productivity.

Across the three categories, Michael advises people neither to get rid of nor succumb to it—but to leverage it. “The trick is to harness it in some way,” he said.

Who Gets Imposter Syndrome?

Everyone can feel like a fraud from time to time. But do women get imposter syndrome more severely or more frequently than men do?

The original research into imposter syndrome focused on the self-concepts of high-achieving women.¹ This created a clinical foundation for understanding it as a phenomenon that widely affects women. “Societal expectations on women across the world are often very different from the ones that are put on men,” Michael said. “There is no denying that that the challenge for women in the high-achievement space has its own set of growth/credibility tension issues.”

Survey research suggests that women are more likely to report anxious feelings when compared to men. Imposter syndrome may not be more prevalent among women, but people may perceive it as being more common because men who feel anxiety might not report it.

Do people today experience it more often or more intensely than in the past? Likely not. “Our brains don’t biochemically distinguish between being attacked by a saber-tooth tiger and the threat of job loss. Anxiety is an equal-opportunity employer,” Michael said. The expanded scope of our work may have increased over time, yes. But despite the modern cultural effects on imposter syndrome, the feeling of anxiety is fundamentally human.

The Benefits of Imposter Syndrome

“There are more benefits than drawbacks, but the drawbacks can feel stronger,” Michael said. Sharing an insecurity can create identification and connection between others who feel the same way. People who feel like imposters use nonverbal behavior like eye contact and nodding, which can increase their interpersonal effectiveness. Showing stronger social skills can benefit team interaction and collaboration. Investing effort into preparation to compensate for a sense of inadequacy can also motivate better performance.

How to Use Imposter Syndrome to Improve Performance

First, understand the difference between identity and reputation. In terms of performance, identity relates to the actor’s viewpoint and reputation relates to the audience’s viewpoint. Our identity, or self-evaluation, rarely aligns with how we are really perceived. Feedback from scientifically valid personality assessments and 360-degree assessments can provide perspective and reputational insights.

Next, seek tactical coaching and peer connections. A Hogan coach can provide actionable feedback to help reframe someone’s mindset about imposter syndrome. “Imposter syndrome often signals your willingness to push boundaries because you’re stretching yourself outside your comfort zone, so to try to appreciate this as your natural response,” Michael said. Peer coaching sessions can normalize vulnerability and feelings of imposture, inspiring connection, confidence, and growth.

Finally, practice self-love. People with imposter syndrome struggle with feeling worthy. “So few of us got enough love in our childhoods,” Michael said. “Until we can build back that self-love with good coaching, force yourself to give your customers love. They will love you back.” Loving others can increase your sense of worth and make it easier to love yourself.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 102 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Reference

1. Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006

Knowing how to develop high-potential employees starts with identifying them. A high potential is usually considered to be someone with the personality characteristics, experience, and readiness to step into senior leadership. So, how can organizations build an effective high-potential development program?

Recently on The Science of Personality, Christopher J. Duffy, MBA, managing partner at Hogan Assessments, spoke about high-potential employees—a group that organizations spend a tremendous amount of time and resources to define, identify, and develop.

“There is no silver bullet to this equation,” Christopher said. “The most effective high-potential programs usually take considerable resources and support.”

Let’s discuss who high-potential employees are, how to identify them, and how to develop them.

Who Are High Potentials?

When organizations talk about high-potential employees, they usually mean people with the potential for leadership succession. Organizations are looking for people to step into critical upper leadership roles.

The search for successor talent starts with making an accurate evaluation of the readiness that employees show in their current positions. Organizations must effectively prepare and develop those individuals for whatever their destinations might be.

Every organization has a slightly different definition of what counts as potential, which makes identifying high potentials more complex. To some, the criteria for high potentials are related to workplace politics, reputation, or even a golf handicap. To others, the criteria come from performance metrics and other analytics.

“Multimodal high-potential programs are the most effective,” Christopher said. They tend to combine contextually specific expectations for the future role, as well as clear psychometrics and past performance data. Finding successor talent isn’t a quick or standardized process. Identifying characteristics of high-potential talent to align with organizational needs requires intention.

Personality Characteristics of High Potentials

The specific definition of a high-potential employee differs based on the organization and role. Nevertheless, our personality data have shown three broad skill groups that help high potentials become successful leaders.

• Functional – A high-potential employee has mastered the core foundational characteristics of following processes and being rewarding to work with.
• Social – A high-potential employee excels at creating and inspiring followership within their group and can self-manage the dark side of charisma.
• Effective – A high-potential employee shows the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team related to their leadership role. They engage and influence that team to achieve collective outcomes.

High potential isn’t just one metric. It’s a combination of characteristics related to job competence, socioemotional skills, and team performance.

How to Identify High Potentials

Ideally, a successful high-potential program would begin with psychometric data from the Hogan assessments. A multimodal approach brings personality data into the discussion for individual development. It adds scientific rigor to what has traditionally been a subjective process.

“If you can put the assessment as part of the identification process at the front end, it can be a fantastic way to make sure that you’re not missing something,” Christopher said. Organizations might fail to identify high potentials, especially if they seem quiet. Excellent high potentials can sometimes get passed over because they may not have a strong drive for self-promotion. Organizations might also misidentify high potentials, especially if they seem loud. People who act charismatic can sometimes lack the leadership skills to succeed in strategic roles.

Even if the pool of high potentials is already predetermined or fixed, Hogan assessment data are extremely beneficial. Psychometric data effectively identify gaps that could emerge as high potentials advance along the leadership track. Organizations should identify a targeted, personalized plan to address each high potential’s specific development needs. “The most effective component of the high-potential program is making sure we have a clear plan for what to do next with these individuals and really help them prepare for that destination role,” Christopher added.

Goals and Mistakes of High-Potential Programs

“Leaders are able to adapt through strategic self-awareness to ensure they’re effective,” Christopher said. “We need high potentials to be able to recognize and understand where they might have to flex their natural style to be most successful.”

High potentials who may have low social energy might nevertheless build reputations as connected leaders by going out of their way to be present with their teams, making specific efforts to build cross-departmental relationships, and being mindful about how they solicit and implement feedback. A high-potential program shouldn’t convert everyone into an extravert; instead, it should create awareness of how successful leaders show up in their organization.

Where high-potential programs go wrong is a lack of long-term focus and direction. Putting too much effort into identification and too little effort into development will not yield a successful outcome. “I encourage clients to think along a three- to five-year horizon for developing high-potential employees,” Christopher said. He also challenged organizations to define a clear, transparent path for a future leader’s advancement to reduce turnover at higher levels of seniority.

How to Develop High-Potential Employees

A good high-potential program is a process, not an event. “At Hogan, we’re in the business of assessing individuals and providing them with insights around who they are, how they lead, and how they can develop. The worst thing you can do is put those insights on the shelf and forget about them,” Christopher said. Personality insights are extremely relevant throughout a person’s entire career—but especially when they are making transitions.

A high-potential program ought to be a long-term development program that continually reinforces the insights that were created through the high-potential identification process. Developing high-potential employees also tends to be successful when peers are encouraged to collaborate. Peer development can help high potentials stop viewing each other as competitors and invest in each other’s progress.

Insights for Coaching High Potentials

Having a certified Hogan coach is essential to help high potentials realize they will likely need to evolve or change. “High potentials think more of the same will produce results,” Christopher said, calling that belief a common mistake. Being conscientious, detail oriented, and hardworking brought high potentials success and recognition to a certain point in their careers. Those skills may not serve them well as successor talent, though. Leaders need to think strategically, learn to delegate, and understand their new scope and scale.

“Strategic self-awareness is absolutely critical for individuals to make that bridge to doing things in a different manner,” Christopher said. High potentials need coaching to help them deconstruct what has worked for them in the past and think differently about how to evolve or change their approach in the future. Leaders who are effective know when to resist their natural tendencies and apply different behavioral strategies to benefit their teams.

Organizations must provide ongoing development for a high-potential program to be effective. “The advice I leave with our audience is there is no one-size-fits-all for high potentials. I fully believe in being mindful of the programs that you create,” Christopher said.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 101 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Values affect our personal and professional lives in ways we aren’t often aware. They influence our work performance and organizational effectiveness. The importance of values can’t be overstated—values explain quite a lot about the nature of human nature.

Recently on The Science of Personality, Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president of Hogan Assessments, spoke about the importance of values. “Values have shaped human history,” he said.

In this article, we cover what values are, how organizations establish values, and the relationship between values and organizational effectiveness. Let’s explore the impact of values.

What Are Values?

Values refer to the interests, motives, and drivers that shape what a person strives to attain in life. A group’s values are determined by the shared individual values of group members. “The values of the group determine all sorts of outcomes, particularly at the level of group functioning,” Dr. Hogan said.

Dr. Hogan has been studying values since the 1980s. “To have a proper understanding of people and their organizations requires saying something about values,” he said.

Values are very important for group success. Some values, in fact, are more valuable than others at fostering organizational success. Greed and selfishness tend to ruin organizations, while cooperation and innovation can improve them. A group’s values are therefore more significant to group outcomes than any one individual’s personality.

Values Are Unconscious

Dr. Hogan asserts that values are largely unconscious. In personality psychology, the unconscious is a concept that means that we sometimes behave in ways we don’t understand.

There are three ways of looking at the unconscious: (1) The personal unconscious is a Freudian concept that refers to repressed thoughts and desires. An example would be forgotten early childhood trauma. (2) The collective unconscious is a Jungian concept that refers to the history and survival of the species. An example would be fear of the dark. (3) The sociological unconscious refers to the values, precepts, opinions, and assumptions that we gain from our childhood environment. “You internalize them as a little kid at your parents’ dinner table, and you believe this is just how life is supposed to be lived,” Dr. Hogan said. An example would be overeating out of thriftiness or aversion to waste.

Personality and Values

Personality characteristics are always active and influential. For instance, extraverts seek opportunities for interaction, and introverts seek opportunities for solitude. Values, on the other hand, come into play when we make decisions. “The decisions you make are a reflection of your values. Your values generate your fate,” Dr. Hogan said.

When we are presented with a choice, we follow our values. They represent our guiding philosophy in life. If offered identical roles in two different work environments, we’ll very likely choose the organization with values that align with ours.

How Organizations Establish Values

Organizational culture equates to the values that prevail in an organization. Those values come from the shared values of the senior leadership team. Leaders impose their values on the rest of the group through reward and punishment. As a simple illustration, a leader who values punctuality will reward people who arrive at work on time and punish people who are late. “The behaviors that they reward get implemented, and the behaviors that they punish go away,” Dr. Hogan explained.

Since values are unconscious, leaders aren’t always aware of how their values affect organizational culture. Who gets hired, promoted, or fired is often a consequence of leader values. Leader values might also differ from the stated values of the organization. Misaligned values between organizations and leaders, organizations and teams, or organizations and individuals can all cause workplace conflict.

The brand reputation of an organization typically reflects the values of the founder. Dr. Hogan used the Hogan Assessments brand as an example. “It’s [high] Science and Aesthetics,” he said, referring to two scales on the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI). “There’s a strong emphasis on data, but there’s also striving for quality.” He added that the MVPI scales of Altruistic, Power, and Hedonism also influence the Hogan brand identity.

The Importance of Values to Organizational Effectiveness

Leaders drive the values of an organization. Certain values tend to create more effective organizations than others.

Knowing what values an organization does endorse isn’t as effective as knowing what values it should endorse. This marks the difference between descriptive and prescriptive values. “The real question to ask is, ‘What are the values that characterize successful, high-functioning organizations?’” Dr. Hogan said.

Values that support organizational effectiveness include equal opportunity, downward delegation, minimal hierarchy, innovation and change, and data-based decision-making.

Two more important values for organizational effectiveness are implementing accountability and defining success. Holding people accountability for results is essential for accomplishing goals. It’s also necessary for the goals to be clearly outlined so everyone knows the criteria for winning. Leaders who drive success don’t always make passionate vision statements. Instead, they pay close attention to processes and measuring milestones for achievement.

“The best single predictor of people getting along is the degree to which they share values,” Dr. Hogan said. It’s the same with predicting how people and organizations get along too.

Listen to this conversation about the importance of values in full on episode 100 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Effective leaders exhibit four metacompetencies of leadership. These are (1) being emotionally intelligent, (2) being achievement focused, (3) being strategic, and (4) being inspiring. In this article, we explore the research behind these metacompetencies and how they influence leadership effectiveness.

The four metacompetencies were developed using a combination of Hogan personality assessment data and 360 assessment data. Peter Berry, managing director of Peter Berry Consultancy (PBC), an authorized distributor of Hogan’s assessments in Australia and New Zealand, presented the competencies research on The Science of Personality. Peter has previously spoken about 360 leadership assessments on the podcast.

Measuring and Improving Leadership

Leadership may well be the most important resource for any enterprise. Think about leadership this way: What is the impact of a good leader building performance, engagement, retention, and business results? Conversely, what is the impact of a bad leader destroying those things?

“The light-bulb moment was realizing that leadership can be improved,” Peter said. “It starts with self-awareness, then it goes to self-management, and eventually to self-mastery.”

To thoroughly evaluate and improve leadership, Hogan personality data and Hogan 360 data are combined. Personality has to do with reputation, and 360 relates to behavior. “Joining the two tools enriches the whole leadership and coaching program,” Peter said. “One without the other is only half the jigsaw.”

The Four Metacompetencies of Leadership

The PBC database houses more than 30,000 data points from 360s across the globe. Of those 360s, 1,300 are from CEOs. PBC analyzed the characteristics of leaders who scored at the 75th percentile and above—the best of the world’s senior leadership. What distinguished that group from other leaders? Emotional intelligence, achievement focus, strategic skills, and motivational skills.

“We also found that there was another competency, which was like the price of admission, the foundation or building block,” Peter said. “It’s conscientiousness.”

Leaders need a certain degree of conscientiousness, dependability, and reliability at all organizational levels. Even a CEO must report to the board accurately.

Correlated data from 360s and personality assessments consistently led to the same four metacompetencies for effective leadership.

Emotional Intelligence, or EQ

Emotional intelligence (EQ) helps to define career success. “Our research using the 360 data showed that high EQ leaders are calm and even-tempered. They are self-aware around their improvement opportunities. They manage their emotions maturely. They have excellent people skills. They know how to make people feel valued. They are friendly, warm, and thoughtful,” Peter said.

In terms of the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), emotional intelligence relates to the scales of Adjustment, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Prudence. Adjustment describes resilience and how a person responds to stress. It’s intrapersonal. Interpersonal Sensitivity relates to building relationships and social skill. And Prudence connects to integrity—building trust through reliability and consistency.

Altogether, these three scales contribute to both the emotional and social competencies necessary for high EQ. “High EQ people drive employee experience, engagement, and high-performing teams,” Peter said.

Achievement Focus

Delivering results and accomplishing goals are another key metacompetency for effective leaders. Being achievement focused means having a clear business plan with measurable goals that are clearly and frequently communicated to the team.

“We’re all here to produce outcomes that benefit customers or communities or society,” Peter said. He described the achievement-focused leader’s cadence of strategic planning and operational tasks. Vision sharing and team building should occur approximately quarterly. The rest of the leader’s time should be devoted to tactical excellence in team performance. “Having a clear line of sight with that relentless focus on results and outcomes is just crucial for a high-performing team,” Peter said.

Strategic Skills

As leaders rise through managerial levels, their time tends to become less operational and more strategic. They work less in the business and more on the business. “Managerial competencies are your baseline, but you’ve learned to add some really sophisticated leadership skills on top,” Peter said.

Being strategic means thinking about long-term opportunities, being visionary, setting stretch goals, and driving innovation. A strategic leader is constantly looking for improvement opportunities while remaining able to pivot. Peter described strategic leaders as able to bring their view of the next three to five years into the one-year business plan. They recognize what it will take to become a competitive industry leader. They combine big-picture thinking with a deep understanding of the organization’s purpose and values.

Motivational Skills

The ability to motivate and inspire the workforce is the hallmark of an effective leader. “They’re consciously focused on morale and employee engagement, being positive role models, building strong collaborative relationships, and demonstrating strong leadership skills,” Peter said.

Being inspiring has many positive outcomes. One is that the employee experience is high, typically measuring in the top quartile compared to competitors. Another is that employee retention remains high. Finally, engagement is also high, meaning that productivity is high.

The ability to inspire is related to the HPI scale Ambition, as well as to HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity. Data from 360s show that high Interpersonal Sensitivity is essential in making others feel valued, motivated, and engaged and in building a positive work environment. “That combination [of scales] is just awesome in driving the culture of winning,” Peter observed.

360s and Leadership Development

The most prevalent global coaching trends focus on executive presence, emotional intelligence, strategy and vision, and influencing skills. Those are the same capabilities that leaders need to advance through the four metacompetencies of effective leadership.

Leadership development helps to build team effectiveness to deliver strategic outcomes and a culture of employee engagement. Individual development comes from having a targeted development plan rooted in the motivation to improve. The Hogan assessments and the Hogan 360 together can reveal nuanced insights about leadership strengths and challenges.

“The best leaders are the best learners,” Peter said. “We encourage people to have a curious mindset. Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 99 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Humans just don’t excel at surviving in the wild alone. We have no claws, horns, fangs, shells, or spikes. What we do have is each other—and a far higher chance of survival when we practice cooperation in groups. Our instincts for cooperation at work and elsewhere stems from our group-living ancestors who passed down their cooperative genes. To be a successful group member, we need to get along with our fellow group members, at least to some degree. This viewpoint from evolutionary theory helps explain the importance of getting along at work.

Nearly all meaningful work is accomplished in teams, which are three or more people who share a common goal.¹ Cooperation is a choice to contribute individual effort toward mutual benefit. It involves committing time, skills, and expertise toward group goals. An example would be a software development team that builds an app for a demographic sector they don’t belong to, such as healthcare providers. The app doesn’t intrinsically benefit the developers. Instead, their earnings depend on the product they create via team cooperation.

This article will cover why we cooperate, as well as the benefits of cooperation at work, including status, acceptance, engagement, and performance.

Why We Cooperate

The reasons why we cooperate with each other—our drive to get along—are addressed in socioanalytic theory. Socioanalytic theory claims that three universal motives lie at the root of human behavior: (1) getting along, (2) getting ahead, and (3) finding meaning. Getting along, or cooperation, relates to our desire to gain attention, approval, and acceptance.³ Social acceptance is so central to human affairs that people will live or die in pursuit of it.

Humans cooperate because we are inherently social beings. We live in groups; therefore, we are motivated to get along with others. Other people provide the in-group belonging that we all seek in the form of social approval. Being able to cooperate successfully means being aware of our performance in the context of other people’s performance. The work we do and the way we do it affect the work of others on our team and whether the team achieves its goals.

Getting along well requires a certain degree of socioemotional skills, including self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

Self-Awareness and Reputation

We have two ways to view personality—from the inside and the outside. The inside view is called identity, which is someone’s perception of themselves. The outside view is called reputation, which is made of everyone else’s perception of that person. Reputation is formed during social exchange, when we evaluate each other’s behavior.²

How we seem to others affects how likely we are to get along in a group, and being aware of how others perceive us can help us manage our behavior to improve our ability to get along. Personality assessment can help us build this awareness. At Hogan, we use personality assessment to measure the degree to which a person seems considerate, perceptive, and socially sensitive. Interpersonal Sensitivity, the scale that assesses these characteristics, is one of seven scales on the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), which provides insights about everyday personality strengths.

All levels of Interpersonal Sensitivity have benefits and drawbacks depending on social context:

• Low Interpersonal Sensitivity – A communication style that tends to appear direct, candid, and straightforward, yet might also be perceived as abrasive and argumentative
• Average Interpersonal Sensitivity – A communication style that typically seems cooperative and friendly with a tactful approach to conflict, yet might also appear impatient with others’ shortcomings
• High Interpersonal Sensitivity – A communication style that seems diplomatic, friendly, and warm, yet might also be perceived as conflict avoidant and overly sensitive

Personality data can help us excel at cooperation at work. We work together best when we recognize when and how to use our own behavioral tendencies to achieve outcomes for the group.

Emotional Intelligence

Nearly every job in the world requires workers to interact with other people, whether they work in a coffeehouse, courthouse, or even lighthouse. Being considerate of others is a keystone of successful cooperation.⁴ People who are positive, predictable, and sensitive toward others tend to perform very well at the job of getting along.⁴

Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president at Hogan Assessments, rightly observed, “Career success depends on the ability to successfully interact with others, build and maintain relationships, and manage one’s social environment.” In other words, successful workplace cooperation depends on emotional intelligence, which consists of socioemotional skills related to identifying and managing one’s own and others’ emotions. Emotional intelligence matters because emotion influences how we act and are perceived at work.

Getting along helps your group to get ahead—and, by definition, you get ahead too. Cooperation also provides additional organizational benefits, aside from merely achieving shared goals.

Benefits of Cooperation at Work

Among the many benefits of cooperation at work are individual status, acceptance by others, employee engagement, and team performance. We’ll look at how getting along relates to each benefit using our software development team example.

Status

All groups have social hierarchies. In a team’s hierarchy, a person’s status is determined not only by job title but also by reputation. The director of technology may be nominally in charge of the software development team, but the project manager might actually be more effective at facilitating team cooperation, thus making them a more effective leader. Effective leaders persuade others to set aside their individual goals for the good of the team and are evaluated according to the team’s performance.² That is the Hogan definition of a leader—one who builds and maintains a high-performing team. A leader must leverage their reputation to achieve goals by means of a team’s work.

Successful leadership, then, depends on the ability to get along—to convince others to share goals and succeed or fail as a team. These critical socioemotional skills, including negotiation, affect whether someone attains a leadership role or leads effectively. To someone seeking power, status, and the control of resources (the universal motive we call “getting ahead”), cooperation also serves the pursuit of leadership. According to Dr. Hogan, “You can’t get ahead unless you can get along.”

Acceptance

Fulfilling our core human motivation for acceptance by others is one of the benefits of cooperation at work. Social acceptance leads to feelings of belonging and trust. Social exclusion causes pain and distress.⁵ (Yes, it actually hurts.) When the senior software architects are getting along at work, each is more satisfied with their work life.

A sense of belonging at work built on mutual acceptance among group members is an important metric in the financial outcomes of organizations. Employees who feel accepted at work tend to perform better, stay employed longer, take fewer sick days, and recommend their company to others.⁶ A company of 10,000 employees with a strong sense of belonging could save $52,000,000 per year through productivity and talent retention.⁶

Engagement

Cooperation also builds employee engagement, which is an attitude of enjoyment and interest toward work. Decades of engagement research prove that employee engagement raises quality and profitability, while reducing accidents, theft, and absenteeism.⁷ Suppose a junior developer is struggling to get along with the other members of the software development team. That person could be counted among the 77% of global workers who aren’t engaged.⁷ They would be much less likely to do their best work.

Performance

Groups that cooperate to achieve their goals succeed; groups that don’t can fracture and fail. In prehistoric warfare, the very survival of the group members depended on getting along. The software development team’s lives probably aren’t dependent on their ability to cooperate, but their livelihoods probably are. If they utterly fail to produce expected business outcomes, their organization’s survival could also be at risk. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that team productivity affects group survival.

As you may recall, effective leaders create teams of individuals who are committed to shared goals. Team performance, then, is incumbent on good leadership. And good leadership, in turn, relies on the ability to get along with others.

Personality Predicts Performance

The benefits of cooperation at work are many for individuals, teams, and organizations. Cooperation originates in human genetic history and continues to have a wide influence on global business outcomes. Organizations truly cannot survive without it. Lacking teeth and claws, we instead have social status, teamwork, and leadership to help us succeed.

So, how can we gain more understanding about how we tend to cooperate at work? The nature of human nature shows our innate impulse for cooperation in groups. “At a very deep level, people need social acceptance and respect,” Dr. Hogan said. “It is biologically mandated that you try to recruit people to support you.” Within our teams, our personalities indicate what behaviors we are likely to use to get along at work. Being calm, charming, compliant, curious, and more all contribute to our reputations and thus our prospects for getting along in any given group. That’s why we say at Hogan that personality predicts performance. Who we are determines how we cooperate.  

References

1. Hogan, R. (2006). Personality and the Fate of Organizations. Routledge.
2. Hogan, R., & Sherman, R. A. (2020). Personality Theory and the Nature of Human Nature. Personality and Individual Differences, 152, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.10956
3. Hogan, R., & Blickle, G. (2018). Socioanalytic Theory: Basic Concepts, Supporting Evidence and Practical Implications. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Personality and Individual Differences.Sage Reference, 110–129. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526451163.n5
4. Hogan, J., & Holland, B. (2003). Using Theory to Evaluate Personality and Job-Performance Relations: A Socioanalytic Perspective. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 100–112. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.100f
5. Williams K. D. (2007). Ostracism. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 425–52. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085641
6. Carr, E. W., Reece, A., Kellerman, G. R., & Robichaux, A. (2019, December 16). The Value of Belonging at Work. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/12/the-value-of-belonging-at-work
7. Gallup Workplace. (2024). What Is Employee Engagement and How Do You Improve It? Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx

A personality test isn’t quite like other job-related tests. There’s no such thing as passing or failing, for one. And it’s not even truly a test—it’s an assessment, which is more like a measurement. Because of that, we have a few important tips for how to take a personality test.

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp discussed Ryne’s recent blog post about taking getting assessment advice from ChatGPT.

The short version is . . . don’t.

But in that case, what is good advice for taking a personality assessment? This article covers what a personality assessment measures, how to take a personality assessment, and how not to.

What Does a Personality Test Actually Do?

A personality test is a test only in the same sense as testing someone’s height. Everyone has a distance from the ground that we can measure. It’s the same with personality.

The Hogan personality assessments measure characteristics that describe a person’s reputation. Reputation is based on observable behavior and social skills, which are what make it measurable. Our assessments are designed to predict workplace performance. Someone who tends to behave in an organized and process-oriented way will likely bring that focus and method to their work tasks. Our assessments also provide data-based personality insights. Someone with a direct, straightforward communication style will likely be seen by others as candid and perhaps even blunt. This characteristic might be helpful or unhelpful in different contexts.

Results on a personality test aren’t scored for correctness or accuracy because there are no right or wrong answers. Instead, results on the Hogan assessments are normed against a representative global sample of working adults and are given in percentiles. Getting a 17th percentile result means that 17 out of 100 global working adults are likely to score lower and 83 out of 100 are likely to score higher. Having high or low results is neither good nor bad. Personality assessment scores are simply data points that describe personality characteristics.

How to Take a Personality Test

The Hogan personality assessments don’t have questions on them. They have statements, called items. For example, “I enjoy performing in front of an audience” or “Being loyal to my boss is important to me.” Test takers can respond to items in four ways: (1) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) disagree, and (4) strongly disagree.

Remember that your results don’t depend upon one single answer. Personality data are aggregated across a whole series of items to produce a raw score. The raw score is then compared to a norm to produce a percentile score. Even if you respond only with extreme answers, you won’t necessarily get an extreme percentile score. “One of the beauties of a personality assessment is that you can just take it,” Ryne said. “You don’t have to overthink it.”

1. Be honest and authentic.

Ryne encouraged test takers not to feel self-conscious about how they respond or worry about being inconsistent. People are naturally consistent in our responses. In general, the best way to respond to an assessment is to think about how we generally behave across many situations, relative to other people we know, he explained. Doing so will result in results that feel most accurate and genuine.

2. Respond as though you were at an interview.

In an interview, we show the best and brightest side of ourselves. We should respond to assessment items with a similar mindset of making a first impression, so to speak. On a personality test, it’s OK to describe yourself as you’d like to be seen by others because Hogan assessments measure reputation.

3. Give the assessment your attention.

Focusing on the assessment should be your priority to give consistent responses. Make sure to remove any distractions. Close your email, silence your phone, and find a comfortable and quiet space. Without spending too much time on any single item, pay attention and respond consistently to the assessment.

How Not to Take a Personality Test

Social conditioning, the stress of a job search or a potential promotion, and other factors may lead some people to believe that it’s possible to ace a personality test. Web searches for “how to pass a personality test” are incredibly common. But as we’ve noted already, passing or failing isn’t possible, and there are no right or wrong answers. For the best potential outcomes, here’s what you shouldn’t do when completing an assessment.

1. Don’t deliberately distort your responses.

“Intentionally going out of your way to say that you’re someone that you aren’t seems to backfire much more than you might expect,” Ryne cautioned. Trying to make yourself sound extremely ambitious or extremely unambitious could harm your prospects, especially if the resulting data are inaccurate. It’s fine to respond that you strongly agree or strongly disagree with an item—if it’s true. Strongly disagreeing doesn’t mean you will seem like a disagreeable person. The assessments are looking at your pattern of responses across a whole series of items. In other words, don’t try to “beat” the test.

2. Don’t use advice from AI tools or let AI tools answer for you.

It isn’t a good idea to ask an artificial intelligence for advice on a personality assessment. Not only are AI tools prone to error, but you aren’t being honest and genuine if you accept any external input on your responses. If your assessment results don’t match you, that data won’t help you and might even hurt you.

It’s probably wisest to avoid taking personal advice from artificial intelligence tools in general. “If you really want advice, you should talk to an expert,” Ryne said.

3. Don’t overthink.

Taking a personality assessment when applying for a new job or participating in a talent development initiative can feel stressful. Do your best to avoid the anxiety of trying to decipher the right answer. Remember that there isn’t one, and trust your instinct.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 98 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!