Why is everyone so damn busy? It seems that the response to "How are you?" on conference calls or conversations with friends results in my least favorite word - busy. Most of the insanely busy people I know aren't working multiple jobs or balancing family and work. The full calendar is a result of choice rather than sheer workload. Busyness isn't a badge of honor anymore… it just makes you look self-important (and self-loathing).

Stop the madness, people. Learn the power of no, find some work/life balance, and, for the love of all things holy, unplug from your email. If you're not too busy, read "The Busy Trap." It will make you think twice about using this dreadful word ever again.

Why is everyone so damn busy? It seems that the response to “How are you?” on conference calls or conversations with friends results in my least favorite word – busy. Most of the insanely busy people I know aren’t working multiple jobs or balancing family and work. The full calendar is a result of choice rather than sheer workload. Busyness isn’t a badge of honor anymore… it just makes you look self-important (and self-loathing).

Stop the madness, people. Learn the power of no, find some work/life balance, and, for the love of all things holy, unplug from your email. If you’re not too busy, read “The Busy Trap.” It will make you think twice about using this dreadful word ever again.

In preparation for my upcoming maternity leave, I have been thinking a lot about the benefits of working as a part of a high functioning team. The stress and uncertainty of stepping away from my job and leaving my duties in the hands of others has the potential to bring out my derailers in full force….Hello, Bold and Diligent. However, working in a high-functioning, team-based environment has assuaged my dark side and I am feeling pretty good about shutting down for a bit. So what is so great about my team?

First, we are very aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses; we are open and honest about our Hogan scores. While this often presents opportunities to joke around with one another when, for instance, someone’s Skeptical or Bold side makes an appearance, it also presents an opportunity to understand where each team member is coming from, where and why they might need some extra support, and what is driving their behavior. Second, we are focused on collaboratively achieving common goals; we succeed or we fail. Working in an environment where collective responsibility is an everyday reality allows this new mom (with a tendency to be a bit of a control freak) to have confidence in, and feel assured, that my team has my back.

For more information about teams, download our complimentary ebook, The Truth About Teams, which breaks from traditional team building models to help leaders balance team members’ personalities, identify shared values, and avoid shared performance risks.

In preparation for my upcoming maternity leave, I have been thinking a lot about the benefits of working as a part of a high functioning team. The stress and uncertainty of stepping away from my job and leaving my duties in the hands of others has the potential to bring out my derailers in full force….Hello, Bold and Diligent. However, working in a high-functioning, team-based environment has assuaged my dark side and I am feeling pretty good about shutting down for a bit. So what is so great about my team?

First, we are very aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses; we are open and honest about our Hogan scores. While this often presents opportunities to joke around with one another when, for instance, someone’s Skeptical or Bold side makes an appearance, it also presents an opportunity to understand where each team member is coming from, where and why they might need some extra support, and what is driving their behavior. Second, we are focused on collaboratively achieving common goals; we succeed or we fail. Working in an environment where collective responsibility is an everyday reality allows this new mom (with a tendency to be a bit of a control freak) to have confidence in, and feel assured, that my team has my back.

For more information about teams, download our complimentary ebook, The Truth About Teams, which breaks from traditional team building models to help leaders balance team members’ personalities, identify shared values, and avoid shared performance risks.

In the previous blog in this series my colleague, Miranda Hanes, discussed the percentage of women moving into leadership roles and the decidedly lower representation of women at the highest ranks in the organization. She posed the question, “Where are they?” I would like to expand upon Miranda’s blog by posing another question, “Where did they go?” We know that women comprise about 50 percent of the workforce and approximately 30 percent of managerial and supervisory roles, but very few women ascend to the C-suite in organizations. So the question, in my opinion, becomes what happens during women’s career progression that causes them to break the glass ceiling and ascend the career ladder, and why do so many women go over the glass cliff? Is it due to a lack of skill and competence, a matter of cultural fit, the need for work/life balance, or is it simply burnout and frustration with the need to work smarter and harder to reach the top spots.

A recent case study in the Business Insider titled “Why Women Are More Effective Leaders Than Men” helps answer some of these questions through its exploration of the effectiveness of male and female leaders at various points in their career. In this article, men were rated more effective early in career, whereas women were rated more effective mid-to-late in career, with effectiveness ratings having minimal mean differences beyond the age of 60. Some key differences as to what may contribute to this trend relates to behavioral characteristics such as: openness to feedback, willingness to change one’s leadership style, and a strong focus on professional development. Or in Hogan speak, a strong focus on strategic self-awareness.  

When thinking more broadly about how female leaders are typically characterized and perceived, there is a strong emphasis on competencies like collaboration, motivating and inspiring others, and team development. What is often left out of these conversations are competencies such as: delivers results and takes initiatives. Recent research has shown that women tend to fair equally well, if not better in some cases, on these competencies. However, very few organizations have women leading at the top of the house. So the question is why aren’t we promoting women more rapidly? Or even in many cases, where did they go or why did they opt out? In order to more directly answer these questions I think we need to go to the source. We need to spend more time talking to women in these high profile leadership roles to better understand their journey, their struggles, and what gets them out of bed in the morning and motivated to lead others.

Until we can have these conversations, our best strategy is to continue focusing efforts on leadership development programs geared specifically for women, and allowing women more access to strong female leaders earlier in their careers. Research suggests that women are interested and motivated by opportunities to develop, so these programs are likely working, and could be a great way to engage and retain high performing female leaders.

I might also add that we need to encourage both men and women to capitalize on their strengths. Although created equally, we know that men and women do not lead in the same way. Therefore, my advice for organizations is to stop focusing on leadership development in a vacuum. If women and men take a different approach and style to leadership, then create programs that focus on this difference and leverage it to bring diverse styles to the C-Suite. And for all of the aspiring female leaders out there, don’t try to lead like a man. We bring a different set of strengths and interpersonal style to the table. Let’s focus on that—even if it does mean we climb the ladder one rung at a time.

In the previous blog in this series my colleague, Miranda Hanes, discussed the percentage of women moving into leadership roles and the decidedly lower representation of women at the highest ranks in the organization. She posed the question, “Where are they?” I would like to expand upon Miranda’s blog by posing another question, “Where did they go?” We know that women comprise about 50 percent of the workforce and approximately 30 percent of managerial and supervisory roles, but very few women ascend to the C-suite in organizations. So the question, in my opinion, becomes what happens during women’s career progression that causes them to break the glass ceiling and ascend the career ladder, and why do so many women go over the glass cliff? Is it due to a lack of skill and competence, a matter of cultural fit, the need for work/life balance, or is it simply burnout and frustration with the need to work smarter and harder to reach the top spots.

A recent case study in the Business Insider titled “Why Women Are More Effective Leaders Than Men” helps answer some of these questions through its exploration of the effectiveness of male and female leaders at various points in their career. In this article, men were rated more effective early in career, whereas women were rated more effective mid-to-late in career, with effectiveness ratings having minimal mean differences beyond the age of 60. Some key differences as to what may contribute to this trend relates to behavioral characteristics such as: openness to feedback, willingness to change one’s leadership style, and a strong focus on professional development. Or in Hogan speak, a strong focus on strategic self-awareness.

When thinking more broadly about how female leaders are typically characterized and perceived, there is a strong emphasis on competencies like collaboration, motivating and inspiring others, and team development. What is often left out of these conversations are competencies such as: delivers results and takes initiatives. Recent research has shown that women tend to fair equally well, if not better in some cases, on these competencies. However, very few organizations have women leading at the top of the house. So the question is why aren’t we promoting women more rapidly? Or even in many cases, where did they go or why did they opt out? In order to more directly answer these questions I think we need to go to the source. We need to spend more time talking to women in these high profile leadership roles to better understand their journey, their struggles, and what gets them out of bed in the morning and motivated to lead others.

Until we can have these conversations, our best strategy is to continue focusing efforts on leadership development programs geared specifically for women, and allowing women more access to strong female leaders earlier in their careers. Research suggests that women are interested and motivated by opportunities to develop, so these programs are likely working, and could be a great way to engage and retain high performing female leaders.

I might also add that we need to encourage both men and women to capitalize on their strengths. Although created equally, we know that men and women do not lead in the same way. Therefore, my advice for organizations is to stop focusing on leadership development in a vacuum. If women and men take a different approach and style to leadership, then create programs that focus on this difference and leverage it to bring diverse styles to the C-Suite. And for all of the aspiring female leaders out there, don’t try to lead like a man. We bring a different set of strengths and interpersonal style to the table. Let’s focus on that—even if it does mean we climb the ladder one rung at a time.

Extensive research highlights the importance of work engagement – employees’ morale and involvement with work – as determinant of individual and organizational performance. Large-scale studies show that engagement is positively correlated with a wide range of important business outcomes, such as organizational commitment, citizenship, innovation, and team performance, and negatively correlated with turnover intentions, strain, and burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Seibert, Wang, & Courtright, 2011). Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence indicates that higher engagement levels are directly translated into higher business revenues and profits (Harter et al, 2009). These findings have prompted organizations to monitor engagement levels via regular employee surveys. According to Gallup, who surveys millions of employees every year, only 30% of Americans are engaged at work, and the most common reason for disengagement is employees’ direct boss or line manager. Thus leadership is a critical antecedent of engagement (Wollard & Shuck, 2011).

Leadership is typically defined as the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams (Hogan, 2007). As engagement is a key driver of individual-, team-, and unit-level performance, it has been argued that leaders influence organizational effectiveness by engaging employees, or failing to do so (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007). Meta-analyses suggest that leadership effectiveness increases employees’ job satisfaction and commitment (Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002; Fuller, Patterson, Hester, & Stringer, 1996; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996), while independent studies report strong correlations between transformational leadership and employee engagement (Zhu, Avolio, & Walumbwa, 2009), where engagement mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ turnover intentions (Wefaltd et al, 2011). Although these findings support the idea that leadership is a major cause of employee engagement, an important unaddressed questions remains, namely what causes performance differences in leadership?  

To this end, this symposium includes four integrated presentations that highlight the role of leaders’ personality as determinant of subordinates’ engagement levels and discuss how this knowledge can be translated into actionable organizational recommendations.

First, SIOP Fellow Robert Hogan, who pioneered the use of personality assessments in organizational settings, presents a causal model for understanding the relationship between personality, leadership, and engagement. This model posits that personality characteristics drive individual differences in leadership effectiveness because they impact on employee engagement.

Then, Justin Black, Strategic Advisor at Sirota Survey Intelligence, puts Hogan’s model to the test by examining longitudinal effects of managers’ personality on their direct reports’ engagement in a multinational technology firm. Results highlight causal paths between managers’ reputation – how others’ evaluate them – and subordinates’ engagement: prudent and empathic managers engage; passive-aggressive and volatile managers disengage.

Next, Christine Fernandez, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Starwood, discusses linkages between CEO’s competencies, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction in 398 worldwide hotels. Results show strong associations between CEOs interpersonal skills, multisource feedback, employee engagement, and guest loyalty, as well as providing a detailed account on the personality of successful hotel CEOs.

The final presentation, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of I-O Psychology at University College London and VP of Innovation at Hogan, examines the role of managers’ and employees’ emotional intelligence as determinant of employee engagement and job performance in a large retail chain, integrating both top-down and bottom-up perspectives on engagement.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

Dr. Robert Hogan spent his career working to prove that personality predicts workplace performance and helps businesses dramatically reduce turnover and increase productivity by hiring the right people, developing key talent, and evaluating leadership potential. Here, he discusses what role personality plays at work.

What role does personality play in an employee's performance at work?

An overwhelming amount of data support the claim that WELL VALIDATED personality measures predict job performance better than any other known evaluation method, including interviews and IQ tests.  But unlike interviews and IQ tests, well validated personality measures do not discriminate against women, minorities, or older people.   In addition, an overwhelming amount of data support the claim that, when employers use well validated personality measures to hire employees, they make more money because they hire more productive employees, reduce turnover, absenteeism, and shrinkage, and increase productivity and customer satisfaction.

How much of a factor should personality be when an employer is considering who to hire, fire and/or promote?

Using well validated personality measures to hire, fire, and promote employees has two advantages.  First, the decisions will be objective—often they are politically biased.  Second, the decisions will be based on data and not personal intuition.  Persuading business to make personnel decisions based on empirically defensible methods is, curiously, a hard sell.  To answer your question directly, personality should be the major single factor used to make personnel decisions—if you believe in data.

Are there any specific personality types that employers should avoid hiring?

Employers should avoid hiring “team killers”—highly talented people who also destroy morale, by quarreling with subordinates, complaining, testing the limits, and performing erratically.  Such people are hired because they are smart and attractive, and seem to have a lot of potential.  Employers give them a lot of slack because they are so obviously talented, but over time, their negative impact on the rest of the team cripples the performance of the entire group.  This is a well-known phenomena in athletics, hence the term “team killer”.

Are there any specific personality types that are more likely to earn a promotion?

People who are more  likely to earn promotions are called high potentials in contemporary HR parlance.  Vast amounts of empirical data support the view that high potentials are characterized by three personality attributes.  First, they are pleasant, charming, and rewarding to deal with; clients, colleagues, and bosses all like them.  Second, they are smart enough to learn the job quickly.  And third, they are willing to do the job—the come to work regularly and work hard while there.  We call this the “RAW model”, where RAW stands for:  (1) Rewarding (to deal with); (2) Able (to learn the job); and (3) Willing (to do the job).   

Extensive research highlights the importance of work engagement – employees’ morale and involvement with work – as determinant of individual and organizational performance. Large-scale studies show that engagement is positively correlated with a wide range of important business outcomes, such as organizational commitment, citizenship, innovation, and team performance, and negatively correlated with turnover intentions, strain, and burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Seibert, Wang, & Courtright, 2011). Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence indicates that higher engagement levels are directly translated into higher business revenues and profits (Harter et al, 2009). These findings have prompted organizations to monitor engagement levels via regular employee surveys. According to Gallup, who surveys millions of employees every year, only 30% of Americans are engaged at work, and the most common reason for disengagement is employees’ direct boss or line manager. Thus leadership is a critical antecedent of engagement (Wollard & Shuck, 2011).

Leadership is typically defined as the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams (Hogan, 2007). As engagement is a key driver of individual-, team-, and unit-level performance, it has been argued that leaders influence organizational effectiveness by engaging employees, or failing to do so (Schaufeli & Salanova, 2007). Meta-analyses suggest that leadership effectiveness increases employees’ job satisfaction and commitment (Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002; Fuller, Patterson, Hester, & Stringer, 1996; Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996), while independent studies report strong correlations between transformational leadership and employee engagement (Zhu, Avolio, & Walumbwa, 2009), where engagement mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ turnover intentions (Wefaltd et al, 2011). Although these findings support the idea that leadership is a major cause of employee engagement, an important unaddressed questions remains, namely what causes performance differences in leadership?

To this end, this symposium includes four integrated presentations that highlight the role of leaders’ personality as determinant of subordinates’ engagement levels and discuss how this knowledge can be translated into actionable organizational recommendations.

First, SIOP Fellow Robert Hogan, who pioneered the use of personality assessments in organizational settings, presents a causal model for understanding the relationship between personality, leadership, and engagement. This model posits that personality characteristics drive individual differences in leadership effectiveness because they impact on employee engagement.

Then, Justin Black, Strategic Advisor at Sirota Survey Intelligence, puts Hogan’s model to the test by examining longitudinal effects of managers’ personality on their direct reports’ engagement in a multinational technology firm. Results highlight causal paths between managers’ reputation – how others’ evaluate them – and subordinates’ engagement: prudent and empathic managers engage; passive-aggressive and volatile managers disengage.

Next, Christine Fernandez, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Starwood, discusses linkages between CEO’s competencies, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction in 398 worldwide hotels. Results show strong associations between CEOs interpersonal skills, multisource feedback, employee engagement, and guest loyalty, as well as providing a detailed account on the personality of successful hotel CEOs.

The final presentation, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of I-O Psychology at University College London and VP of Innovation at Hogan, examines the role of managers’ and employees’ emotional intelligence as determinant of employee engagement and job performance in a large retail chain, integrating both top-down and bottom-up perspectives on engagement.

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

Dr. Robert Hogan spent his career working to prove that personality predicts workplace performance and helps businesses dramatically reduce turnover and increase productivity by hiring the right people, developing key talent, and evaluating leadership potential. Here, he discusses what role personality plays at work.

What role does personality play in an employee’s performance at work?

An overwhelming amount of data support the claim that WELL VALIDATED personality measures predict job performance better than any other known evaluation method, including interviews and IQ tests.  But unlike interviews and IQ tests, well validated personality measures do not discriminate against women, minorities, or older people.   In addition, an overwhelming amount of data support the claim that, when employers use well validated personality measures to hire employees, they make more money because they hire more productive employees, reduce turnover, absenteeism, and shrinkage, and increase productivity and customer satisfaction.

How much of a factor should personality be when an employer is considering who to hire, fire and/or promote?

Using well validated personality measures to hire, fire, and promote employees has two advantages.  First, the decisions will be objective—often they are politically biased.  Second, the decisions will be based on data and not personal intuition.  Persuading business to make personnel decisions based on empirically defensible methods is, curiously, a hard sell.  To answer your question directly, personality should be the major single factor used to make personnel decisions—if you believe in data.

Are there any specific personality types that employers should avoid hiring?

Employers should avoid hiring “team killers”—highly talented people who also destroy morale, by quarreling with subordinates, complaining, testing the limits, and performing erratically.  Such people are hired because they are smart and attractive, and seem to have a lot of potential.  Employers give them a lot of slack because they are so obviously talented, but over time, their negative impact on the rest of the team cripples the performance of the entire group.  This is a well-known phenomena in athletics, hence the term “team killer”.

Are there any specific personality types that are more likely to earn a promotion?

People who are more  likely to earn promotions are called high potentials in contemporary HR parlance.  Vast amounts of empirical data support the view that high potentials are characterized by three personality attributes.  First, they are pleasant, charming, and rewarding to deal with; clients, colleagues, and bosses all like them.  Second, they are smart enough to learn the job quickly.  And third, they are willing to do the job—the come to work regularly and work hard while there.  We call this the “RAW model”, where RAW stands for:  (1) Rewarding (to deal with); (2) Able (to learn the job); and (3) Willing (to do the job).