Every office has a resident narcissist – that guy who never seems afraid to toot his own horn. But what if that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing?

Narcissistic individuals believe their own superior talent and typically resist developmental feedback. If personal development is presented as a strategy for advancing their personal agenda, however, narcissistic individuals can be persuaded to:

• Lower their expectations for special treatment, and try to accept responsibility for their occasional mistakes
• Recognize that they ignore negative feedback, and seek feedback from family, and friends who are not competitors and whose feedback is usually well-meaning
• Stop regarding team interactions as opportunities for competition in which only one person can win; remember that they real competition is outside the organization, not within it
• Realize that subordinates are most likely to be productive when they feel respected; learn how to offer positive feedback to others when they contribute
• Use their confidence, energy, and determination to motivate rather than intimidate others

It comes down to self-awareness. If you provide your employees with a realistic understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and behavioral tendencies, they can harness the positive outcomes associated with narcissism and avoid taking it overboard.

To find out more, download our ebook The Upside of Narcissism in the Workplace. 

In a recent book chapter, Hogan's Jarrett Shalhoop and Michael Sanger explore the nature of Chinese leadership through the lens of personality and values and explain how these differ from leadership styles of three countries with large trade interests in China -- the U.S., Germany and Australia. For organizations that must select managers for cross-cultural assignments, recognizing the divergent traits and behaviors inherent in Chinese managers, and how they play out with their manager, direct reports and colleagues at a similar level, is needed to ensure that individuals are placed into the right management roles.

Read the full article from Yahoo! News

 

The HR world is already atwitter with a brand new batch of buzzwords. But wait! Here are five of last year’s biggest buzzwords that will still matter in 2013. 

LEADERSHIP
“To me, there is only one talent management issue, and it never changes: leadership. What also never changes is the fact that businesses don’t understand this, which is why they put so many self-serving assholes in leadership positions.”  - Dr. Robert Hogan

After what seemed like a never-ending election cycle, the last thing anyone wants to keep talking about is leadership. But it’s something we can’t afford to ignore. Competent leadership is crucial for a company to succeed. Yet, research indicates that two-thirds of the leaders in corporate America will fail. Why? Check out this free ebook to find out.  

GAME CHANGERS
At any given organization, 20% of employees account for 80% of productivity. They are the game changers, and in 2013, companies are going to have to work hard to attract, develop, and retain employees capable of creating value and driving growth. How would Hogan do it? Download From Potential to Performance to find out. 

MULTI-GENERATION WORKFORCE
Although they aren’t necessarily the entitled slackers the media made them out to be, Millennials (Generation Y) and Digital Natives (Generation Z) work differently than older generations. Organizations need to work to separate fact from fiction when it comes to generational differences in order to leverage the experience of their older employees and build the talent bench of the future. Need a place to start? Check out this blog. 

TALENT ANALYTICS
The HR world was all abuzz with talk of Big Data last year, and rightly so; many organizations are sitting on a mountain of data about their people. This year, the challenge is for those companies to find a way to effectively analyze, understand, and leverage those data to make their organizations run better. What kind of data do we have? Check out the Hogan archive. 

ENGAGEMENT
Employee engagement matters. Engaged employees are more satisfied and more productive, and productivity ties directly to the bottom line. In 2013, we hope to see a reduction in Hawaiian-shirt Fridays and a genuine effort by organizations to identify and fix the root cause of low engagement. Here’s a hint: it’s their leaders. Want more? Check out our free white paper. 

Gossip, Reputation, and how Whispered Words Kill Careers

“It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” – Errol Flynn

From celebrity gaffes to political scandals, if we can learn something about ourselves based on what makes the news, it’s that people love a good piece of gossip. Although many people condemn gossip as slander or hearsay, a person’s reputation can have serious consequences for his or her career.

Download Sticks & Stones and find out how reputation can make or break someone in the workplace.

You manage things; you lead people.

Say you apply for a job. You take an assessment to see if you’re the right fit for the company and the role. After you join the company, you take another assessment to gauge your managerial skills. Later you may be part of a team-building exercise, which requires an entirely different assessment. Pretty soon, you’re feeling like this: 

According to senior consultant Dr. Kevin Meyer, a lot of companies are dealing with assessment overkill.

“Over time, they’ve adopted specific assessment tools for specific needs,” he said. “In theory, it’s a good approach, but when you use different tools there’s no common framework for a company to use to understand and evaluate its employees.”

Our comprehensive approach to personality assessment provides the depth and detail companies need to hire the right people, identify and develop talented individuals, build better leaders, and improve their bottom line. And because personality is stable over time, our assessments are a useful tool throughout the employee lifecycle.

To learn more, check out this video interview, or read our new eBook, Why Personality?

He’s the passive aggressor, the one with the tight-jawed smile. Sure, he’s a great guy when he gets his way, but give him an unpleasant task and he’ll drag his feet. Need him to fill out that insurance paperwork? Yeah. He’ll get right on that.

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. Although the procrastinator is outwardly pleasant and sociable, team members may be putt off by his stubbornness.

Watch this video to see the Procrastinator at work, or visit www.howdoyouderail.com to view the entire HDS video series. Follow on Twitter @ImHiLeisurely #howdoyouderail

High-Performance Strategies for Business Teams

Society tends to idolize the individual – from the star quarterback to the charismatic leaders of the modern business arena. In business, high-performing teams can achieve superior results to individuals. Yet, when the psychological roles within a team are unbalanced, even teams composed of talented individuals rarely perform to their maximum potential.

Download The Office Playbook and learn about team culture and the personalities that influence performance.

When it comes to understanding your employees, it boils down to three basic questions:

What do people want? What are the core motives, values, and interests that get them out of bed and into the office every morning?

How will they get what they want? What strengths and weaknesses do they display when they are at their best?

What will get in their way? What are their derailers, the characteristics that emerge during stress or pressure to erode relationships and derail their chances of success?

Armed with this powerful information, you can make better hires, identify and develop talented individuals, build better leaders, and impact your bottom line. To find out more, check out our recent eBook, Why Personality?

Assessments are powerful, business-critical tools that predict and monitor employee performance and multiple assessments are administered based on the different needs within the organization. Over the course of a typical year, some employees might be assessed and reassessed over and over again, causing frustration and assessment burnout for already busy employees. When organizations use multiple assessments that have no or limited correlation to each other, it also creates a glut of data that forms its very own black hole, sucking in all the information – full of redundancies – including the vital insights.

Since the variance between these assessment tools is often slight, organizations risk capturing virtually the same data in different systems that are further limiting because they are unable to talk to each other. Organization-wide, collected data filters into this black hole ensuring it is nearly impossible to compare results or pull broad-spectrum reports. As more assessments are ordered to suit emerging needs, employees and human resources professionals become frustrated. To avoid burnout and black hole syndrome, finding an alternative is imperative.

Research indicates that the solution may be easier than you realize: employ a comprehensive suite of assessment tools. Here’s how:

One Suite, Multiple Options Having a comprehensive suite allows the organization to assess employees once, using the same questions for everyone. With this concise data in hand, the organization can run multiple reports on everything from detecting leadership potential to recognizing levels of accident proneness.

Creating Consistency Collecting the same information about all employees provides a broad, deep understanding of the entire workforce.

Implementing Strategy This starts by identifying the organization’s needs (PDF) including the biggest pain point; once needs are determined a comprehensive assessment suite can be rolled out. We recommend holding a “conversion” training to help employees understand the new approach and its associated value for improving the HR lifecycle and employee experience. 

With a comprehensive assessments suite in place, organizations will see burnout diminish while the black hole gives way to a viable bank of employee data. To find out more about using a comprehensive suite of assessments, download our latest eBook, Why Personality?