Last week we revealed the eight most common personality types found in the Hogan suite of assessments. Starting this week, and in the following weeks, we will take a deeper look at these eight profiles. This week we take a deep look at the personality profile of Rebels.

Rebels makeup approximately 8% of the working population. Their Hogan profile is highlighted by high scores on Recognition, Power, Hedonism, and Commerce on the MVPI; low scores on Adjustment, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Prudence as well as high scores on Sociability and Inquisitive on the HPI; and high scores on most of the HDS scales except for Diligent and Dutiful, with especially high scores on Excitable and Skeptical. See Figure 1 below for the full profile.

Figure 1. Rebels Hogan Profile

The Reputation of Rebels

We had eight Hogan consultants with a combined 82 years of experience provide independent, written interpretations of the Rebels profile shown above. Some of the words our experts most frequently used to describe rebels were “emotional,” “strong,” “passionate,” “direct,” “volatile,” “reactive,” “energetic,” and “status.” Additionally, we examined the workplace reputation of Rebels by drawing on Hogan 360 data gathered with Hogan distributor Peter Berry Consultancy. Colleagues, supervisors, and even subordinates of Rebels described them as “very competitive and driven,” but also as having difficulty “managing emotions maturely and intelligently” and staying “calm and even tempered.” In other words, Rebels are seen by their co-workers as enthusiastic and energetic but struggling with emotional control. Lastly, our job performance archive also tells us that Rebels score low on “political savvy,” “modeling behavior for others,” and “overcoming obstacles.”

Common Careers for Rebels

Rebels will prefer careers where they can be creative and disruptive, where they can push the boundaries and limits of what most people consider possible. Rebels dislike the status quo and will struggle to fit with many traditional jobs. As a result, Rebels are substantially more likely to end up working for themselves as entrepreneurs.

In fact, we find that every sample of entrepreneurs that we work with is overrepresented by people with the Rebels personality profile. These samples have 18-28% entrepreneurs, which is 2-3 times more than the 8% we see in the global working population. On the darker side of things, we have also found Rebels to make up nearly half of our sample of organized crime members. Whether as entrepreneurs or as criminals, Rebels make a habit out of breaking the rules. The strictness of society’s rules then largely decides whether Rebels are considered sinners or saints. In popular media, characters such as Tony Stark (Ironman), Donna Meagle (Parks and Recreation), and Aladdin (Disney’s Aladdin) are prototypical Rebels – creative, disruptive, and pushing the limits.

Advice for Rebels

If you are a Rebel, you need to be aware of your tendency to try to skirt around the rules. On the one hand, disruption leads to innovation, change, and progress. On the other hand, many people resist change and will see your disruptive behavior as a threat to their stability. You are more comfortable with change than most people and need to realize that other people will not be as enthusiastic about your transformative ideas. Most critically, you need to be aware that some of your plans and ideas might be considered outside the bounds of fair play by society, which could lead to serious legal trouble.

Regardless, you should be prepared to cut your own path and to start your own business. You will likely be resistant to working for anyone else and working for yourself gives you the freedom and flexibility you desire. Keep in mind that, as your business grows, your employees will be looking for stability. Many of the changes and “improvements” you might like to implement will be silly and a waste of time in the minds of your employees. Frequent changes in direction will drive your best employees away. The key to success will be in your ability to temper your impulse to constantly reinvent.

How to Deal with Rebels

If your boss has the personality profile of a Rebel, be prepared to deal with frequent change. A Rebel boss might demand one thing on Monday and the complete opposite thing on Tuesday. You will need to be adaptable, flexible, and comfortable with instability. In the mind of a Rebel, nothing is ever quite good enough so the call for improvements will be constant. If any of your employees are Rebels, then be prepared to spend a fair amount of time doing performance management. They will likely listen to your coaching and feedback, but ultimately resist changing their behavior.

Your Rebel employees will often see your point of view as outdated and not future-oriented enough. To keep your Rebels productive, it is best to provide them with tasks and opportunities to create, change, or disrupt current processes. Provide ample opportunities for Rebels to share their innovative ideas. Ultimately, Rebels will probably leave your company to strike out on their own, so you should maximize their strengths while they’re there.

Want to learn more about personality tests? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Personality Tests

When discussing personality, it’s common to hear people refer to themselves or others as “Type A” or “Type B.” Or, for those who have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, acronyms like ISTJ or ENTP or INFP are so commonplace they frequently show up in online dating profiles.

At Hogan, we’ve historically steered away from labeling people as a certain “personality type” based on their assessment results. The primary reason for this is that personality trait scores lie on a continuum and dividing people into convenient buckets sacrifices precision. Further, even two people with highly similar personality profiles can be dramatically different from each other if they only differ on a single scale.

So, what’s the value of assigning personality types? First, types give people a natural way to think about those around them. Second, personality types refer to the whole person and not just various aspects of personality. Third, applying types to people makes personality easy to understand when it comes to coaching and development.

Although Hogan still avoids labeling people with types, we did a deep dive into our archive to see if there were some common types we could discover. Using the data of 332,935 individuals who completed the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory, we identified eight different personality types – or common profiles – that can be applied to the vast majority of the working population.

Most Common Personality Types

Rebels – These individuals represent 8.0% of the sample group. Their scores suggest that they are interested in being famous, wealth, having power, and living a luxurious life. They are also seen by others as sociable and curious in daily behavior, but can also be emotional, distrustful of others, and rule-breaking. Entrepreneurs make up a large percentage of this group.

Marketers – Representing 18.2% of the sample group, Marketers are seen as highly motivated to compete, win, push for results, and make money. At their best they are bright, sociable, and ambitious at work. However, they also tend to take big chances and are overconfident in their abilities. This profile group is commonly seen amongst salespeople.

Proletarians – We identified that 13.7% of those observed are what we refer to as Proletarians. These individuals are interested in stability and simplistic lifestyle. Others consider them to be hardworking, reserved, and careful. They generally make solid employees and prefer to work without being bothered. These people are equally represented across most professions.

Congenials – At 17.2% of the sample group, Congenials are viewed by others as lacking motivational and career interests. They tend to be introverted, but also relaxed, friendly, polite, and rule-abiding at work. Owing to their friendly nature, these individuals regularly receive high performance ratings from their supervisors. Congenials are commonly found in administrative and clerical roles.

Over-Achievers – This group represents 16.6% of the individuals we studied. Unsurprisingly, Over-Achievers are interested in career success, but they do insist on playing fair. They are hardworking, bright, and resilient to stress. While our data suggest that these individuals are well-suited for leadership positions, they tend to be stuck in individual contributor roles, largely due to the fact that they refuse to play politics.

Networkers – Representing 12.8% of the group, Networkers tend to be interested in fame and being liked by others. They are sociable, cool-headed, and bright in daily behavior. That said, they are also known to break the rules, take risks, be overly dramatic, and often times impractical. Because of their ability to connect with others and their willingness to play politics, Networkers make up a large percentage of leadership roles.

Misfits – Misfits make up 6.9% of the group we studied. They are highly motivated by fear with a strong desire for stability and to enjoy life. They also tend to be emotionally volatile and have difficulties building close relationships due to excessive reclusiveness. Our data indicate that many individuals in this group are struggling to find the right career fit for them.

Preppers – At 6.5% of the group, Preppers are like Misfits in that they are motivated by fear with a strong desire for stability. What makes them different than Misfits is that they are dependable when they can keep their emotions in check. This group is introverted and always prepared for the worst. Individuals fitting this profile often work in the security sector.

Assigning personality types to people will never be an exact science, regardless of the amount of data collected or the tools used to measure personality. Still, it is often useful to look at the person as a whole instead of thinking of individuals as simply a mixture of the same chemicals. Our data indicate that there are in fact eight robust personality types – or personality profiles – that are meaningfully related to work and career outcomes.

Want to learn more about personality tests? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Personality Tests

Ready to take your Hogan skills to the next level? Once you earn your official certification to administer Hogan’s personality assessments, you’ll have the opportunity for more extensive training in administering Hogan’s personality assessments.

Hogan offers two options for advanced certification to help people build upon skills developed during the Hogan Assessment Certification workshop (which is a prerequisite for completion of either advanced certification course): Advanced Interpretation and Advanced Feedback.

Advanced Interpretation

The Advanced Interpretation workshop will help you learn how to extract the maximum interpretive value from Hogan personality assessment results to help your organization best understand potential and current employees and leaders.

In this course, you’ll develop expertise in techniques for using our three core personality assessments. You’ll also gain practice synthesizing subscales and scale combinations, including resolving competing or complex scale combinations, to form a more nuanced, in-depth, individualized picture of how someone is likely to behave in the workplace.

The course will teach you how to avoid common interpretive mistakes, such as framing lower Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) scores in a harsh or negative light, disregarding no- or low-risk Hogan Development Survey (HDS) scores, or misunderstanding the way that low scores operate on the Motives, Values, and Preferences Inventory (MVPI) scales.

Lastly, you’ll compare and contrast your insights with interpretations from Hogan’s experts. This guided practice will enable you to become confident in your ability to bring the assessment data to life in the real world. 

Advanced Feedback

Like the Advanced Interpretation workshop, the Advanced Feedback workshop was designed for people who have already earned official Hogan Assessment Certification. In this course, you’ll learn how to deliver high-impact feedback to help people who have taken the assessments get the most out of their results.

This course will cover the different types of feedback, including debriefing, developmental feedback, and coaching. You’ll understand how to structure a feedback session using the comprehensive model, the values model, the job requirements model, or the competency model, and you’ll know how to choose the most appropriate model for each feedback session’s objectives.

You’ll also walk away with a firm understanding of methods for troubleshooting some of the common problems that occur during the feedback delivery process. For example, some participants might not trust the accuracy of the assessment results, or they might feel as if the results are accurate in their personal lives but not at work. After taking Advanced Feedback, you’ll feel at ease responding to situations like these.

Finally, you’ll have the opportunity to roleplay conducting a feedback session in a supervised setting. You’ll develop experience encouraging participation from the feedback recipient and in planning developmental action based on the assessment results and the person’s job responsibilities.

Register Today

Begin the process of deepening your interpretation and feedback delivery skills today. Click here to check out our course schedules and sign up for a certification workshop near you.

People are the deadliest invasive species in the history of the earth. People have the potential to kill every living thing and, in certain instances have already done so (e.g., passenger pigeon, western black rhinoceros, great auk) or are on their way to doing so (e.g., sea turtle, elephant, tiger, polar bear). Given their frightful potential and worldwide presence, it would be useful to know something about people. Personality psychology is the “go-to” discipline for understanding people; personality psychology is the only discipline whose primary focus is the nature of human nature. What does personality psychology tell us about human nature? The answer depends on whom you ask, or more precisely, to which personality theory you subscribe.

Keep reading to learn more about the history of personality theory, different theoretical approaches, and the role of personality in organizational and leadership performance.

History of Personality Theory

Modern personality psychology began in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, where an amazing flowering of human creativity brought revolutions in a wide variety of fields including architecture, music, physics, medicine, music, painting, literature, economics, and especially philosophy. Personality theory started as a psychodynamic version of psychiatry—mental illness was hypothesized to be a function of intrapsychic dynamics and the physical symptoms were secondary. The pioneers of this new way to conceptualize psychic troubles included Pierre Janet (who was French), Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Erik Erikson, and others. Personality theory was a vibrant intellectual activity for 70 years but by the early 1970s, some prominent personality psychologists began to argue that personality theory was pointless, that only data mattered. In retrospect, Walter Mischel’s (1968) critique of personality psychology was more a symptom of the decline of personality theory than a cause—it reflected a changing culture rather than creating one.

The collapse of interest in personality theory created a hole in our ability to understand human affairs. This is because personality theory is unavoidable: everything we do depends on our assumptions about human nature. Even social psychology depends on (often untenable and unspecified) assumptions about human nature. We need to make these assumptions explicit for two reasons: (1) ideas have consequences—they drive everything we do; and (2) knowledge proceeds more efficiently from error than from confusion—bad ideas can be corrected, but unspecified assumptions lead to futility.

Types of Personality Theory

There are three major theories of personality, with subtypes within each. The first is the many versions of psychodynamic theory associated with clinical psychology. The second personality theory is trait theory, which concerns cataloguing dimension of individual differences. The third is interpersonal theory which largely concerns career coaching and development—i.e., applications to everyday life. In the following paragraphs, we briefly describe the history of each personality theory, identify its core assumptions, and evaluate the consequences of these assumptions.

Psychodynamic Theory

Psychodynamic theory dominated personality psychology for 70 years and contains many valid insights. For example, early experience shapes later personality, much social behavior is unconsciously motivated, people are inherently irrational, and psychology can be used for human betterment. The three major assumptions of psychodynamic theory are: (1) everyone is somewhat neurotic; (2) the goal of life is to overcome one’s neurosis; and (3) the goal of personality assessment is to identify the sources of one’s neurosis. The problem with psychodynamic theory is the first assumption; everyone is not neurotic. Although most people have issues that bother them from time to time, to be neurotic is to be dysfunctional on a continuing basis and that is obviously not true for most people. In addition, as positive psychology points out, the absence of neurosis does not guarantee happiness or success. Lastly, diagnosing psychopathology is not the primary goal of personality assessment. Despite its compelling subject matter, psychodynamic theory pointed personality psychology in the wrong direction for 70 years. Positive psychology (Seligman, 2002) is a superficial, but natural, reaction to the excesses of psychodynamic theory.

Trait Theory

Trait theory began in the 1930s as an academic exercise in classification and is largely defined by the writings of Gordon Allport (1937), Raymond Cattell (1943), Hans Eysenck (1947), and their students. The goal of trait theory is to classify the structure of personality; the units of analysis are “traits,” defined as (a) recurring behavioral tendencies; and (b) neuropsychic structures. The behavioral tendencies can be observed; the neuropsychic structures are inferred and believed to correspond to the behavioral tendencies. Trait theory makes three major assumptions: (1) everyone has traits; (2) the goal of life is to discover one’s traits; and (3) the goal of personality assessment is to measure traits. Despite the immense popularity of trait theory in modern psychology, it has limited utility as a personality theory for several reasons; here we will mention three. First, trait theory describes behavior in terms of traits, and then explains behavior in terms of traits (e.g., Mike Tyson is aggressive because he has a trait for aggressiveness); this is a tautology—as Walter Mischel (1968) pointed out long ago. Second, the search for the neuropsychic structures that explain the consistencies in behavior is a worthy project, but it is a project for neuro-scientists, not personality psychologists (it is also a project that has, thus far, yielded less than spectacular results). And third, the accepted taxonomy of traits, the Five-factor model (Wiggins, 1996), is based on ratings of school children in Hawaii (Digman, 1963) and Air Force enlisted men in Texas (Tupes & Crystal, 1961). Trait theory has in fact produced an common language for describing the reputation of others and identified a replicable structure underlying the trait terms. Nonetheless, it is not clear that the Five-Factor Model is (a) the most useful model for describing or predicting human behavior. In fact, there is compelling evidence showing that lower-order trait variables predict important outcomes better than the higher-order variables of the Five Factor Model (Brown & Sherman, 2014; Luminent, Bagby, Wagner, Taylor, & Parker, 1999; Paunonen & Ashton, 2001; Watson, 2001).

Interpersonal Theory

Interpersonal theory is based on the writings of William McDougall (1908), George Herbert Mead (1934), Henry Stack Sullivan (1953), George Kelly (1955), Timothy Leary (1957), and Jerry Wiggins (1996). The goal of interpersonal theory is to understand how people interact with others and how those interactions influence subsequent interactions. Interpersonal theory makes three major assumptions: (1) almost everything consequential in life occurs during social interaction, or as part of preparation for future social interaction, (2) the goal of life is to find and retain a productive place in one’s social network, and (3) the goal of personality assessment is to describe and predict how people will behave in social interactions. Interpersonal theory differs from trait and psychodynamic theory in three important ways. First, trait and psychodynamic theory assume that the way we think about ourselves drives our social interaction whereas interpersonal theory assumes that our social interaction drives how we think about ourselves (others teach us how to think about ourselves). Second, trait and psychodynamic theory define maturity as self-understanding whereas interpersonal theory defines maturity as the ability to interact productively with others (i.e., as social skill). Third, trait and psychodynamic theory ignore reputation, whereas interpersonal theory assumes that establishing and maintaining one’s reputation is crucial for a productive life.

Socioanalytic Theory

Our perspective on personality theory, socioanalytic theory, integrates interpersonal theory with evolutionary psychology. Socioanalytic theory makes three major assumptions: (1) People always live in groups, and every group has a status hierarchy and a religion; (2) the goals of life concern getting along, getting ahead, and finding meaning; and (3) the goal of assessment is to predict individual differences in the ability to get along, get ahead, and find meaning. There are huge individual differences in peoples’ ability to get along, get ahead, and find meaning and there are huge payoffs in terms of fitness for being able to do so.

Evolutionary Theory

Evolutionary theory tells us that life is about competition. There is competition at the individual level (within groups) for status, power, and social acceptance; this competition is driven by sexual selection (Ridley, 1991). Then there is competition between groups for territory, market share, political dominance, and ultimately survival. Warfare drives human evolution at the group level (Turchin, 2006).

There are major individual differences in the ability of individuals to compete for status, and there are major differences in the abilities of groups to compete for survival (e.g., the Rohingya). Although psychologists focus almost exclusively on within-group competition, between group competition is more consequential. What is good for the individual may or may not be good for the group. Free riders—rent seekers who enjoy the benefits of group living without contributing to its maintenance and functioning—represent one such example (Cornes, 1986). On the other hand, what is good for the group is usually good for the members. Success at within-group competition is a function of social skill, which includes the ability to get along with others (to avoid expulsion from the group) and to get ahead (to maximize one’s resources). Success in between-group competition is a function of leadership.

Socioanalytic theory concerns predicting and explaining effectiveness of both individuals and groups.

Individual Effectiveness

Within-group competition takes place during social interaction—interaction is where the action is. In order to interact, people need an agenda for the interaction and they need roles to play. Overt agendas vary across interactions, but the covert agenda for most interactions concern negotiations for belonging and status. Three components of personality shape interactions: identity, reputation, and social skill. Our identities are the generic roles we take with us to each interaction; they determine the roles we play and how we play them. After every interaction there is an accounting process and people gain or lose a little bit of status; our reputations reflect the outcome of this accounting process. Reputations are inherently evaluative and indicate how well we are doing in the process of within-group competition. Social skill is what translates identity into reputation. Dysfunctional people choose maladaptive identities, create bad reputations for themselves, and lack the social skill needed to change the cycle. Competent people use their social skill to create reputations that match their identities and maximize their social and economic wellbeing.

Personality research has traditionally focused on studying the self and identity, but that search has not been productive. After 100 years, we still have no taxonomy of identities, no agreed upon methodology for measuring identity, and no useful generalizations about identity to report. Identity concerns the “you” that you know, and Freud would say (correctly) that the “you” that you know is hardly worth knowing—because you made it up. Your identity is the story you tell yourself about yourself, it is largely imagined and only loosely tied to reality.

In contrast, socioanalytic theory focuses on reputation—reputation is the “you” that others know. Reputation is easy to study by means of observer ratings. The Five-Factor Model of personality (Wiggins, 1976) is a robust taxonomy of reputation and, over the past 20 years, we have accumulated an abundance of findings regarding personality and many important life outcomes: marital satisfaction, health status, academic performance, substance abuse, driving records, income, social class, etc. (Roberts, et al., 2007; Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, reputation is the summary of peoples’ past behavior, therefore reputation is the best data source we have regarding peoples’ future behavior. In our view, assessment should focus on reputation and not identity.

Let us clarify a key point here: although reputation (i.e., how others evaluate you) is the best predictor of future behavior, this does not mean that self-report assessments are useless. In our view, self-reports contain both identity claims (i.e., views of yourself that might not be true) and reputational information (certain identity claims are reliably associated with reputational outcomes). The reputational information is important, and the identity claims often muddy the water. Moreover, self-reports that are empirically tied to reputation (i.e., people with high scores on scale X are described by others as Y) are enormously useful. For example, the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI: Hogan & Hogan, 2007) includes a scale called “Learning Approach.” People with high scores on this scale are described by others as smart, up-to-date and well-informed. Our emphasis on reputation does not imply that self-report tools are useless.

Nonetheless, we understand that identity research will not go away because people enjoy navel gazing and find discussions of identity fascinating. Although the academic study of identity has not been productive, there are three points about identity that are worth noting. First, Erikson (1963) argued that maturity depends on achieving a stable sense of identity. He defined identity in interpersonal terms—when behaving in ways that are most comfortable to yourself, you are most valuable to those people whom you most value—and we agree with him. Second, the Identity scale on Holland’s (1973) Self-Directed Search is the most valid scale on the inventory, based on external correlates. Third, the Identity HIC on the Hogan Personality Inventory is a highly valid component of the HPI based on external correlates. When identity is defined as having a sense of where your life is headed and what that means to others—not who you are but what you are trying to do—it is a meaningful and consequential concept.

Before ending this discussion of competition at the individual level, we should note how psychodynamic theory and trait theory define self-awareness and how we define self-awareness. Freud and Allport thought introspection and self-analysis leads to self-awareness, whereas we think performance analysis leads to self-awareness. The distinction is the same as that between Freud’s and Socrates’ definitions of self-awareness. The ancient Greeks valued self-knowledge: the inscription over the tomb of the Cumaean Sybill was “Know Thyself.” But for the Greeks, self-knowledge concerns understanding one’s performance capabilities and limitations. This is how we define self-awareness. We use personality assessment to create “strategic self- awareness” and enhance peoples’ ability to get along and get ahead.

Group Effectiveness

Chimpanzee troops engage in genocide, ancient humans engaged in genocide, Native Americans practiced genocide—human history is a record of constant warfare. The Old Testament of the Bible is full of suggestions of the following variety: “When you capture a city, put to the sword all the men in it…utterly destroy them…save alive nothing that breatheth…As for the women and children, you may take them as plunder for yourselves” (Deuteronomy 2:10- 20). In the history of our species, if your tribe was overrun by another tribe, your opportunities for reproductive success ended abruptly. This is the reason we believe between-group competition trumps within-group competition. Success at within-group competition means nothing if you lose the between-group competition.

It seems clear that the success of armies, athletic teams, business enterprises, universities, religious organizations—any collective activity—depends on the leadership of that collectivity. But from WWII until the early 1980s, academic psychology thought individual differences in the talent for leadership was a myth, that leadership was situational, and if you were successful in a leadership role, you were just lucky. As of today, there is still no consensus regarding the characteristics of competent leaders. In our view, the academic study of leadership suffers from five major problems: (1) the wrong definition of leadership; (2) no attention to the consequences of leadership; (3) no attention to the subordinates’ view of leadership; (4) no attention to derailment; and (5) no attention to personality. Progress is being made, but these issues remain salient. We now take them up in turn.

Defining Leadership

Most research defines leadership in terms of the people at the top of organizations. But who gets to the top of large, hierarchical, bureaucratic, male-dominated organizations? People with good political skills who win the within-group competition for status. A meta-analysis of leader personality (i.e., the personality of people in leadership roles) indicates that leaders tend to score low on Neuroticism and high on Extraversion, Openness, and Conscientiousness (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002). Clearly these individuals have talent for acquiring status. But, do they have any talent for leading their groups to success?

An alternative view of leadership, and one that we prefer, is to define leadership from the perspective of group effectiveness. For the most part, people are biologically wired to behave selfishly (Dawkins, 1976). However, people are also capable of altruism when altruism (a) serves their long-term self-interest or (b) promotes the interests of those sharing their genetic material (Fletcher & Doebeli, 2008; Hamilton, 1964a, b; Nowak, Tarnita, & Wilson, 2010; Trivers, 1971). Further, the history of human warfare and modern team sports indicates that cohesive and coordinated groups outperform disorganized groups. Thus, in our view, the primary goal of leadership is to persuade people to temporarily set aside their selfish desires for the good of the group. In this view, leadership should be evaluated on the basis of the group’s performance, not on the basis of one’s ability to gain leadership positions. Politicians are skilled at gaining leadership positions; effective leaders are skilled at building and maintaining high-performing teams.

When it comes to competition between groups, leadership plays a critical role (Hanson, 2001; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). Obvious examples include:

• The recent and sustained success of the New England Patriots football team compared to the recent and sustained failure of the Cleveland Browns football team
• The success of the Union Army over the Army of Northern Virginia in the US civil war
• The sustained success of Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum company compared to the colossal failure of Enron

There are many such lists of competing organizations outperforming one another. Researchers are finally beginning to understand that the leadership of an organization has consequences for the members of the organizations. For example, economists (who are interested in the financial consequences of personality) estimate that CEOs account for between 17% to 30% of the variance in firm financial performance (Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Hambrick & Quigley, 2014; Mackey, 2008; Quigley & Graffin, 2016; Quigley & Hambrick, 2014). CEO personality is more important for firm performance than any other factor except the industry sector in which the firm competes.

If leadership is about building teams, then it is important to know how the teams react to the leadership to which they are exposed. The team members are the consumers of leadership and will react accordingly. Employee engagement can be easily assessed using survey methodology. Over the past 20 years, overwhelming evidence shows that employee engagement predicts every significant organizational outcome, positive or negative, including absenteeism, turnover, productivity, quality, and customer service ratings. The lower the engagement levels, the worse the outcomes, the higher the engagement levels the better the outcomes (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). But most importantly for this discussion, the personalities of the managers create the engagement levels of their staff. And, on average, what do those personalities look like? The news is not encouraging.

Incompetent Leadership

Consider the following from various lines of survey research. A recent survey of the UK public indicated that 22% of people hate their boss, 52% of people name their boss as their main cause of dissatisfaction, 20% would forgo a pay raise if someone would fire their boss, and an astonishing 12% of respondents admit to having imagined killing their boss (Whitfield, 2018). In a similar US survey, 65% of Americans say they would prefer getting rid of their boss to receiving a pay raise (Casserly, 2012). On this basis, we estimate that 65% to 75% of managers in the U. S. economy, public and private sector, are incompetent and alienate their subordinates.

In an important piece of unpublished research, V. Jon Bentz, Vice President for Human Resources at Sears during the 1970s, hired hundreds of new managers using an assessment center (Bentz, 1985). All newly hired managers were bright and personally attractive. Bentz was a meticulous record keeper; he found that 65% of these new managers failed (the number is important). He found that the reasons for their failure nicely fit into 11 categories which, upon closer examination, nicely paralleled the DSM III, axis 2 personality disorders. Thus, managerial failure seems unrelated to intellectual competence (e.g., IQ), and directly related to interpersonal competence. Personality is the core of interpersonal incompetence and thus the core of managerial failure.

Effective Leadership

There is little agreement in the academic research regarding effective leadership (i.e., the characteristics of people who can build and maintain high performing teams), though three lines of research converge to define effective leadership: (1) Implicit leadership theory (Kouzes and Posner, 2008); (2) Research on emergent vs. effective managers (Luthans, Hodgetts, & Rosenkrantz, 1988); and (3) Research on organizational effectiveness (Collins, 2001).

Implicit leadership theory. Implicit leadership theory is based on the assumption that, because leadership has been such an important factor in human history, people have a rough intuitive sense of the characteristics of good leaders. Kouzes and Posner devised a simple but effective way to summarize those intuitions: ask people to describe the best and the worst bosses they ever knew. The results, aggregated over millions of responses, suggest that people believe good leaders share four characteristics. First, effective leaders have integrity—they keep their word, they do not play favorites, they do not self-deal, and they live up to their obligations. Because lying, along with money, is the mother’s milk of politics, many politicians quickly lose their credibility as leaders. Second, team captains are usually the best players on the teams, professional sports coaches are usually former athletes, etc. Consequently, effective leaders need to have real expertise in whatever business a team’s major focus might be. Newly minted officers in the military have credibility issues because they lack deep knowledge of operations at the daily level, and experienced enlisted personnel tend not to take them seriously as a result.

Subordinates are more likely to have faith in leaders who know something about the business that they are leading. Third, the fate of any organization depends on the outcomes of all the decisions that are made on a daily basis. Good leaders need to be able to make sound, defensible decisions quickly and on the basis of limited information. Making good decisions also involves changing bad decisions when it becomes apparent that they are wrong—good leaders can admit their mistakes. Finally, good leaders project a vision and create persuasive stories about why what the team or group is doing is important. In summary, implicit leadership theory offers a great deal of evidence to indicate that effective leaders are perceived as having integrity, competence, good judgment, and vision.

Emergent versus Effective Leaders. Luthans and his colleagues (1988) gathered comprehensive data on 457 managers from several organizations over a four-year period. At the end of the study, they collected performance data on the managers. They found two groups of high performers: (1) those who advanced rapidly in the organization; and (2) those whose teams performed well. There was a 10% overlap in the groups (r = .30). The important finding concerned how the two groups spent their time. The people who advanced rapidly spent their time networking. The people whose teams performed well spent their time working with their teams. These two types of managers map directly on to the concepts of leadership emergence and effectiveness previously discussed. Emergent managers are regularly identified as high potential employees, while effective managers are overlooked because they do not stand out and play organizational politics. It is the is process of promoting emergent managers, and overlooking effective managers, that creates the high rate of managerial failure in corporate affairs.

Organizational Effectiveness. Collins and his colleagues (2001) studied the Fortune 1000 companies to identify companies with 15 years of mediocre financial performance and then 15 years of superior performance. He found 11 companies that fit this profile. For comparison purposes, he also identified 11 companies, in the same industry, who showed only mediocre performance across the same time period. Analyses revealed that the cause of the turnarounds was the arrival of new CEOs. But the crucial finding is not that CEOs matter, but rather what kind of CEO matters. And the answer is the CEO personality is what mattered. In particular, the 11 successful CEOs were: (1) fiercely competitive and hard-working; and (2) humble, modest, and understated. That is, this group of high-performing CEOs were, in Luthan’s (1988) terms, effective not emergent. Thus, the available evidence indicates that effective leaders are (a) trustworthy, (b) competent, (c) have good judgment, (d) project an appealing vision, and (e) blend fierce ambition with personal humility. Thus, leadership effectiveness is a function of personality.

Last Thoughts on Personality Psychology

Personality psychology began as an applied activity (Stagner, 1937) and at its best it remains an applied activity directed at solving real problems for real people. The key problems for personality research concern predicting and explaining the outcomes of within and between group competition. Career success (the result of within-group competition) and organizational effectiveness (the result of between-group competition) are the most crucial issues in life. How can personality psychology help people have more successful careers? Mostly by creating strategic self-awareness and eliminating self-defeating behavior. How can personality psychology help organizations become more effective? Mostly by helping them hire effective leaders.

Want to learn more about personality tests? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Personality Tests

*This article was written by Dr. Robert Hogan and Dr. Ryne Sherman for a special issue of Personality and Individual Differences.

Allport, G.W. (1937). Personality: A Psychological Interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Bentz, V. J. (1985). A view of the top: a thirty-year perspective of research devoted to the discovery, description and prediction of executive behavior. Invited address, Division 14, 93rd Annual Convention, American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, CA.

Brown, N. A., & Sherman, R. A. (2014). Predicting interpersonal behavior using the inventory of individual differences in the lexicon (IIDL). Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 23-28.

Casserly, M. (October, 2017). Majority of Americans would rather fire their boss than get a raise. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/17/majority- of-americans-would-rather-fire-their-boss-than-get-a-raise/#37f6c2ae6610

Cattell, R. B. (1943). The description of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 476-506.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. New York: HarperCollins.

Cornes, R. (1986). The Theories of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Digman, J. M. (1963). Principal dimensions of child personality as inferred from teachers’ judgments. Child Development 34, 43-60.

Erikson, E. (1963). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

Eysenck, H. J. (1947). Dimensions of Personality. London: Metheun.

Fletcher, J. A., & Doebeli, M. (2008). A simple and general explantion for the eovluton of altruism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276(1654).

Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. (1984). Upper Echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 193-206.

Hambrick, D. C., & Quigley, T. J. (2014). Toward a more accurate contextualization of the CEO effect on firm performance. Strategic Management Journal, 35, 473-491.

Hamilton, W. D. (1964a). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 1-16.

Hamilton, W. D. (1964b). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 17-52.

Hanson, V. D. (2001). Why the West has Won. London, UK: Faber and Faber.

Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L. & Hayes, T.L. (2002). Business-unit-level-relationships between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 268-279.

Hogan, R. & Hogan, J. (2007) Hogan Personality Inventory, 3rd Edition.

Tulsa: Hogan Press. Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2005). What we know about leadership. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 169-180.

Judge, T.A., Bono, J.E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M.W. (2002). Personality and leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 765-780.

Kaiser, R. B., Hogan, R., & Craig, S. B. (2008). Leadership and the fate of organizations. American Psychologist, 63(2), 96-110.

Kelly, G. A. (1955). The Psychology of Personal Constructs. New York: Norton.

Leary, T. (1957). Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and Methodology for Personality Evaluation. Eugene, OR: John Wiley & Sons.

Luminent, O., Bagby, R. M., Wagner, H. L., Taylor, G. J., & Parker, J. D. A. (1999). Relation between alexithymia and the five-factor model of personality: A facet-level analysis. Journal of Personality Assessment, 73, 345-358.

Luthans, F., Hodgetts, R.M., & Rosenkrantz, S.A. (1988). Real managers. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Mackey, A. (2008). The effect of CEOs on firm performance. Strategic Management Journal, 29, 1357-1367.

McDougall, W. (1908). Introduction to Social Psychology. London: Methuen & Co.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and Assessment. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Nowak, M., Tarnita, C., E., & Wilson, E. O. (2010). The evolution of eusociality. Nature, 466, 1057-1062.

Ozer, D. J., & Benet-Martinez, V. (2006). Personality and the prediction of consequential outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401-421.

Paunonen, S. V., & Ashton, M. C. (2001). Big five factors and facets and the prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(3), 524-539.

Quigley, T. J., & Graffin, S. D. (2017). Reaffirming the CEO effect is significant and much larger than change: A comment on Fitza (2014). Strategic Management Journal, 38, 793-801.

Quigley, T. J., & Hambrick, D. C. (2014). Has the “CEO effect” increased in recent decades? A new explanation for the great rise in America’s attention to corporate leaders. Strategic Management Journal, 36, 821-830.

Ridley, M. (1991). The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. New York: HarperCollins.

Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 313-345.

Seligman, M.E.P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: The Free Press.

Stagner, R. (1937). Psychology of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: Norton.

Tupes, E. C., and Christal, R. E. (1961). Recurrent personality factors based on trait ratings (USAF ASD Tech. Rep. No. 61-97); Lackland Air Force Base, TX: U. S Air Force.

Turchin, P. (2006). War and peace and war. New York: Penguin.

Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57.

Watson, D. (2001). Procrastination and the five-factor model: A face level analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 149-158.

Whitfiled, H. (2018). Horrible bosses: Have you ever imagined killing your boss? Focus. https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/horrible-bosses

Wiggins, J. S. (1996). The five-factor Model of personality: Theoretical Perspectives. New York: Guilford.

The Personality Brokers, Merve Emre’s interesting new book, is a kind of feminist treatise focusing on the lives and work of the two amazing women, Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, who developed and promoted the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI is the best known and most widely used personality “instrument” in the world. I never met the authors, but I knew pretty much everyone responsible for the development of the MBTI in the 1960s—both the critics and the proponents. It might be informative to reflect briefly on the pros and cons of this remarkably successful assessment product. In my view, there are five aspects of the MBTI that are positive and worth remembering.

First, the original goal of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is both worthy and honorable: It was intended to be used to improve the lives of working people by providing a rational basis for aligning people with jobs. It was designed to be used as a placement tool, a convenient and easy-to-use method for sorting employees in ways that maximized their happiness and the productivity of organizations. Who would not be in favor of maximizing individual happiness and corporate productivity?

Second, the MBTI is rooted in Jungian psychology. Carl Jung was a brilliant and highly eccentric psychiatrist, and a brave early supporter of Freud and psychoanalysis. After the famous 1913 break between Freud and Jung, Freud’s supporters engaged in a long and successful campaign to discredit Jung’s ideas, even though Freud adopted many of them as his own. Freud had a profound and, in many ways, negative impact on personality psychology for over 60 years; his influence began to decline in the 1970s, although for the wrong reasons. Freud argued that everyone is neurotic, that the big problem in life concerns dealing with one’s neurosis, and the goal of assessment is to identify the source of peoples’ neuroses. In contrast, the MBTI is all about people’s strengths; as such, it is deeply anti-Freudian and one of the first contributions to what is known today as “positive psychology.”

Third, a major reason for the MBTI’s popular appeal is that it describes people in terms of types, and I believe this is how we naturally think about other people. Academic psychologists, for reasons that only they understand, are devoted to trait theory. It is not a question of using trait theory to get beyond the conventional wisdom of types (the goal of most academic psychology), it is a question of carving nature at its joints—as recommended by Aristotle. For that reason, the MBTI with its focus on types is still ahead of the game.

Fourth, the MBTI can in fact be used to tailor marketing arguments for specific groups of people. The sort of argument that would appeal to an INTJ (a scientist) is, in principle, quite different from the sort of argument that would appeal to an ESFP (a new-age hipster). It is a relatively easy task to use peoples’ social media data to assign them to an MBTI type and then shape messaging accordingly.

Finally, using Myers-Briggs Type Indicator scores to align people with jobs is vastly preferable to using unguided intuition to align people with jobs. Talent management decisions should be based on assessment data not the reasoned judgment of HR professionals, no matter how experienced they are.

I believe that the MBTI also presents four problems that should be considered by potential users. First, the MBTI is often used to make personnel decisions without first gathering validity data to support the decisions. This is, of course, a problem attributable to the users and not the instrument. However, the MBTI’s simplicity and ease of use facilitates these kinds of deplorable abuses.

Second, the news derived from the MBTI is always positive and upbeat. But people can only improve their performance if they know what they are doing wrong.  MBTI results have nothing to say about the dark side, about behavioral tendencies that annoy and alienate other people and destroy the trust and confidence on which relationships depend and which support positive career development. Consequently, the MBTI has limited utility for career coaching purposes.

Third, the MBTI, along with the Five-Factor Model (FFM) that is the universally accepted paradigm for trait psychologists, has nothing to say about the up-down or status dimension in life. Every human group has a status hierarchy, with people at the top, people in the middle, and people at the bottom; in addition, the principal dynamic in every human group is the individual search for power. On issues of ambition and power seeking, the MBTI and the FFM are equally uninformative.

And finally, like most other major commercially available assessments (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the California Psychological Inventory, the Strong Vocational Interest Inventory), there have been no significant updates or changes to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator since its original publication. It is expensive and troublesome to upgrade a major assessment with a large archival base, but imagine how hard it is for BMW to come out with a new product line every three years. Upgrading a psychological assessment is trivial by comparison.

Want to learn more about personality tests? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Personality Tests

We all know the stereotypes: Great CEOs are extroverted. They’re self-promoting. They’re risk takers. But are these stereotypes true? Which traits actually differentiate CEOs from other executives? And, most important, which attributes separate successful CEOs from other CEOs?

There is a great deal of conjecture and mythology about CEOs and the attributes that define their success. Russell Reynolds Associates, in partnership with Hogan Assessment Systems, has led a research effort to separate myth from reality, identifying key indicators of leadership that have a measurable impact on a company’s growth. The results demonstrate that intensity, an ability to prioritize and focus on substance, and an ability to know what one doesn’t know (and utilize the best in what others do know) are more strongly related to best-in-class CEO leadership than traditional traits like extroversion or self-promotion.

We believe our data-based approach has particular relevance due to our use of Russell Reynolds Associates’ and Hogan’s proprietary psychometric databases at the core of the study. Other researchers have approached these questions about CEOs by conducting interviews, analyzing resumes, and even evaluating vocal patterns. We chose an in-depth approach, creating detailed psychometric profiles of 200 global CEOs, using the results of three well-established psychometric instruments: the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), which provides an overall measure of adult personality, including interpersonal skills, emotional factors, resiliency, and communication style; the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ-32), which measures management and leadership style and behavior, including how people try to influence others, their approaches to innovative thinking, and self-motivation; and the Hogan Development Survey, which measures areas for development or potential derailing factors in managers and executives, including their decision-making style and independence of thinking. We validated the trends we discovered in another global sample of 700 CEOs produced by our partners at Hogan and subsequently compared these CEOs to the non-CEO executives in our proprietary database of 9,000 senior leaders.

Our analysis revealed that CEOs differ meaningfully from the overall executive population across many personality attributes. Two traits in particular stand out: an ability to embrace appropriate risks and a bias toward acting and capitalizing on opportunities. We consider these traits the “essence” of the CEO personality. In other words, a CEO is significantly less cautious and more likely to take action when compared to other senior executives.

As for the stereotypes, while we confirmed that CEOs in general are more likely to be risk takers than other executives, we did not find that they are consistently extroverted or self-promoting.

In addition, six other traits differentiate the typical CEO from other executives on a statistically significant basis:

• drive and resilience
• original thinking
• the ability to visualize the future
• team building
• being an active communicator
• the ability to catalyze others to action

It’s rare to have such detailed psychometric data related to the mindset of the CEO. It is even rarer to be able to link psychometric data to corporate performance. To make that link, we applied a quantitative hurdle of 5% compound annual growth rate during the CEO’s tenure.

When we compared the results of the best-performing CEOs to those of their less successful peers, we found that best-in-class CEOs stand out in three ways:

• They show a greater sense of purpose and mission, and demonstrate passion and urgency. These traits often manifest themselves as intensity, impatience, and an eagerness to move forward as well as a strong sense of ownership and immersion in activities. Researchers at McKinsey recently published related observations pertaining to new CEOs. In short, they asserted that the worst thing new CEOs can do is “sit on their hands.” The best-performing CEOs “move boldly and swiftly to transform their companies.” We don’t advocate decisions and actions that are overly spontaneous or impulsive, but we do value efficiency and speed in analyses and when acting on strategy.
• They value substance and going straight to the core of the issue. They have an ability to rise above the details and understand the larger picture and context. They have a keen sense of priorities as they think and act. We summarize this as an ability to “separate the signal from the noise.” Great CEOs have a “nose” for what are the most significant issues, challenges, threats, and opportunities facing an organization. While they draw on myriad inputs and discussions, their views about prioritization are clear and often quite independent. Ram Charan spoke to HBR about this several years ago in the context of “making tough calls.” We are seeing this play out right now, for example, in the retail space, where forces are creating tremendous complexity for CEOs. As retail is increasingly omnichannel, online, digital, and global, CEOs need to be thinking about consumer demand fluidity, globalization, regulations, and exchange-rate volatility, to name a few issues that barely scratch the surface of what retail CEOs are juggling.
• They have a greater focus on the organization, outcomes and results, and others than on themselves.They “know what they don’t know” and have an ability to be open-minded, seek additional information, and actively learn. This notion of a relatively modest CEO is counterintuitive for many. At the same time, there has been a good deal of writing about the usefulness of humility in CEOs. Our finding is data-based evidence that the Level 5 CEOs described in Jim Collins’s book Good to Great — leaders who are “a study in duality: modest and willful, shy and fearless” — can be related to desirable organizational results. Warren Buffett is a wonderful example of how this set of traits can play out in a leader: Despite overseeing what could be considered one of the most successful companies ever founded, Buffett estimates that he spends 80% of his day learning in an effort to understand businesses, markets, and opportunities. We summarize, of course, that great CEOs need to have the capacity to act boldly in difficult and uncertain situations; to be able to develop and articulate a strong point of view; and to be highly determined. The additional point here is that the most-successful CEOs also need to believe that the best idea wins and that they often obtain the best ideas based largely on how they work with others in a collaborative way.

There is no single profile for the successful chief executive. In every case, boards will have a broad set of business conditions to assess before determining their target profile. Some companies may require a true extrovert — someone willing to trumpet the company’s successes through constant and varied social gatherings. Others may benefit from a quieter approach, from a leader who can build relationships without appearing too “salesy” and who can avoid spooking relevant markets. But at the top of the list should always be the ability to embrace effective and appropriate risks and the ability to act on opportunities in high stakes situations — especially when the “right” action is not initially clear. These are the headlining traits that separate CEOs from other senior executives.

When a board wants to increase their odds of hiring a successful leader, it should interview and assess candidates for intensity and impatience, find those who focus on core issues, and search for a leader with the ability to have a point of view while still being open-minded and recognizing the power of the organization around him or her. These characteristics of our best-in-class CEOs will benefit almost every business, as they are clear markers for the ability to act quickly, draw nonobvious and nonlinear conclusions, connect thoughtfully across a wide variety of channels, and take advantage of digital and market disruption — all essential in today’s dynamic markets.

Dean Stamoulis leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Center for Leadership Insight. He provides guidance to boards and chief executive officers on how to build excellent leadership teams. This advisory work includes optimizing hiring, promotion, and succession decisions, and contributing to the development of promising senior executives.

*This article was written by Dean Stamoulis of Russell Reynolds Associates, and was originally published by Harvard Business Review on November 15, 2016.

There is no universally accepted model for transforming collections of individuals into high performing teams. There are four more common models used to improve team performance, which include Tuckman’s Stage Model, Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model, Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. Although each of these frameworks offers unique insights into team dynamics, The Rocket Model has several distinct advantages over the others.

Models of Team Performance

Tuckman’s Stage Model. Tuckman noted that leaderless discussion groups seemed to go through four distinct phases: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Groups do not become highly effective until they reach the performing stage. The model provides advice to leaders for helping groups transition through the four phases. Although these phases can readily be seen in volunteer groups, they rarely occur in corporate settings since work groups are usually brought together for some purpose, have better defined roles, and have some sort of pecking order.

Hackman’s Inputs-Processes-Outputs Model. According to Hackman, inputs are the raw materials available to a group or team, and include team members, raw materials, equipment, etc. Processes are the procedures or systems team members use to do work, and outputs are the end products. The inputs-processes-outputs model is based on sound research, but is too vague to be of much use.

Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni developed a team performance stage model that includes: (a) absence of trust; (b) fear of conflict; (c) lack of commitment; (d) avoidance of accountability; and (e) inattention to results. The model provides some useful insights into team dynamics, but is not based on sound research, and although it seems to make intuitive sense, in many cases it is simply wrong.

Curphy and Hogan’s Rocket Model. The Rocket Model capitalizes on the advantages of the previous frameworks in that it is based on research from hundreds of teams and provides sound, practical advice for improving group and team performance. The Rocket Model consists of eight components, which include context, mission, talent, norms, buy-in, power, morale, and results. Context concerns gaining team member agreement on the challenges facing the team; mission is setting team goals and benchmarks; talent focuses on the number, roles, and skills of team members; norms pertain to the rules by which team members operate; buy-in is all about fostering employee engagement; power concerns acquiring needed authority and resources; morale pertains to the level of team esprit-de-corps and conflict, and the accomplishments attained fall in to the results component.

The Rocket Model can be used to diagnose current team functioning and launch brand new teams. It can also be applied to co-located and virtual teams and groups. Because it is based on a foundation of research and provides practical advice for improving group and team performance, we believe The Rocket Model is superior to the other three frameworks.

Want to learn more about personality tests? Check out The Ultimate Guide to Personality Tests

By Gordon Curphy
Curphy Consulting Corporation
Guest blogger and author of The Rocket Model

The terms team and group are often used interchangeably, but there are some differences between groups and teams.

We define teams as consisting of three to 25 people who:

– Work toward a common set of goals
– Work jointly
– Share common leadership
– Hold joint accountability for performance
– See themselves as being part of a team with common goals and shared fates

Groups and Teams

This definition of teams is somewhat different from the usual definition in three ways. First, according to this definition dyads are not teams. The dynamics between any two people are much simpler than those between three or more people. Second, this definition assumes people share a “mental model” about the teams to which they belong. In other words, they identify themselves as being members of a particular team and tend to have common interpretations of events. And third, teams tend to be fairly small—usually less than 25 people. Larger groups may call themselves teams (such as a professional football team) but in reality, they are usually groups made up of various sub-teams (the offensive unit, defensive unit, etc.). Common examples of teams might include commercial aircrews, crews of firefighters, United States Army platoons, product development teams, manufacturing shift workers, fast food restaurant crews, research and development teams, and soccer teams. The individuals in each of these examples share common goals, depend on the help of the other team members, share leadership and common fates, and most importantly, identify with their teams.

Groups are clusters of people that do not share these five characteristics to the same extent as teams. A regional sales team responsible for selling insurance and other financial services to local citizens would be a prototypical group. In this so-called team, each sales rep has individual revenue and profitability goals for an assigned geographic territory. An individual’s ability to achieve these goals does not depend on what the other sales reps do; instead, it is completely dependent upon that person’s own performance. Although individual efforts contribute towards the region’s revenues and profitability goals, the region’s performance is merely the sum of each rep’s individual efforts. If a regional sales manager wants to increase revenues, then he or she could add reps, expand territories, increase prices, or change the product mix; requiring the reps to work more closely together would have little if any impact on the region’s financial performance.

Leading Groups and Teams

This is not to say that leaders play passive roles when managing groups. In fact, far from it! Leaders in charge of groups need to ensure that the members operate under the same assumptions regarding customers and competitors, possess the right skills, stay motivated, share information, have adequate resources, achieve their individual goals, and get differences quickly resolved. Contrast these leadership demands with those of a head surgeon of a cardiovascular surgical team. The head surgeon would have many of these same leadership responsibilities but would also need to ensure that their fellow surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants shared common goals, cooperated, used common work processes, had seamless task handoffs, shared a common fate, and identified with the team as they put stents and pacemakers into patients. Thus, the leadership demands on people in charge of teams are more extensive (and consequently more difficult to master) than the demands on people in charge of groups.

This blog post was authored by Gordon Curphy, managing partner of Curphy Leadership Solutions and author of The Rocket Model.