Over the past several weeks, Hogan Chief Science Officer Ryne Sherman took us on an in-depth tour of the eight most common personality types found via the Hogan suite of assessments. Using the data of 332,935 individuals who completed the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory, Hogan consultants identified these eight different types: Rebels, Marketers, Proletarians, Congenials, Overachievers, Networkers, Misfits, and Preppers. 

In this interview, Ryne discusses the each of the eight types:

In any company, few things are more important than having a strong pipeline of high-performing leaders. In this new COVID-19 era, leadership teams everywhere are now faced with making critical decisions in an environment that changes hourly. Leaders from every size of organization are required to exercise judgment in unprecedented scenarios.

At Hogan, we have long researched the personality characteristics of effective leaders in the midst of high-pressure situations. We have also closely studied the identification of high-potential talent, or talent that has the ability to build and lead teams that can consistently outperform. This is a unique moment in time to identify high potentials (HIPOs) and next-generation leaders. Such moments of crisis often provide incredible opportunities for HIPOs to be identified, as the demands for high-risk and high-visibility decisions increase.

There is a saying that “pressure will turn you into either dust or a diamond.” Thankfully, unlike the carbon under the earth’s surface that can form either crumbly coal or solid diamonds, depending on its environment, people have the ability to be strategically self-aware and make intentional choices about how to react to intense or unexpected pressure. We aren’t bound by the conditions of the environment we find ourselves in. We have choices.

So, how do organizations make the most of this opportunity to identify these HIPO “diamonds”? It is essential to start any talent identification process with a valid and reliable framework. After decades of research and working with clients around the world, we at Hogan have found that there are three different dimensions to consider when looking for the HIPO “diamond in the rough.”

The first thing to look for is competence in what we call Leadership Foundations, or the degree to which people are able to manage their careers well, are rewarding and enjoyable to deal with, and are good organizational citizens overall. Look for individuals who calmly and steadily reach out to assist others in solving difficult problems. You have likely already noticed them patiently working through the new challenges your organization is facing. You likely won’t find them doing this alone; you will see them pulling others together to work through details, ensuring that their efforts are closely aligned with the needs of the team and department.

The second dimension that we have identified as important for identifying HIPO talent is Leadership Emergence, or the likelihood that people will stand out from the crowd and lead from the front. These individuals look and feel like leaders. They instill confidence. You will likely see them as bright, quick, influential, and even charismatic in how they approach challenges. They are the people actively building connections and quickly taking action toward key challenges.

Many of today’s HIPO identification and succession planning processes significantly overindex identifying talent with emergent leadership behaviors, and it is easy to understand why. Emergent leadership behaviors ensure that individuals are noticed, not passed over. After all, is a diamond valuable if you can’t find it?

However, without the final dimension that we have identified for HIPO identification, many emerging leaders simply will not stand the test of time. HIPOs must also be skilled in critical competencies around Leadership Effectiveness. Our research at Hogan shows that true HIPOs must be able to work through others — achieving critical business outcomes, managing organizational resources and assets, planning proactively, and motivating others to work toward common goals. Effective leaders are patient and engaging, known for inspiring commitment and accountability.

The difference between emerging and effective leaders is often found in how each group spends their time. You might spot emerging leaders networking with key stakeholders and decision makers, but effective leaders more often go “heads down,” spending their time driving team performance. Interestingly, our research shows that these two groups overlap by only 10%. This small overlap between the two groups reinforces the importance of purposeful HIPO development.

As we face new challenges in the coming months, talent development for HIPOs, in particular, will be needed to help them become truly successful as they reach higher levels of organizational responsibility. Whenever you see up-and-coming talent with a ton of visible action and fast-moving energy, encourage them to keep their energy steadily focused on team results and better ways of working. To identify less visible leaders, look for trends in business results and team performance, and then work with those people to practice visible leadership “from the front.”

Organizations that take advantage of the numerous development opportunities that will arise during this time of crisis will find a strong and healthy pipeline of leaders for the future. We at Hogan are here to help you identify, develop, and retain these HIPOs in your organization. We know people.

On April 17, 2017, Southwest flight 1380 from New York to Dallas was in serious danger. A failed fan blade had struck the plane, creating a window-sized hole on the left side of the plane. Oxygen masks were deployed and, unsurprisingly, the passengers began to panic. Captain Tammie Jo Shults remained calm, took command of the situation, adapted to the circumstances, and safely landed the plane in Philadelphia, saving hundreds of lives. Her audio call is worth a listen.

More recently, the Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined with more than 700 passengers testing positive for COVID-19. Captain Gennaro Arma was credited for preventing panic with his calm and reassuring leadership style. There are many examples of extraordinary leaders rising to the occasion in crisis situations. Because many organizations are currently facing the crisis caused by COVID-19, we thought it would be a good time to review what we know about organizational crisis and what makes a leader most effective during such times.

Crisis Is Common

Every organization will face a crisis at some point. While the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, operating in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world has long meant that crisis is inevitable. Whether an organization succeeds through a crisis is dependent upon its leader’s actions. In fact, a leader’s legacy is often determined by how he or she handles a major crisis. Effective leaders must make good decisions quickly, often based on limited information. Effective leaders must serve as a rallying force that keeps employees on track. Organizations with the best leaders are the ones that come out on top when the crisis subsides. The question then is this: What personality characteristics are most critical for leading through a crisis?

Leading Through a Crisis

Of course, you can ask anyone on the street what it takes to lead through a crisis, and they will give you an answer. So why should you listen to us? The difference between us and everyone else is that we have been systematically studying personality and leadership effectiveness for more than 30 years. What does that research tell us?

First, our research shows that an effective leader in a crisis acts like Tammie Jo Shults: She remains calm, takes charge, and confidently makes critical decisions. The two personality traits associated with acting this way are adjustment and ambition. In a crisis, people look to their leader for guidance on how to respond. If the leader is calm and sets a path forward, people will remain calm and order will be maintained. If the leader is panicked and lacks confidence about the actions to take, people will start to panic and chaos will ensue. Well-adjusted and ambitious leaders quickly adapt to unexpected changes caused by the crisis, such as the sudden shift to remote work many are experiencing, and they communicate with people about how to proceed.

Second, every crisis comes with increased stress. Even if the leader doesn’t display it externally, he or she is feeling the pressure. Our research shows that when people are under stress, they can lose their normal mode of operating and begin to derail. When faced with a crisis, people derail in three major ways: (1) moving away — by running from the problem, (2) moving against — by combating those thought to cause the problem, and (3) moving toward — by getting as close to the problem as possible and trying to micromanage it away. None of these are very effective, but our research shows that the worst thing to do when leading through a crisis is to move away and avoid the problem. Common tactics in this category include denying that there is a problem, pretending that the problem is overblown, or giving up on the problem entirely. We find that leaders who are effective during crises face stressful challenges head on. They are honest with themselves and others about the size of the problem and put mitigating actions into place as soon as possible. Leaders with a low proclivity for moving away are less likely to become volatile and are more persistent when things go wrong. They remain open to new ideas, maintain trust in their teams, stay engaged and connected, communicate openly and transparently, and are true to their word.

Third, our research also shows that the most effective crisis leaders show compassion and work to stay connected with the needs of their employees, customers, communities, and partners. While an ambitious and steady leader reduces panic and sets out a future plan, employees must also continue to feel valued by the organization and that their concerns are being addressed. Our research indicates effective crisis leaders score high on the personality trait interpersonal sensitivity and the value altruism. They genuinely care for their colleagues, their communities, and their constituencies, and they act as a unifying force through the crisis.

Summary

Crisis is inevitable, and organizations are well advised to be prepared. The single best way to be prepared for a crisis is to have a leader who is effective at handling crises when they occur. Our decades of research on personality and leadership tell us that the most effective leaders during a crisis are well adjusted, ambitious, realistic about the scope of the problem, steadfast about tackling the problem head on, and deeply compassionate about how the crisis is affecting others. Although it can be difficult to see in the midst of a crisis, organizations with these sorts of leaders have bright futures ahead.

*This post was authored by Hogan’s Chase Borden, Kimberly Nei, and Ryne Sherman.

With concern about the spread of COVID-19, more companies are choosing to allow workers to office remotely; Remote work isn’t a new concept. Over the past couple of years, with the increase in demand for a flexible workplace and the development of more advanced AI technology, many companies are choosing to offer employees the option to work virtually. VR conferencing; communication platforms such as WeChat, Slack, and Skype for Business; and apps for managing remote work and workers make remote work feasible and just as easy to manage as working in an office.

Having plans and a policy in place for virtual or remote employees will allow companies to adapt to external threats more quickly. Without such plans, companies can find themselves unprepared and scrambling to react when faced with a crisis. Figuring out how to best manage a workforce with limited mobility can be difficult. For example, some employees might not work as well without direct supervision; how can we know which employees need greater support and which ones can be more independent? When team members are remote, how can they learn to play off one another’s strengths and weaknesses to work more efficiently, both as a team and with other departments? And while many companies are considering ways to cut costs during this time, hiring is still inevitable for many companies. Typically, in-person interviews are part of any company’s hiring process. How can a company hire the right talent without meeting in person? How a company handles these challenges could determine its success or failure, especially during a time when the COVID-19 will have potentially serious implications for the global economy.

Personality Assessments for Remote Employees

At Hogan, we often say that there are two elements that make a business successful: people and money. We specialize in helping companies know people. We study the science of personality and know that personality predicts performance, so we also know that understanding personality is central to resolving the challenges of working remotely mentioned previously. Using a valid and reliable personality assessment can tell you everything you need to know about a person’s work style, and it can help you determine the best course for managing a person or team, or decide whether to proceed in hiring someone.

If you know that an employee is extraverted, you might plan more interactive opportunities for that employee, allow her to set her own goals, and provide resources for her to accomplish those goals remotely. If you find that an employee lacks agency, you might need to plan out specific activities and goals for him to accomplish with frequent check-in points since he might not automatically be comfortable driving his own agenda. Making sure he has enough structure working virtually will be the key to his success.

When building and managing a team, consider that a large body of research has shown that selecting team members by functional skills does not guarantee effectiveness. While you might have a team full of people with world-class skills or degrees, the team can still fail to perform as a cohesive unit.  Personality and values are essential for developing that social cohesion and enhancing performance, especially when the team works remotely.

Finally, when considering hiring talent via remote processes, assessments can be your biggest asset. As Darin Nei, director of product and international distributors at Hogan, outlined: Personality assessments add structure to the interview process, are difficult to fake, and are a cost-effective way of gathering equal and fair interview information about all candidates. Personality assessments for remote employees are a great initial step in the entire hiring process because it doesn’t discriminate, so it is an easy way to help promote diversity and inclusion in your organization as part of the hiring process. Additionally, when combined with other assessments, such as reasoning or ability assessments, it can provide a complete, objective, overall picture of a candidate. While interviews with some candidates will still be necessary, using a personality assessment is a great foundation for the entire hiring process and will help any interview, including those that are remote, be much more effective.

While we cannot control many things during the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we should look for the areas we can understand and develop to give our companies the best competitive advantage. Hogan can work with your company to help it gain a huge competitive advantage by helping you understand your talent, ensuring your company is as successful as possible during turbulent times.

*This post was authored by Krista Pederson, director of Asia Pacific business development at Hogan, and Garrett Shaffer, an account manager at Hogan.

For the fourth year in a row, the Financial Times compiled with Statista, an independent research company based in Germany, FT 1000 – the annual list of Europe’s fastest-growing companies. This list includes European companies that achieved the highest compound annual growth rate in revenue between 2015 and 2018. The ranking suggests that the most nimble and innovative companies are thriving.

Competition at the top was tougher this year, with companies requiring a minimum growth rate of 38.4% to make the list, compared with 37.7% last year.

The ranking reflects the growing importance of technology, which dominates the list with 189 entrants. Most winners come from Germany, closely followed by Italy, the UK, and France, with these four nations accounting for about 70% of the overall ranking. Although London retains its lead as the city with the greatest number of fast-growing companies, Paris and Milan follow closely, while Warsaw and Vilnius make the top 10 for the first time.

Landing a place halfway through the ranking comes shortly after achieving the 89th place in the Italian 400 fastest-growing companies list, a ranking compiled by Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian financial newspaper of reference, in collaboration with Statista. This list includes small/medium companies with the highest compound annual growth rate in revenue, led by organic business development supported by robust organizational skills and execution.

In the words of the Co-Founders and Partners of Awair, Gianfranco Gennaro, Francesca Antonini, and Andrea Facchini, “it would be unfair to celebrate this milestone without acknowledging the outstanding support that Hogan Assessments has given our company since day one. When we became a Hogan Authorized Distributor in 2015, Italy was yet uncharted land, but organizations and Independent Consultants have fallen rapidly in love with such a broad range of science-based, data-driven, and highly predictive tools.”

The FT 1000 list demonstrates that despite the array of obstacles to growth in recent years in Europe stemming from economic uncertainties in the Western Markets, growth is still possible. Customers reward trusted business partners such as Awair when they recognize clear thought leadership, outstanding quality of services and products, flawless execution, as well as client service.

*This is a guest blog post authored by Giulia Sacchi, marketing & communications coordinator at Awair.

*This is a guest post authored by David Biggs, PhD, of Advanced People Strategies.

I have always been fascinated with teams and their impact on organizations. My most recent work in this area has been using the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) from Hogan Assessments.

• HPI – Measures everyday personality and can be used to predict job performance.
• HDS – Identifies potential personality-based performance and derailment behaviors.
• MVPI – Reveals a person’s core values, goals, and interests.

One of the advantages of using psychometrics is the ability to quickly discover a team’s underlying motivations and personality factors.

Schein (1990) warns that misalignment of team values and underlying assumptions can lead to serious organizational conflicts. I have certainly seen that in my career, with project managers falling out and physically coming to blows over resources.

The first step in the process of creating a better-functioning team is improving trust. This involves encouraging people to feel OK with being vulnerable, open, and honest in front of their coworkers. Improving trust is easier said than done. Putting ourselves at risk of failure or ridicule can be difficult to achieve. Individual differences are also a factor. For example, individuals who are more skeptical can be less trusting, especially under pressure.

Lencioni (2005) suggests that behavioral profiling might be key to improving trust within teams by giving team members an objective, reliable measure for understanding one another. This aids the team in admitting weaknesses and strengths to one another, which is part of building an effective team. It also provides the team with a common vocabulary for describing their differences and similarities.

We often use the Hogan assessments (HPI, HDS, and MVPI) for both individual and team development. At the 2020 Division of Occupational Psychology conference, a case study was presented that demonstrates the process of using the assessments for development in a team among whom skepticism made trust difficult to foster.

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 not only understand the world around us, but as clues about the individual speaking, typing, and writing.

Unfortunately, text data does not fit into the traditional structured format of rows and columns. Text data is messy, unstructured, and not easily analyzed using classical statistical methods. Enter natural language processing, or NLP. 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.

There is no singular method associated with NLP. NLP consists of multiple techniques ranging from using keywords to interpret text or speech to understanding the underlying meaning and context of communication. Because of the varying techniques associated with NLP, in the IO literature, NLP has been used to aid with several business initiatives, such as job analysis and selection, to name just two.

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 to the field of NLP to evolve and grow constantly. At Hogan, we are leveraging this continual growth by using NLP to improve our products and talent analytics solutions.

Hogan and Natural Language Processing

One way we are using NLP is by streamlining the coding process of focus-group notes for personality scale relevance, thereby 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 by approximately 6,000% while maintaining predictions that are both consistent and accurate.

Many text-based, data-analytic tasks require similar knowledge about language, such as semantics, structural similarities, and syntax. This knowledge can be shared from one model to another through transfer learning. Transfer learning allows us to quickly take advantage of cutting-edge NLP research without having to spend months and years gathering unneeded data and training similar models from scratch. Transfer learning involves taking a model trained on another dataset for a different task and fine-tuning it on a second dataset for a different task. In other words, we take what the model learned already and adapt it for our purposes. The base model for focus-group note prediction was trained on over 3 billion words. The base model was fine-tuned on a large collection of focus group notes collected across hundreds of organizations where researchers identified which personality scales were relevant based on their expert judgment.

This approach has already shown promising results for correctly identifying the relevance of personality characteristics from focus-group notes. When compared against human-raters (subject matter experts; SMEs), our model was consistent and had an average accuracy score approximately 10% higher than the average accuracy of the SMEs. This indicates that Natural Language Processing is an accurate and efficient method for identifying the critical personality characteristics of job roles from focus groups.

*This is a guest post authored by Lynne Cruickshank, senior consultant at Peter Berry Consultancy (PBC). 

A clear link has been established between how leadership drives engagement, which in turn drives performance. However, one of the challenges that leaders face is how to engage a multi-generational workforce that consists of people who differ in their perceptions and approach to work. Through developing an understanding of the unique motivators, drivers, and values of their workforce, leaders can identify the kind of approaches and work environments that are most likely to engage and motivate their employees from all generations.

So, what motivates different generations?

Research conducted by PBC revealed that people from younger generations in the Australian workforce (i.e. Generation Y [born 1978-1992] and Generation Z [born 1993-present]) tend to have distinctly different values and motivators compared to those from older generations (i.e. Generation X [born 1965-1977] and Baby Boomers [born 1946-1964]).

Specifically, younger generations (i.e. Generation Y and Generation Z) were more likely to value work where they can:

• Influence others, challenge themselves, and focus on achievement and success
• Stand out and be acknowledged for their achievements
• Find enjoyment, variety, and fun
• Socialize, network, and collaborate with others
• Have a sense of certainty and predictability

Those from Generation Z were also found to be more strongly motivated by opportunities to engage in meaningful work that contributes to society and helps others compared to older generations (i.e. Generation X and Baby Boomers).

On the other hand, those from older generations (i.e. Generation X and Baby Boomers) were more likely to:

• Have stronger values toward upholding traditional ways of working, respecting a sense of hierarchy, and being good organizational citizens
• Present with a preference for a professional approach to work
• Be less concerned about the need for teamwork and socializing
• Not as concerned with wanting status and praise or being in environments that are fun and provide variety

What does this mean for those in leadership roles?

When seeking to engage and motivate employees from Generations Y and Z, leaders should consider providing these individuals with opportunities to engage in work that they will find meaningful, that will challenge and stretch them, and also provide them with the opportunities to engage and collaborate with others. Leaders should identify opportunities to celebrate successes and ‘wins’ with these individuals and acknowledge and recognize their contributions and achievements as this is likely to help further engage and motivate employees from younger generations. Additionally, these employees are likely to appreciate having factors that enable work-life balance and flexibility. Finally, as younger generations were found to more strongly value having a sense of certainty and predictability, they are likely to appreciate clarity around their current role as well as open discussions about their future career within the organization.

It is important to note that what engages and motivates employees from younger generations is not necessarily going to be the same for those from Generation Y or Baby Boomers due to the differences in values found across different generations.

For employees from Generation Y and Baby Boomers, they are less likely to find public acknowledgement and recognition of their contributions and achievements motivating and are likely to prefer focusing on deliverables rather than spending time focusing on socializing and injecting fun into the workplace. They are more likely to value tradition and conventions within the organization and appreciate those who demonstrate a strong work ethic and help foster a professional and business-like environment. As people from these generations are more likely to be in leadership roles within an organization, it will also be important for these leaders to keep in mind that what they tend to find rewarding and their preferred working style may differ from people they are responsible for leading and managing who are from younger generations.

At the end of the day, it is important for leaders to think about the type of culture and work environment that they want to foster based on the organization’s values and strategic focus.

They can then ensure that key practices, processes, and systems are in place to help drive this desired culture and work environment that will help achieve the organization’s key goals and performance outcomes. To ensure employees are engaged and motivated and contributing to the successful performance of the organization, it is also important for leaders to understand the values, motivators, and drivers of their employees and how this is likely to impact how they will respond to the current culture and work environment within the organization. While the generational differences outlined above are useful to consider when managing multi-generational teams, it is important to remember and respect each team member as an individual and to seek to understand their personal motivators at work.

Hogan’s distributor in Indonesia, Experd Consulting, welcomed Krista Pederson, director of Asia Pacific business development at Hogan, to Jakarta. While she was there, the group visited the University of Indonesia’s psychology department, where Krista alongside Emilia Jakob, Experd’s vice president, taught a class on “Hogan Personality Assessments and Cross-Cultural Leadership” at a department-wide event.  Afterward, they spent time with the dean of the psychology department discussing potential cooperation and research projects.

During Krista’s time in Jakarta, Eileen Rachmann, CEO of Experd, arranged several business development meetings with major Indonesian banks and financial institutions to discuss using Hogan for talent and leader selection, especially with regard to making sure there is a company culture fit. Krista also shared Hogan’s findings on what Indonesian leaders’ personalities look like as compared to the leader personalities of their major trading partners, Japan, India, US, South Korea, and Singapore.

Hogan has found that emergent leaders in Indonesia tend to be higher on Prudence, Inquisitive, and Learning Approach, compared to the leaders of their top trading partners. Although this doesn’t provide information about effective leaders, it does provide an interesting context for Indonesian leaders when working with leaders and teams from other countries. We intend to continue our research into this area, especially with regard to what effective leader personalities in Indonesia look like.

Finally, Krista met Experd ‘s Hogan team and toured the Experd office building. Experd has been working on expanding its cooperation with several higher institutions across Indonesia using Hogan and looks forward to greater growth in the coming years.

*This is a guest post authored by Adrian Chew, principal consultant at Peter Berry Consultancy (PBC). 

Globalization and the expansion of organizations across international borders have created opportunities and challenges for current and future leaders. As a consultant, psychologist, and coach, I am excited to see more organizations around the world investing in psychometric and multirater feedback data for leadership development.

Having reputational data available can be tremendously helpful to leaders for understanding and narrowing down key areas to focus on for development. Many multirater assessments allow leaders to compare themselves to other leaders around the world using global benchmark scores (for example, the Hogan 360°, powered by PBC, does this). Having the ability to use benchmarks to understand how leaders differentiate themselves is great, considering how globally connected we are. But given how diverse we are from country to country and culture to culture, are we missing any critical nuances that need to be considered when supporting our leaders and managers in their development?

As part of our commitment to better understanding leadership and talent, PBC recently conducted a study looking at observed leadership behavior around the world. The study was based on data collected from 2012 to 2017 using the Hogan 360°. The data consisted of more than 5,600 ratings of 1,642 leaders in eight countries: Australia, Denmark, Greece, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Essentially, we wanted to see if leaders around the world tended to show up in similar ways.

The Similarities

Two key themes emerged from our findings. The first was that leaders around the world are still struggling to fully demonstrate the competencies often associated with transformational leadership: building and maintaining relationships with others; motivating and coaching others; and holding others accountable to work toward innovative and strategic business outcomes. In fact, it was in the Hogan 360°’s Working on the Business competency quadrant where we saw the least amount of variability among leaders.

Secondly, but unsurprisingly, we found most leaders — particularly those in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Japan, and Singapore — were rated highest in the Working in the Business competency quadrant, especially with regard to perceived work ethic, industry knowledge, and expertise. This seems to reflect a common phenomenon observed in so many organizations, where technical expertise and operational prowess are catalysts for progression into people management and leadership roles, while relationship management skills and the capability to motivate others are much less prevalent.

The Differences

We saw the most variation in leaders when it came to how resilient and emotionally intelligent they appeared. Leaders also differed significantly in how invested they were in building trust and rapport with others through strong relationships. For example, we found that leaders in Mexico are more likely than leaders in the other countries in the sample to be perceived as polite, respectful, and able to manage stress well. This may be a reflection of the expectation that leaders in Mexico need to be flexible, hardworking, and operate with integrity (Kowske & Anthony, 2007). In contrast, leaders from the U.K. appeared to have less of a focus on managing their emotions.

We also saw a lot of variability in leaders when it came to the Hogan 360°’s Relationship Management competency quadrant. Leaders from Mexico once again showed strengths in this domain, with leaders from Greece, Australia, and the U.S. also scoring relatively high. Leaders from Denmark, Japan, and Singapore scored particularly low for this domain. When we investigated this further, we learned that leaders from Japan had been rated particularly low for the People Skills competency, which included behaviors associated with being a positive role model, making others feel valued, and being warm and thoughtful in interactions with others. Considering the high in-group collectivist culture that likely exists in countries such as Japan and Singapore, where duties and obligations take precedence over personal needs, this seems to make sense. 

So, knowing that there are, indeed, differences in what can be expected of leaders around the world, what can we do?

• The use of standard global benchmarks can be used to provide a baseline for leaders who increasingly need to operate more globally.
• The use of country-specific benchmarks in 360° assessments can help organizations better understand how local leaders compare with each other (while accounting for country-specific nuances in expected leadership behavior).
• By recognizing nuances and better understanding the expectations that teams, colleagues, and managers have of their leaders, organizations can become more focused and prioritize relevant areas for their leaders to develop professionally.
• We can continue to help leaders of leaders understand differences in their teams’ behavior.

You can read more about our findings on how leaders from each country scored in our white paper.