The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory identifies the core goals, drivers, and interests that determine what gets people to the office each day. The MVPI consists of 10 primary scales, which are further divided into five item themes. The MVPI item themes provide additional interpretive power by categorizing participants’ responses to the questions that compose each MVPI scale.

MVPI Item Themes:

• Lifestyles – The manner in which a person would like to live
• Beliefs – “Shoulds”, ideals, and ultimate life goals
• Occupational Preferences – The work an individual would like to do, what constitutes a good job, and preferred work materials
• Aversions – Reflects attitudes and behaviors that are either disliked or distressing
• Preferred Associates – The kind of people desired as coworkers and friends

Read more about interpreting the MVPI Item Themes

Most people have experienced some form of office politics, and it’s wise to view other’s motives with a healthy amount of skepticism. But where is the line between skepticism and paranoia, and at what point does that paranoia interfere with a person’s career?

Our latest ebook, I’m too skeptical? Where’s the proof?, evaluates potential performance implications and describes how to manage the highly skeptical.

An individual’s ability to exercise leadership is hinged on his or her ability to persuade others to follow. According to the Hogan Leadership Model, followers look for four essential qualities in a leader: integrity, judgment, competence, and vision. Of these, integrity is most essential.

In a recent survey, Hogan asked more than 1,000 individuals about the qualities of their all-time best boss. Eighty-one percent of respondents said trustworthiness was their most important personality characteristic. Conversely, 50% described their worst boss as deceitful.

“People need to know that the person in charge won’t take advantage of his or her position,” said Dr. Robert Hogan, founder of Hogan Assessments. “That they won’t lie, steal, play favorites, and betray subordinates.”

In a separate study, Dr. Hogan and Hogan co-founder and former vice president Dr. Joyce Hogan gathered personality data and performance ratings from the immediate supervisor and subordinates of 55 managers at a large transportation company. Statistical analysis revealed that subordinates ratings of their managers’ overall effectiveness was directly tied to the degree to which a manager was trusted.

Unfortunately, as the as the past decade of scandal, corruption, and Congressional hearings proved, there are an alarming number of dishonest people in leadership roles. Our latest complimentary eBook, Trust and Betrayal, examines who these people are, and how companies can prevent them from damaging their workforce.

Hogan and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) partnered to launch Reflect by GMAC, the first self-directed, personality-based development tool designed to bring the power of self-awareness to B-school students.

Reflect evaluates personal and professional qualities deemed imperative in today’s workplace by 800 corporate recruiters. It provides concrete action items to help individuals learn more about themselves, improve their strengths, and address their weaknesses. The Reflect tool is the only interactive platform that goes beyond results to provide a personalized action plan, library, and benchmarking data from 14 job functions.

The assessment measures 10 key competencies:

• Innovation – generates new and unique ideas
• Operational Thinking – works efficiently and effectively
• Decision Making – selects best course of action
• Strategic Vision – combines own ideas with others
• Strategic Self-Awareness – recognizes own strengths and weaknesses
• Resilience – performs well under pressure
• Drive – holds high standards for self and others
• Interpersonal Intuition – adjusts communications to audience
• Valuing Others – builds trust-based relationships
• Collaboration – promotes team accomplishments

More on Reflect by GMAC, powered by Hogan

In their book chapter “The Mask of Integrity,” published in Citizen Espionage: Studies in Trust and Betrayal, Drs. Joyce and Robert Hogan, outlined four characteristics that typified the ideal betrayer:

Charisma – According to Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, vice president of research and innovation at Hogan, there are three ways to influence others: force, reason, or charm. Force and reason are rational – even when people are forced to do something, they obey for a good reason. Charm, on the other hand, is based on emotional manipulation and has the ability to trump rational assessments.

Self-absorption – The second characteristic of an ideal betrayer is an unusual degree of self-absorption, or, more to the point, a relentless drive for self-advancement. Betrayers possess a ruthless dedication to self-advancement to the extent that other people lose their value as humans and become objects to be manipulated.

Self-Deception – The third characteristic that typifies the ideal betrayer is self-deception. A major tenet of psychoanalysis and existentialism is that people are prone to deceive themselves about the reasons for their actions.

Hollow Core Syndrome – The final characteristic of the ideal betrayer is a pattern of personality characteristics called the hollow core syndrome. The hollow core syndrome refers to people who are overtly self-confident, who meet the public well, who are charming and socially poised, and who expect others to like them, but who are privately self-doubting and unhappy.

Unfortunately, this charm, confidence, and talent for ingratiation provides betrayers the tools they need to find employment at and quickly ascend the ranks of large, hierarchical organizations, and the private self-doubt associated with the hollow core fuels their pursuit of the money, power, and prestige offered by senior management positions. Trust and Betrayal, a new eBook from Hogan, examines what companies can do to identify and mitigate the effects of betrayers in their ranks.

As businesses continue to expand into China, and Chinese companies establish operations around the world, employers find themselves having to integrate both Chinese and Western perspectives into their organizational leadership roles. Understanding the inherent differences between Chinese and Western leadership styles is essential for successful talent management programs.

To pinpoint the differences between Chinese and Western leadership styles, Hogan consultants Jarrett Shalhoop and Michael Sanger collected personality data from 992 Chinese business leaders who met three criteria:
1. They were born and educated in Mainland China.
2. They were working in Mainland China at the time of assessment.
3. They had direct reports at the time of assessment.

They compared this sample to business leaders in the U.S. (4,184), Germany (1,779), and Australia (4,864), regions selected because of their large trade interests with China.

Shalhoop and Sanger examined three kinds of data: bright-side personality, also called normal personality, dark-side personality, and values. Together, these three dimensions accurately predict individuals’ strengths, weaknesses, and leadership style.

Read the results of the study to understand the differences between Chinese and Western leadership styles.

Providing candidates with accurate feedback about the behaviors they should keep doing, stop doing, and start doing is the first step to improving their interpersonal effectiveness. The Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory provide useful feedback about what individuals need to do to improve their performance at work. This interpretation guide uses a simple, but focused, series of steps to help affect behavioral and repetitional change for the coaching candidate. Visit our bookstore to purchase Coaching Strategies.

Dr. Hogan to speak on personality assessment, leadership, and organizational effectiveness.

They may like it, but extroverted people are less likely to put a ring on it.

Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Hogan’s vice president of research and innovation, and his colleagues surveyed more than 16,000 people to examine how personality influences relationship style. They found that extroverted people tend to be more passionate in their relationships, where conscientious people tend to favor intimacy and commitment. Agreeable individuals tend to be intimate, committed, and passionate.

They also found that two out of three relationship styles were significantly related to how long a relationship lasted. People with a committed relationship style tended to have longer-lasting relationships, where passionate relationship style was negatively related to relationship length. That is, if you tend to be more passionate, your relationship is likely to end more quickly.

Find out how else your personality is affecting your love life.

Although it is one of the most researched topics in the world, the academic study of leadership has failed to produce any applicable results.

Why? Dr. Robert Hogan explains.