The protests against systemic patterns of racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death, the success of female heads of state leading their countries through the global pandemic, and the recent United States Supreme Court decision prohibiting workplace discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation are just a few of the topics that are spurring discussions about diversity and inclusion (D&I) right now.

Although these current events have brought D&I to the forefront, this topic should not be new in the workplace — addressing D&I concerns should be a critical priority for all organizations. However, many organizations struggle to create diverse workplaces, especially at the highest levels, and to promote cultures that allow all employees to feel heard and included.¹ Fortunately, organizations can leverage Hogan assessments to help address these concerns and create a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Defining Diversity and Inclusion

There are different ways to define D&I in the context of the workplace. These borrowed definitions are helpful ways for us to better understand what we are referencing when discussing diversity and inclusion²:

• Diversity concerns all the ways people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
• Inclusion concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

Why Should We Care about Diversity and Inclusion?

Both diversity and inclusion should be important to organizations as they seek to do the right thing, avoid legal recourse, and deliver key business outcomes. Given these reasons, it’s not surprising that the majority of survey respondents (75%) in a recent study by Pew Research consider it important for their organizations to promote diversity in the workplace.³

Even if there were no moral imperative or risk of legal challenges, organizations could not ignore the strong business case for creating a diverse workplace. As one example, some estimates suggest that organizations with higher levels of gender diversity can outperform organizations that lack female representation by up to 58%.⁴

The positive impact does not stop there. Organizations with more D&I practices tend to have lower levels of absenteeism and turnover and higher levels of organizational innovation and performance. However, even with these notable outcomes, many employees still say their organizations are not doing enough to create inclusive environments.

How Can Hogan Help Your Diversity and Inclusion Goals?

There are a few reasons you should consider using Hogan’s personality assessments in your D&I efforts. First, personality assessment promotes fairness in selection. Our research shows that personality is a strong predictor of performance without producing meaningful subgroup differences. This means we recommend solutions that can help you identify the best talent without discriminating against any group, thereby preserving diversity in applicant pools. Contrary to popular misconception, using personality for selection does not create a workforce of people who have the same personality profile. Hogan creates selection profiles that are specific for each job and would vary across jobs within the same organization. Within a job, we typically only screen on a few personality characteristics for which people will have diverse scores on scales in the profile range and even more so across other personality characteristics.

Second, you can use Hogan’s personality tools to identify and develop leaders who will promote diversity and inclusion. We analyzed data from more than 5,000 individuals to explore the components of Hogan’s personality inventories that predict supervisor ratings on behaviors, such as

• discouraging discrimination and prejudice;
• relating well to a variety of people;
• recognizing the unique potential of each person;
• showing respect, tolerance, and open-mindedness;
• respecting views different from one’s own;
• treating others with respect regardless of race, gender, appearance, religion, and beliefs;
• valuing diverse perspectives;
• displaying sensitivity to issues related to diversity and culture;
• having the ability to see the world through the eyes of others; and
• displaying sensitivity to the needs of others.

We meta-analyzed within-study correlations across 47 organizations and found that Adjustment, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Prudence, and Altruism had positive relationships with behaviors related to diversity and inclusion. Additionally, Excitable, Skeptical, Bold, Mischievous, Recognition, and Power had negative relationships with D&I behaviors. This suggests that people who are optimistic, perceptive, warm, conscientious, tolerant, open-minded, not defensive, trusting, modest, humble, honest, sympathetic, and concerned about helping others will work to foster an environment of inclusivity, regardless of race, age, gender, background, and ideas.

Implications

The importance of diversity and inclusion and the steps you need to take to make your workplace more diverse and inclusive cannot be outlined in a short blog. In fact, half-baked attempts at improving D&I initiatives can have negative impacts. An appropriate organizational culture is necessary to nurture diversity and inclusion. Some research suggests that organizational diversity structures alone, such as diversity policies, diversity training, and diversity awards, can cause white males to have illusory perceptions of fair decision-making procedures impacting minorities (i.e., a “we checked the box” attitude).⁵ This can lead to white males reacting harshly to claims of discrimination because they might assume all D&I issues have been addressed. Further, we haven’t even touched on the complexity of thinking about diversity in a global context.

While we cannot give you a silver bullet, we do provide these practical recommendations for consideration in your larger D&I initiatives:

• First, use the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) to select and promote all employees to increase diversity, hire qualified candidates, and promote fairness in hiring. Using assessments that do not discriminate will lead to more diversity at all levels.
• Second, use the HPI, HDS, and MVPI to select, promote, and develop leaders who will create a diverse and inclusive environment.
• Finally, use the HPI, HDS, and MVPI to provide feedback to employees and enhance their awareness of biases they might have that could stifle D&I efforts.

For more information, make sure you check out our webinar on the topic. You can also listen to our recent The Science of Personality podcast episodes, “Women in Leadership” and “SCOTUS LGBTQ Decision and What It Means for Your Organization.”

*This post was authored by Amber Burkhart, Kimberly Nei, Chase Winterberg, and Jessica Walker.

References

1. Jones, S. (2017, June 9). White Men Account for 72% of Corporate Leadership at 16 of the Fortune 500 Companies. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/
2. Kapila, M., Hines, E., Searby, M. (2016, October 6). Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter. Independent Sector. https://independentsector.org/resource/why-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-matter/
3. Horowitz, J. M. (2019, May 8). Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country’s Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/05/08/americans-see-advantages-and-challenges-in-countrys-growing-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/
4. Moran, G. (2017, January 23). How These Top Companies Are Getting Inclusion Right. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/3067346/how-these-top-companies-are-getting-inclusion-right
5. Kaiser, C. R., Major, B., Jurcevic, I., Dover, T. L., Brady, L. M., & Shapiro, J. R. (2013). Presumed fair: Ironic effects of organizational diversity structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(3), 504–519. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030838

The cases of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor represent just two recent and horrific examples of police brutality resulting in unnecessary loss of human life. The awfulness of these cases is amplified by fact that African Americans—both George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are black—are more than 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police than white Americans. Although statisticians, social scientists, and activists dispute the root cause of this difference (e.g., systemic racism, crime rates, culture, socioeconomics), one thing is for sure: when a police officer takes the life of another person the responsibility for doing so lies ultimately with that officer.

Personality refers to the ways in which people think, feel, and act differently from one another. Some people think doctors can be trusted, others do not. There are movies that some people love and other people hate. Some people make their bed every morning, others do not. Virtually every difference between people is related to personality. Police officers, like all people, differ in how they respond to situations they encounter. Where one police officer sees threats and responds violently, another does not.

The deadly encounters with the police over the past decade or have led to repeated calls for police reform. In 2018, for example, the NYPD began a program for implicit bias training. Similar programs had already been adopted across the US, though the effectiveness of these programs has been seriously questioned. Most recently, the city council of Minneapolis voted to defund the police department. Although some attempts at police reform are better than others, it is important to ask ourselves whether training, education, and policy reforms are even the right place to start in dealing with police brutality.

In a stand-up comedy routine that went viral, Chris Rock begins by stating what many of us already know. Police work is difficult, risky, and inherently dangerous. The people who dedicate their lives to serving and protecting their communities deserve the utmost respect. But, as Mr. Rock further points out, “in some jobs everybody has to be good.” You cannot have mistakes. You cannot have “just a few bad apples.” The best way to keep bad apples out of your barrel is to avoid picking bad apples in the first place. The best way to avoid police brutality is to avoid hiring people who are likely to resort to unjustifiable, violent, and life-ending tactics when they are under pressure.

Hogan has a long history of helping communities hire better police officers. Unlike clinical assessments used to diagnose personality disorders (e.g., the MMPI), our assessments are used to predict everyday work behavior, how effectively people do their jobs, and how people respond under stress. Moreover, our assessments promote diversity and inclusion by providing an unbiased view of a job candidate’s fit for a given job. That is, men and women get the same average scores and people of different ethnicities get the same average scores. In short, scientifically validated personality assessments provide an accurate and fair way to hire quality police officers, reduce police brutality, and rebuild the respect and admiration that police officers deserve.

*This post was authored by Hogan Chief Science Officer Ryne Sherman and Hogan Talent Analytics Consultant Chase Winterberg.

According to the World Economic Forum 2022 Skills Outlook report, the growing workforce skills that will be imperative to businesses in the coming years include a more holistic approach to leadership incorporating complex, analytical, innovative, and creative thinking in combination with social influences and emotional intelligence. Lessening in demand will be traditional/transactional and isolated skills such as manual dexterity, memory, personnel management, quality control, time management, and technology management.

There has been intensive publicity and buildup around Industry 4.0 and IoT 4.0. However, the most significant, pending transition of the global workforce concerns preparing people for the future of work. Organizations looking to implement foundational change should look to the Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0, a contemporary, 21^st century model of engaging or inspiring leadership.

The Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0, developed by Inspire Imagine Innovate Pte, Ltd., addresses these growing skills gaps through a new model which enables the global workforce to engage the goals and opportunities of Industry 4.0 and IoT 4.0 through:

Personality & Emotional Intelligence (EQ-i)

Perseverance & Resilience

• Interdependent Collaboration
• Synthesizer
• Comprehensive Learning Agility

Perspective

• Global Mindset (Diversity & Inclusion)
• Coaching Mindset
• Whole Brain® Thinking

In our experience, organizations are now realizing that their employment engagement surveys are revealing very limited insight into their employees and actually reflect an overall leadership deficiency and a lack of engaging or inspiring leadership with a coaching mindset, within their organizations. Global citizens are also expressing their dissatisfaction with and disapproval of the leadership of their governments as well as their educational and healthcare systems — which clearly have not advanced to Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0.

The fields of leadership, employee engagement, talent management, personality, and coaching have simultaneously converged, and the collective imperative of leading organizations has become ‘Engage Your Potential, Develop Your Talent, and Focus Your Performance.’ This confluence of disciplines presents a challenge to organizations, as many universities, business schools, consulting firms and leadership development service providers have not progressed their faculty, consultants, trainers, and coaches to align with these changes.

Based on our extensive experience working with global multinational organizations across the globe to improve their leadership performance, potential and well-being, we felt that a new ‘lens’ was needed, through which the talent development conversation would shift. To correct this perspective, I created Future Talent / Future Leader 4.0 — A Human Centric Model Preparing People for the Future of Work, to address the ever-increasing complexity and distributed nature of leadership and to align the global workforce with future leadership capabilities, one individual at a time.

The Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0 Model is built upon 15 years of global executive coaching experience with emerging, high-potential and senior level leaders, and Hogan Assessments.

In spite of a lack of confidence in leadership within organizations, government, and non-government organizations (NGO) that is prevalent throughout the world today, individuals, citizens, and stakeholders are realizing the value and path forward through Future Talent / Future Leader 4.0’s contemporary, 21^st century model of engaging or inspiring leadership, to help them achieve their goals.

We are also beginning to realize that the original 70/20/10 guideline for talent and leadership development (70 percent of their knowledge is acquired from job-related experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others, and 10 percent from formal educational events) has shifted to 60/30/10, to reflect the following characteristics of the global workforce:

1. Leaders are now expected to be engaging/inspiring leaders who recognize, acknowledge and develop others
2. Leaders and managers are now expected to develop into leaders and managers with a coaching mindset
3. Mentors are frequently assigned to leaders, by corporations, to assist with the learning and development of managers and leaders
4. The outcome of executive coaching and leadership development initiatives is increasingly focused on enhancing the productivity and effectiveness of teams and work groups
5. Peer-to-peer-based learning and interactive learning groups, with executive sponsorship, have replaced lectures and presentations in the classroom

To find out more and learn how you can help your organization engage the goals of Industry 4.0 and IoT 4.0 via the path forward through the Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0 (‘3 P’s’ Model), please visit https://www.inspireimagineinnovate.com/the-future-talent-future-leader-4-03ps-model.

*This is a guest blog authored by Kevin Asbjörnson, an advanced practitioner of Hogan Assessments and global leader and teams’ coach in the Hogan Coaching Network (HCN). The Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0 Model is not a Hogan model. 

*Kevin may be reached in Singapore  at his email address, at Kevin.Asbjornson@InspireImagineInnovate.com or on LinkedIn at the following URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinasbjornson.

References and Internet Links:

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/future-of-jobs-2018-things-to-know
• https://www.hoganassessments.com/coaching-network
• https://www.inspireimagineinnovate.com/a-path-forward-future-talent-future-leader-4-0-a-human-centric-model-preparing-people-for-the-future-of-work/

The amount of text data we send out in the world is staggering. On average, there are 500 million tweets sent per day, 23 billion text messages, and 306.4 billion emails. Everything we say, every email we send, and every word on our resumes can be used to understand the world around us, and it also gives us clues about the individual speaking or writing. Hogan’s Data Science team is exploring how best to capture text data and harness its power in understanding human nature. Below are some frequently asked questions that people unfamiliar with text-based machine learning often ask us.

Q: What is NLP?

A: NLP is a type of artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to break down, process, and quantify human language. NLP helps us understand the hidden stories within text-based data.

Q: Why is NLP important?

A: Up to 95% of usable organizational data is unstructured, resulting in an increased drive for using this data to remain competitive. The competition and consistent advancements in computational power, data access, and open-source research initiatives have led the field of NLP to evolve and grow constantly.

Q: How do NLP, artificial intelligence, and machine learning relate to each other?

A: Broadly speaking, artificial intelligence refers to using machines to mimic human decision making. The decision making can be either rule-based (the machine is told which rules and procedures to follow explicitly by the designer) or learned (the machine learns the rules and procedures based on data).

Machine learning refers to machines learning from data. A machine is said to learn if its performance increases on a particular task in response to exposure to a new experience or new data that tells the machine how to perform a task better. Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence.

Natural language processing refers to using a machine to quantify human language. NLP includes both rule-based and machine learning techniques. So, NLP is a type of artificial intelligence centered around human language that often uses machine learning. 

Q: What are some common NLP techniques?

A: There are several common techniques used in this research, including:

• Bag of words – A list of all the words used in a training sample.
• Inverse document frequency – The number of documents a word appears in.
• Lemmatization – Removing inflections from a word. For example, “studies” would become “study.”
• N-grams – Word combinations where the N indicates the number of words to be combined. For example, a bi-gram could be “computer science.”
• Stemming – Reducing a word to its stem. For example, “studies” would become “studi.”
• Stop words – Frequently used or extremely common words often removed in NLP analyses.
• Term frequency – How often a word occurs in a document.

Q: What are some everyday examples of NLP?

A: There are several applications in which NLP might drive something you encounter and use daily:

• Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant
• Spell-check
• Autocomplete
• Voice-to-text messaging
• Search engines
• Spam filtering

Q: How is Hogan using NLP?

A: One way we are using NLP is by streamlining the coding process of focus group notes for personality scale relevance. We’re injecting NLP into our job analysis strategy to increase the efficiency of the approach and improve the quality of our results. Manually reading and coding focus group notes is a time-intensive and cognitively draining process. Using NLP, on average, we can decrease the overall time it takes while maintaining predictions that are both consistent and accurate. This approach has already shown promising results for correctly identifying the relevance of personality characteristics from focus group notes. When compared against human raters (i.e., subject-matter experts, or SMEs), our model was consistent and had an average accuracy score higher than the average accuracy of the SMEs. Please see our blog post on NLP from February 11, 2020, for more details.

Q: What are some new research directions Hogan is exploring with NLP?

A: Hogan’s Data Science team has several projects in the works using NLP to expand our insight from available text data housed internally as well as from open-source applications (e.g., O*NET):

• Job family matching using job descriptions – Hogan is exploring using NLP to allow someone to enter their job description and receive the job family and relevant Hogan assessment scales linked to their job description.
• Automatic item writing – Hogan is exploring using natural language generation to automatically generate assessment items that (1) tap specific Hogan personality domains, (2) are equivalent in difficulty and readability to our current items, and (3) are interchangeable with our current items to ensure both test security and fairness of the assessment process.
• Automatic feedback generation – Hogan is exploring using natural language generation to provide accurate, quick, and unique feedback to every user based on that user’s assessment results.

We’re excited to announce that Hogan has officially launched The Science of Personality podcast, which explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and organizational success.

The Science of Personality is hosted by Hogan Chief Science Officer Ryne Sherman, PhD, a world-renowned personality psychologist, along with Hogan Public Relations Manager Blake Loepp. In each episode, Ryne and Blake will discuss current trends in personality psychology, leadership, and popular culture and how these affect our personal and professional lives.

“Our goal with this podcast is to simplify the very complex nature of personality psychology and make it relatable to a broader audience,” said Sherman. “Psychologists have struggled for decades just to define personality, yet it has a tremendous impact on how we communicate, build relationships, advance our careers, and live our lives. The goal of this podcast is to help people understand why personality is so important.”

The podcast will feature some of the world’s leading experts in personality psychology as guests and will cover topics such as women in leadership, diversity and inclusion, artificial intelligence, big data, and the dark side of personality. Episodes will be released every other week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and thescienceofpersonality.com.

“This is something Blake and I have been talking about doing for a couple of years,” said Sherman. “Once we found ourselves working remotely and unable to travel due to a global pandemic, we decided to make this a priority. It’s our hope that the audience finds this podcast both informative and entertaining.”

About The Science of Personality

Personality affects the way we relate to the world and the people in it, how we work, who we love, and how other people see us. Although the study of personality is centuries old, our ability to understand such a complex and abstract concept is relatively new in the context of history. Featuring some of the world’s leading experts in personality psychology and business, this podcast explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and organizational success.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on how critical essential and frontline workers are in supporting the health and safety of our communities. Essential organizations and industries are hiring in large numbers to keep up with the demands of their customers and stakeholders. These new demands also require organizations to implement new policies to ensure their customers and workers are healthy and safe from potential infection. Now more than ever, essential organizations need methods to identify workers capable of following and adapting to these new safety policies.

Understanding Safety

When it comes to workplace safety, employee personality and behavior are as relevant as on-the-job training, equipment, and protocols. However, it doesn’t really matter what protocols are in place if employees are not prone to adhere to the protocols. Identifying safety-conscious personnel who will adhere to protocols, as well as people who exhibit potential for dangerous behavior, is a key step toward preventing costly and sometimes fatal accidents. Hogan researchers have distilled six factors that help organizations identify workers who will maintain and contribute to a safe work environment:

• Compliant – The tendency to follow the rules. Low scorers ignore authority and company rules, while high scorers follow guidelines and protocols.
• Strong – The ability to handle stress with confidence. Low scorers tend to panic under pressure and make mistakes, while high scorers are steady and reliable.
• Poised – The ability to handle pressure without becoming irritable. Low scorers lose their tempers, blame others, and make mistakes. High scorers are calm and composed.
• Vigilant – The ability to stay focused when performing monotonous tasks. Low scorers tend to make mistakes because they are easily distracted, while high scorers stick to the task at hand.
• Cautious – The tendency to avoid risk. Low scorers tend to take unnecessary risks, while high scorers carefully weigh all options when facing a risky decision.
• Trainable – The tendency to respond favorably to training. Low scorers are overconfident and difficult to train. High scorers are receptive to advice and genuinely enjoy learning.

Essential and Frontline Workers’ Safety

Examinations of safety behaviors associated with essential and frontline workers in the medical, protective services, and transportation fields reveal high scorers on the Hogan Safety Report are more likely to encourage and promote safety practices, act professionally and accept responsibility for errors, and avoid taking unnecessary risks. We present examples of safety-specific results for three groups of essential and frontline workers below.

In the medical field, surgeons with high scores on the Safety Report are approximately twice as likely to promote patient safety and are 1.6 times more likely to accept responsibility for errors. Although our overall sample size was too small to confer significance, our evidence suggests nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants who score highly on the Safety Report are approximately 3.5 times more likely to observe and promote safety practices.

Workers in protective services, such as probation officers, who score high on the Cautious subscale are 2.4 times more likely to encourage safe behavior, 3.8 times more likely to avoid taking unnecessary risks, and 2.7 times more likely to follow on-the-job safety guidelines.

Among transportation workers, bus drivers who score high on the Safety Report are twice as likely to work safely and responsibly (according to their supervisors) and 1.8 times more likely to adhere strictly to rules and procedures. Bus drivers who score high on the Compliant subscale are half as likely to be involved in a traffic accident. Heavy and tractor-trailer drivers who score high on the Strong subscale are half as likely to be ticketed for speeding. Heavy and tractor-trailer drivers with high scores on the Cautious subscale are 2.7 times more likely set a good example to other drivers by following rules and procedures. And those with high scores on the overall Safety Report are four times more likely to act predictably and professionally.

Bottom Line

The importance of safe and healthy work environments in essential organizations cannot be underestimated. Hogan understands the core aspects of an individual’s personality that help create and maintain safe work environments. Not only is there evidence that the Hogan Safety Report can work across a broad range of jobs, but Hogan’s Safety Report predicts across a broad range of criteria (supervisor ratings, number of accidents, speeding citations). This ability to predict extends to the subscale level, such as the Cautious subscale, providing an opportunity for more nuanced interpretation.

The broader outlook is that we, as a global society, have entered a new economic environment where safety is an important performance criterion for all essential industries and organizations. Hogan is prepared to apply knowledge from years of research to help navigate this new terrain.

*This blog post was authored by Hogan’s Nathan Hundley and Andrew Blake.

Hogan Assessments is proud to introduce the official Hogan WeChat account. Used by most companies with a footprint in the China market, WeChat is a multipurpose app developed by Tencent with more than one billion active users who span the globe.

Hogan’s WeChat account will feature unique articles, written in Simplified Chinese, about Hogan and personality assessments with the goal of educating the China market and Chinese audiences about the Hogan’s talent management solutions.

In addition, Hogan will also use the WeChat account to support China-based distributors — including Optimal Consulting, Mobley Group Pacific, Empower Leaders, Edge Consulting, and Infelligent — by linking to their WeChat accounts, publishing their contact information and certification workshop dates, and by republishing and linking to their unique Hogan-focused articles.

Hogan is committed to supporting distributors in the Asia-Pacific markets and will continue to provide education about Hogan and personality assessments across the region.

To follow the Hogan WeChat account, please scan the QR code in this post or add the Hogan WeChat ID: HoganAssessments.

At Hogan, we define leadership as the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team. And high-performing teams consistently outperform the competition. You want your team to be one of those, right? We don’t know what impact the current pandemic will have on our businesses, but we do know that high-performing teams are critical to our success.

Hogan’s data scientists recently conducted a literature review to define the characteristics of high-performing teams more clearly. From that review, we know that high-performing teams have strong norms around how they engage interpersonally. Because we are social and group-dwelling beings, it’s no surprise that teams are suffering interpersonally right now as we practice social distancing. Although other factors are at play, the interpersonal norms (the “rules” for how the team operates) have likely deteriorated further than the process-oriented norms. Specifically, this global pandemic has disrupted our social interactions. For example, imagine a high-performing team who used to gather in a coffee shop for morning kickoff meetings. Now what are they doing? Drinking coffee alone at their kitchen tables?

Interpersonal norms are critical to team efficacy, and you cannot let them go unattended yet expect teams to keep functioning at a high level. It does take some extra effort, but the team results are worth it. Based on Hogan’s literature review, we decided to focus our message on how to handle conflict, belonging, communication, and collaboration virtually. These norms keep teams connected, motivated, and engaged; they ground teams in productive interpersonal interactions. They are the invisible glue to a high-performing team. Without them, a team will come apart, not only at the edges, but at the core.

Whether you’re coaching leaders or you’re a member of a team, consider the following questions:

• How does your team address conflict when you aren’t all in the same physical location?
• What do you do to create a sense of belonging and connection for your team? How do you inspire and acknowledge contributions when so many factors compete for your team members’ attention?
• What about communication? How have you adjusted your practices around keeping people informed and aligned?
• How does your team collaborate and work together toward important business results?

Click here to listen to Brandy and Wendy’s webinar, “Practical Advice for Transitioning Team Norms in this ‘New Normal.’”

Working from home is a not a new experience for many employees. In the United States, 50% to 70% of jobs can be done from home, but the number of remote workers is actually much lower. This trend is mirrored around the globe. That is, the actual number of remote workers trails the number of jobs that can be done remotely. At least, this was the trend before the current situation we find ourselves in with the COVID-19 crisis. What we have seen recently is that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many workers and organizations to officially make the shift to a remote working environment.

During the initial influx of new remote workers, organizations focused on ensuring that these workers had the necessary resources to work remotely effectively by addressing technology and infrastructure concerns (e.g., availability of smart devices, video conferencing platforms, internet security, etc.). However, it is important that we do not overlook the behaviors and characteristics that will be most important for individuals to be effective as they move to remote work.

Critical Competencies for Working Remotely

The current situation presents an opportunity for us to revisit what we know about effective remote workers. First, we know that being an effective remote worker requires the following:

• Self-managing by demonstrating self-control and motivation without direction from others.
• Communicating effectively with others.
• Working in a dependable and timely manner.
• Being able to adapt to different situations, approaches, and ideas.
• Developing collaborative relationships to achieve key objectives.

Personality Characteristics of Remote Workers

Our research shows that there are some personality characteristics that are more closely linked to these effective remote working behaviors. Individuals who are seen as reliable, structured, and conscientious tend to be more successful remote workers because they work in a predictable and dependable manner. Additionally, those individuals who are perceived as considerate, warm, and sympathetic are more likely to build the collaborative relationships that are important when working remotely. Self-management requires individuals who can handle daily stressors well, while effective communication is not just driven by extraverts but by those who are seen as taking initiative and working efficiently.

Qualities that might detract from effective remote working behaviors are those characterized by volatility, timidity, and avoidance. People who cope with uncertainty and stressful situations by moving away from others and disengaging might have a harder time being effective while working remotely.

Maximizing Success in a Remote Environment

At Hogan, we know that context is everything. To understand the elements of an individual’s personality that may be strengths at work (or conversely, weaknesses), you must understand the person’s work context. In our current situation, it is safe to say that everyone’s context has changed. Many people who used to spend their days in bustling offices interacting with coworkers are now spending hours working in solitude at home. Others have traded their coworkers’ banter and cooperation for their children’s conversation and education. Even those who worked remotely previously are significantly impacted as they may now have (1) family members intruding upon their previously sacrosanct home office spaces, or (2) teammates who are new to working remotely. As we all adjust, we can offer a few practical recommendations based on our research into the competencies and characteristics that promote success in a remote work environment.

Take Care of Yourself

Engage in self-care. While this storm may be lighter for some and heavier for others, it is a storm for us all. The stress associated with unexpected changes and an unknown future is likely impacting you and everyone around you to some degree. Tune into your own emotions and make sure you are utilizing healthy, effective coping mechanisms that work for you. Work with your team to recognize the volatility and ambiguity currently impacting your organization, locale, and industry and determine how you can navigate this storm together.

Establish a Schedule

Consider how your schedule and productivity might change in this new season. What would your ideal working hours be in your work-from-home environment, and what does your employer prefer? If you can work with your boss and team to establish and communicate a clear schedule — when you are likely connected and available, versus when you are likely to be out-of-pocket — it will help you build your reputation as a predictable, accessible resource.

Maintain Your Motivation

Identify the triggers that impact your motivation and productivity. In what situations do you find it difficult to work with tenacity and resolve? Define and act on things that you can do in your new context to maintain your motivation and engagement at work. This may mean volunteering for special projects, pursuing development opportunities, or offering to help others. Think of what really motivates you at work and try to create opportunities for yourself.

Adapt Your Objectives

Revisit your individual and team goals and how they align with the organization’s overall goals. What has changed in the season of COVID-19 and what remains the same? How do you need to adapt your objectives or those of your team? Collaborate with key stakeholders to set new expectations. Then make sure these are clearly communicated so everyone understands what you need to accomplish and how you are likely to get there.

Make Relationships a Priority

Reflect on your relationships at work and identify steps you can take to network and connect in this new, fully virtual environment. Are there past or currently unaffiliated colleagues with whom you could collaborate to achieve mutual goals? Are there individuals or teams with whom you could communicate to provide support or guidance? How can you help lift others’ morale? Once you have identified your critical connections, create a plan for meaningful collaboration. Take care not to overschedule people, which can happen too easily when people are trying to stay connected without physical proximity.

Some people may enjoy working in remote environments and find success easily. They might be naturally suited to a more distanced, independent approach to work. Others find remote work more difficult and less enjoyable, and they count down the days until they can get back to the office and their teammates. What is important is that we find ways to be effective during this time. This likely means we need to put more conscious effort into how we work, and it requires that we engage in honest self-reflection and self-evaluation to ensure we are leveraging our strengths and compensating for our weaknesses. But together, we can all get the job done.

Want to know more? Watch Hogan’s on-demand webinar, “Personality Characteristics of Effective Remote Workers.”

*This is post was authored by Hogan Senior Consultant Jocelyn Hays and former Senior Consultant Amber Burkhart.

As governments around the world are under increased demands to reopen, leaders everywhere are making decisions in the face of staggering uncertainty and conflicting information. In many ways, the decisions that first closed down businesses and quarantined cities, although certainly difficult, were much easier exercises in short-term decision making and execution than those that leaders will have to make for the longer-term journey.

And now everyone is asking, what will this “new normal” look like?

Let’s start with what we know. As our coaches at Hogan Assessments will tell you, in order to gain something new and worthwhile in your life, you will inevitably face choices. You won’t lose weight without changing behaviors around your eating and activity levels. You won’t strengthen your family relationships without investing in quality time with your loved ones. You won’t learn a new language without reprioritizing your time in consistent study and practice.

For leaders, 2020 has thus far been an intensive exercise in making hard choices. I would hypothesize that, for both leaders and teams, the remainder of 2020 will be an exercise in cultivating appropriate strategic self-awareness to make choices that will carry their organizations and talent into the future.

In many of these forthcoming decisions, identifying the right choice and the wrong choice might be difficult. In those times, it will be critical for leaders to reflect on the appropriate questions:

1. What did you have to let go of against your wishes in 2020? How have you been forced to change the way you lead? The way your team operates?
2. Where are you still using approaches or processes that brought you and your team success in the past? Where are these working? Where are they not working?
3. Are you paying attention to signals telling you that an approach or process isn’t working today? What are those signals?

Leading in a “new normal” season will require deliberate management of the tension between the “normal” and the “new.” At Hogan, we know that innate personality characteristics and motivators may lead some people to crave returning to the past, to the pragmatic, to solutions that have worked before, to the “normal.” These individuals often look for certainty, for steadiness, and for signals that remind them of past success. They might be hoping desperately to regain a sense of normalcy in their life. They might also be working diligently right now to apply processes or systems that brought them success in the past.

We also know that others naturally will find an abundance of freedom in the ambiguity. They will come up with new ideas or methodologies quickly, worrying little about appropriate application or execution. These creative innovators might be looking to drive significant change in the way they have operated before. Their comfort with ambiguity often frees them from a need for process and possibly even short-term expectations. If these individuals also have higher levels of ambition, they might be very quick to take on new challenges and run into the unknown.

In the second half of 2020, effective organizational leadership must balance these inevitable perspectives, deciding when to lean toward “normal” and when to lean toward “new,” and then lead others in that direction.

Our research on humility in leadership shows that the leaders with the most potential to effectively manage the tension through this next milestone will be those who are naturally open to coaching and feedback, as well as admitting when they make mistakes along the way. These humble leaders will quickly value and respect other points of view and new ways of thinking. They will help keep the focus on aligned team performance and a healthy organizational culture.

Humble leaders will also keep both the humanity and accountability in organizational processes in the coming months. They will keep lines of communication and therefore critical knowledge open. They will encourage sharing insights, and they will celebrate mistakes. Because of their focus on learning and development, humble leaders will raise up other leaders around them without being threatened or fearful of losing positional power or credibility.

At Hogan, we have seen time and time again that having a strategic self-awareness rooted in the science of personality provides leaders with a competitive advantage. Having this awareness across your team increases your organization’s competitive advantage. As we step into this season of our “new normal” and everything that it brings, that competitive advantage just may make the difference between companies that remain healthy in the coming months and those that do not.

The choices you make today will determine the strength you have tomorrow.