Occupational well-being is an essential part of overall well-being. Effective leadership coaching will personalize developmental feedback to the leader’s needs based on the context of their role, function, and organization and on their personality. Individual differences in personality reveal how people experience well-being at work and how they manage stress. Leadership development should investigate how everyday personality characteristics, stress responses, and values can affect a leader’s well-being—and ultimately the well-being of the leader’s team and other stakeholders.

Well-being and development have always been close concepts, but organizations don’t seem to be drawing clear lines between development and well-being. Although 83% of US workers experience work-related stress,¹ only 24% of employees strongly agree that their organization cares about their well-being.² Unlike the goal of life coaching, however, leadership development’s goal is to equip leaders to build and maintain high-performing teams of people who effectively balance work and well-being.

When a leader’s occupational well-being is in balance, they can create work environments that better support their employees’ occupational well-being too. Leader behavior and relationships directly influence employee job satisfaction. Interpersonal relationships represent 39% of job satisfaction, and relationships with management represent 86% of satisfaction in work relationships.³ Employees experience more job satisfaction when their leaders prioritize, model, and actively support occupational well-being. After all, lack of support or recognition from leadership is the top driver of burnout.⁴

Read on to learn which Hogan scales have distinct bearing on well-being and how Hogan practitioners can incorporate well-being as a theme in leadership development conversations.

How Hogan Helps

Hogan’s personality assessments are objective tools that can help improve leader and employee well-being. While our assessments can give insight into the extent to which a person is concerned with well-being, they don’t measure well-being itself.

Hogan practitioners can use our assessments in development conversations to combat stress and burnout and improve well-being. They should first explain the purpose of development and what the assessments measure, then focus on these areas in the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI). The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) measures overused strengths that can become derailers. Practitioners should review high HDS scores for greater insight into potential performance challenges.

HPI

The HPI measures characteristics that describe how people tend to behave when they are at their best. Everyday personality strengths influence both managerial style and workplace reputation.

• The Adjustment scale concerns how someone typically handles stress and coaching. Those with lower scores tend to be more stress-prone and coachable, while those with higher scores tend to be more stress-tolerant and resistant to feedback.
• The Ambition scale refers to a person’s drive, energy, confidence, and initiative. A higher score might suggest behavior that focuses on work to the exclusion of well-being, while a lower score could imply the opposite.
• The Interpersonal Sensitivity scale relates to communication style, such as whether someone is candid and argumentative or sensitive and diplomatic. A person with lower scores could seem insensitive toward the well-being or emotions of their employees or coworkers, while someone with higher scores could seem oversensitive.

MVPI

The MVPI measures personality from the inside, describing the values that drive our occupational goals. Put another way, values show what people most care about when it comes to work.

• The Hedonism scale measures preference for formal or informal work environments. It can suggest how likely someone is to integrate work into their personal life.
• The Altruistic scale measures preference for personal responsibility and self-reliance or helping and serving others. It can suggest how motivated someone is to improve others’ lives.

Emphasizing a leader’s interconnected strengths and preferences that already pertain to well-being can provide a natural segue into occupational well-being as a developmental theme.

Advice for Leadership Development Conversations

Understanding how personality affects learning will help a Hogan practitioner to approach these three areas of the leadership development process⁵:

1.    Enhance the learner’s receptivity to feedback and coaching.

Early in a development conversation, practitioners should draw a personalized connection between development and occupational well-being. If the leader has a high Altruistic score, the practitioner might connect that value to development by pointing out that a focus on well-being can increase employee retention. If the leader has a low Interpersonal Sensitivity score, the practitioner might explain that developing a variety of communication styles might make employees feel more connected and improve relationships.

2. Match feedback and coaching approaches to the learner’s style.

Effective leaders build and maintain high-performing teams. Leaders who learn about their own and their teams’ strengths and values also gain insight into improving the occupational well-being of both by reducing stress and increasing productivity.

Development, therefore, should help leaders become more self-aware and more perceptive of what their employees might need for well-being. Practitioners who build a development plan based on the leader’s learning style help provide optimal conditions for gaining strategic self-awareness.ⁱ

3.     Promote engagement and action in executing the development plan.

The development plan should, if executed well, enhance how a leader’s personality strengths positively influence behavior and reputation. According to Trish Kellett, MBA, director of the Hogan Coaching Network, “Developing the behavioral repertoire of leaders equips them to understand and approach people in even more impactful and effective ways.” While this achievement will likely improve well-being broadly, it may also be appropriate to develop specific action items related to occupational well-being goals. Goals that appear in a development plan should be tied to specific business outcomes. There’s a difference between intentional deep breathing before client video calls and leaving work an hour early twice a week for a guided meditation class. Both are ways to manage stress, but only the former is suitable for a development plan.

Development coaching offers the opportunity for leaders to learn strategies to combat stress and burnout and to improve their well-being and that of their employees. Incorporating well-being into leadership development conversations should become another approach in the Hogan practitioner’s repertoire.

Note

1. For an extended discussion of learner styles, see pages 127–130 in Coaching the Dark Side of Personality.⁵

References

1. The American Institute of Stress. (2022). Workplace Stress. https://www.stress.org/workplace-stress
2. Harter, J. (2022, March 18). Percent Who Feel Employer Cares About Their Wellbeing Plummets. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/390776/percent-feel-employer-cares-wellbeing-plummets.aspx
3. Allas, T., & Schaninger, B. (2020, September 22). The Boss Factor: Making the World a Better Place Through Workplace Relationships. McKinsey Quarterly. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-boss-factor-making-the-world-a-better-place-through-workplace-relationships
4. Fisher, J. (2022). Workplace Burnout Survey. Deloitte. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/burnout-survey.html
5. Warrenfeltz, R., & Kellett, T. (2016). Coaching the Dark Side of Personality. Hogan Press.

People often see a new year as a time for goal setting. But what role does personality play in determining which life goals we decide to pursue?

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, chief science officer, and Blake Loepp, PR manager, spoke with Olivia Atherton, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Houston, about personality and goal setting.

“Everything we do on a daily basis is goal driven,” Olivia said. “We all have life-orienting goals that motivate what we want to do and where we want to go.”

Let’s dive into this illuminating conversation about the degree to which personality influences the types of goals we set, reasons we might change our goals, and why we tend to place less importance on achieving goals over time.

Personality and Life Goals

Olivia and her colleagues surveyed more than 500 college students and followed up 20 years later to understand how personality affects motivation and achievement. Their project, the Berkeley Longitudinal Study (BLS), examined seven types of life goals in relation to personality and individual differences using the Big Five and other constructs.

As a quick reference for the following discussion, the Big Five personality traits are (1) extraversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) openness, (4) conscientiousness, and (5) emotional stability, which is sometimes called neuroticism. These five traits correspond roughly to the seven scales of the Hogan Personality Inventory. The seven types of life goals are (1) aesthetic goals, (2) economic goals, (3) family and relationship goals, (4) hedonistic goals, (5) political goals, (6) religious goals, and (7) social goals. These life goals have many parallels to the 10 scales of Hogan’s Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory.

The BLS found that personality does have an impact on the goals we pursue. Olivia’s research showed that the personality tendencies that people had at age 18 were related to how their goals changed over time. For instance, people who were more agreeable showed decreases in family and relationship goals in adulthood. This is because they invested in goal-relevant activities (forming relationships, marrying, having children). Therefore, they placed less importance on those goals as they achieved them.

A second finding from Olivia’s research was that some of the life goals that people found important at age 18 were related to how their personalities changed from ages 18 to 40. Those people who were more agreeable at age 18 and placed less importance on family and relationship goals at age 40 actually became more conscientious. This is likely because their new familial roles (i.e., spouses and parents) required a certain level of conscientiousness. In other words, achieving their goals contributed to changing that personality characteristic.

Personality and Goal Importance

While the BLS study didn’t focus on whether the same personality characteristics that predict goal importance are the same characteristics that predict goal achievement, it’s an intuitive assumption. “If your personality tendencies lead you to place importance on certain types of goals, the same characteristics may also be helpful for you in putting effort towards that goal and achieving it,” Olivia hypothesized.

“People with certain personality tendencies tend to place more importance on certain types of life goals,” she continued. “This means that these personality characteristics might be suited for different life goals.”

The links between personality and goal importance are intriguing—and even surprising:

• Extraversion – Extraversion was linked with hedonistic goals, or life goals revolving around pleasure and fun.
• Agreeableness – People who were more agreeable tended to place higher importance on social goals, or life goals focused on helping others.
• Openness – Openness was related to the most types of life goals, likely because people with high openness tend to be interested in many things. Aesthetic goals, hedonistic goals, religious goals, and social goals were all linked to openness.
• Conscientiousness – Being responsible, organized, and hardworking was most related to economic goals and family and relationship goals, or the domains of work and love.
• Neuroticism – Neuroticism was associated with aesthetic goals, likely because the arts can serve as a creative outlet for those who tend to be more anxious or depressed.

Having goals helps us find purpose and meaning using the limited time, resources, and effort that we can expend. Connecting our goals to what matters most to us is a useful way of reaching toward what we want to achieve in life.

Advice for Goal Setters

Olivia shared three pieces of advice that put goal setting into the context of personality and development.

1.     Understand the links between personality and life goals.

Because we pursue life goals over the course of a lifetime, there are many big, small, and individual ways to work toward achievement. We can leverage our personality strengths and values to identify the goals we want to devote our effort to accomplishing. We should also be mindful that the goals we pursue can cause development in our personality, as in the example of increased conscientiousness for those who pursued relationship and family goals.

2.     It’s OK to change your life goals.

Shifting life goals is a natural part of growing. In our late teens and early twenties, we tend to have the most life goals because we are still trying to determine what matters to us. As we age, we refine our values and revisit which goals we want to pursue. Goals can also become less important or relevant over time as we achieve them. Don’t be afraid to adapt the goals you emphasize as you develop along your life path.

3.     Revisit your goals at any time of the year.

While the beginning of a year is a good time to reflect and make plans, so is the beginning of a month, week, or day. There’s nothing magical about a new year for setting and pursuing goals. Be willing to start over and try again whenever you want.

“If you focus on pursuing the things that are interesting to you and working towards those goals, whatever it might be, I’m confident that people will end up in the places they want,” Olivia said.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 67 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Organizations need to consider inclusion and belonging in their employee well-being initiatives. Diversity and equity are important, but inclusion and belonging give diversity and equity meaning. Belonging, especially, is a vital yet intangible outcome of excellent inclusion practices. A well-being initiative that incorporates inclusion and belonging prioritizes the unique perspectives that a diverse workforce offers.

The inclusion arm of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) strategies is often hard to measure. Diversity is a numerical fact about employees’ uniqueness. Equity is a body of strategic policy and procedure to benefit and protect employees. Inclusion necessitates leader and employee action to influence organizational culture. Even more abstract than inclusion, belonging is how individuals feel about the culture.

Let’s explore the difference between inclusion and belonging and how to emphasize inclusion and belonging in well-being initiatives.

The Difference Between Inclusion and Belonging

The difference between inclusion and belonging is straightforward. Inclusion is a behavior, and belonging is a feeling or outcome of that behavior.

So, inclusion might be catering a team lunch from a vegetarian restaurant. Belonging would be employees’ sense of appreciation about that decision. It’s easy to see why inclusion and belonging usually make it onto fewer spreadsheets and presentations than diversity and equity do.

In designing a healthy workplace, organizations need to consider inclusion and belonging. They influence both employee well-being and organizational performance. The presence of inclusion contributes to well-being and retention, whereas its absence contributes to stress and departures.^1,2

Inclusion and belonging relate to the three “master motives” that drive human behavior. These include (1) getting along with others, (2) getting ahead of others, and (3) finding meaning. We humans have always lived in groups. In seeking to get along within our group, we pursue social acceptance and cooperation. When we vie for status within our group, we attempt to get ahead of others, sometimes excluding other group members. By trying to find meaning with respect to our group, we often identify our work as a significant component of our purpose in life. Altogether, these motives speak to why group acceptance matters so much to us.

More specifically, inclusion has to do with getting along with others, and belonging has to do with finding meaning. This socioanalytic view of personality explains why inclusion and belonging are so integral to well-being. They are deeply rooted in the origins of society itself.

Well-Being and Inclusion

When people perceive rejection by their group, they are not likely to perform at their peak. In an article for Forbes, Simi Rayat describes this state as a “neural seesaw,” tilting from high engagement and performance to high fear and anxiety.³

The absence of inclusion harms our well-being, but its presence improves our well-being. Experiencing workplace exclusion, such as being ignored, interrupted, or prevented from accessing the same resources as others, negatively influence mental health. On the other hand, acts of inclusion, such as respect and courtesy, seeking connection with others, and promoting the visibility of others, positively influence job satisfaction.³

An employee well-being initiative without inclusion as a significant component fails to account for the importance of getting along for team and organizational performance.

Well-Being and Belonging

Belonging at work speaks to our need for finding meaning in our lives. Like inclusion, belonging has positive effects on well-being. Social belongingness is related to identity, trust, participation, solidarity, and values within groups, teams, networks, and institutions.

As an emotion, belonging grows in the presence of inclusive actions. Feelings of social belonging contribute to well-being when fostered by “low stress, high role autonomy, social support, and quality leadership.”⁴ Data show that people tend to feel belonging when they are trusted and respected, when they feel safe to express their opinions, and when their contributions are valued.⁵ Conversely, feeling ignored, stressed, or lonely at work makes people feel as though they do not belong.

Nearly all these conditions that contribute to belonging fall within the influence of leaders. But how exactly can leaders establish inclusive practices to promote belonging in employees?

The Connection Between Inclusion, Belonging, and Well-Being

Well-being, inclusion, and belonging are inseparable. Organizations should integrate DEIB initiatives and well-being initiatives, particularly to ensure that employees have the same access to consistent well-being resources that meet their different needs.⁶ Passively providing resources alone does not address the need for inclusive actions and a sense of belonging. Achieving these relies on values, leaders, and employees.

Values

An inclusive culture starts at the top. Leaders’ values are likely to drive their decisions regarding organizational policies, programs, benefits, and culture. Likewise, values are likely to drive leaders’ behavior, which can influence employee well-being directly and indirectly.

Organizational culture stems from leader values. A team led by someone who values recognition will have a different culture than a team with a leader who values aesthetics. One leader is likely to emphasize visibility and the other quality. What constitutes inclusive behavior might differ somewhat based on the cultural context of these two teams.

Leaders

Organizations need to select and develop leaders who excel at promoting inclusive behavior. Key leader competencies that foster inclusion and belonging include listening to others, inspiring others, building relationships, caring about people, developing people, integrity, accountability, and other socioemotional skills.

Hogan Assessments provide a reliable, valid way to select and develop such leaders. Someone with a lower score on the Hogan Personality Inventory’s Sociability scale would tend to listen before speaking, resist distraction, and communicate in a more formal, structured way. Someone with a higher Sociability score would tend to be socially proactive, be team oriented, and build relationships with a wide range of people. Each of these personalities can support a diversity climate and promote the well-being of individual team members. Both personalities can do so even more effectively with awareness, strategy, and intention.

Employees

What makes employees feel that they belong differs by the employee. Broad practices of inclusion are excellent, of course (“we don’t interrupt each other” or “we use each other’s preferred method of address”). Specific inclusive actions will also help specific individuals feel belonging (“Amira is observing Ramadan, so let’s meet at the office, not a restaurant”). A relationship of trust is necessary between leaders and followers and among team members to facilitate inclusion and belonging on the individual level.

Organizations that understand the nuance of personalities in their company will be best positioned to build inclusion and belonging into a well-being initiative. Employees with high scores on the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory’s Affiliation scale, for example, strongly value opportunities for collaboration and social contact. They might be more aware of or sensitive to exclusion at work. Similarly, employees with high MVPI Hedonism scores strongly value variety, excitement, and enjoyment in the workplace. They might become indifferent or discouraged without social relationships. On the other hand, leaders who invite meaningful connection help to ensure that people know their well-being matters at work.

Where to start? Personality assessment provides information about everyday personality characteristics, potential derailers, and the values, preferences, and biases of leaders and employees. This empowering knowledge is the first step in strategic intention to promote inclusivity and foster belonging as a cornerstone of any organizational well-being initiative.

References

1. Prilleltensky, I. (2012). Wellness as Fairness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 49, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-011-9448-8
2. American Psychological Association. (2021). The American Workforce Faces Compounding Pressure: APA’s 2021 Work and Well-Being Survey Results. https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/work-well-being/compounding-pressure-2021
3. Ryat, S. (2022, July 18). The Powerful Connection Between Inclusion and Well-Being. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/07/18/the-powerful-connection-between-inclusion-and-well-being
4. Oyanedel, J. C., & Paez, D. (2021, August 30). Editorial: Social Belongingness and Well-Being: International Perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735507/full
5. Twaronite, K. (2019, 11 May). Five Findings on the Importance of Belonging. EY.https://www.ey.com/en_us/diversity-inclusiveness/ey-belonging-barometer-workplace-study
6. Maese, E., & Lloyd, C. (2022, February 21). It’s Time to Synchronize Your DEI and Wellbeing Strategies. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/389957/time-synchronize-dei-wellbeing-strategies.aspx

The news about the spectacular collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its 30-year-old multibillionaire founder Samuel Bankman-Fried raises some interesting questions. Who is Sam Bankman-Fried? What is Sam Bankman-Fried’s personality? Why did he behave this way? Let’s look at the personalities of entrepreneurs to explore some possible answers.

Who Is Sam Bankman-Fried? 

To understand the psychology of Bankman-Fried, it is useful to note that he belongs to a particular group of American businesspeople. Among them are Michael Milken, Jeffrey Skilling, and Bernard “Bernie” Madoff. Milken, an American financier, whose net worth is about $6 billion USD, was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud and spent time in prison. Skilling is a former McKinsey consultant and was the CEO of the failed energy trading company Enron. He was indicted for conspiracy, insider trading, and securities fraud and spent time in prison. Madoff, a financier and former chair of Nasdaq, once had a net worth of $64.8 billion. Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felony charges and died in prison.

These men were all charming and socially skilled, intense, hardworking, and (for a time) very wealthy. They were also highly intelligent. For instance, in Skilling’s successful application to Harvard Business School, he wrote, “I am f—ing smart.” All of them were willing to ignore established rules and regulations while taking big financial risks, making them fearless in ways that few people are. Smart, charming, and fearless may sound like the description of a psychopath—except, unlike the typical psychopath (e.g., Al Capone), these men were well educated and had clear career focuses and professional identities.

These men can also be described as “entrepreneurs” who went too far in testing the limits—in professions where testing the limits is expected behavior.

The Personality of Entrepreneurs

Hogan has personality data on a sample of more than 500 entrepreneurs. Our data show that entrepreneurs (including Bankman-Fried) as a group are distinctive, with both expected and unexpected characteristics.

On our measure of everyday personality, entrepreneurs look like smart delinquents: bright, impulsive, edgy, colorful, and indifferent to authority. On our measure of dark-side personality characteristics, entrepreneurs look creative, which involves challenging norms. They also seem socially skilled (but not transparent) and somewhat duplicitous (delinquent). Most importantly, on our measure of values, entrepreneurs seem detail oriented, smart, analytic, risk seeking, norm defying, fun loving, and driven to win. It is surprising but important to note that they are not particularly motivated by money. They are much more powerfully motivated by fame, fun, and success, with wealth being a secondary consideration. 

Within a population of adventurous, norm-defying risk-takers, Bankman-Fried is unique only insofar as he is at the high end of the distribution of the characteristics that define entrepreneurs.

What Drives Entrepreneur Behavior?

Entrepreneurs are as necessary as they are troublesome. Entrepreneurs—as defined by our assessments—are essential for economic progress.

Creative Destruction

Capitalist (or free market) economies grow faster than regulated, managed economies and are how countries lift citizens out of poverty. The key feature of capitalist economies, as the great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter noted, is creative destruction. Economic progress depends on challenging norms, defying conventional wisdom, and disrupting standard practices. And creative destruction depends on a certain kind of leadership.

The Fall of Respectability

In his recent Wall Street Journal article, Adam Kirsch notes that modern entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Sam Bankman-Fried have not only been disruptive, but have also abandoned respectability—and investors expect them to do so.

Being willing to ignore accepted standards of dress and behavior is the sign that the person is a disruptor. As Kirsch notes, “Silicon Valley has always looked for unicorns and disruptors, who by definition don’t respect the way that others do things.” Kirsch shares an anecdote about Jobs as an example: “One of the things that appealed to [Don Valentine, the founder of the investment firm Sequoia] about Jobs was that ‘he did a number of weird things . . . on purpose just to shock people.’”   

Kirsch contrasts the appearance and behavior of major players in the modern tech world (and Donald Trump) with the decorous appearance and conduct of old-school business giants such as Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie founded the Carnegie Steel Corporation in 1892 and became one of the richest men in US history upon its sale in 1901. In comparison, Sam Bankman-Fried famously negotiated a $200 million deal with Sequoia Capital in gym shorts with unkempt hair. The deal occurred during a Zoom meeting while Bankman-Fried was simultaneously playing the video game League of Legends.

The disheveled and ill-mannered Bankman-Fried seems to have come from a different culture compared to the well-groomed and well-mannered Carnegie. But what is going on beneath the surface?

A Socioanalytic Perspective on Entrepreneur Behavior

Our perspective on human behavior, socioanalytic theory, can help to explain. Socioanalytic theory fuses Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, George Herbert Mead’s role theory, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Socioanalytic theory holds that humans have always lived in groups with three universal motives. These are acceptance, status, and meaning.

Through this lens, all social behavior is a game during which the players negotiate for status and acceptance. After every interaction, participants’ reputations are slightly altered, either positively or negatively. Also note that, as Freud observed, all public behavior is a text to be interpreted. Finally, note that, as the ethologists point out, the essence of animal communication is deception.

With these observations in mind, we can conclude two things about the appearance and behavior of Carnegie and Bankman-Fried. First, both are putting on a carefully constructed performance—nothing about their behavior is spontaneous or natural. Second, both played to the same audience—namely, their investors—and not to the general public. Moreover, if their performances were discordant with the expectations of their intended audience, their enterprises would begin to fail. But most importantly, despite the superficial differences in apparent respectability, Carnegie and Bankman-Fried are much the same in underlying psychology: smart, analytical, competitive, audacious, and indifferent to the damage they might cause for others. 

This blog post was authored by Hogan Founder and President Robert Hogan, PhD, and Chief Science Officer Ryne A. Sherman, PhD.

Everyone, including leaders, reacts to stress differently, but the way that leaders respond to stress affects their team members. When leaders react to stress with insecurity, mistrust, hostility, or social withdrawal, their attitudes and behaviors can cause significant damage to team psychological safety.

Team psychological safety is the shared perception of whether it is safe or risky for team members to show their authentic selves to each other. The presence of fear—whether a leader’s fears or fear of the leader—destroys trust and creates a sense that interpersonal risk-taking is dangerous.

Many people see leaders as those who give orders and assess others; however, leaders who successfully build and maintain high-performing teams focus on setting direction, supporting others, and cultivating psychological safety.¹ The leader role calls for the strategic self-awareness to understand and control one’s dysfunctional behavior, or derailers, that may arise during stress, overwork, fatigue, or other situations in which self-management tends to be compromised.

Read on to learn about how we measure derailers, the effects of five specific derailers on psychological safety, and ways leaders can improve team psychological safety.

The Dark Side of Leadership

The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) measures personality strengths that, when overused, can become problematic. Everyone’s personality has dark-side characteristics—potential behaviors stemming from personality strengths that could derail performance. A leader who cares about quality, for example, might overuse that characteristic, becoming obsessive about project details or stalling in fear of making an incorrect decision. A leader who cares about self-sufficiency might overuse that characteristic, appearing tough, aloof, or indifferent to team members. While a commitment to excellence and an appreciation for independence are positive qualities, without moderation they can become risk factors that destroy teams or derail careers.

The HDS consists of 11 scales that are categorized into three clusters that broadly describe stress responses: moving away from others (withdrawal), moving against others (antagonism), or moving toward others (conformity). Most people have one or more elevated scores, and elevations often occur within the same cluster.

The Moving Away cluster is defined by the Excitable, Skeptical, Cautious, Reserved, and Leisurely scales.² Derailing behaviors stemming from high scores on these scales can be uniquely damaging to psychological safety. Because derailment in this cluster often involves increasing the distance between people as a method for dealing with insecurity, it can be especially instrumental in creating room for people to fear the worst. Characterized by lack of communication or communication that critiques, Moving Away derailers can damage psychological safety by fostering intimidation and by stifling trust and openness.

Excitable

“You force me to express in no uncertain terms how much I have become disappointed with you.”

The Excitable scale describes behaviors that range from calmness and steadiness to volatility and explosiveness. Because they can be prone to intense emotion and struggle to manage pressure, people with a high Excitable score might express their fears or frustrations by seeming moody, tending to overreact, or exhibiting annoyance, tension, or stress.

Skeptical

“I am being mistreated and taken advantage of, and so I am fully justified in responding in kind.”

The Skeptical scale describes behaviors that range from showing trust in others to expecting disappointment or mistreatment. Someone with a high Skeptical score tends to suspect that others harbor ulterior motives. They may appear brooding or defensive and act retaliatory about perceived slights.

Cautious

“I have no option but to point out all the potential problems that could occur, because otherwise you will make changes that could have disastrous consequences.”

The Cautious scale describes behaviors that range from openness to reluctance about trying new methods, technology, or experiences. Highly motivated by fear of embarrassment and failure, people with a high Cautious score may exhibit hesitance in decision-making, analysis paralysis, or obsession with details. They tend to resist risk.

Reserved

“You say that I am not listening to you. You must realize that if you could say anything that is of interest to me, I would listen.”

The Reserved scale describes behaviors that range from socially approachable to socially distant. Someone with a high Reserved score may adopt a tough or harsh communication style and may employ a closed-door policy. Their critical, independent air can damage the transparency and open communication that psychological safety depends on.

Leisurely

“The only reason I have ignored you is because you always interrupt me at a time when you should be doing your own work.”

The Leisurely scale describes behaviors that range from being cooperative, coachable, and supportive to being stubborn or privately resentful. Those with high Leisurely scores may appear friendly but feel hostile, creating doubt about whether they express their thoughts or feelings honestly. Their irritability and passive resistance can make them seem unreliable.

The Moving Away cluster describes the behaviors of a person who may be prone to emotional displays, alert for signs of betrayal, afraid of criticism, distant and uncommunicative, or resentful of authority.² Moving Away derailers can become problematic when people with elevated scores come under stress or stop self-managing. A leader with any of these qualities out of control would likely struggle to nurture the goodwill, camaraderie, and mutual trust that is necessary for psychological safety.

Understanding Fears and Improving Psychological Safety

It is incumbent upon leaders to address their fears or the way their behavior may create fear in others. Leaders can improve the psychological safety of their teams with their own transparency and a willingness to change.

Understanding Fears

Underlying mental models called schemas, which reflect the basic beliefs we develop about ourselves in early life, tend to frame how we interpret social information.³ For instance, someone who experienced an early betrayal might fear disloyalty and even mistakenly perceive it in others. The strength of one’s schemas, situational factors like stress, and organizational culture all influence the likelihood that derailers will emerge for any individual or leader.

Strategic self-awareness is necessary in overcoming fears. A Harvard Business Review article describes underlying fears as “an active force that drive unproductive behaviors.”⁴ Understanding the extent to which those behavioral characteristics are strengths and the point at which they begin to cause derailment is vital.

Improving Psychological Safety

In addition to overcoming their individual fears, leaders are responsible for establishing psychological safety and mitigating fear within their teams. It’s an ongoing commitment, and these steps will help.

1. Assess – Personality assessment grants a unique and empowering self-knowledge. When leaders don’t understand their specific derailers, they will struggle to know their reputations, or how others perceive them. Leaders who are aware of their reputations can learn to implement behavioral change to enhance their strengths.
   
   
2. Acknowledge – Everyone has derailing behaviors, and everyone can improve their performance. Leaders who practice transparency create a foundation for psychological safety. Those who own their behaviors and model openness can repair or reinforce trust: “I’m sorry that I acted annoyed with you this morning. I was afraid of losing control of the project, and I let my temper get away from me.”
   
   Personal growth is a cycle of action, acknowledgement, and reflection. Hogan Founder Robert Hogan, PhD, wrote about the importance of reflection in leadership development: “Reflecting on the outcomes of our actions allows us to understand both their consequences and the reasons for behaving that way in the first place. Our analogy is to athletics, where critical feedback on past performance is a constant feature of life, and where mental rehearsal is used to sharpen and enhance future performance.”⁵
   
   
3. Adapt – Long-term behavioral modification comes from a leader’s commitment to change. This often involves executive coaching, ongoing feedback from team members, and performance evaluations of interpersonal strategies. Behavioral interventions are more likely to be effective when leaders have addressed the fears that trigger their derailers.⁴ Adaptation can become habitual when leaders successfully learn to interrupt their own patterns of derailment for the good of the team.

It’s important to remember that a leader isn’t one who has all the answers or never makes mistakes. A leader is someone who accomplishes goals by facilitating team performance. As Amy C. Edmondson, author of The Fearless Organization, writes, “The leader’s job is to create and nurture the culture we all need to do our best work. And so anytime you play a role in doing that, you are exercising leadership.”¹

References

1. Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons Inc.
2. Hogan, R., Hogan, J., & Warrenfeltz, R. (2007). The Hogan Guide: Interpretation and Use of Hogan Inventories. Hogan Press.
3. Nelson, E., & Hogan, R. (2009). Coaching on the Dark Side. International Coaching Psychology Review, 4(1), 9–21.
4. Zucker, R., & Gotian, R. (2022, August 18). Facing the Fears That Hold You Back at Work. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/08/facing-the-fears-that-hold-you-back-at-work
5. Hogan, R., & Warrenfeltz, R. (2003). Educating the Modern Manager. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2(1), 74–84. https://doi.org

Hogan is excited to announce the appointment of Advanced People Strategies (APS) as an authorized Hogan distributor in Ireland.

APS has successfully represented Hogan for 18 years in the United Kingdom. In recent years, APS has experienced significant growth, providing supportive tools and services to maximize practical people development opportunities, including custom 360 solutions, individual coaching, team development, and the innovative SkillsPilot platform focused on quick and effective skills assessment and feedback.

“Our friends at APS have been a tremendous member of our international distributors network for nearly two decades, providing first-class services to clients across a wide range of industries,” said now-former Hogan CEO Scott Gregory, PhD. “With so much potential in the Irish market, we anticipate further growth and success for them moving forward.”

Despite the impact of the global pandemic and recent economic uncertainties, APS has trained and certified more than 1,000 practitioners in the last three years. Similar results are expected with the expansion into Ireland.

“The APS team has years of experience helping organizations implement successful people development strategies,” said APS CEO Chris Humphreys. “We are looking forward to supporting our expanding network of clients in Ireland with access and experience to make the most of the added value Hogan can bring for business leaders and HR practitioners.”

APS will celebrate the appointment with an in-person event, “Make or Break Your Organisation’s Future? Talented Leaders, Teams, and an Enabling Culture,” featuring Robert Hogan as keynote speaker. The event will be held at the Teeling Whiskey Distillery, Dublin 8, Ireland on Thursday, March 2, 2023. The conference will focus on critical people insights for business leaders, HR directors, and talent specialists in Ireland. Register today!

About Advanced People Strategies

APS has a dedicated team of leadership & talent development specialists, and is an authorized Hogan Assessments distributor for the UK and Ireland, providing certification, coaching, masterclasses, and team and leadership development programs. Drawing on Hogan’s world-class psychometric assessments and partnering with highly respected academic leaders, its highly qualified and experienced consultants help organizations build effective leadership skills, accelerating readiness and capability.

Business leadership can be just as challenging as elite athletics. In both, strategic performance relies on mindset and personality characteristics.

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, chief science officer, and Blake Loepp, PR manager, spoke with Barry Roche, founder and CEO at RSG Consulting, about the role that personality plays in strategic performance.

Barry’s service in the British Royal Marine Commandos taught him the value of adaptability, physical and mental resilience, and a sense of humor. It also gave him his interest in psychology. With more than two decades of experience building organizations across industries, Barry has seen how important human performance is to business success. “The big problems in businesses always come with people attached,” he said.

Let’s dive into some components of strategic success, performance, and the dark side of personality, and the dos and don’ts of strategic performance.

A Mindset of Strategic Success

Experiencing stressful environments, undergoing physical challenges, or enduring hardships improves confidence. Elite performers, whether in athletics, business, or other fields, have a clear mindset about challenge and failure. Having handled past adversity, elite performers are confident in the face of present adversity.

As challenging as elite individual performance is to attain, corporate strategic performance can be even harder. “Strategy is just a plan to deliver a long-term outcome,” Barry said. “It needs to be really specific so you can align people behind it to achieve it.”

Clarity, effective communication, and execution are all essential components of strategic success. Depending on whether an organization is a startup, small- or medium-sized enterprise (SME), or a large enterprise, strategic success will vary according to size and need. Broadly, large companies can struggle with communication and building teams, SMEs can struggle with growth and succession planning, and startups can struggle with liftoff.

The mindset of learning from failure, however, remains central regardless of size. “Failure is not failure. It’s an opportunity to learn. Mistakes are only mistakes if you make them twice,” Barry said. He suggests analyzing failures to search for ways to improve and successes to learn what has been effective. Referencing his training in martial arts, he added, “It’s that white-belt mentality of thinking you’ve got something to learn no matter what level you’re at.” The elite performer, the person who attains strategic performance, is driven by a hunger for improvement. This type of high performer is constantly refining the strategy. Comparing an amateur’s eight-minute abs program to an Olympian’s detailed two-year training plan shows the necessary difference in mindset.

Performance and the Dark Side of Personality

Barry uses Hogan personality assessments in his business practice, calling them the bedrock of his recruitment and team programs. Hogan’s tools are reliable, valid, and simple to understand while being nuanced. To become high-performing leaders, individuals must understand their bright side (strengths), dark side (potentially overused strengths), and inside characteristics (values).

“The dark side is where the rubber hits the road for me,” Barry said, adding that adversity brings out a person’s true character. When he designs strategies, he focuses on how to recover from hardships and challenges. Self-awareness can help a person respond well during tough times. With it, elite performers can modify their behavior to benefit themselves and their teams.

Often our strengths can get us into trouble by derailing our behavior, sometimes to the point of career failure. The dark side, which is assessed by the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), measures strengths that might go into overdrive during times of stress or adversity. On an individual level, identifying these potential derailers is the first step to strategic self-awareness. On a team level, considering everyone’s scores can predict what they will find challenging and prepare them for enduring difficulties. Team reporting can also reveal team members who have useful skills outside their initial job scope or who have combinations of personality characteristics that might facilitate solving specific problems.

The strategic success of a high-performing team relies on the shared understanding of one another’s personality characteristics. Barry said that a high degree of respect was a necessary part of the culture of an elite team: “Emotional safety and inclusiveness are a participant in every high-performing team that I’ve looked at. Creating that is not easy because the trust has to be built.”

The Dos and Don’ts of Strategic Performance

To paraphrase Charles Darwin, the species that survives is not the most intelligent but the most adaptable. Strategic performance relies on knowing what to do, what not to do, and when to act.

What Not to Do

Don’t ignore your people. Most businesses invest a lot of time into financial strategy, but they don’t direct equal care and attention toward developing the people who will execute that strategy. Failing to factor in the human component of strategy is a harmful omission. “That goes back to creating high-performance individuals who can then participate in a high-performance team that will then deliver the strategy,” Barry said.

Don’t rely on luck instead of a sound business model. Throwing talent and money at a problem and hoping for the best leads straight to downsizing and bankruptcy. “The new survival is purpose and meaning,” he said. In a reliable business model, clarification means refining what your people understand about the plan. Prioritization means creating time for them to work on what matters. Execution means setting milestones so they can track their progress.

What to Do

Focus on teams. “Leaders now need to focus on developing high-performing teams. No leader is inherently good enough to do it by himself, and no team is inherently good enough to do it without creating that high-performance culture and being led appropriately,” Barry said. The strategy is simple but hard: define, prioritize, execute, and refine.

Know your purpose—and prepare for it. Barry compared elite-performing organizations to martial artists who train constantly and rigorously with a clarity of focus. “The people who invest in a clear understanding of the people they’ve got who execute plans will be the ones that enjoy strategic success in the future,” he said.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 65 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

Employee well-being matters. Most of us have had jobs that made us stressed or miserable. We know what it’s like to feel as though a boss or workplace is costing us our physical or mental health. In the words of Robert Hogan, PhD, “Bad leaders perpetrate terrible misery on those subject to their domain.”¹ Who should be responsible for employee well-being, though?

The short answer is that both the employer and the employee have a stake in employee well-being. The pandemic and its economic effects have caused a permanent change in how we work—and how we feel about work. In their endeavors to bring people back into the office, 83% of employers say that employee well-being is a significant part of their return-to-work strategy.² Yet burnout has risen by 17% while workplace happiness has decreased by 6% over the last two years.³

Employees remain stressed out and burned out despite employers’ focus on well-being. In a recent survey from the American Psychological Association, 79% of 1,501 respondents reported experiencing work-related stress in the previous month.”⁴ There seems to be a huge disconnect between employers wanting to improve employee well-being and employees reporting workplace stress. Is that the fault of leaders? How much accountability should organizations really have for the well-being of their workers?

Read on to explore the extent to which organizations should be responsible for employee well-being and ways that organizations can take effective action to improve workers’ wellness.

Whose Responsibility Is Well-Being, Anyway?

Employers and employees have a shared responsibility to communicate with each other about work and well-being. In that sense, both parties must be fully committed to the employer-employee relationship. Like any relationship, it should be reciprocal and rely on clear communication for success.

Because well-being is unique to each person, employees need to tell their employers about their needs. Likewise, employers need to indicate their expectations for work and respond to employee communications appropriately. Faltering communication can create circumstances for burnout.

In addition to a mutual responsibility to communicate, employees and employers also have different obligations to one another.

Employee Responsibility

Individuals have full responsibility for their personal well-being. Only each person can manage their own physical, emotional, and mental health. Employers should not be accountable for employee well-being in that way.⁵

Individuals are also responsible for reasonably safeguarding their well-being at work.⁶ Employees’ actions can affect the safety of the work environment.If eye protection is a safety requirement, but some employees won’t wear goggles, they have chosen not to uphold safety standards. If others’ behavior causes a workplace hazard, employees should report risks to their safety. Compliance and communication fall firmly within the purview of employee responsibility.

Employer Responsibility

Employers are responsible for providing well-being support, mitigating stressors, and creating an environment conducive to workplace happiness. Their approach to employee well-being should be guided by an intention to treat people the way people prefer to be treated—an empathy-driven variation of the Golden Rule. Treating employees like individuals by honoring their needs and their wants is an employee well-being philosophy that strengthens the employer-employee trust relationship.

Employers should also provide physical health support, mental health support, and a culture established by leaders that facilitates well-being and reduces the likelihood of burnout. Any well-being programs and policies will likely need to be tailored to the organization’s location, size, and industry.

Physical health – Employers are accountable for providing physical safety. In the US, those standards are governed by the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It is a legal requirement for workplaces to be free of major hazards and compliant with other such standards. Expressions of physical health support might include safety training, flexible work schedules and paid time off, health stipends, wellness programs, and robust health benefits.

Mental health – Just as employers are legally obligated to provide physical health support, they ought to provide mental health support as well. Mental health support might include access to mental health resources, opportunities for learning and development, education in mitigating bias and harassment, generous leave policies, and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. In fact, DEI and well-being are inextricably linked; organizations should integrate both initiatives to improve their joint efficacy.⁷

Culture of well-being – Leaders are responsible for establishing the culture of their teams, departments, and organizations. Because their values influence the values of the group, a culture that values individual well-being starts with leaders. To address burnout and promote a culture in which employee well-being is a priority, leaders need to commit to systemic change rather than wellness programs alone. According to the McKinsey Health Institute, “Taking a systemic approach means addressing both toxic workplace behavior and redesigning work to be inclusive, sustainable, and supportive of individual learning and growth, including leader and employee adaptability skills.”⁸

Meaningful organizational change begins with leader action. Keep reading to learn what steps leaders can take to promote employee well-being.

Organizational Action Steps for Employee Well-Being

Employee well-being is a shared responsibility. To better fulfill their part, employers should administer personality assessments to leaders and employees, develop leaders who value well-being, and understand employee motivation, values, and preferences.

Conduct assessments – Achieving employee well-being goals can be nearly impossible without collecting data that describe the current context. A personality assessment provides data-driven insights about how well people may tolerate stress and change, how they may respond to burnout, and what motivates them to work. After assessment shows leader and employee characteristics, potential derailers, and values, organizations may establish or adapt well-being initiatives specific to their talent.

Develop leaders – Using assessment results, organizations can develop leaders who value and excel at supporting employee well-being. Personality characteristics can indicate strengths, such as building team psychological safety, setting vision, and using active listening. They can also indicate overused strengths that may derail leaders and the kinds of behaviors that stress might trigger. When people understand their assessment results, they can make deliberate choices to leverage their strengths, moderate their overused strengths, and even learn new or different behaviors. This strategic self-awareness empowers leaders to effect reputational changes that positively influence employees’ workplace wellness.

Understand motivation – Assessment results also provide talent insights into people’s motivations for work. Motivation relates to well-being when our work satisfaction meets our deep-seated human need to find meaning. At Hogan, we use the 10 scales of the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) to measure the core values, drivers, and interests that reveal motivation factors and preferred work environments. Of course, what constitutes meaningful work will differ from person to person. Some prefer public recognition while others prefer private acknowledgement (the Recognition scale); some prefer a high level of decision-making responsibility while others prefer to execute processes and tasks (the Power scale). Knowing the specific drivers for each person enables leaders to position employees in roles that the employees feel are most rewarding and to provide them with environments where they are likely to be most productive.

When employers understand the impact that leaders have on employee well-being, they can take actions to build a safer environment, encourage purpose and fulfillment, and protect against burnout by creating a culture of well-being.

References

1. Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2005). What We Know About Leadership. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 169-180. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.169
2. Miller, S. (2022, April 7). Employers Focus on Well-Being and Work/Life Balance as Employees Return. SHRM. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/employers-focus-on-well-being-and-work-life-balance-as-employees-return.aspx
3. LinkedIn People Science Team. (2022, March). Employee Well-Being Report. LinkedIn. https://business.linkedin.com/glint/resources/employee-well-being-report-march-2022#0
4. Abramson, A. (2022, January 1). Burnout and Stress Are Everywhere. Monitor on Psychology 53(1), 72. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-burnout-stress
5. Amador de San José, C. (2021, November 17). Who Is Accountable for Worker’s Wellness: The Employer or the Employee? Allwork. https://allwork.space/2021/11/who-is-accountable-for-workers-wellness-the-employer-or-the-employee/
6. Gill, M. (2021, May 10). Employee Wellbeing Is a Shared Responsibility. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2021/05/10/employee-wellbeing-is-a-shared-responsibility/
7. Maese, E., & Lloyd, C. (2022, February 21). It’s Time to Synchronize Your DEI and Wellbeing Strategies. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/389957/time-synchronize-dei-wellbeing-strategies.aspx
8. McKinsey Health Institute. (2022, May 27). Addressing Employee Burnout: Are You Solving the Right Problem? McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/addressing-employee-burnout-are-you-solving-the-right-problem

Measuring personality is complex. How can personality assessment retain what is valuable in traditional methods while leveraging the technology of the future, such as AI and machine learning?

Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, chief science officer, and Blake Loepp, PR manager, spoke with Georgi Yankov, PhD, senior research scientist at Development Dimensions International, about the future of personality assessment.

They discussed comparing traditional assessments to new methods, as well as some of the philosophical challenges that new assessment methods may face in the coming months and years.

Let’s dive into the exciting complexity of the personality assessments of the future.

Traditional Assessments Versus New Assessments

The difference between traditional assessments and the newer ones concerns variables and data.

In traditional assessments, the developer designs, pilots, improves, models, and norms an assessment according to a standard process. Hypotheses about the relationships between items and scales are confirmed or disproved. The process can be long, but the tools produced by this method have a history of excellent reliability and validity.

In new assessments, the developer works with large quantities of data and advanced machine learning algorithms. To model the data, the developer must concede some supervision and expertise. With traditional machine learning algorithms, decision trees can provide some insight about which variables are most important for the task at hand (for example, making predictions). With deep learning algorithms, the processes between the input and the output aren’t observable. This is what’s known as the black box problem in data science—we can see the input and the output, but how did we come to these results? Although these powerful tools can integrate with the context the user provides and report instantaneously, they also necessitate new methods that come with their own challenges.

Another way to express the difference is that traditional assessments are theoretically or conceptually driven, while the new assessments are technologically driven. A job analysis might be the first step toward finding the ideal candidate for a particular job using traditional assessment, while an approach using a new assessment might start with data analysis. To find a candidate with a new assessment, the developer might consider what data are available, what data can be collected, what can be measured, and what—among that information—might predict success in the target job.

Why Newer Isn’t Always Better

New assessments that overpromise should be viewed with healthy skepticism. “With assessments about humans, it’s a really serious leap of faith to promise improved overall assessment,” Georgi pointed out. Humans are unpredictable, and we simply cannot explain all their behavior.

New measurement approaches differ from traditional assessments in reliability and validity. Because of the sheer volume of data points, an AI-based measurement system may apply unknown parameters or rely on rules influenced by outdated societal attitudes, demographics, and norms. In other words, the reliability can deteriorate quickly. Traditional assessment offers more control over reliability because developers know the items in an assessment and can retire them if they become obsolete.

AI-powered tools stand the risk of lower reliability—and lower validity as well. They may excel in predictive validity, but personality assessments also rely on construct and content validity. “We can control the inputs and the construct domain in traditional assessments, but in automated ones, it’s difficult,” Georgi explained. “People are not so predictable.”

Some elements of AI-based assessments can be helpful, however. They have the promise of scalability, speed, a lower price point, and removing bias. Assessments that use machines for concrete tasks built on sound research can incrementally improve traditional assessments. “If it is improving what is old in a targeted way to solve a specific user problem, only then can it be better,” he said.

New technologies offer high potential to enhance traditional measurement tools, such as the ability of AI to generate more items and parallel forms based on natural language since humans could control exactly what such models would produce. They could not only produce a job analysis but also personalization for job recommendations, like Netflix for jobs, as Georgi described it.

Personality Assessment and User Experience

Reliable, valid, and in-depth assessments often generate results that are quite complex for the end user to understand. Users don’t know theories of personality and often need a coach to make actionable recommendations based on the results. “They want it boiled down for their busy, everyday lives. They probably have five minutes a day for development,” Georgi said. Reports need to be targeted in how they express, for example, what it means to be high in conscientiousness and low in neuroticism and how such people tend to behave at work and at home.

Validated heuristics that people can use for development are arguably more important than one-dimensional results, such as a high, medium, or low score in extraversion. “People love stories about themselves,” said Georgi. “I encourage everyone who does personality reports to make them a little bit more about everyday life,” he added, noting that machine learning can help with generating nonlinear relationships for reports that people will use and love.

User experience seemingly demands simplicity for quick, applicable comprehension, but personality assessment demands even more detail and nuance. Even the Hogan assessments with their 28 main scales and scores of subscales cannot quite capture the total complexity that is an individual. In moving toward a more holistic picture of personality, we will need artificial intelligence to help us develop the heuristics to better understand ourselves and others.

The Future of Personality Assessment

Considering this discussion, what will be the best approach to measuring personality in the future? An integrated personality measure, Georgi said.

Industrial-organizational psychologists have long thought of personality theory in terms of ingredients, such as cognitive ability, motivations, values, attitudes, and more. However, the founders of the discipline did not intend to dissect people but to functionally organize them to explain how all their characteristics worked together. “The people who we assess and we measure—they are first people, then their personalities,” Georgi said.

The Humpty Dumpty approach with specialists focused on separate traits won’t serve the personality assessment of the future. What will serve instead is a dialectic of induction and deduction, with the induction piece aided by technological tools that help psychologists sift data to study personality in context. “I’d like to see machine learning and AI help us come back to the origins of our field where we wanted to predict behavior,” Georgi said. “We are in the business of prediction, not explanation. We want to serve the person, not just report in general.”

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 63 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!

The first-ever winter FIFA World Cup starts in a matter of days. The anticipation for kickoff is heightening around the globe. But who will prevail as winners?

At Hogan, we recommend using science to predict performance. However, we wanted to explore other methods that people use to forecast the performance of World Cup teams. One method that stood out was the use of “oracle” animals, who supposedly prophesy the winners of World Cup matches.

This is certainly a cute and amusing way to choose the winners of games. But how often does it work? Because we recommend using scientific methods to predict performance, we decided to assess the animals’ accuracy.

Using Oracle Animals to Predict World Cup Winners

Let’s explore just how often the oracle animals made accurate predictions.

Paul the Octopus (Germany)

During the 2010 World Cup, this Germany-based octopus would predict the outcome of football/soccer matches by choosing between two boxes containing flags that were positioned in his tank.¹

Accuracy: 85.7%

Nelly the Elephant (Germany)

Another Germany-based animal demonstrated the ability to take penalties (with more success than the English national team). She made predictions by shooting into one of two empty nets in which hung the flags of the competing countries.¹

Accuracy: 90%

Ying Mei the Giant Panda (China)

China had a panda who was intended to predict the outcome of matches by choosing food from boxes draped in national flags. However, Ying Mei’s keepers decided the spectacle might lead to overcrowding and endangerment of the animals, so they promptly retired her.¹

Accuracy: N/A

Neymar-Mite the Hamster (Singapore)

This Singaporean rodent, aptly named after the skillful Brazilian football/soccer player, would use his own psychic tricks to predict outcomes. His guardians would place him would place him in a hamster ball on a mini field with goalposts marked with country flags. Neymar-Mite would predict the winning country by rolling his hamster ball into the net of the goal he preferred. Unfortunately, he had low success rates.²

Accuracy: 36%

Aochan the Penguin (Japan)

Aochan, a Tokyo-based penguin, would predict winners of the 2014 World Cup matches by spinning a wheel that had various outcomes written on it. Regrettably, his optimism for Japan against Ivory Coast was unfulfilled.¹

Accuracy: 0% (0 out of 1)

Using Personality to Predict Professional Athlete Performance

Given the limited accuracy of oracle animal predictions, we (obviously) would not recommend using these to predict performance in any serious scenario. Although some psychometric tools claim to predict occupational performance with similar rigor as the oracle animals, Hogan Assessments has decades’ worth of evidence to demonstrate how our personality assessments can predict performance.

We have studied job performance across multiple job families and industries, and this research has enabled us to predict the likelihood of success for people in nearly any job, including professional athletes.

Here are some scales from the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) related to the success of professional athletes.

High Ambition (HPI) and High Power (MVPI)

The athletes performing in the World Cup clearly have a goal—to win! They are competitive and driven to achieve impossible-seeming goals.

High Prudence (HPI), High Dutiful (HDS), and Low Mischevious (HDS)

Athletes need to be dependable and conscientious. An athlete’s reliability and self-discipline can make a difference in whether a game is won or lost. How much coaches influence team success during the World Cup is a matter of debate. However, athletes should be disciplined and believe in the coach’s philosophy to improve the chances of winning.

High Inquisitive (HPI)

The best of the best meet at the World Cup, so teams must remain curious in seeking to understand and defend against the opposition’s tactics. This includes having a well-practiced strategy that the team can adapt during the game.

Accuracy of Personality Assessment

Hogan has researched and created a performance profile for professional athletes based on these personality characteristics. What we found was that 88% of players who scored high on the profile were top or middle performers.

Who Will Win the World Cup?

We do not yet know who will triumph in the World Cup this time around. We will pay attention to who the oracle animals predict will win because we love animals. From a more scientific perspective, however, we are confident that the teams whose athletes have more of the personality characteristics outlined here will be most likely to succeed.

At Hogan, we wish all the teams who are competing in the World Cup the best of luck!

This blog post was authored by Krista Pederson, Hogan’s managing director of Asia Pacific, and Nathan Cornwell, a senior consultant on Hogan’s international distributors team.

References

1. Pallagud, C. (2022, August 29). 15 Animals That Predicted World Cup Match Outcomes. ILoveQatar.Net. https://www.iloveqatar.net/qatar2022/guide/oracle-animals-predicted-world-cup-match-outcomes
2. Chooi, T. L. (2018, June 29). Meet the FIFA World Cup 2018 Animal Oracles. ActiveSG. https://www.myactivesg.com/read/2018/6/meet-the-fifa-world-cup-2018-animal-oracles