Today's post is excerpted from the essay "Personality Theory and Positive Psychology" by Robert Hogan and Michael J. Benson.

The term "strategic self-awareness" is a favorite of Dr. Hogan, and one that's used frequently around our office in regard to the over-arching goal of the assessment process. It stands to reason that if your goal is to get along and get ahead, especially in the workplace, it's critical that you have a firm grasp on your strengths and weaknesses from a personality standpoint. So how do we go about becoming strategically self-aware? The following text provides a good overview of the process. It may also be the first psychological text to use the phrase "flicking boogers."

The mainstream (and dominant) intrapsychic tradition of personality psychology defines self-knowledge in terms of becoming aware of thoughts and emotions (and strengths) that were formerly unconscious. This is sometimes popularly expressed as getting in touch with one’s emotions, strengths (or even one’s “inner child”). This definition of self-awareness is the cornerstone of traditional psychotherapy, and it would be difficult to overstate how influential it has been. In our view, it is also incorrect, and it takes the process of guided individual development in the wrong direction.

Socrates’ maxim was “know thyself;" he also famously maintained that the unexamined life is not worth living. However, Socrates and the ancient Greeks meant something very specific by self-knowledge. They were a practical people and they defined self-knowledge in terms of understanding the limits of one’s performance capabilities—i.e., knowing one’s strengths and shortcomings vis-?-vis one’s competitors in various activities. This is a sensible way to think about self-awareness; we refer to it as strategic self-awareness because it is information that can be used to shape and direct one’s career. There are two components of strategic self awareness: (1) understanding one’s limitations and strengths; and (2) and understanding how they compare with those of others. The second part is what distinguishes self-awareness from strategic self-awareness. We would like to note three points about this model of self-awareness.

First, strategic self-awareness cannot be gained in vacuo or through introspection. Strategic self-awareness depends on performance-based feedback using some sort of systematic assessment process. If people want to improve their golf games, they will consult a golf pro who asks them to hit some balls, perhaps video-tape their performance, then offers feedback. If they want to improve their tennis game, they will do the same thing. But what should they do if they want to improve their life (or career) games? They will need feedback on their habitual ways of dealing with other people—i.e., the interpersonal moves they typically employ in their efforts to both get along and get ahead.

Second, for career success, people need feedback in the five performance areas mentioned above: their talent level in various performance domains, the degree to which they can be coached, their ability to function as part of a team, their sportsmanship, and their ability to perform under pressure. For example, well developed multi-rater tools (360-degree feedback instruments) that contain evaluations from different perspectives can provide insight regarding current performance. The information can then be used to devise a plan to expand their capabilities (add new skills), expand their capacity (improve existing skills), or find ways to compensate for shortcomings.

Third, we believe feedback should be framed in terms of three categories as follows: (a) Keep doing—continue doing whatever a person is doing correctly; (b) Stop doing—eliminate troublesome or counterproductive performance characteristics (interrupting, cheating, lying, farting, flicking boogers, etc.); (c) Start doing—acquire new behaviors that will enhance their performance.

Today’s post is excerpted from the essay “Personality Theory and Positive Psychology” by Robert Hogan and Michael J. Benson.

The term “strategic self-awareness” is a favorite of Dr. Hogan, and one that’s used frequently around our office in regard to the over-arching goal of the assessment process. It stands to reason that if your goal is to get along and get ahead, especially in the workplace, it’s critical that you have a firm grasp on your strengths and weaknesses from a personality standpoint. So how do we go about becoming strategically self-aware? The following text provides a good overview of the process. It may also be the first psychological text to use the phrase “flicking boogers.”

The mainstream (and dominant) intrapsychic tradition of personality psychology defines self-knowledge in terms of becoming aware of thoughts and emotions (and strengths) that were formerly unconscious. This is sometimes popularly expressed as getting in touch with one’s emotions, strengths (or even one’s “inner child”). This definition of self-awareness is the cornerstone of traditional psychotherapy, and it would be difficult to overstate how influential it has been. In our view, it is also incorrect, and it takes the process of guided individual development in the wrong direction.

Socrates’ maxim was “know thyself;” he also famously maintained that the unexamined life is not worth living. However, Socrates and the ancient Greeks meant something very specific by self-knowledge. They were a practical people and they defined self-knowledge in terms of understanding the limits of one’s performance capabilities—i.e., knowing one’s strengths and shortcomings vis-?-vis one’s competitors in various activities. This is a sensible way to think about self-awareness; we refer to it as strategic self-awareness because it is information that can be used to shape and direct one’s career. There are two components of strategic self awareness: (1) understanding one’s limitations and strengths; and (2) and understanding how they compare with those of others. The second part is what distinguishes self-awareness from strategic self-awareness. We would like to note three points about this model of self-awareness.

First, strategic self-awareness cannot be gained in vacuo or through introspection. Strategic self-awareness depends on performance-based feedback using some sort of systematic assessment process. If people want to improve their golf games, they will consult a golf pro who asks them to hit some balls, perhaps video-tape their performance, then offers feedback. If they want to improve their tennis game, they will do the same thing. But what should they do if they want to improve their life (or career) games? They will need feedback on their habitual ways of dealing with other people—i.e., the interpersonal moves they typically employ in their efforts to both get along and get ahead.

Second, for career success, people need feedback in the five performance areas mentioned above: their talent level in various performance domains, the degree to which they can be coached, their ability to function as part of a team, their sportsmanship, and their ability to perform under pressure. For example, well developed multi-rater tools (360-degree feedback instruments) that contain evaluations from different perspectives can provide insight regarding current performance. The information can then be used to devise a plan to expand their capabilities (add new skills), expand their capacity (improve existing skills), or find ways to compensate for shortcomings.

Third, we believe feedback should be framed in terms of three categories as follows: (a) Keep doing—continue doing whatever a person is doing correctly; (b) Stop doing—eliminate troublesome or counterproductive performance characteristics (interrupting, cheating, lying, farting, flicking boogers, etc.); (c) Start doing—acquire new behaviors that will enhance their performance.

The following Robert Hogan commentary appeared on the Hogan Assessments Website in March 2007. It's a good summary of of why we (Hogan) do what we do, and I'd be curious to know the perception of the relationship between personality and career success from people *outside* the realm of I/O psychology. If you're currently searching for employees (or even an employer), how much does personality matter to you?

Why does personality matter? To answer this question, we need to resolve two prior issues:

1. What is personality?
2. Who wants to know why personality matters?

The answer to the question, “What is personality?” is that there are two answers. There is what we call “personality from the inside” and there is what we call “personality from the outside”. Personality from the inside concerns your view of you, it concerns the person you think you are—it concerns your hopes, your dreams, your values, your goals, your aspirations, your fears, and the things you think you need to do to realize your goals and avoid your fears. We refer to personality from the inside as your identity.

Personality from the outside concerns our view of you, the person we think you are, and we refer to this as your reputation. It concerns the things we need to know in order to be able to deal with you effectively. So, there is the you that you know, personality from the inside, or your identity. Then there is the you that we know, personality from the outside, or your reputation. These two forms of personality are different in very important ways.

Consider the you that you know—your identity. Freud would say that it is hardly worth knowing—because you made it up. Everyone has to be someone, and you are the hero or heroine in your own life’s drama, but that doesn’t mean that your identity is necessarily closely related to reality. The way people think about and describe themselves is only modestly related to how others describe them—people don’t really know themselves all that well. Even worse, about 100 years of research on identity shows that it is very hard—almost impossible—to study in a rigorous and empirical way. As a result, we psychologists don’t know very much about identity that is interesting or useful.

Consider the you that we know—your reputation. Reputation is quite interesting for several reasons. First, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior; your reputation reflects your past behavior, therefore your reputation is the best information we have regarding what you are likely to do in the future. Second, reputations are easy to study—we need only ask other people to describe you. And third, there is a well-defined and widely accepted taxonomy of reputations that has been used to study occupational performance, and as a result, we psychologists know a lot about the kinds of people who do well or poorly in different kinds of jobs. That is, we know a lot about the links between reputation and occupational performance.

As for the question of who wants to know why personality matters, it matters to two categories of people: (a) people who are interested in their own career development; and (b) potential employers. People who are interested in their own career development need to know about their own strengths and shortcomings relative to the demands of various occupations.

More precisely, people who want to approach the topic of career development in a strategic manner will want to know:

1) how their strengths match the demands of various careers; and

(2) how other people will perceive them during job interviews and while working.

Personality matters to potential employers in at least three ways. First, they need to know what kind of employee you will be—will you be cranky, difficult, and hard to manage or will you be a world-class organizational citizen? Second, they need to know if your personality fits the demands of the job for which you are applying—do you have the drive to succeed in sales, the social skills to succeed in customer service, the good judgment to succeed as a manager? And third, they need to know if your values (your identity) are consistent with the corporate culture—it doesn’t matter how talented you are, if your values are inconsistent with the corporate culture, you will not succeed in that organization.

The bottom line is that personality matters to individuals because self-understanding allows a person to be strategic about his/her career choices and career development. Personality matters to employers because knowledge about a job applicant’s personality allows them to be strategic about the hiring process.

The following Robert Hogan commentary appeared on the Hogan Assessments Website in March 2007. It’s a good summary of of why we (Hogan) do what we do, and I’d be curious to know the perception of the relationship between personality and career success from people *outside* the realm of I/O psychology. If you’re currently searching for employees (or even an employer), how much does personality matter to you?

Why does personality matter? To answer this question, we need to resolve two prior issues:

1. What is personality?
2. Who wants to know why personality matters?

The answer to the question, “What is personality?” is that there are two answers. There is what we call “personality from the inside” and there is what we call “personality from the outside”. Personality from the inside concerns your view of you, it concerns the person you think you are—it concerns your hopes, your dreams, your values, your goals, your aspirations, your fears, and the things you think you need to do to realize your goals and avoid your fears. We refer to personality from the inside as your identity.

Personality from the outside concerns our view of you, the person we think you are, and we refer to this as your reputation. It concerns the things we need to know in order to be able to deal with you effectively. So, there is the you that you know, personality from the inside, or your identity. Then there is the you that we know, personality from the outside, or your reputation. These two forms of personality are different in very important ways.

Consider the you that you know—your identity. Freud would say that it is hardly worth knowing—because you made it up. Everyone has to be someone, and you are the hero or heroine in your own life’s drama, but that doesn’t mean that your identity is necessarily closely related to reality. The way people think about and describe themselves is only modestly related to how others describe them—people don’t really know themselves all that well. Even worse, about 100 years of research on identity shows that it is very hard—almost impossible—to study in a rigorous and empirical way. As a result, we psychologists don’t know very much about identity that is interesting or useful.

Consider the you that we know—your reputation. Reputation is quite interesting for several reasons. First, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior; your reputation reflects your past behavior, therefore your reputation is the best information we have regarding what you are likely to do in the future. Second, reputations are easy to study—we need only ask other people to describe you. And third, there is a well-defined and widely accepted taxonomy of reputations that has been used to study occupational performance, and as a result, we psychologists know a lot about the kinds of people who do well or poorly in different kinds of jobs. That is, we know a lot about the links between reputation and occupational performance.

As for the question of who wants to know why personality matters, it matters to two categories of people: (a) people who are interested in their own career development; and (b) potential employers. People who are interested in their own career development need to know about their own strengths and shortcomings relative to the demands of various occupations.

More precisely, people who want to approach the topic of career development in a strategic manner will want to know:

1) how their strengths match the demands of various careers; and

(2) how other people will perceive them during job interviews and while working.

Personality matters to potential employers in at least three ways. First, they need to know what kind of employee you will be—will you be cranky, difficult, and hard to manage or will you be a world-class organizational citizen? Second, they need to know if your personality fits the demands of the job for which you are applying—do you have the drive to succeed in sales, the social skills to succeed in customer service, the good judgment to succeed as a manager? And third, they need to know if your values (your identity) are consistent with the corporate culture—it doesn’t matter how talented you are, if your values are inconsistent with the corporate culture, you will not succeed in that organization.

The bottom line is that personality matters to individuals because self-understanding allows a person to be strategic about his/her career choices and career development. Personality matters to employers because knowledge about a job applicant’s personality allows them to be strategic about the hiring process.

Welcome to "The Science of Personality," an informal repository of information and commentary related to industrial/occupational psychology.

Much of the content is the work of Dr. Robert Hogan, founder of Hogan Assessment Systems and an international authority on personality assessment, leadership, and organizational effectiveness.

As such, Dr. Hogan offers keen insight into the goings-on within the the I/O psych community, as well as a host of other related topics in his pursuit of strategic self-awareness and "educating the whole person."

We invite you to explore a range of topics in the days to come, and to engage in ongoing dialogue related to personality and its role in the world of business and corporate society.

Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, "He governs best who governs least." I am a lifetime liberal but on this point, I largely agree with the former President and conservative icon. Several years ago, on a commercial flight to somewhere, I was sitting next to a talkative retired aeronautical engineer. In the course of his monologue, he noted that he had been Ronald Reagan's boss in World War II. They ran a logistic operation for the Army in the western Pacific (Reagan had bad eyes and had received a deferment from combat assignments). I asked him about Reagan's performance, and he said Reagan was the best natural manager he had ever seen. I then pointed out that, inside the Washington beltway, Reagan was frequently criticized for his "hands off" leadership style, and the engineer snapped, "That's because he knows what he is doing." He then pointed out that everyone agreed that Reagan's transition into the White House had been the smoothest in recorded memory—more so even that of the compulsively organized Navy Nuclear Engineer Jimmy Carter—and this testified to Reagan's skill as a manager.

I believe the fundamental dynamic in every organization is the individual search for power (those who don't seek power don't contribute to the dynamics). This inevitably leads to what Gordon Curphy calls "projects for promotion;" ambitious managers, eager to advance their careers, invent leadership initiatives—not to solve problems but to make a point about their leadership talent. In this way, much energy and sometimes blood and treasure are expended for the sake of someone's legacy. I think people mostly want to be left alone to do their jobs and live their lives. Leadership is probably relevant in times of crisis and when organizations are confronted with internal or external threats.

Vast amounts of money and effort are spent each year studying, evaluating, and training leadership, which reflects the perceived importance of the topic. Nonetheless, it’s worth asking if all this effort is justified, just to keep the process honest. In extreme and statistically infrequent cases (e.g., corrupt CEOs and heads of state), bad leadership can cause terrible problems for many people. But in the typical case (e.g., a middle manager), is leadership important, and if so, how, and in what ways?

From a conceptual perspective, one can argue that the importance of leadership is overblown. Three considerations support this view. First, in hunter-gatherer societies, which are proxies for the original social organization of humans, there are no leaders. Hunter gatherer groups are utterly democratic, they use distributed decision making, and if one person tries to exert authority over the others, that person will be quickly sanctioned. If he (and it is always a he) persists in trying to rule, he will be terminated. Thus, we evolved in leaderless societies and, in ordinary circumstances, we may find leadership alienating at a deep psychological level.

Second, various researchers estimate that the base rate of incompetent management in corporate America (and no doubt around the world) is 65% to 75%. Based on these numbers, if leadership were truly important, most organizations should fail; the fact that they don’t fail suggests that factors other than leadership explain their performance. Third, anyone who has conducted job analyses in organizations, or worked in one, knows that employees expend a lot of effort trying to avoid their managers. I once interviewed the star salesman for a very large logistics firm. In dismay, he confided to me that he hated it when his sales manager came around. As he put it, “I can’t wait for him to leave so that I can get back to making money for the company and for me.”

The case for minimal leadership is even stronger from an empirical perspective. Pragmatic considerations suggest that I/O psychology should focus on business unit performance. Specifically, priority should be assigned to those factors that will have the largest impact on team effectiveness and ultimately the fabled bottom line. The research literature suggests that leadership style impacts staff morale, and that staff morale then predicts business unit performance, so the effects of leadership on organizational performance are mediated by staff morale. Leadership style reliably correlates about .30 with staff morale. However, staff members’ own scores on Big Five measures of Adjustment or Core Self Evaluations correlate above .50 with staff morale. This suggests that although leadership style affects staff morale, it is not the most important determinant of morale. The conclusion seems straightforward: the best way to enhance staff morale, and therefore business unit performance, is to hire staff with high scores for Adjustment or Core Self Evaluations. Leadership is a secondary consideration.

In Herzberg’s (1966) pioneering study of the determinants of employee motivation, he concluded that it is important to distinguish between motivator factors and hygiene factors. Motivator factors actually improve performance. Hygiene factors only serve to demotivate people. Removing hygiene factors removes sources of dissatisfaction, but removing them does not actually enhance performance. The data suggest that leadership is a hygiene factor—bad leadership alienates employees, whereas good leadership doesn’t improve performance, it just doesn’t impede it. Consequently, leadership interventions should focus on weeding out the bad ones and worry less about the characteristics of good ones.

Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “He governs best who governs least.” I am a lifetime liberal but on this point, I largely agree with the former President and conservative icon. Several years ago, on a commercial flight to somewhere, I was sitting next to a talkative retired aeronautical engineer. In the course of his monologue, he noted that he had been Ronald Reagan’s boss in World War II. They ran a logistic operation for the Army in the western Pacific (Reagan had bad eyes and had received a deferment from combat assignments). I asked him about Reagan’s performance, and he said Reagan was the best natural manager he had ever seen. I then pointed out that, inside the Washington beltway, Reagan was frequently criticized for his “hands off” leadership style, and the engineer snapped, “That’s because he knows what he is doing.” He then pointed out that everyone agreed that Reagan’s transition into the White House had been the smoothest in recorded memory—more so even that of the compulsively organized Navy Nuclear Engineer Jimmy Carter—and this testified to Reagan’s skill as a manager.

I believe the fundamental dynamic in every organization is the individual search for power (those who don’t seek power don’t contribute to the dynamics). This inevitably leads to what Gordon Curphy calls “projects for promotion;” ambitious managers, eager to advance their careers, invent leadership initiatives—not to solve problems but to make a point about their leadership talent. In this way, much energy and sometimes blood and treasure are expended for the sake of someone’s legacy. I think people mostly want to be left alone to do their jobs and live their lives. Leadership is probably relevant in times of crisis and when organizations are confronted with internal or external threats.

Vast amounts of money and effort are spent each year studying, evaluating, and training leadership, which reflects the perceived importance of the topic. Nonetheless, it’s worth asking if all this effort is justified, just to keep the process honest. In extreme and statistically infrequent cases (e.g., corrupt CEOs and heads of state), bad leadership can cause terrible problems for many people. But in the typical case (e.g., a middle manager), is leadership important, and if so, how, and in what ways?

From a conceptual perspective, one can argue that the importance of leadership is overblown. Three considerations support this view. First, in hunter-gatherer societies, which are proxies for the original social organization of humans, there are no leaders. Hunter gatherer groups are utterly democratic, they use distributed decision making, and if one person tries to exert authority over the others, that person will be quickly sanctioned. If he (and it is always a he) persists in trying to rule, he will be terminated. Thus, we evolved in leaderless societies and, in ordinary circumstances, we may find leadership alienating at a deep psychological level.

Second, various researchers estimate that the base rate of incompetent management in corporate America (and no doubt around the world) is 65% to 75%. Based on these numbers, if leadership were truly important, most organizations should fail; the fact that they don’t fail suggests that factors other than leadership explain their performance. Third, anyone who has conducted job analyses in organizations, or worked in one, knows that employees expend a lot of effort trying to avoid their managers. I once interviewed the star salesman for a very large logistics firm. In dismay, he confided to me that he hated it when his sales manager came around. As he put it, “I can’t wait for him to leave so that I can get back to making money for the company and for me.”

The case for minimal leadership is even stronger from an empirical perspective. Pragmatic considerations suggest that I/O psychology should focus on business unit performance. Specifically, priority should be assigned to those factors that will have the largest impact on team effectiveness and ultimately the fabled bottom line. The research literature suggests that leadership style impacts staff morale, and that staff morale then predicts business unit performance, so the effects of leadership on organizational performance are mediated by staff morale. Leadership style reliably correlates about .30 with staff morale. However, staff members’ own scores on Big Five measures of Adjustment or Core Self Evaluations correlate above .50 with staff morale. This suggests that although leadership style affects staff morale, it is not the most important determinant of morale. The conclusion seems straightforward: the best way to enhance staff morale, and therefore business unit performance, is to hire staff with high scores for Adjustment or Core Self Evaluations. Leadership is a secondary consideration.

In Herzberg’s (1966) pioneering study of the determinants of employee motivation, he concluded that it is important to distinguish between motivator factors and hygiene factors. Motivator factors actually improve performance. Hygiene factors only serve to demotivate people. Removing hygiene factors removes sources of dissatisfaction, but removing them does not actually enhance performance. The data suggest that leadership is a hygiene factor—bad leadership alienates employees, whereas good leadership doesn’t improve performance, it just doesn’t impede it. Consequently, leadership interventions should focus on weeding out the bad ones and worry less about the characteristics of good ones.

Welcome to “The Science of Personality,” an informal repository of information and commentary related to industrial/occupational psychology.

Much of the content is the work of Dr. Robert Hogan, founder of Hogan Assessment Systems and an international authority on personality assessment, leadership, and organizational effectiveness.

As such, Dr. Hogan offers keen insight into the goings-on within the the I/O psych community, as well as a host of other related topics in his pursuit of strategic self-awareness and “educating the whole person.”

We invite you to explore a range of topics in the days to come, and to engage in ongoing dialogue related to personality and its role in the world of business and corporate society.