Diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you work in human resources, or a related field, you’ve heard these terms before and, odds are, you have some idea of what they mean. But just so that we are all on the same page, I’ll use the following, heavily borrowed, definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion:

• Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
• Equity concerns fair treatment, access, and opportunity for all people. Equity is about providing recognition, promotion, and compensation that is consistent with one’s work and qualifications. No one should be provided special treatment or privileges based on anything but performance.
• Inclusion concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

There are at least three reasons organizations should care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. The first is moral. Basic standards of human decency tell us that all people are of value and have something to contribute to society. Moreover, all people – regardless of background – deserve to be treated fairly, sharing equally in the benefits and burdens of society.

The second reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is legal. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The act also established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which further expanded Title VII to include discrimination based on age, gender, and disability. Ultimately, organizations found to be in violation of the laws are subject to legal ramifications including fines.

The third reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is to do better business. Solving business problems like growing market share, understanding clients for different markets, and ensuring your advertising isn’t off-putting to certain groups is easier and more efficient with people from a diverse set of backgrounds. In 2015, Bud Light added the tag line “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night” to their label. The advertising was immediately criticized. One cannot help but think that if the marketing team had included just one woman, they would have immediately realized this was a really bad idea.

The good news is that many organizations today get it. In 2005, fewer than 20% of the Fortune 500 had officers/programs for diversity and inclusion. In 2016, that number was closer to 60% and is poised to climb even higher. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are good for the organization and they are here to stay. But many organizations still struggle to increase their diversity and inclusion. The purpose of this essay is to make the scientific case for the use of personality assessments as a direct way to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

Making Personnel Decisions

When it comes time to hire someone, or to promote someone to a higher role, there are lots of valid ways organizations can go about doing this. Obvious options include asking for referrals, looking at resumes, and conducting an interview. All these methods, to various degrees, are valid predictors of workplace performance. Unfortunately, all these methods are also heavily subject to bias. Referrals practically guarantee that you will reduce diversity (i.e., people tend to only refer people with whom they are familiar, and we tend to be most familiar with people who are similar to us). While resumes may appear to be unbiased, they frequently include opportunities for implicit bias to occur. For example, some names may reflect ethnicity (e.g., John Logan vs. Juan Lopez) and even educational experiences may be a better reflection of parental socioeconomic status than ability to perform on the job. And, of course, interviews are full of opportunities for bias to creep in. The data are clear, with classic methods of making personnel decisions, you get increased workplace performance, but also increased bias. Ultimately, this reduces diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The good news is that it is easy to eliminate bias from personnel decisions: just make decisions at random. That is, if you decide to hire or promote people on a completely random basis (i.e., rolling dice, drawing names out of hat), it is guaranteed that you will not be making biased decisions. Unfortunately, it is also guaranteed that you will not be making the most effective decisions in terms of your organization’s long-term performance.

But there is still one more alternative, one way that you can increase both long-term performance and increase your organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion: scientifically validated personality assessments. Decades of research on personality assessment (broadly speaking) show effectively zero differences in scores due to race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, language, physical appearance, education level, or disability. (There are age differences, but these reflect maturity and are not biased against older adults.) At Hogan, we gather personality data from millions of people – from virtually every ethnic background – all over the world on an annual basis. Our own data show no meaningful differences in test scores as a function of group status. As just one example, the figures below show average scores on our three core assessments – the HPI, the HDS, and the MVPI – for different U.S. racial categories. The scores are so close that they are virtually identical.

But with personality assessments, you don’t just get diversity, equity, and inclusion. As already mentioned, you can do that simply by choosing people at random. With scientifically-validated personality assessments, you also get a track record of predicting workplace performance. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

TL; DR

The point here is simple: If all personnel decisions were made using scientifically-validated personality assessments, unfair discrimination in the workplace would cease to exist. Personality assessments lead to increased productivity and engagement, as well as increased diversity, equity and inclusion. If you are serious about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organization, using scientifically-validated personality assessments is an easy way to do that.

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

Almost every week I learn about a new psychological assessment company entering the marketplace. Although each company is different, they all tell the same story. First, they tell you that hiring is broken; Personality tests don’t work anymore; Recruiting is out-of-date. Second, they tell you that their company has the answer. Finally, they hit you with the marketing smokescreen: a list of sophisticated-sounding technological advancements designed to confuse you, misguide you, and make you feel like you are missing out. You are not missing out, but you are falling for the common marketing trends used by these new companies. In this article, I expose these trends so that you won’t fall for them.

Trend #1: Neuroscience

Some companies measure how fast you react to flashing objects on a computer screen and say that their assessments are based on neuroscience. Neuroscience is the study of the structure and function of the nervous system. Even though such a broad definition leaves room for debate, the reality is that neuroscience concerns the function of individual neurons and the brain (i.e., a large mass of neurons). So unless the assessment you are taking is directly recording brain activity, it isn’t neuroscience. Pushing the spacebar in response to images on a computer screen isn’t neuroscience. You don’t have to take my word for it. Check the table of contents of this book on neuroscience methods. Here’s another. No mention of measuring reaction times to flashes on a screen. Don’t fall for the neuroscience routine when it’s just measuring reaction time.

Unfortunately, the deception isn’t as innocent as calling a reaction time task neuroscience. Recent scientific studies have shown that reaction time tasks of individual differences are psychometrically useless. First, these tasks are designed to eliminate individual differences. If individuals don’t get different scores on the tasks, how they can possibly predict individual differences in performance? Second, these tasks have poor test-retest reliability. This means that you won’t get the same score each time you complete the tasks. If the scores you get back are random, how can they predict performance? Last, and not surprisingly, these tasks don’t predict real-world outcomes. One recent study showed that self-report measures of personality predicted 20 (out of 30) life outcomes and that reaction time tasks predicted none. Don’t fall for computer-based reaction time tasks that don’t predict anything.

Trend #2: Big Data / Deep Learning

Some companies brag about their stacks of big data and their use of machine learning or artificial intelligence to produce talent insights. However, if you dig deep, you find that most of the data these companies collect is useless; they aren’t even using it. For example, millions of mouse movements, keystrokes, and response times can be measured in a 10-minute assessment. But are they consequential? Do they predict anything? How is moving your mouse five pixels to the left before you respond to a question even relevant to your job as a store clerk? Evidence indicates that these sorts of micro-movements don’t predict anything and aren’t job relevant. Modern assessments might measure millions of things that you do, but only a few of them predict job fit and job performance. Unless the assessment is asking the right questions and measuring the right things, the big data are just another smokescreen.

The second thing you find as you dig deep (and you should be digging deep) into these assessment companies is that the sophisticated statistical methods they tout don’t provide the new insights they promise. Recent advances in deep learning and artificial intelligence have made news; and, these areas are poised to advance human progress. But these techniques are most beneficial for complex problems and huge data sets, not on data sets with a few hundred people and a handful of variables. Don’t fall for grandiose claims about big data and artificial intelligence that aren’t bringing new talent insights.

Trend #3: Gamification

Another marketing trend to watch out for is gamification. Gamification is defined as adding game-like elements such as points, scores, trophies, competition, and entertaining environments to existing assessments. The idea is that if job applicants have more fun taking the assessment, they will be less likely to drop out of the application process. Although the data show that candidates do enjoy game-based assessments, the data also show that gamification doesn’t improve performance predictions. Research indicates that applicants who drop out during the assessment process are unlikely to be your strongest candidates anyway. So you aren’t losing high-quality candidates due to dropout during assessment.

Further, measuring psychologically stable characteristics (e.g., IQ, personality) via games is extremely difficult. Although there is evidence that cognitive ability can be measured via game-based assessments, measuring personality using game-based assessments doesn’t work. In addition, assessments that claim to be game-based often aren’t games at all. In fact, most are just boring psychology laboratory tasks, like the Go, No-Go. Dr. Richard Landers—a global expert on game-based assessments—points out that dressing up boring tasks and adding arbitrary point systems doesn’t make something a game. Don’t fall for games that don’t predict performance.

Trend #4: Profile Matching

Everyone wants to hire high-performing employees. One intuitive way to do that is to hire people who are like your current high performers. Several new companies use a profile-matching approach. First, they assess your high performers. Next, they see what differentiates your high performers from some larger population of people who have taken the assessments. The differences between the two create a high-performer profile. At face value this approach sounds perfect, but it is deeply flawed as the following example demonstrates.

Imagine you are the owner of a professional basketball team. You have three superstars and would like more superstars. A company promises to use their assessments to help you find superstars. First, they measure your three superstars on basketball-relevant skills: speed, height, shooting ability, etc. Next, they compare your players to a large population. Lo and behold, they find out that your superstars are faster, taller, and better shooters than the general population. On this basis, they recommend that you hire players who are fast, tall, and great shooters.

I’m sure you can see the problem here. The assessment company you hired isn’t differentiating between your high performers and your low performers. They are simply telling you what differentiates people, who work in your organization (professional basketball players) from those who work in other organizations (everyone else). Although this profile matching approach used by many companies seems intuitive, it doesn’t work. Only a proper validation study that differentiates high and low performers will give you an accurate profile. Don’t fall for assessments that are only validated on high performers.

Trend #5: Emphasizing Irrelevant Information

The last marketing trend is something that shysters have been doing for a long time: emphasizing features of a product that don’t really matter. New and old assessment companies often emphasize the total number of applicants, time to hire, and the diversity of the hiring class as selling points. The odd thing about emphasizing these is that you don’t need an assessment company to do any of them. A simple lottery will do. That is, if you hire people randomly, you are sure to increase the total number of applicants and the diversity of the hiring class, and likewise you will decrease time to hire. The problem is, when it comes to performance, hiring randomly doesn’t work.

When it comes to performance, the only thing that matters is validity: how well does the assessment predict performance? The reality is that some assessments predict job performance better than others. Rest assured that assessment companies that don’t show or emphasize validity don’t have any. With no validity, they have no choice but to emphasize irrelevant features. The good news is that you don’t have to trade predictive validity for these less relevant features. Well-validated assessments predict job performance and do not discriminate with regard to race, religion, sex, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. As a result, well-validated personality assessments help you build a workforce that is high-performing and diverse. Don’t fall for assessments that emphasize irrelevant information.

Conclusion

Many of the new assessment firms use flashy technology and claim new insights into workplace performance. Hiring managers and HR professionals need to be wary of companies using these common marketing trends. Only two things matter in psychological assessment: fairness and predicting performance. Companies that emphasize neuroscience, big data, and gamification are often trying to distract you from the fact that their assessments don’t predict workplace performance.

On December 14^th, 2017 the Australian government launched the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation, and Financial Services Industry. The Commission was launched on the heels of numerous banking scandals involving the Big Four Australian banks. The Commission provided a preliminary report in August of 2018 and the final report was made public in February of 2019. Ultimately, the Commission found evidence of bribery, forgery, inadequate lending practices, lying to regulators, and even charging fees to people who were dead.

The preliminary Commission report concluded that the primary cause of this misconduct was:

“…greed – the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of basic standards of honesty…From the executive suite to the front line, staff were measured and rewarded by reference to profit and sales…When misconduct was revealed, it either went unpunished or the consequences did not meet the seriousness of what had been done.”

All of this brings back memories of the 2007-08 financial crisis in the US. Much like in the US, calls for more stringent regulations are inevitable. However, such regulations are unlikely to mitigate devious financial practices in the future. Indeed, as the Commission pointed out:

“…The law already requires entities to ‘do all things necessary to ensure’ that the services they are licensed to provide are provided ‘efficiently, honestly and fairly’. Much more often than not, the conduct now condemned was contrary to law. Passing some new law to say, again, ‘Do not do that’, would add an extra layer of legal complexity to an already complex regulatory regime…”

Further, the strategies currently being implemented to mitigate the risk-taking culture of banking and finance risks do not appear to be working. As Alessandra Capezio, a professor at the Australian National University, points out, the problem is not the standards and regulations of the banking and financial industries: it is the people in the industry, particularly the leadership.

It should surprise no one that the banking and financial services industries attract people who are interested in, and motivated by, money. Our own data on the personalities of more than 10,000 leaders in the banking and financial services industries from all over the world confirm this: people in this sector score well-above average on Commerce, a scale measuring the degree to which one is interested in business and financial pursuits.

However, being interested in money is not all that makes banking and finance leaders unique. They also score higher than average on Power – the desire to have authority over others and control of resources, Ambition – the tendency to take charge and compete with others, and Mischievousness – the tendency to manipulate others and bend the rules. Further, banking and finance leaders also tend to score below average on Security – the desire for predictability and stability, Prudence – the tendency to display high moral / ethical standards, and Dutiful – the tendency to conform and obey regulations set by others. Overall, these data paint the picture of the typical banking and financial industry leader just as described by the Commission and Capezio: greedy, risky, manipulative, and self-interested.

This is not to say that all banking leaders fit this description. In fact, the history of corporate financial scandals – including the recent banking scandals in Australia – is peppered with moralistic whistleblowers who brought the truth to the public. But these folks are exceptions to the rule.

What can be done about the problem of risky and malicious practices that seem to run rampant in the banking and financial services industries? The answer is not more regulations. As we have seen time and time again, the kinds of people who become leaders in these institutions are not bound by regulations. If the root cause of the problems facing the banking and financial services industry is the leadership, then the solution is to select better—more ethical—leadership. Fortunately, there are hundreds of years of research on the science of personality, leadership, and organizational effectiveness that can be used to inform leadership decisions. Unfortunately, many organizations – including financial organizations – continue to ignore the benefits of scientifically-validated personality assessments for leadership selection. In doing so, they put themselves, their employees, and their customers at risk.

On February 13^th, the Nevada assembly heard a proposal for a new bill, Nevada AB132. The bill itself is only 2.5 pages long and is pretty easy to read, but effectively has two parts:

1. Making it unlawful to deny employment on the basis of a marijuana screening test
2. Making it unlawful to condition employment on the completion, or results, of a personality test

The first part of the bill concerning pre-hiring marijuana testing has received a fair amount of local news coverage, and is outside of my areas of expertise. However, I will say it does seem odd that one can be excluded from a job for testing positive for a drug that is recreationally legal in the state. If an alcohol test could determine if you drank alcohol at any time over the past, say 30 days, should people of legal age to consume alcohol be excluded from jobs on the basis of that test result?

The second part has received far less attention, but is nonetheless disturbing. The key part of the bill reads:

In other words, this is a ban on using personality assessments for the purposes of employee selection.

What does this have to do with marijuana screenings you may ask? At face value, very little. However, one of the bill’s sponsors, Assemblyperson Dina Neal, provided some insight in a recent interview:

Neal said she had a constituent who applied for a retail association position to stock shelves and was subjected to a 50-question character assessment, which prompted her to add the provision to the bill.

Neal said she is willing to work to address concerns. “I’m open to finding a solution,” she added. “The solution needs to lead to people finding a way to get a job, not the opposite.”

Clearly, the intention of this bill is to remove barriers for employment. I fully support the intention of the bill. However, if this bill is passed Nevada will suffer a number of unintended consequences. To understand why, consider the following two points:

1. All employers must make employment decisions. These decisions can be based on many things: a coin flip, a dream, a lie detector test, an interview, a behavioral test, resumes, references, a personality assessment, etc. Obviously, some of these methods are more valid at predicting job performance than others (e.g., a coin flip is random, a lie detector has no validity). The validity evidence for personality assessments is overwhelming and undeniable. A meta-analysis by Barrick and Mount (1991) showed this definitively nearly 30 years ago. Since then, the validity evidence for personality has only grown more massive and more convincing (e.g., personality and workplace safety; an update of Barrick and Mount). Our own data show that when personality assessments are properly aligned with job performance criteria, personality predicts job performance as well as any cognitive ability assessment (curiously, cognitive ability assessments were not mentioned in the bill at all) and better than interviews. The evidence is quite clear: if one is making an employment decision, well-validated personality assessments based on scientific principles provide useful predictive insights into the candidates potential job performance.
2. Personality assessment for the purposes of employment selection largely came as a response to the Civil Rights Act and the creation of the EEOC. Virtually all personality assessments do not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or age. The same is not true of interviews, resumes, or reference requirements. Additionally, while scholars debate about whether or not cognitive ability tests are discriminatory or not, it is factually true that scores on cognitive ability test do tend to show adverse impact. In this regard, well-validated personality assessments offer both a high degree of predictive validity and virtually zero discrimination. Simply put, if all hiring decisions were based on personality assessments alone, employment discrimination on the basis of gender, race, etc. would cease to exist.

In summary, personality assessments provide employers with an unbiased evaluation of a candidates work potential and job fit. When used properly, such assessments give historically discriminated against groups (e.g., women, minorities, elderly, etc.) a fair playing field in the application process. This bill would eliminate that and, presumably, leave employers with only interviews and cognitive ability tests as their main resources. The former is well-known to be biased (especially against such groups) and the latter shows marked group differences.

The Nevada Assembly person sponsoring this bill clearly have the best of intentions in mind. However, they do not fully understand the consequences this bill – if passed – will cause for groups who have historically been the targets of discriminatory hiring practices. In this regard, AB132 reflects a failure to educate our lawmakers about the value of personality tests in terms of validity and fairness.

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

A recent article in the Washington Post described a new service from a company called Predictim that claims to help people find the perfect babysitter. The service scans the would-be sitter’s entire Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram history, then uses recent advances in personality and data analytics to assess four “personality features” — propensity toward Bullying / Harassment, Disrespectfulness / Bad Attitude, Explicit Content, and Drug Abuse.

At face value, this type of service has merit. There is a plethora of recent research demonstrating that social media profiles and word use on Twitter reflect the personalities of their users. Thus, it is sensible to think you could combine social media profiles and behavior to predict how a person might behave on the job.

However, these services ignore a long history of research showing that people strongly respond to incentives and will modify or even falsify their responses to succeed. This is a major problem, not just for Predictim, but for any service offering to evaluate someone’s work potential on the basis of their social media pages. Let me explain.

In the mid-2000’s, many employers started using text-searching programs to quickly sift through resumes. This worked just fine until savvy applicants found ways to stuff their resumes with keywords. A simple tactic was to put loads of keywords typically used by employers to select candidates in their resume in white font. When printed, the white font is undetectable to the human eye (on white paper, of course). However, the computers slogging through resumes picked up all of those keywords hidden on the resume, increasing the applicant’s chances of being selected.

Today, text-searching technology has gone beyond keyword-only searches to use natural language to weed out such strategies. However, the point is not about resume stuffing. The point is job applicants strongly respond to incentives and will try to trick or cheat the system to get selected.

In 2013, researchers demonstrated that “Liking” curly fries on Facebook was associated with higher IQ scores. However, as this curious finding made its way through the media, the relationship quickly disappeared; liking curly fries no longer predicts IQ scores. People thought they would appear smarter if they liked curly fries on Facebook, so everyone started liking them, eliminating the relationship.

Which brings us back to choosing babysitters via social media analysis. Virtually all the research mentioned in the opening paragraph demonstrating that personality is linked with social media usage was done in a context in which the people being studied had no incentive to be dishonest. However, when people know their social media profiles are being used to measure their intelligence and select them for jobs, they will start gaming their social media profiles to beat the system. If there is an incentive to have a “clean” social media profile, people will have them.

In fact, many people already have both “professional” and “personal” Facebook accounts. Which account do you think they submit to a potential employer who asks? Which Instagram account will the potential babysitter send to parents?

With employers using social media records to make personnel decisions, the stakes of social media use have become much larger. When careers are at stake, people will carefully cultivate social media profiles to maximize their chances of getting the job. If employers continue to do this, services that specialize in creating sanitized social media accounts for job applicants will emerge. How will employers combat these services? How will firms that assess personality via social media know that the profile they are getting is the real “Risky Rebecca” and not the professionally cultivated “Responsible Rebecca?”

Faking is a common problem in the personnel selection industry, though traditional personality assessments based on questionnaires tackled this issue long ago. Simply put, faking a questionnaire-based personality assessment is extremely difficult and many people who try to fake on such assessments get worse job-fit scores than they would have gotten if they had simply answered honestly. Faking a social media-based personality assessment is much easier, as you just need to keep content positive and to a minimum. If social media analysis companies cannot solve the faking problem, it will quickly put an end to their business model.

Sports are an excellent laboratory for understanding how leadership impacts organizational effectiveness. The criteria for success are clear and easily quantified (i.e., winning vs. losing). Moreover, frequent changes in personnel and leadership provide quasi-experimental evidence of how these factors play a role in success. In this essay, I consider the case of the Florida Atlantic University football program.

In the fall of 2011 there was a great deal of excitement in Boca Raton as it was the opening season for a brand new football stadium. The $70 million stadium seats around 30,000 people and is located in the heart of the campus. The season, however, was disappointing for FAU fans. The team finished 1-11 (1 win, 11 losses), dead last in the conference, and had an average attendance of 17,565 (ranking 103^rd among its FBS competitors). The legendary Howard Schnellenberger, who had announced his intention to retire prior to the beginning of the season, stepped down as head coach.

The team did not fare much better over the next five seasons. Carl Pelini was hired to begin the 2012 season, but subsequently resigned midway through the 2013 season for alleged illegal drug use. Charlie Partridge took over for the 2014 season and recorded three consecutive 3-9 records before being fired in November of the 2016 season. One month later, FAU hired Lane Kiffin as the head coach of the 2017 season.

Without a full season to recruit, Kiffin was faced with coaching the same players that had previously produced back-to-back-to-back 3-9 records. For this reason, what happened in 2017 is remarkable. Here are the highlights:

-An 11-3 win-loss record, their all-time best record as an FBS competitor

-Scored a team record 58 points in a game against Old Dominion

-Broke that record by 69 points in a game against North Texas the next week

-Scored 73 offensive touchdowns, tied for 3^rd most in the FBS

-Undefeated (8-0) in conference play

-Won the conference championship in a 41-17 rout of North Texas

-Boca Raton Bowl Champions in a 50-3 victory over a good Akron team

Same roster. Different leadership. Vastly different results. How was this possible? I watched the team play in 2016. Despite having the same players, the 2017 team looked entirely different.  In 2016, when a critical 4^th down came up, the team looked lost and panicked: “Should we punt?” “Should we go for it?” No one seemed to know. Watch the clip below to see how the 2017 team reacted to a 4^th and goal situation in the first quarter of the Boca Raton Bowl:

A few years ago, as I was standing in the bookstore, I heard someone on the radio talk about a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that a computer algorithm, relying only on the things you “like” on Facebook, makes more accurate judgments of your personality than your friends. If you heard about this study, it might have made you feel a bit squeamish. Maybe it even made you want to delete your Facebook account. In the wake of Cambridge Analytica, it is certainly reasonable to wonder just how much big data companies (like Facebook, Google, Verizon, or Visa) know about you. Having personally reviewed this study before it was published, I was not quite so concerned. Let me explain.

The study itself showed that aggregated Facebook likes (i.e., the things that you like on Facebook) can be used to predict self-reports on a personality test. Further, when the total number of likes is large enough, the aggregated likes show a stronger relationship with self-reported personality than reports from your friends, family, spouse, or colleagues. This was widely reported to indicate that computers make better personality judgments than humans. I have three problems with this conclusion.

1) The data show that self-other agreement with human judges was about r = .49, while self-other agreement with computer-based judgments was about r = .56. In real-world terms, what these numbers mean is that if you judge yourself to be above average (the median) on a trait, your friends are likely to guess that you are above average 74.5% of the time, while the computer algorithm guesses correctly 78% of the time. This is a real difference, so I don’t want to downplay it, but it is important not to oversell it either.

2) One of the most interesting findings from this paper was the fact that both aggregated Facebook likes AND peer judgments of personality predicted self-reports of personality largely independently of each other. Average self-other agreement with human judgments was r = .42 when controlling for computer judgments. Likewise, average self-other agreement with computer judgments was r = .38 when controlling for human judgments. Both the computer algorithm and human judgments were related to different parts of self-reports. That is, peer-judgments of you and like-based judgments of you did not overlap very much.

3) Although the reports made it sound as if computers have some sort of knowledge that we do not, this is of course not true. The computer-based algorithm for making personality judgments is based entirely on the person’s behavior. That is, “Liking” something on Facebook is a behavior. The computer is taking the sum total of those behaviors and using them as a basis for “judgment.” Critically, these behaviors came from the person whose personality is being judged. Thus, one could argue that the computer judgments are merely linking self-reports of behavior or preferences (e.g., I like Starbucks) with self-reports of personality. In other words, the paper showed that how you describe your own personality is related to the things that you like. When you put it like that, it does not sound nearly as disconcerting.

I don’t mean to denigrate the study here. It was an interesting and well-conducted study on personality assessment. Still, what would be more interesting is the knowing the degree to which aggregates of Facebook likes predict (a) one’s reputation and (b) how one will perform in the workplace. Regarding the former, the data from this study indicate the relationship between Facebook likes and reputation is pretty weak, suggesting that Facebook behavior is mostly about identity, not reputation. Regarding the latter, there appear to be no studies speaking to the question.

*Photo by Michał Kubalczyk on Unsplash.

The fate of any organization is largely a function of that organization’s leadership. The organization of the United States is no exception to this rule. As such, it is appropriate to understand Donald Trump’s personality and its impact on the function of the United States.

I do not personally know Mr. Trump and I have never had the opportunity to professionally assess his personality (though I’d be happy to do so if he were willing). Thus, my views are based purely on watching his behavior.¹ His personality is captured by his reputation, which is the sum of his behavior, and organized by a standard set of themes as follows.

We can look at two sides of the Personality of Donald Trump. His Bright Side (how he typically behaves when he’s at his best) and his Dark Side (how he behaves when he lets down his guard).

The Personality of Donald Trump

Beginning with the Bright Side we can expect Mr. Trump to be:

Highly Adjusted. Mr. Trump does not appear anxious or nervous. When at his best, he remains calm under pressure, doesn’t break down in the face of criticism, and is quite pleased with himself as a person. The downside is that he is reluctant to listen to feedback — especially negative feedback — from others.

Highly Ambitious. Mr. Trump is competitive, wants to win, and wants to be in charge. He is concerned about results and getting things done. On the downside, he tends to compete with those who are actually on his team and alienate his staff when he does.

Highly Sociable. Mr. Trump likes to entertain, to be the center of attention, and to talk…a lot. The obvious downside is that he can be unwilling to listen, overbearing, and shoot off at the mouth without thinking.

Low on Interpersonal Sensitivity. Mr. Trump is direct, doesn’t shy away from confrontation, or really care much about peoples’ feelings. The upside is that he is willing to let people go when needed (e.g., “You’re Fired”). The downside is that he is hostile and alienates others.

Low on Prudence. Mr. Trump doesn’t care much for rules and tends to avoid them. He is independent minded and has little patience for anyone who might try to order him around. The positive side is that he will be quick to make decisions and to make things happen.

Highly Inquisitive. Mr. Trump has a lot of ideas and a big imagination. He has all sorts of ideas for solving problems, but has difficulty implementing his plans and thinking through the details of their execution.

On the Dark Side we can expect Mr. Trump to be:

Highly Excitable. Mr. Trump is emotional and highly unpredictable. This is most apparent in his Twitter usage where he is prone to sling personal insults and attacks on the media. Such people are difficult to work with because you never know what will set them off and people often have to walk on eggshells around them.

Highly Bold. This is Mr. Trump’s most defining characteristic. He is unusually self-confident, and shows feelings of grandiosity and entitlement. Such individuals tend to make a good first impression, but are difficult to work with because they feel entitled to special treatment, ignore their critics, and intimidate others. As a result, he tends to overestimate his capabilities.

Highly Mischievous. Mr. Trump is charming, interesting, and daring. He enjoys taking risks, pushing the limits, and thrives on excitement. Such people are hard to work with because they are impulsive, downplay their mistakes, take ill-advised risks, and have no regrets.

Highly Colorful. Mr. Trump is quick, fun, and socially skilled. He loves making use of his celebrity and having his accomplishments recognized. He’s very good at calling attention to himself. Such people are hard to work with because they are self-promoting, overcommitted, and easily angered.

Low on Diligence. Mr. Trump is uninterested in the details and execution of plans. Instead, he prefers to put his big ideas forward and leaves others to figure out the details of making them work. As a result, he tends to focus on short-term fixes without considering the long-term consequences.

Low on Dutifulness. Mr. Trump likes to defy the status quo, doesn’t care about pleasing others, and is quick to make decisions. He doesn’t take orders (or advice) from many people (if anyone).

In summary, what we see from Mr. Trump is what we already knew about him. The real-estate mogul and reality TV star is the same person we see as President.

What has this meant for the United States as an organization? First, foreign and domestic policies have been created and acted upon quickly, sometimes without the proper vetting (e.g., US immigration policy; trade tariffs). Second, the US is perceived as aggressive, competitive, and tough, guided by a strong desire to “win,” even at the expense of others (allies and enemies included). Third, the US is perceived as less predictable and unbound by rules and past agreements (e.g., Iran deal). This will result in a lack trust from our allies in the future.

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

¹ Which is the same method everyone else uses. I do have the advantage of being a trained personality psychologist with experience assessing many people. The assessment here compares Mr. Trump to the population in general, not other politicians or political candidates. Many politicians are very similar to Mr. Trump on a number of these characteristics.

*The original version of this article was published by Psychology Today on September 17, 2015, prior to Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016. It has been updated to reflect observations made since he took office.

*This article was originally published by Training Industry on May 1, 2018.

One of the best studies ever conducted on organizational effectiveness was done by Jim Collins and described in his book “Good to Great.” Collins identified 11 firms from the Fortune 1000 that had 15 years of below-average performance in their industry followed by 15 years of above-average performance. The key question of the investigation is, what took these 11 firms from “good” to “great”?

Collins ultimately concluded (somewhat reluctantly) that the key driver of change in organizational performance was a change in leadership. However, simply changing the leadership was not enough. Collins found that these 11 high-performing firms chose leaders with an almost paradoxical blend of characteristics: They were fiercely competitive, yet personally humble.

It is easy to understand why leaders who are fiercely competitive are more effective: They want to beat the competition. What is less clear is why humility – as opposed to confidence, charm and charisma – was characteristic of the most effective leaders. This article draws on recent research in personality science to offer three generalizations about humility, leadership and organizational effectiveness.

Generalization #1: Humble Leaders Are More Effective.

In a systematic series of studies, Bradley Owens demonstrated that employees working for humble leaders are more engaged, satisfied and productive and better organizational citizens. That is, they talk up the organization to others, building a positive reputation for their organization. Additionally, organizations with humble leaders suffer from less turnover and are themselves more collectively humble.

So, what is it that humble leaders do to create such positive results? At least three things: First, humble leaders give credit to their team members and let everyone share in the team’s success. Doing so builds trust among the team. If subordinates do not trust their leader, the mission is doomed to failure. Humble leaders build trust.

Second, humble leaders recognize their own shortcomings and are willing to ask for help when a problem is outside of their area of expertise. Because team members trust humble leaders, they are happy to help when their leader asks.

Third, humble leaders are coachable. They listen to feedback from others and use it to improve their own performance. Leaders who lack humility cannot get better, because they ignore feedback.

Generalization #2: Humble Leaders Are Overlooked.

Unfortunately, modern organizations often overlook their most effective (humble) leaders. Charisma, charm and self-proclamations of competence are strong predictors of leadership emergence (i.e., being chosen to lead), despite their lack of association with leadership effectiveness (i.e., building a winning team). Because humble leaders give credit to others and avoid the spotlight, senior leadership often overlooks and underestimates their accomplishments.

Our own data show that ambition (i.e., the tendency to take charge, compete and advance one’s career) is slightly negatively correlated with humility. In other words, one of the key factors associated with leadership emergence (ambition) is negatively correlated with a key factor of leadership effectiveness (humility). The grid below illustrates the situation:

As shown, if leaders are selected for their emergence characteristics (i.e., high emergence), the probability of choosing an ineffective leader is 60 percent! This is precisely why Collins referred to the 11 most effective leaders as holding a paradoxical combination of traits. A small fraction of leaders possess both ambition and humility.

Generalization #3: Lack of Humility Ruins Organizations.

Most businesses ultimately fail, and the primary cause of organizational failure is poor leadership. There are many ways that leadership can go wrong, but four themes – all related to a lack of humility – are readily apparent. The first theme of poor management is an exaggerated sense of self and entitlement. Such narcissists obviously lack humility but are quite adept at getting themselves into leadership positions (see generalization #2). Ultimately, these leaders alienate their staff because they make promises that they cannot keep, they take credit for all successes, and they blame anyone and everyone else for any failures. Talented employees quit or find themselves on the proverbial chopping block. When talent leaves, organizations fail.

The second theme of poor management is a lack of awareness about how one’s actions are affecting others. These leaders are insensitive to the “people side” of doing business. Further, they fail to recognize this insensitivity as a shortcoming. Subordinates see them as cold and uncaring. While humble leaders are open to listening to what other people feel and think, insensitive leaders are unwilling to listen to opinions and feedback from others.

The third theme of poor management is an exaggerated need for social support and approval. All people have some need for social support and approval, but some really poor leaders are desperate for it (think Michael Scott from “The Office”). Similarly, the fourth theme of poor management is insecurity and low self-confidence. Both of these traits are rooted in insecurity and fear of rejection. Leaders who lack humility are desperate for attention and approval of others. Indeed, much of their expressed arrogance and overconfidence is intended to mask a deep desire for the approval of others. On the flip side, however, people who are overly humble may also suffer from such insecurities. For example, agreeing with the statement “I’m not very good at things” may reflect either true humility or a lack of self-confidence. Leaders who are appropriately humble are seen as confident and suffer from neither diffidence nor arrogance.

Leaders are the most consequential members of any organization. Unfortunately, the current cultural attraction to leaders who are charming, charismatic and self-promoting (e.g., transformational leadership) is leading us in the wrong direction. Some of our most effective leaders are hiding in our organizations, masked by their own humility. For the future success of our organizations, finding them is critical.

“This porridge is too hot!”

“This porridge is too cold.”

“Ahhh, this porridge is just right.”

–Goldilocks

At Hogan, we’ve been talking a lot about Humility lately. We’ve spent much less time talking about its antonym – Charisma. However, colleagues have used the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) to study charisma and recently published their findings in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This post highlights their key findings, relates it to our own thinking about humility, and calls out some practical implications for coaching and leadership development.

In their paper, Jasmine Vergauwe, Bart Wille, Joeri Hofmans, Rob Kaiser, and Filip De Fruyt show that the HDS contains a “Charisma Cluster” of scales. Specifically, the Bold, Mischievous, Colorful, and Imaginative scales together form a measure of charisma that reflects a combination of confidence, risk-taking, social presence, and strong vision.

People with high scores on the Charisma Cluster describe themselves as talkative, inventive, energetic, and original. They also describe themselves as good-looking, persevering, and ingenious. In contrast, observers describe these individuals only as talkative, energetic, and original, not as good looking and persevering.  Thus, individuals with a charismatic personality have inflated views of themselves that are inconsistent with how others see them.

Second, and most importantly, the researchers examined the relationship between charisma and overall effectiveness in a sample of over 300 business leaders. Once again, self-ratings of overall effectiveness were inconsistent with coworker ratings: HDS charisma scores significantly predicted self-rated effectiveness (r = .29), whereas the charisma scores were uncorrelated with coworker-rated effectiveness. But the story didn’t end there.

There was a significant curvilinear relationship between HDS charisma scores and coworker-rated effectiveness. According to coworkers, a slight elevation on the charisma cluster – neither too little nor too much – predicted the highest levels of rated effectiveness. The Figure tells the story.

Coworkers indicated that those managers with scores slightly above the average in a large sample of working adults (i.e., about the 60^th percentile) were seen as the most effective leaders. After that, more charisma predicted decreasing effectiveness. In contrast, the higher the self-ratings for charisma, the higher the self-rating for effectiveness.  But other people are always the best judge of a person’s performance.

At about the 70^th percentile on the charismatic cluster, coworkers start to see the dark side of charisma—where confidence become arrogance, risk-taking gets reckless, social presence looks melodramatic, and strong vision becomes ungrounded grandiosity. But these highly charismatic leaders can’t see the downside, and in fact see themselves as extraordinarily effective leaders.Rob Kaiser (a coauthor) refers to this divergence of opinion at the highest levels of charisma as “the gradient of delusion.”

The moral of this story will be familiar to readers of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Leaders with just the right amount of charisma, neither too little nor too much, are the most effective. Some charisma is desirable; without any spark, leaders lack the confidence, charm, vision, and flair needed to inspire others. But when it comes to charisma, there is clearly such a thing as too much of a good thing.

This research has two practical implications. First, we should never rely on self-assessments of effectiveness or workplace performance. Reputation is where the action is and other people own your reputation.

Second, those working in coaching or leadership development need to develop strategies for bringing highly charismatic leaders back to reality. Coworker feedback is obviously one way to help charismatics calibrate their excessively rosy self-appraisals. Charismatic leaders can also benefit from working with a partner who provides a practical foil to their unrealistic self-beliefs. Such people need to be trusted by the larger-than-life charismatic; they need the insight not to be taken in by the charismatic’s charm and they need to be able to steer charismatic leaders back on track—and prevent them from going over the edge.