You make what seems like a promising hire – good resume, relevant experience, and solid references. And, at first, her performance matches that promise.

As time wears on, however, you start to hear grumbling around the water cooler. Nobody likes to work with your new hire. Her coworkers start to pull away, her work unit shows signs of waning engagement, and her performance starts to flag. Just like that, your promising new employee turns into a nightmare. Why? Odds are, your new hire is succumbing to the dark side of her personality.

Dark side personality characteristics emerge during times of increased stress, like the often-intense pressure to perform during the first several months of employment. If unchecked, these characteristics can disrupt relationships with a person’s coworkers and subordinates, which can impede their chances at success.

The Hogan Development Survey measures dark side personality along 11 characteristics, which can be grouped into three distinct reactions to conflict:

• Moving Away From Others – People in this group manage insecurities by intimidating and avoiding others. They tend to be alert for signs of criticism, rejection, betrayal, or hostile intent. When they think they have detected threat, they react vigorously to remove it.
• Moving Against Others – People in this group expect to be liked, admired, and respected. They tend to resist acknowledging their mistakes and/or failures (which they blame on others), and they are often unable to learn from experience.
• Moving Toward Others – People in this group want to please figures of authority. As a result, they are easy to supervise, and are popular with their bosses. However, in conflict, they tend to side with authority figures rather than sticking up for their team members or subordinates.

Unfortunately, dark side personality characteristics are nearly impossible to detect in a normal hiring process, making this story all too familiar. However, you can use targeted personality assessment to identify candidates’ dark side characteristics and focus onboarding efforts to ensure that you don’t wind up with a hiring horror story.

To learn more about our approach to dealing with people’s dark side, check out our whitepaper How your Greatest Strength can Become your Greatest Weakness.

People look for four essential characteristics in leaders. In previous posts, we discussed the importance of integrity and judgment. The third and fourth essential characteristics of good leaders are competence and vision.

Good leaders are perceived as knowing what they are talking about, as being competent in the team’s business. The term “empty suit” refers to people who are in charge but don’t know what they are doing. In hunter-gatherer tribes, leaders are distinguished by their moral qualities, their judgment, and their superior hunting ability. These characteristics garner respect and loyalty from their subordinates.

Also, good leaders explain to their team the significance of their mission and how it fits into the larger scheme of things. This vision clarifies roles, goals, and the way forward, thereby facilitating team performance.

By adopting a vision, people can transcend their selfish interests and develop impersonal ends for their actions.

To learn more about the essential characteristics of good leaders, check out our free e-book, Leadership: You're Doing It Wrong.

People look for four essential characteristics in leaders.

In a previous post, we discussed the importance of integrity. The second essential characteristic people look for in leaders is judgment.

The welfare of subordinates depends on the judgment of their superiors, and some people have better judgment than others.

The success or failure of organizations depends on decision-making. Napoleon destroyed France and Hitler destroyed Germany by deciding to invade Russia in the winter, after which their armies (their subordinates) were slaughtered.    

Most business failures are the result of bad decisions that are compounded by an unwillingness to evaluate decisions and change direction.

To learn more about the four essential characteristics of good leaders, check out our free e-book, Leadership: You're Doing It Wrong.

The Impact of Values on Team Dynamics and Corporate Culture

Ever feel like someone is pushing you to be someone you’re not? You might be a victim of unconscious biases. Because values are an inherent part of our personality, many leaders are unaware of the kinds of values they hold, and how their values affect their subordinates. Through values assessment, leaders become more aware of the facets in their personality that might negatively affect workplace relationships.

Download The Power of Unconscious Biases and learn how the projection of an individual’s values onto others is having an impact on your workplace relationships.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Leadership is the ability to build and maintain a team that can outperform the competition. Therefore a good leader must be someone others are willing to follow.

People look for four essential characteristics in leaders, the first of which is integrity.

People need to know that the person in charge won’t take advantage of his or her position—won’t lie, steal, play favorites, or betray subordinates. Unfortunately, many do.

Integrity is the most important characteristic of good leaders. In our survey of more than 1,000 individuals, 81% said trustworthiness was the most important personality characteristic of their best boss. Conversely, 50% described their worst boss as deceitful.

Trust in one’s superior is essential, and predicts the entire range of desirable organizational outcomes: productivity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Once subordinates lose trust in their leaders, the relationship can never be repaired, and they are likely to remain outside the circle of trust.

To read more about the essential characteristics of good leaders, check out our free e-book, The Hogan Leadership Model.

Steve Jobs is arguably one of the most successful businessmen in modern times. He started Apple and NeXT, took a majority ownership stake in Pixar for $10M and after ten blockbuster films sold the company to Disney for over $7B, and around the time of his death Apple had a market cap greater than the gross domestic product of Poland. Apple is one of the world’s most recognized brands and the company’s products have won numerous awards for their technical capabilities, functionality, ease of use, and aesthetics. Because of these results many view Steve Jobs as the personification of the successful business leader, yet Walter Isaacson’s biography paints a picture of a complex and highly flawed individual. 

As experts in executive assessment, reading Isaacson’s book prompted us to ask three questions about Steven Jobs and current hiring practices. First, would Jobs have been hired to be the CEO of a start up or a Fortune 500 company if he had to go through a formal assessment process?  Second, what would an assessment have revealed about Jobs’ watch outs or development needs? Third, what can we learn from Steve Jobs and his leadership style? This last question is important, as Job’s tremendous success as a businessman has overshadowed some of the critical lessons about leadership.

Read the full article by guest bloggers, Gordon Curphy and Rocky Kimball.

Leadership lessons from Thomas J. Watston, Sr.

What is a good leader? Michael Scott, the former main character in NBC’s hit sitcom The Office, has an intertesting take.

Unfortunately, Michael’s definition rings true. Leadership is usually defined in terms of a person’s status in an organization. If a person has a title, he or she must have the leadership skills. Right? Wrong.

The truth is, people typically advance in organizations by pleasing their bosses with displays of loyalty and technical knowledge. Performance appraisals reflect how much supervisors like their subordinates. Consequently, designated high performers are often skilled at office politics rather than leadership.

Human evolution suggests an alternative definition of leadership. During 2 million years of pre-history, humans lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, and there was constant warfare between them. Leadership probably evolved as a mechanism that allowed normally selfish individuals to pull together for a common purpose—to compete with neighboring groups to defend territory and resources.

Therefore, leadership should be defined as the ability to build and maintain a team that can outperform the competition. Leadership is a resource for the group, not a source of privilege for incumbents; leadership should be defined and evaluated in terms of the performance of the team, which depends on how the subordinates perceive the leader.

To learn more about what makes a good leader, check out our complimentary e-book, The Hogan Leadership Model.

He’s the hothead, the live wire, the one with the short fuse and explosive temper. His energy is infectious, but his mood can turn on a dime, and when he starts lobbing shells, boy you’d better take cover.

On the climb up the corporate ladder, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. Although the loose cannon’s intensity makes him a favorite with his boss, his volatile emotions have the people around him walking on eggshells.

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