Advanced People Strategies (APS), an official Hogan distributor in the UK, will host a Hogan UK Seminar on October 22 in London featuring Dr. Robert Hogan and Peter Berry, managing director of Peter Berry Consultancy and originator of the Hogan 360.

The event is focused on Diversity & Inclusion, which has become a primary focus for organizations worldwide. Beyond the moral and legal obligations, organizations should focus on D&I to improve their business. Solving problems like increasing market share, understanding different markets, and ensuring your advertising translates across groups and cultures is much easier when employees come from diverse backgrounds.

That’s where Hogan can help. Hogan’s personality assessments, which are backed by decades of science and data, equip organizations with and easy-to-implement solution to improve D&I, as well as overall productivity and engagement.

This 1-day seminar for HR and People Development Professionals will explore how leadership personality and behavior impacts today’s increasingly diverse workforce. The cost to attend the event is £295 + VAT, which includes a morning of expert speakers, lunch, networking and, for those who are already Hogan Certified, an opportunity to attend the Hogan 360 accreditation workshop with Peter Berry. You can register here for the event!

Hogan distributor, RELEVANT Managementberatung, is partnering again with the International Coach Federation Germany chapter to present the 2^nd Annual German Prism Award, awarded to companies making a difference in the coaching community through professionalism, quality, and data.

The selection process and criteria were modeled after ICF’s International Prism Award, which has been granted annually since 2005 to companies that stand out through the establishment of a coaching culture with extraordinary results in difficult change processes. Past winners of this prestigious award include Coca Cola, SAP, Airbus, and several other prominent companies. The Inaugural German Prism Award was awarded last year to CMS Law Tax, an international law firm with more than 70 offices worldwide.

“We are proud of the partnership we’ve formed with the ICF, and we’re excited to continue the momentum we built from last year’s event,” says RELEVANT owner, Dr. René Kusch. “Our goal from the very beginning was to advance the coaching profession, and this award honors the very best in the field.”

Those nominated are coaching programs that have innovative concepts and/or have made a significant contribution to achieving important corporate goals. The award will be presented on Friday, November 15 during ICF Germany’s Coaching Day in Munich. You can purchase tickets here to attend the event.

“There are so many strong candidates among this year’s nominations, but that’s exactly what we were hoping for,” says Kusch. “Although there can only be one winner, it’s wonderful to see so many organizations across Germany implementing such robust coaching programs. It’s obviously become a point of emphasis for German organizations, and we believe it will have a tremendous positive impact on the German workforce and the country as a whole.”

During the last few new employee orientation sessions at Hogan, I have been asked “what is the most exciting project you have ever worked on in 23 years at Hogan?” Given today’s date, I thought I would share my response.

The most rewarding project I have been a part of was helping America recover from the attacks occurring on 9/11/01. This project was bittersweet, on one hand we were reminded every day about how a group of cowards shattered lives, drove fear into our country, and changed the face of travel forever. On the other hand, the challenge we faced brought out the best in people, it changed perspectives, started conversations, and led individuals to set aside their personal aspirations to help society as a whole.

We rarely talk publicly about Hogan’s involvement post 9/11, primarily because we did it to serve, not to brag. That said, here is a little Hogan history that I hope never gets lost.

Once the shock of the attack had settled, Congress quickly passed the Aviation Transportation Security Act (ATSA), creating DHS and the TSA. Based on Hogan’s reputation, we were quickly asked to help select a workforce of over 100,000 people. Our challenge was to provide a valid, predictive assessment program.

For over three years, members of the Hogan team worked day and night in DC, airports, and conference rooms around the country. We created the Aviation Security Screener Employment Test (ASSET). We validated the ASSET, deployed it on a third-party system, and then trained others in the use of the data.   In the end, we screened several million applicants. TSA agents became the public face of safety and security. Countless studies were carried out and we proved we could predict key criteria.

One year into the project we were challenged to work on another start-up, the FFDO program. This program is the only one in the world that screens, selects, and trains commercial pilots to carry a weapon in the cockpit — as the last line of defense. Once again, our reputation for assessment excellence and experience in military and law enforcement put us front and center.  I will never forget being onsite for the first training program and watching pilots cross the stage as deputized federal agents.

The rest is history and like any government project, eventually our involvement came to an end.

At Hogan, we make it a priority to remind our employees that what they do every day, regardless of their role, makes a difference. It makes a difference not only to the client organizations, but also to their employees, customers, and communities.

Hogan has a strong tradition that all of our employees continue to support – and for that dedication I say thank you to them. They should be proud of who we are and what we do. I know I am.

Gaining the best and most suitable employees for your company is the key to success. Nowadays, companies are trying to hire the best of the best and are putting a lot of effort into new and exciting forms of recruiting. While a strong recruiting strategy provides only one major advantage for most companies, it is substantial for other companies.

Hiring the wrong employee for a job can inevitably lead to underperformance, which can cost millions and expose other employees to increased risk. Every year, companies within the EU lose billions of euros from accidents, injuries at work and other damages. In 2017, European companies lost more than € 476 billion, which was a staggering 3.3% of the European Union’s GDP.

It goes without saying that industries with higher levels of physical labor, such as construction, oil and gas, are at greatest risk from accidents at work and injuries. Companies working in security-conscious industries need to take additional measures to ensure that they hire the right people and create a safe environment for their employees.

The Right Safety Culture

When selecting employees for a job, it is simply not enough to interview candidates during the interview process on security-related topics. If the candidates apply for any position, they will probably match up for the job – and rightly so! During the recruitment phase, candidates tend to become “yes people” – eager to fill in as many boxes as possible in order to secure the job. Employers in the safety-conscious industries have a duty to ask themselves – “How can I really know if this person will act locally in a responsible manner?” Without the right occupational safety culture, a company poses a threat to its employees and revenue.

To ensure a safe work environment and attract the right people, more and more companies are choosing to conduct personality analysis in the hiring process. Personality testing can be incorporated into the recruitment strategy of any business without much effort. This is recommended, especially in security-conscious industries.

Personality Assessment and Personality Traits

Personality ratings can be used to rate applicants for certain personality traits that are most important to the industry in which they compete. Applicants who score high for certain characteristics can be identified and selected for the job. While those who achieve low scores can be filtered out and directed by employers in a different direction.

Interview with Zsolt Feher, Managing Director of Hogan Assessments

Zsolt Feher, Managing Director of Hogan Assessments, explains in an interview how a personality assessment in terms of safety-relevant behavior looks exactly, which personality traits are taken into account and how these ultimately improve safety in the workplace.

• What are the benefits of a safety assessment compared to other measures such as health and safety training etc.?

Security controlling requires other actions and measures. Let’s assume that security is based on four “pillars”: training, rules, equipment and what else we bring – our character. Often organizations have the first three pillars but forget that we are all individuals who have different views and different ways of dealing with security. We think it is essential to use personality measurements to determine who is safer and who does not. We do not change the first three pillars, but we have this fourth as a sort of add-on to personalize all four pillars in even greater detail. And everyone knows that four legs are more stable than three.

• What are the anticipated reactions of HR departments and works councils when a safety assessment is to be incorporated into the recruitment process? How are these assessments usually integrated?

Safety assessments are mostly used in the form of a pre-selection, as one of several competencies that are considered. Organizations, of course, will always give priority to experience and expertise, especially in technical areas, while security is seen as an additional area. We work a lot with energy and mining companies, where safety is much more important. We were one of the first consulting companies to provide this assessment online. But of course, we do understand that field workers do not automatically have global access to computers and iPads, so they simultaneously make the assessment available in the old-fashioned way, with paper and pencil. We do not consider it advisable to apply safety assessments to managers or executives, as it focuses on individuals with specific responsibilities. For others, additional reports are available, depending on which job our clients want to evaluate.

• Which security-conscious actions can be measured with the safety assessment and in what form?

We mainly focus on six different components/competences:

• The first concerns a person’s willingness to follow rules. Low-scoring employees (“low scorer”) may tend to ignore the rules, while high-scoring employees (“high scorer”) follow these rules without hesitation.
• The next component deals with dealing with stress. Low scorers are prone to stress; these employees are easily panicked under pressure and make mistakes. High scorers usually stay constant.
• The third area concerns aggression: Low scorers may lose control and make mistakes more easily. High scorers know how to control themselves.
• The next component is about the ability to concentrate. Low scorers are more distracted and may be more likely to make mistakes. High scorers, on the other hand, remain able to concentrate longer.
• Then we also consider the risk appetite. Low scorers tend to take unnecessary risks. High scorers, on the other hand, avoid risky actions.
• The sixth and last component concerns the training ability. Low scorers tend to ignore training and feedback. High scorers, however, fit well in training.

All of these areas are important separately, but of course also in combination. One might assume that a questionnaire is needed, which asks the person directly about his/her safety-related attitude. But, that’s not true – and that’s why it’s so hard to manipulate the outcome of the assessment. We use a questionnaire focused on competencies, strengths, and weaknesses, also called the HPI (Hogan Personality Inventory), which considers all important personality traits and considers only those people who are more inclined to safety from a person more averse to security differ. Items such as “Do you know why the stars sparkle – yes/no?” are difficult to answer if someone wants to influence the outcome. So, it’s better.

• Have companies that have taken up and carried out this safety assessment noticed a significant or at least noticeable trend in the safety-conscious behavior of their employees?

It is difficult to change personality. That’s why 80% of all New Year’s resolutions never work. Real change is very difficult and requires a lot of effort and concentration. We therefore suggest applying this assessment to preselection in order to avoid hiring people with demonstrably high security risks. When used as a development tool in the field, it can see exactly where more attention needs to be given on an individual basis. For example, “What are the weaknesses of a colleague?” In the beginning, the employees must learn to understand themselves, for which we must give honest feedback. Once they understand why they are in danger (some points are harder to understand than others), then the company can start with a development program or individual safety coaching. It also gives the company the opportunity to redesign certain groups: bringing together safety-conscious individuals and persons who are not secure. People with a high level of security usually help the other team members to raise their awareness, especially if they have proven to be self-learners.

The results are easily perceptible and easy to quantify: before we install our program, we observe injuries at work or worse. After screening our employees through our review process, we have achieved excellent results with lower injury rates and fewer fatalities. In total, European companies save about 64 million in operating costs and just under 1,700 production days due to fewer accidents.

• What are the most common reactions or feedback from workers who have gone through the safety assessment? (For example, do you tend to accept or reject it?)

This is my favorite part in this program. Usually, when we give feedback (especially after they do not even understand what the questions are for sure), we often hear first, “Who told you that about me?” A certain amount of anxiety or resistance to this “weird” situation exists every time before the feedback starts. But as soon as we share our insights, almost all participants open up relatively quickly. They find our observations fascinating and amazed how accurate our review can be. Once they understand that the result suit them, we can evaluate what should change in this respect, which usually works very well.

• Are there any disadvantages to safety assessments?

I would say, “No, no way.” The process will require some internal “marketing,” especially if the company has to negotiate with unions in this context. In development situations, it’s not about getting rid of the low scorers, but about building their security awareness, with the bonus of having fewer injuries, which should be in everyone’s interest.

• Which culture-specific differences should be considered when implementing and carrying out a safety assessment?

We use the same skills all over the world. In addition, our standards in this case are geared towards a world population. Most of our reports can be normalized in a number of ways: for example, if a company wishes to complete the questionnaire in Polish and receive the report in French Canadian, then we can easily do so as nearly 60 languages ​​are offered in our system.

• Will more and more companies use this safety assessment in the coming years?

Twenty years ago, when we started to realize bigger projects, safety was one of the most common areas for this assessment. Our company has grown organically since then, as has the use of these reports.

*This was originally published as a two-part series via Zukunft Personal Blog on June 5 and June 11. It includes a guest article authored by Zsolt Feher, as well as a Q&A piece with the author.

Are you already Hogan Certified but want to further hone your interpretation or feedback skills? Hogan has you covered.

Earlier this year, Hogan expanded its Global Learning offerings to include the Hogan Advanced Interpretation Workshop and the Hogan Advanced Feedback Workshop. Both workshops were introduced because of popular demand based on survey results from newly Hogan Certified users.

The one-day Hogan Advanced Interpretation Workshop was designed for practitioners looking to gain deeper interpretive insights from Hogan Assessment data. This course teaches professionals to:

• Connect Hogan data points across scales and assessments for more robust interpretations
• Extract maximum value from subscales
• Learn advanced interpretation techniques around low HDS and low MVPI scores

Skills acquired in this applied workshop prepare attendees to analyze Hogan data at a deeper level.

The one-day Hogan Advanced Feedback Workshop was designed for practitioners who wish to receive more extensive instruction and practice delivering effective Hogan feedback. This course teaches professionals to:

• Deliver Hogan feedback within a cohesive frame
• Apply best practices for Hogan feedback delivery
• Troubleshoot common issues, such as resistance to feedback
• Connect assessment results to job context
• Create developmental action plans

Skills acquired in this experiential workshop prepares participants to deliver high-impact Hogan feedback.

The remaining Hogan Advanced Interpretation Workshops in the US in 2019 include:

• Minneapolis, MN – September 12
• Portland, OR – September 19
• Washington, DC – September 26
• Chicago, IL – October 24
• Dallas, TX – November 14
• Atlanta, GA – December 5
• Portland, OR – December 5

The remaining Hogan Advanced Feedback Workshops in the US in 2019 include:

• Minneapolis, MN – September 12
• Washington, DC – September 26
• Chicago, IL – October 24
• Dallas, TX – November 14
• Atlanta, GA – December 5

For those who are not Hogan Certified, two-day Hogan Assessment Certification Workshops will be held during the two days prior to each advanced workshop in all host cities. Each of the two, one-day advanced workshops are also available upon request for those who have previously completed the Hogan Assessment Certification Workshop. Hogan Certified users can email training@hoganassessments.com to register for an advanced workshop separately.

For more information, visit www.hogancertification.com.

*This post was authored by ThreeFish Consulting.

ThreeFish Consulting, the authorized distributor for Hogan Assessments in India, welcomed back Ryan Ross, Managing Partner of Hogan Assessments, for a series of three client events across the country to provide thought leadership around the Science of Personality.

The first stop on the tour was in Pune in the western part of the country. The ThreeFish Breakfast Roundtable on July 30^th at the JW Marriott was well attended by Hogan Users and a wider audience from a range of industries who were interested in learning more about Hogan and the Science of Personality. This was a great “launch” event for Pune as it was the first time ThreeFish-Hogan held a client event in the city. “The growth of ThreeFish into Pune marks an important milestone – while support has existed in the local market for several years, Pune-based businesses are demanding quality assessments, and Threefish is equipped to meet their need” said Ryan. Given the mixture of current and potential clients, Ryan’s talk focused on the link between personality, leadership, and organizational performance. Elaborating on the view, ‘Who you are is how you lead’, Ryan said “it was such a great event, the way the audience engages in such a lively and smart conversation is one of the best things about being in India. Too often participants are quiet or shy, but not in Pune. It was a thrill from a presenter’s standpoint.“ The engaged audience had a lively conversation around how our personality affects the way we think, behave, make decisions, and build relations, ultimately impacting our performance.

After wrapping up in Pune, the team was off to the ‘Garden City of India,’ Bangalore, wheree we hosted the next Breakfast Roundtable on July 31. It was a warm gathering with Hogan users from both corporate and independent practitioners. There was a lot of excitement in the community to participate in a ThreeFish-Hogan gathering given the long gap since the last event. Ryan’s talk, ‘Chasing Leadership Trends – a Recipe for Disaster’, discussed two key macro trends in leadership hiring – ‘short-termism’ which leads to the celebrity CEO and ‘trend-chasing’, where our knowledge on effective leadership is often ignored. Ryan talked about the “multiplier effect” of good and bad leadership across the organization, drawing attention to Laissez Faire leadership. Reflecting on leadership from the lens of the led, Ryan elaborated on what employees actually want from their leaders, which are the four core aspects of effective leadership: Integrity, Inspiration, Competence, and Vision. The talk was a success with the Bangalore audience and was reflected in the lingering conversations over a cup of “chai” and the buzz that followed. “Bangalore is such a smart market, it is an established market, and one in which practitioners are not only implementing current practices, but being bullish about introducing cutting edge ideas,” Ryan said after the event. 

Then, it was off to the premier event, the TechHR Conference 2019 in Gurgaon hosted by People Matters where Hogan-ThreeFish were Gold Sponsors. There was a packed hall on the main stage for Ryan’s session entitled, ‘Bright and Shiny or B.S. – The Role of AI in Talent Acquisition.’ Ryan acknowledged that digital innovations and advances in AI have produced a range of novel talent identification and assessment tools which promise to help organizations improve talent acquisition capabilities. However, he raised the important question of whether these are indeed bright and shiny promises that can propel HR into the digital playing field, or BS promises that are overhyped, over-promising, and perhaps even dangerous to the future of the organization?  Ryan shared his perspective that AI, big data, deep learning all have the potential to help but we must use our ethics and beliefs to guide the future. ‘Bright and Shiny’ can be cool, until it rusts. Ryan’s advice was to choose wisely. The question he posed the audience was “Just because we can, should we?” The immediate discussions among the audience were proof that the question was still very much a subject for debate.

“I have been traveling to India for over a decade,” said Ryan.  “It is such an amazing country with immeasurable potential.  Honestly the amount of skill and talent in the HR/OD space is somewhat intimidating. That said, because India believes in data, it is quite easy to strike up a conversation about assessments and personality – because this is a market that understands assessment has a job to do – that is predict performance.”

Do us a favor. Go to Google and search for the term “mental toughness.” Then click on “news” to see the latest news on mental toughness. We can almost guarantee that you will find an article published within the past three days. Doing this exercise on August 6, 2019 yielded the results on the right.

The point is, people – particularly sports coaches and athletes – talk about mental toughness as a key ingredient for success virtually all the time. Clearly, the concept of mental toughness is of wide interest and importance. But what is mental toughness exactly and how is it related to personality? A few years ago, we set out to investigate this question. Last week, our findings were published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. In this post, we summarize the key results.

Locating Mental Toughness

Although scholars define mental toughness in slightly different ways, they all agree that mental toughness includes self-confidence, competitiveness, and emotional control. As such, our goal was not to try to determine which definition is correct, but rather to understand how the core of mental toughness was related to standard personality instruments.

To do so, we had nearly 500 participants – including 90 current or former collegiate athletes – complete an assessment of mental toughness and several normal personality assessments including the HEXACO-60, the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), and the Hogan Development Survey (HDS). The mental toughness questionnaire asked participants the degree to which they agreed with statements like “I have unshakeable confidence in my ability,” and “I am committed to completing the tasks I have to do.”

Next, we used machine learning techniques to determine the degree to which we could reproduce scores on the measure of mental toughness based only on scores on the personality assessments. We found that we could reproduce an individual’s mental toughness scores with a very high degree of accuracy (r = .70), indicating that mental toughness is a part of personality. Moreover, we found that mental toughness is made up of several dimensions of the HEXACO model of personality: parts of extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotionality. People high on mental toughness tended to endorse items related to pushing for results, having high energy levels, and having a high degree of self-confidence.

We found an even more direct link between mental toughness and the HPI. Specifically, the core components of the Ambition scale (Competitive, Self-Confident, Accomplishment, and Leadership) were strongly associated with mental toughness scores. In terms of the HDS, we found that a combination of subscales stemming from Excitable, Cautious, Bold, Imaginative, and even Dutiful were most related to mental toughness.

Summary

Mental toughness is found everywhere in the world of sports, and for good reason. Scores on mental toughness measures predict performance in Australian football, cricket, gymnastics, soccer, and tennis. Beyond this, mental toughness also predicts performance in non-athletic contexts. Our data show that mental toughness is not outside the scope of personality. In fact, using standard personality assessments, we can accurately reproduce one’s score on a mental toughness measure.

*This post was authored by Georgi P. Yankov of Development Dimensions International and Ryne Sherman.

At Hogan, we talk a lot about derailers and the dark side of personality. When the pressure’s on, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear — drive becomes ruthless ambition, attention to detail becomes micromanaging, perceptiveness turns to cynicism, etc. The dark side of personality derails careers and companies, but it doesn’t have to.

The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) describes the dark side of personality – the qualities that emerge in times of increased strain that can disrupt relationships, damage reputations, and derail peoples’ chance of success. But, how do these situations play out in the workplace? What kind of behaviors should you be on the lookout for? And, most importantly, how do you derail?

In this video, co-workers Kevin, Tina, Diego, Janice, and Lawrence give us an up-close look at the Dark Side of personality. For more information, visit www.howdoyouderail.com.

*This post was authored by Ryne Sherman and Brandon Ferrell.

A recently published study suggests that some of the most common personality assessments (i.e., one’s based on the Big 5) don’t work in other countries. The study was published in a prestigious journal (Science Advances, impact factor > 12), and it has already gained prominent media attention. One outlet said that these personality tests don’t hold up around the world. NPR said that personality tests don’t reveal the real you. Reading these articles might make you conclude that personality assessments just can’t be used in other countries. Fortunately, despite what the economists who contributed to the article and the journalists who are covering it might have you believe, such a conclusion is just wrong. In what follows, we show you why.

Comparing Assessments Across Borders and Languages

If you had a rod that measures 1 meter in Australia, but 2 meters in Kenya, you have a big problem. Clearly, the term “1 meter” doesn’t mean the same thing in different locations or different languages. As a principle of measurement, you want to be sure that whatever you are measuring in one location (or one language) is the same thing that you are measuring in another. In terms of personality assessment, comparing countries (or languages) absolutely requires that the assessments are used in the same fashion across countries and languages. Psychologists use a metric called the congruence coefficient to determine the degree to which instruments are measuring the same thing. Scores on the metric can range from -1.00 to +1.00, with higher scores indicating greater similarity. The accepted standard for declaring the instruments as similar is a congruence coefficient > .84. The recently published study found average congruence coefficients of .73 and .71 in survey data gathered in so-called non-WEIRD countries (e.g., Kenya, Philippines, Colombia, etc.).

Hogan Data

At Hogan, we conduct more than 1 million personality assessments per year with data coming from more than 100 countries, in 47 languages, all around the world. Our assessments are completed by working adults who are either applying for jobs, or as part of their current job’s developmental curriculum. Our flagship measure of personality, the Hogan Personality Inventory, measures 7 personality characteristics that are closely related to the Big 5. In examining our archive, we identified 52 countries with sufficient HPI data to conduct the exact same analysis conducted by the economists. Here is what we find across the 52 countries:

Table 1. Average Congruence Coefficient for 52 Countries on the HPI.

Every single country exceeds the .84 threshold for similarity. The lowest congruence coefficient we found was for Peru (.90). As a direct comparison with the recently published work, we find much higher congruence coefficients for Kenya (.96 vs. .71), Colombia (.91 vs. .72), Philippines (.96 vs. .72), and Serbia (.97 vs. .79). These results are in stark contrast to the conclusions drawn by popular media: high quality personality assessments work – and measures exactly what we think it is measuring – in other countries and languages all around the globe. 

We Aren’t the Only Ones

In 2002, a book chapter by Rolland reported average congruence coefficients of .92 with French and .93 with U.S. English across 15 different countries (including non-WEIRD countries: Malaysia, Korean, Philippines, & China). The most comprehensive published research of this question to date found an average congruence coefficient of .93 across 50 different countries (including Turkey, Serbia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Kuwait, Philippines, Russia, China, India, Malaysia, Botswana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Uganda, & Morocco; which collectively averaged .91). Another paper by De Fruyt and colleagues extended this analysis to adolescents, reporting an average congruence coefficient of .92 across 24 different countries (including Malaysia, Serbia, South Korea, Japan Iran, Thailand, Hong Kong, Turkey, China, and Uganda; which collectively averaged .90).

The point here is this: the largest, most comprehensive studies and databases speaking to the universality of personality factor structures have all come to the conclusions that these personality dimensions are universal. So why did this recent study come to the opposite conclusion?

So…What’s Wrong with that Study?

Research published in academic journals typically must go through a rigorous (and at times, somewhat arbitrary) review process. This involves subjecting the research to review by external experts in the field who scrutinize the work for potential errors and mistakes. Despite this process, it is sometimes the case that flawed work, or flawed conclusions, slip through the cracks. Such is the case with the article in question here. There are two critical problems.

First, the analyses and conclusions of this paper rest on data gathered using a 15-item measure of personality. The 15 items are a subset of items from a medium-length (but well-validated) 44-item measure of personality, known as the Big Five Inventory. It is not clear how these 15 items were chosen (as part of a larger survey), or their psychometric properties. However, it is clear that short measures of personality frequently show poor results. By comparison, studies demonstrating the universality of personality structures (including our own data) used longer, and undeniably far superior, measures of personality. Thus, the results of this study could be adequately summarized as garbage in, garbage out.

Second, the study in question regularly notes that many of the people surveyed had trouble understanding the questions they were being asked, in some cases it was not clear that the participants were even literate. It should come as no surprise that if people cannot read, or understand, the items on a personality assessment that their responses to the questions are necessarily nonsense. If responses to a personality assessment are effectively random, it is certain that there will be no congruence. Further, if even only a sizable proportion of the respondents cannot read the questionnaire but respond anyway, this will necessarily drive congruence coefficients down, perhaps even below the threshold for similarity. By comparison purposes, the participants in all of the studies demonstrating the universality of personality structures were educated well-enough to read and understand the questionnaires. Put another way, the results of this study demonstrate that if people cannot read your test, they will not respond in logically coherent ways.

Summary

In summary, the sky is not falling for personality assessment. The evidence, to date, overwhelmingly demonstrates that the Big 5 personality structure is universal. When high-quality measures of personality are used, and the respondents can read and understand the questions, the structure of personality looks incredibly similar across culture and language. It is far more likely that this study’s failure to replicate this structural similarity is due to poor data quality rather than the outlandish notion that personality structures are different in non-WEIRD cultures.

RELEVANT Managementberatung, an authorized Hogan distributor in Germany, recently hosted its JAM SESSION titled ‘New Leadership? Authentic in Turbulent Times’ with more than 100 attendees on July 4 at the Klassikstadt in Frankfurt. The purpose of the event was to bring clients, HR professionals, and business leaders together to jointly discuss opportunities and risks of leadership in the context of new work.

RELEVANT partnered with Odgers Berndtson to host the event, which featured the following speakers:

• Dr. Robert Hogan, Hogan Assessments – Dr. Hogan spoke to the crowd about how humility outperforms charisma when it comes to effective leadership.
• Dr. Scott Gregory, CEO, Hogan Assessments – Dr. Gregory served as a speaker of one of five breakout sessions. His discussion focused on the science of personality and how to derive value from big data. The other four sessions featured representatives from CMS Legal, Fondsdepot Bank, Beiersdorf, and Daimler.
• Dr. Niklas Friedrich, Vodafone – Dr. Friedrich, who serves as Vodafone’s Head of People & Organizational Strategy, presented to the crowd about Vodafone’s initiative to “futurize leadership” across the organization.
• Marcus Reif, HR expert, speaker and blogger – Mr. Reif spoke about “how to stay relevant in turbulent times” before the official agenda was concluded and the networking continued.

Dr. René Kusch of RELEVANT Managementberatung and Daniel Nerlich of Odgers Berndtson served as facilitators and hosts for the event, creating an atmosphere of curiosity, ease, fun, and sagacity. Thus, attendees who had just met easily engaged in meaningful conversations, laughed together, and challenged each other’s thinking. Dr. René Kusch, initiator of the JAM SESSION said that “There were vivid interactions throughout the entire event, and a heightened common understanding that personality always is the stable factor in turbulent times was palpable. Attendees came to know how to use Hogan for the recruiting and development of leaders and teams.”

Following the event was a celebratory “Dinner with the Hogans,” attended by the RELEVANT team, Hogan’s Managing Director for Europe Zsolt Feher, Dr. Hogan, and Wendy Hogan. The group dined in Frankfurt’s city center, talking shop, sharing personal stories, and enjoying fine cuisine.

Feedback from participants who attended the event was overwhelmingly positive. The event has already led to significant business development opportunities, with people interested in learning more about humility and also how they can get Hogan-certified. Overall, the event was a huge success, and we owe our appreciation to RELEVANT and Odgers Berndtson for making it a reality. Prost!