Awair, an authorized Hogan distributor in Italy, Spain, and France, hosted an event on November 14 in Milan attended by nearly 50 members of the Italian community of Hogan Certified talent management experts. The lively session allowed participants to network, expand their knowledge of Hogan competencies, and to share experiences. 

Over the years, the community of certified people has been growing significantly, and many of the participants have shown interest in meeting and exchanging ideas. With facilitation by Andrea Facchini, Awair Partner and Hogan expert, Awair launched the first Italian Hogan Certified Community, with a remarkable turnout of people ready to share their Hogan knowledge at the November 14 event.

During the meeting, Andrea introduced three main topics requested by participants via survey (Report Selection: How to choose the most appropriate Hogan product. Feedback & delivery: Sharing success and stories and lessons learned, as well as tips for more creative and efficient feedback. Report interpretation: How to handle critical profiles and to look at interdimensional conflicts from a different angle) and then opened the floor to the participants for continued interaction and discussion.

The benefits of being part of the community include:

1. Keeping your Hogan knowledge up-to-date
2. Advancing by learning from practical, real examples
3. Meeting like-minded people, listening, and sharing experiences
4. Expanding your professional network

For those who are not certified, Hogan Certification allows attendees to develop a deep knowledge and understanding of the tools. By leveraging the predictive power, use of the assessments can boost organizational performance by identifying and addressing both the individual and the organizational development areas. But that’s not all: Hogan Certification provides participants with a set of skills that changes their way of looking at the nature of human nature.

Awair has organized Hogan Certification Programs in Milano and Roma since 2015, and has certified over 400 HR experts, including HR professionals at several levels, as well as talent management consultants, coaches, and psychologists.

The meeting on November 14 was a pilot and the feedback was so positive and enthusiastic that more meetings have been scheduled for 2019 in Italy. Also, keep an eye out for the launch of a Hogan Certified Community in France and Spain as well.

Nicole Neubauer, CEO of metaBeratung, an official Hogan distributor in Europe, was recently featured at Rethink! HR Tech Europe in Berlin along with members of her team. Neubauer presented on the importance of valid assessments during the conference.

The event, attended by more than 150 CHROs and HR decision-makers from renowned European companies such as Siemens, Daimler, and SAP, is considered one of Europe’s leading HR summits.

Presenting alongside Neubauer was Lidija Sljeric, senior talent manager at Mondi AG. Over the past two years, metaBeratung has worked alongside Mondi to implement new, cutting-edge processes for employee selection and development by integrating Hogan’s assessments. The project’s success was directly responsible for the selection of Neubauer and Sljeric as featured presenters at the event.

“Rethink! HR Tech Europe offered us the perfect venue and audience to talk about the work we have undertaken with our friends at Mondi,” said Neubauer. “The need for valid personality assessment in the workplace has never been greater, and this provided us with an opportunity to share that message with some of Europe’s leading HR executives.”

Also attending were Neubauer’s Director, Simone Pelzer, and Associate, Kerstin Danzl, who represented metaBeratung’s booth at the event. By doing so, the two helped the company project a strong presence among an international audience of key influencers in the HR industry.

“I’m so fortunate to have such a talented and vibrant team that works tirelessly to accomplish our goal of improving the European workforce,” said Neubauer. “But most importantly, they understand how to have fun throughout the process. That’s what makes my job so rewarding.”

Rethink! HR Tech Europe allowed CHROs and other HR executives to discuss key industry topics, share knowledge, create new partnerships, and identify opportunities for their business. Key topics featured included HR Digitalization, HR Technologies, recruitment, agile change management, and more.

RELEVANT Management Consulting, an official Hogan distributor in Germany, and the German chapter of the International Coach Federation presented the inaugural German Prism Award to CMS Law Tax, an international law firm with 74 offices worldwide.

The award, modeled after the ICF’s International Prism Award, is given to organizations with programs that make a difference in the coaching community through professionalism, quality, and sustainability.

“We are very proud to be supported by an extraordinary jury of several well-known experts in the coaching industry in Germany,” said Dr. Geertje Tutschka, ACC, president of ICF Germany.

Dr. René Kusch, owner of RELEVANT, explained why CMS was chosen as the winner of this prestigious award.

“We are honored to recognize CMS Law Tax as the first winner of the German Prism Award,” said Kusch. “The purpose of this award is to feature organizations that take a cutting-edge approach to their coaching programs, which made CMS the clear choice among a strong group of nominees. They have shown their success by developing a robust coaching culture.”

The nominees represented a variety of industries, and each were tasked with providing insight into how their coaching programs contributed to the achievement of important corporate goals and advanced the coaching profession.

“More and more organizations are implementing coaching programs as part of their training and development processes,” said Tutschka. “Our goal was to identify the organization that truly set itself apart from the competition, and CMS Law Tax did just that with the Partner Peak Performance Program (PPP) for their leaders and designated ‘rainmakers.’”

Although this is the first year in which the German Prism Award was presented, Kusch said RELEVANT is already looking forward to 2019.

“Working together with ICF Germany in order to present this award is a mutually beneficial relationship for all parties involved,” said Kusch. “The ICF is the world’s premier coaching organization, and we are privileged to be involved in the early stages of such a prestigious distinction for German coaching programs.”

Applications for the 2019 Prism Award 2019 will be accepted in Spring of 2019 at www.coachingtag.com.

Opinions on President Donald Trump run strong, to say the least. Whether you believe he will make America great again or single-handedly destroy it, there’s one aspect of Trump everyone can agree on – he knows how to dominate the news.

The days are few and far between that the top political news doesn’t revolve around Trump. He hasn’t been shy about denouncing his opponents, publicizing his successes, and hosting endless campaign rallies. Are Trump’s efforts simply honest attempts to advance his agenda? Or are they a reflection of his personal ego?

Hogan researchers have developed a new assessment we plan on making available soon — the Hogan Humility Scale. It measures how well people spotlight others’ contributions, admit mistakes, show openness to feedback, see themselves as no better than others, and refrain from boasting and arrogant behaviors. We figured a fun way to put the Humility Scale through its paces would be for people to rate their own humility and Trump’s humility, then compare the two.

For this study we collected ratings anonymously from 229 individuals – 102 that identified as Democrats, 46 as Republicans, 76 as Independents and five that chose “other” via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Though we asked them to rate Trump’s humility in October, they used our assessments in the late spring to determine their individual Humility scores.

When we put together this study, we expected Republicans to report similar levels of humility between themselves and Trump due to high identification with the Republican party and Trump himself. Conversely, we expected Democrats to dissociate themselves from Trump as much as possible and report a wide gap between their own humility and Trump’s humility.

But that’s not quite what happened. On average, all our participants rated Trump’s humility at 13 out of a possible 60, which was quite low. While Democrats rated Trump even lower with an average humility score of 9, Republicans only gave Trump an average humility score of 21. Compared to typical U.S. participants completing our Hogan Humility Scale, both Democrat and Republican ratings of Trump’s humility landed at the 0th percentile. In other words, almost no one taking our assessments ever obtains humility scores this low. Although Republicans rated Trump as more humble than Democrats did, virtually everyone in our sample agreed that humility is not Trump’s forte.

We know from past research that humility is an important predictor of performance, so we also asked participants if they approved of Trump’s performance, and if they would vote for Trump if the election were tomorrow. We found that Perceived Trump Humility was strongly and positively related to both. In other words, those who thought Trump was higher on humility tended to rate Trump as more effective in office and were more likely to vote for his reelection. Likewise, those who thought Trump was less humble tended to provide lower ratings of his performance and fewer intentions to vote for him.

Next, we examined Republicans’ and Democrats’ own humility levels. We originally expected Republicans to align themselves closer to Trump and place less importance on humility. Instead, both Republicans and Democrats averaged humility scores of 41, which was at the 56^th percentile — close to the average score for everyone who has ever taken the Humility assessment. Despite the vast political divide between the parties on individual issues, Democrats and Republicans both saw themselves as moderate regarding humility, and both parties’ humility ratings were significantly higher than Trump’s.

The huge gap between Trump’s humility and personal humility in the study was striking, especially for Republicans. Even with their low perception of Trump’s humility, almost three-quarters of them plan to vote for Trump again. It is possible that Republicans hold Trump to a different standard than they see themselves, or simply view him as the best available option due to party loyalty or specific political issues.

Whatever the reason, our study showed strong differences between Democrats and Republicans in their perception of Trump. But even though the heated political wars that play out on cable news make hope for common ground feel slight, the two sides at least have their own humility in common.

Most of you probably know Hogan Assessments was founded by Bob Hogan, and he’s been our guiding force to this day. But how well do you really know him? Did you know his original background was in physics and engineering? Or that his interest in leadership came from leading a janitorial crew for properties owned by Hollywood elite, followed by finding a way to fix cannons for the U.S. Navy? What about his work as a probation officer, which lead to a study of how to solve the problem of crime?

In this video, you’ll get to hear more about Bob Hogan’s colorful life, as well as his thoughts on how psychology works to understand leadership, and his advice for undergraduate psychology majors.

*This is a guest blog post authored by Melvyn Payne, Commercial Director at Advanced People Strategies.

I am privileged to work on a regular basis with leadership teams from a wide variety of backgrounds – both public and private sector. The big question that is usually being considered is “how do we become a high performing team?” 

These teams are usually made up of talented and successful individuals, and, typically, those same individuals expect their stakeholders to see the team as effective at what they do. 

When asked, team members can easily articulate what they would see as the characteristics of a high performing team and, equally, the key risks that cause a team to become dysfunctional, such as a breakdown of trust. 

So why is it that these groups of smart, experienced individuals, who clearly understand what might take the team’s performance to a different level, not take action? 

While most team members collectively agree they want to improve overall performance, there can often be a disconnect between what needs to change collectively and with what motivates the individuals – their personal values and ambitions. 

Consider two recent teams. Both identified similar issues which, if resolved, might take them to a higher performance level. The issues were the need for more open communication and the willingness to hold each other accountable. 

While the issues are the same, the teams themselves were very different. The first team is made up of engineers who need to collaborate on significant international projects. The second is a team of senior HR leaders looking to make a bigger impact on their organization. 

In the case of the engineers, assessment showed the majority are comfortable working independently and enjoy focusing on solving technical challenges. This meant that at a personal level there was less motivation to spend time talking to colleagues, especially about issues that might be more emotive. 

With the HR leaders, the majority value working with people – supporting and helping others in their work. In comparison, this may seem to lend itself to more communication. However, there was a reticence to challenge each other as this might appear confrontational. 

Both groups needed to understand the link between their personal and collective values, behaviors, and potential derailers to develop the ability to enhance interactions and focus on outcomes. High performance doesn’t happen by chance! 

Higher performance usually means more effort, and this requires commitment. It can be difficult to be committed to actions that seem counter to something we value or enjoy. In the case of teams, where people often share common values, this risk is amplified. In the complex world of improving team performance, do we always remember to align the collective ambition and expected team behaviors to what also engages and motivates team members at a personal level?

Political passions are running white-hot in the United States right now. Between Supreme Court nominations, immigration, racial issues, and health care, both sides of the political spectrum are fighting fiercely to win. It’s easy to believe we’re more divided than ever.

With so much at stake, you’d hope the most qualified candidates would rise to the top. Let’s just say that doesn’t always happen. Far too often, people will elect candidates with low qualifications, unworkable ideas, and downright questionable mental capabilities such as (insert the name of an elected official you personally don’t like here).

Since analyzing job fit is what we do, we started wondering what the ideal characteristics of a successful, generic, non-partisan politician would be. However, researchers have produced few studies examining work-specific personality aspects of U.S. politicians, and we didn’t want to just dictate our idea of the ideal politician. This is a democracy, after all.

That’s why Hogan researchers Michael Tapia and Chase Winterberg turned to the American people. The two set out to determine what characteristics and competencies the public wanted from politicians in general, and whether they varied by political affiliation. To do that, they surveyed people about their perception of an ideal politician using Hogan’s Job Evaluation Tool, which incorporates the full spectrum of personality scales we use to predict work-related performance.

Long story short, the study found there’s not a big difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to their preferred characteristics of elected officials. Both parties associated high political job performance with high scores on Ambition, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Prudence, and Learning Approach. Participants identified Imaginative and Dutiful as top elected official derailers. Commerce, Power, Affiliation, and Science were voted the top values for elected officials.

Overall, Republicans and Democrats showed an 83% overlap over the top-12 rated competencies. Though there are some differences, the strong overlap is a powerful contradiction to the perceived differences in today’s political arenas. Despite the widening political divide, we feel it is possible to create a universal standard for judging elected official job fit.

But if that’s the case, why can’t Democrats and Republicans agree on, well, anything? Tapia and Winterberg argue that gulf arose due to a political system that ignores job-related competence and focuses on conflict rather than resolution. Would showing the public there’s a clear consensus on the ideal politician personality help close that gap? If nothing else, it’s more productive than arguing politics with strangers on the Internet yet again.

In this era of Big Data, simply producing or collecting nearly unfathomable amounts of data isn’t enough. The best companies are able to sift through that data to find meaningful trends and, ultimately, specific information that sparks a plan of action.

In the rush to harness that data for job selection, numerous companies are turning to experimental AI and machine learning to discover new forms of data collection and new types of analysis human beings might not be capable of. But not all new methods of data collection are created equal. If set up incorrectly, AI data analysis can go horribly wrong – just ask Amazon.

The Internet giant decided to harness its computing power and expertise to create a job screening program that would scan an applicant’s resume and determine if an applicant is suitable. A person familiar with the effort told Reuters the goal was for the program to receive 100 resumes and spit out the top five.

In order to teach this program how to screen candidates, it was fed resumes submitted tothe company over the last decade. In theory, the program would learn what resume terms lead to successful candidates and which terms lead to rejection. In reality, the program learned to reject female candidates.

The show-stopping side effect was the result of Amazon’s own hiring patterns – most of Amazon’s employees are male. Based on that set of data, the program taught itself that male candidates were preferable. Resumes that included the word “women’s” or the names of all-women colleges were downgraded. Since there was no guarantee the program wouldn’t find other blatantly discriminatory ways to reject candidates, executives pulled the plug.

In short, Amazon’s mistake in this experiment was using biased criterion to judge the resumes, and then give the program free reign. Ryne Sherman, chief science officer at Hogan summed up Amazon’s problem:

“If the criteria are deficient, contaminated, or otherwise systematically biased, big data algorithms will pick up the bias and run with it.”

Today’s supercomputers are immensely powerful and capable of amazing feats. They’re also unfailingly literal. No matter how much power you’re working with, if you set up bad parameters, you’ll get a bad result. Amazon’s mistake was easy to find, but even subtle mistakes made by emerging job screening technology can lead to catastrophic results.

The key takeaway from Amazon’s failure is that big data still needs a human touch. Any type of analysis requires clearly-defined parameters before the supercomputers are even turned on in order to eliminate bias or any other type of noise. Start gathering data without a structure, and your efforts will be wasted.

At Hogan, our assessments were built from the ground up to be free of bias. Even though the database we use to determine scoring and job fit has grown to millions of assessments and has become ever more complex, our results remain valid because of the assessments’ focused structure. In fact, company founders Drs. Joyce and Robert Hogan were inspired to create the company in part out of a desire to eliminate bias from assessments.

Today, amateur and professional trolls work to stir up arguments and divisiveness. Casual social media discussions frequently devolve into arguments with all kinds of questionable bits of information casually thrown around like wadded-up paper balls. Did the Pope really endorse Donald Trump? Is Kid Rock really running for Senate? Time to run to a fact-checking website – but how many people will trust what they say?

It’s enough to turn anyone into a skeptic. And our research on global personality trends shows more people are becoming skeptical, largely due to this contentious atmosphere. As you can see on the graph, average skepticism scores from the Hogan Development Survey have steadily increased nearly every year since 2002. On the other side of the coin, our research team noted skepticism was much lower in 2001 and 2002, potentially due to recent events such as the 9-11 terrorist attack that had an impact on people around the globe. It is possible that, on average, the trauma of the event caused people to become more supportive of their government, at least temporarily.

At healthy levels, skepticism can be a virtue that prevents you from falling for harmful hoaxes and scams. Some of the best business leaders regularly harness their skepticism to steer clear of overly-risky schemes or emailed phishing attempts. But, since the HDS is the only personality assessment that delves into the dark side of human personality, we also know the negative effects of skepticism.

As you navigate the information wars, here are some behaviors to watch out for in yourself (or the family member arguing with you during Thanksgiving dinner):

• High cynicism: assumption others have bad ulterior motives, overly negative, quarrelsome.
• High mistrust: generalized mistrust of people and institutions, worrisome, alert for signs of perceived mistreatment.
• Holding grudges: unwilling to forgive real or perceived wrongs, unsympathetic, fault-finding.

If you find yourself assuming the worst and becoming that argumentative jerk no one wants to talk to, it’s time to step back. Here are some developmental recommendations:

• Recognize that the world is not made up of purely “heroes” and “villains,” and that most people have at least some good intentions.
• Realize that others’ actions aren’t necessarily attempts to demean, frustrate, or take advantage of you.
• Build confidence in others by confiding in them and realizing they will not use such information against you.

*This post was authored by Hogan’s Michael Tapia, Dena Rhodes, and Ryne Sherman.

The New Zealand All Blacks is one of the most successful sports organizations of all time. For over a century they dominated the world stage as a premier member of the international rugby union, competing with such foes as the South Africa Springboks and Australia Wallabies. In 2015, the All Blacks became the repeat champions of the quadrennial Rugby World Cup (2011 and 2015). Even more astonishing, the success of New Zealand Rugby persists across squads. New Zealand’s women’s (Black Ferns) and men’s (All Blacks) Rugby Sevens teams both won the 2018 Rugby Sevens World Cup held in San Francisco.

The achievements of the All Blacks have yielded global recognition and a collection of media projects exploring the methods behind their success. This includes the documentary All or Nothing and James Kerr’s book, Legacy. Kerr spent time with the team and learned about their unique culture, which he believed was essential to their dominance. According to Kerr, the key to this team’s culture is dedication to character, and “character begins with Humility.”

As the reigning world champions, the team members continuously show humility by asking themselves, “How can we do this better?” The team recognizes they must steadily evolve – a necessity to combat their opponents’ own improvements. Coaches, leaders, and players facilitate a positive learning environment in which “not knowing all the answers” is a strength, helping the team to adapt and grow.

According to James Kerr, humility is “a vital part of a well-adjusted character.” At Hogan, we know personality plays a critical role in the success and failure of organizations. For over 30 years, we’ve been describing the strengths, weaknesses, and values of effective leaders and employees. We also stay committed to using data and scientific progress to improve our assessments. In 2018, our research team created an assessment designed to predict leader Humility, which is currently in production and expected to launch in 2019. This new measure relates to greater in-role job performance (r = .35), organizational citizenship behaviors (r = .23), job satisfaction (r = .18), and engagement (r = .15), and is associated with fewer counterproductive work behaviors (r = -.29), and turnover intentions (r = -.20).

Kerr recalled one instance of superb leadership in the All Blacks locker room after a match: After a team debrief, the players left the room and the captains stayed back to clean up – they stayed to “sweep the sheds.” Humble leaders stay grounded, stay productive, and most importantly, gain the respect of their teams. In turn, selecting leaders with humility helps to safeguard future growth, achievements, and organizational success. Humility is a key personality dimension related to greater individual performance and organizational effectiveness, and Hogan is committed to delivering solutions centered around a well-validated Humility measure in the very near future.