RELEVANT Management Consulting, an official Hogan distributor in Germany, and the German chapter of the International Coach Federation presented the inaugural German Prism Award to CMS Law Tax, an international law firm with 74 offices worldwide.

The award, modeled after the ICF’s International Prism Award, is given to organizations with programs that make a difference in the coaching community through professionalism, quality, and sustainability.

“We are very proud to be supported by an extraordinary jury of several well-known experts in the coaching industry in Germany,” said Dr. Geertje Tutschka, ACC, president of ICF Germany.

Dr. René Kusch, owner of RELEVANT, explained why CMS was chosen as the winner of this prestigious award.

“We are honored to recognize CMS Law Tax as the first winner of the German Prism Award,” said Kusch. “The purpose of this award is to feature organizations that take a cutting-edge approach to their coaching programs, which made CMS the clear choice among a strong group of nominees. They have shown their success by developing a robust coaching culture.”

The nominees represented a variety of industries, and each were tasked with providing insight into how their coaching programs contributed to the achievement of important corporate goals and advanced the coaching profession.

“More and more organizations are implementing coaching programs as part of their training and development processes,” said Tutschka. “Our goal was to identify the organization that truly set itself apart from the competition, and CMS Law Tax did just that with the Partner Peak Performance Program (PPP) for their leaders and designated ‘rainmakers.’”

Although this is the first year in which the German Prism Award was presented, Kusch said RELEVANT is already looking forward to 2019.

“Working together with ICF Germany in order to present this award is a mutually beneficial relationship for all parties involved,” said Kusch. “The ICF is the world’s premier coaching organization, and we are privileged to be involved in the early stages of such a prestigious distinction for German coaching programs.”

Applications for the 2019 Prism Award 2019 will be accepted in Spring of 2019 at www.coachingtag.com.

Opinions on President Donald Trump run strong, to say the least. Whether you believe he will make America great again or single-handedly destroy it, there’s one aspect of Trump everyone can agree on – he knows how to dominate the news.

The days are few and far between that the top political news doesn’t revolve around Trump. He hasn’t been shy about denouncing his opponents, publicizing his successes, and hosting endless campaign rallies. Are Trump’s efforts simply honest attempts to advance his agenda? Or are they a reflection of his personal ego?

Hogan researchers have developed a new assessment we plan on making available soon — the Hogan Humility Scale. It measures how well people spotlight others’ contributions, admit mistakes, show openness to feedback, see themselves as no better than others, and refrain from boasting and arrogant behaviors. We figured a fun way to put the Humility Scale through its paces would be for people to rate their own humility and Trump’s humility, then compare the two.

For this study we collected ratings anonymously from 229 individuals – 102 that identified as Democrats, 46 as Republicans, 76 as Independents and five that chose “other” via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Though we asked them to rate Trump’s humility in October, they used our assessments in the late spring to determine their individual Humility scores.

When we put together this study, we expected Republicans to report similar levels of humility between themselves and Trump due to high identification with the Republican party and Trump himself. Conversely, we expected Democrats to dissociate themselves from Trump as much as possible and report a wide gap between their own humility and Trump’s humility.

But that’s not quite what happened. On average, all our participants rated Trump’s humility at 13 out of a possible 60, which was quite low. While Democrats rated Trump even lower with an average humility score of 9, Republicans only gave Trump an average humility score of 21. Compared to typical U.S. participants completing our Hogan Humility Scale, both Democrat and Republican ratings of Trump’s humility landed at the 0th percentile. In other words, almost no one taking our assessments ever obtains humility scores this low. Although Republicans rated Trump as more humble than Democrats did, virtually everyone in our sample agreed that humility is not Trump’s forte.

We know from past research that humility is an important predictor of performance, so we also asked participants if they approved of Trump’s performance, and if they would vote for Trump if the election were tomorrow. We found that Perceived Trump Humility was strongly and positively related to both. In other words, those who thought Trump was higher on humility tended to rate Trump as more effective in office and were more likely to vote for his reelection. Likewise, those who thought Trump was less humble tended to provide lower ratings of his performance and fewer intentions to vote for him.

Next, we examined Republicans’ and Democrats’ own humility levels. We originally expected Republicans to align themselves closer to Trump and place less importance on humility. Instead, both Republicans and Democrats averaged humility scores of 41, which was at the 56^th percentile — close to the average score for everyone who has ever taken the Humility assessment. Despite the vast political divide between the parties on individual issues, Democrats and Republicans both saw themselves as moderate regarding humility, and both parties’ humility ratings were significantly higher than Trump’s.

The huge gap between Trump’s humility and personal humility in the study was striking, especially for Republicans. Even with their low perception of Trump’s humility, almost three-quarters of them plan to vote for Trump again. It is possible that Republicans hold Trump to a different standard than they see themselves, or simply view him as the best available option due to party loyalty or specific political issues.

Whatever the reason, our study showed strong differences between Democrats and Republicans in their perception of Trump. But even though the heated political wars that play out on cable news make hope for common ground feel slight, the two sides at least have their own humility in common.

Most of you probably know Hogan Assessments was founded by Bob Hogan, and he’s been our guiding force to this day. But how well do you really know him? Did you know his original background was in physics and engineering? Or that his interest in leadership came from leading a janitorial crew for properties owned by Hollywood elite, followed by finding a way to fix cannons for the U.S. Navy? What about his work as a probation officer, which lead to a study of how to solve the problem of crime?

In this video, you’ll get to hear more about Bob Hogan’s colorful life, as well as his thoughts on how psychology works to understand leadership, and his advice for undergraduate psychology majors.

Political passions are running white-hot in the United States right now. Between Supreme Court nominations, immigration, racial issues, and health care, both sides of the political spectrum are fighting fiercely to win. It’s easy to believe we’re more divided than ever.

With so much at stake, you’d hope the most qualified candidates would rise to the top. Let’s just say that doesn’t always happen. Far too often, people will elect candidates with low qualifications, unworkable ideas, and downright questionable mental capabilities such as (insert the name of an elected official you personally don’t like here).

Since analyzing job fit is what we do, we started wondering what the ideal characteristics of a successful, generic, non-partisan politician would be. However, researchers have produced few studies examining work-specific personality aspects of U.S. politicians, and we didn’t want to just dictate our idea of the ideal politician. This is a democracy, after all.

That’s why Hogan researchers Michael Tapia and Chase Winterberg turned to the American people. The two set out to determine what characteristics and competencies the public wanted from politicians in general, and whether they varied by political affiliation. To do that, they surveyed people about their perception of an ideal politician using Hogan’s Job Evaluation Tool, which incorporates the full spectrum of personality scales we use to predict work-related performance.

Long story short, the study found there’s not a big difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to their preferred characteristics of elected officials. Both parties associated high political job performance with high scores on Ambition, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Prudence, and Learning Approach. Participants identified Imaginative and Dutiful as top elected official derailers. Commerce, Power, Affiliation, and Science were voted the top values for elected officials.

Overall, Republicans and Democrats showed an 83% overlap over the top-12 rated competencies. Though there are some differences, the strong overlap is a powerful contradiction to the perceived differences in today’s political arenas. Despite the widening political divide, we feel it is possible to create a universal standard for judging elected official job fit.

But if that’s the case, why can’t Democrats and Republicans agree on, well, anything? Tapia and Winterberg argue that gulf arose due to a political system that ignores job-related competence and focuses on conflict rather than resolution. Would showing the public there’s a clear consensus on the ideal politician personality help close that gap? If nothing else, it’s more productive than arguing politics with strangers on the Internet yet again.

Leadership is one of the most important topics in human affairs. When good leaders are in place, institutions and their incumbents thrive; when bad leaders are in place, institutions fail and the incumbents suffer accordingly. The core task of leadership is to build high performing teams; leader behaviors that disrupt this process inevitably lead to failed enterprises. The data show that four leader behaviors are key to building a team or successful collective effort:

– Integrity: Leaders must be trustworthy. Subordinates need to know that leaders keep their word, don’t exploit resources, don’t play favorites, and treat their staff with respect. The dark-side tendencies that lead to managerial derailment mostly concern leader unpredictability, which erodes trust.

– Competence: Leaders need to understand the business at the level of the shop floor. This is easy when leaders come up through the ranks (e.g., in the military). But beginning sometime in the 1970s, the idea took hold that there are formal principles of business (which can be learned in MBA programs) that apply universally, and that if one understands these principles, then one doesn’t need to master the details of the business at a more granular level. I believe this view is dangerously wrong, and it almost guarantees managerial failure.

– Judgment: Judgment has to do with the quality of a leader’s decision making, and that, in turn concerns being able to recognize when they have made bad decisions and then changing them. Bad leaders, when confronted with evidence that their decisions were wrong, tend to double down—e.g., send more troops to Iraq.

-Vision: Making a case for the importance of what the group is doing. As Peter Drucker noted, if the only reason you are in business is to make money, then you should quit. Greed is not an appealing vision for many people.

With these precepts in mind, let us consider the case of Edward S. Lampert, the brilliant hedge fund manager who recently drove Sears, the iconic American retailer, into bankruptcy. Lampert is unusually bright and ambitious. He graduated from Yale in 1984, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in Economics. He then joined Goldman Sachs and worked directly with Robert Rubin as an arbitrage trader. Encouraged by his success at Goldman Sachs, he left in 1988 to launch his own hedge fund, ESL Investments. He was again very successful; he started his hedge fund with $29 million and quickly made hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his backers. He made big bets in Honeywell, IBM, AutoZone, and AutoNation. Before and after making his investments, Mr. Lampert and his team would visit stores, talk to managers, check back rooms for inventory levels—they were known for outworking their competitors. With mountains of cash on hand, Mr. Lampert took control of K-Mart, accumulated a controlling share of Sears, and in 2005, he merged the two, installed himself as chairman, and took an active role in management. I listened to this story on National Public Radio in 2005—while driving by my local K-Mart store—and the experts were pessimistic, saying that Lampert was a financial wizard who knew nothing about running a retail empire. At ESL Lampert had 35 employees, at Sears he had 300,000 employees.

Sears was the Amazon of its day; it transformed shopping in America by shipping its goods to every part of the country. Under Lampert, it crashed fast: In 2007, Sears’ stock market value was $30 billion; on October 17, 2018, its value was $.069 billion. In 2007, revenues were $50.7 billion; in 2017 revenues were $16.7 billion. In 2007, Sears operated 3,418 stores; in August of 2018, Sears operated 866 stores. The reasons for this rapid decline seem pretty clear, and there are four of them. The first problem concerns the way Lampert treated his employees. He, for example, institutionalized absentee leadership. He only occasionally visited Sears headquarters; he preferred to meet with his top management team via conference calls from ESL’s headquarters in Florida. Although most retail executives visit their stores weekly, Lampert asked his executives to meet with their store managers via Skype—because it was more efficient. In addition, Lampert was widely criticized for “shredding” employees during management meetings, and he burned through 3 CEOs in eight years before installing himself as CEO. He split the business into a large number of competing divisions, believing that competition between them would increase profits. The result was massive internal rivalry and falling sales. Lampert’s management style was deeply problematic because it created internal divisions, rivalries, and mistrust.

The second problem concerns the fact that Lampert knew very little about Sears’s core business. As Whitney Tilson, a prominent investor and hedge fund operator said in the Wall Street Journal: “What on earth does he know about running a retailer? It’s exhibit A of hedge fund hubris. This is a case study I will teach in my seminars for years.” Lampert cut back on TV and newspaper advertising and started email marketing, which was cheaper—but Sears’s customers were much less likely to read the email marketing and business declined accordingly. Lampert then cut back on purchasing goods for his stores in order to avoid marking down items at season’s end; as a result, many departments had empty shelves causing customers to conclude that Sears was going out of business. He refused to invest in the maintenance of his stores, allowing them to become dingy and shoddy. Rather than offering discounts, he raised prices. In addition, Lampert didn’t understand Sears’s customer base. At one management meeting, Lampert suggested that Sears should model its customer service after Hermes, the French luxury goods provider; he said his suggestion was intended to provide a “…deeper notion of what it is to serve people.”

The third problem concerns Lampert’s judgment. He was correct in his view that the Amazon model was the future of retailing. But a vision is nothing without implementation and the way to transform a huge bargain-priced retail operation into a just-in-time logistics company is not obvious. Lampert maintains his vision even today, insisting that with his vision, Sears will become leaner and more profitable: The Wall Street Journal article on the fall of Sears is titled: “Fund star stands by Sears Bet.” Good judgment doesn’t involve making the right bet, it involves changing the bet when the data indicate that the bet was wrong. Lampert appears to be quite stubborn and incapable of admitting he has made a mistake.

Finally, there is the nature of Lampert’s vision for Sears. For Lampert, Sears was a pure financial play, an investment designed to make him even wealthier. The result: working for Lampert would be like working for Louis XIV—the only reward would be the fact that one has a job, and having a job is better than not having a job. This of course creates an alienated work force accompanied by high absenteeism, high turnover, low productivity, and poor customer service ratings. Lampert wanted to compete with Amazon; Amazon’s vision is one of providing superior customer service, something at which they clearly excel.

Lampert was right that the long-term prospects for the big U.S. retailers (JC. Penny, Target, Walmart, Sears) are uncertain because they are caught between trying to compete with Amazon on price, convenience, and customer service and compete with high-end retailers who have better stores and products. And the data indicate that Amazon’s business model is steadily gaining popularity across the board. In addition, Sears had been declining for years: its stores were poorly maintained, it lost its focus and moved into insurance, property, and auto repair, and it closed its mail order business, which was its original competitive advantage. Sears has remained in a slow death spiral, and unless its leadership changes, the company could collapse entirely.

In this era of Big Data, simply producing or collecting nearly unfathomable amounts of data isn’t enough. The best companies are able to sift through that data to find meaningful trends and, ultimately, specific information that sparks a plan of action.

In the rush to harness that data for job selection, numerous companies are turning to experimental AI and machine learning to discover new forms of data collection and new types of analysis human beings might not be capable of. But not all new methods of data collection are created equal. If set up incorrectly, AI data analysis can go horribly wrong – just ask Amazon.

The Internet giant decided to harness its computing power and expertise to create a job screening program that would scan an applicant’s resume and determine if an applicant is suitable. A person familiar with the effort told Reuters the goal was for the program to receive 100 resumes and spit out the top five.

In order to teach this program how to screen candidates, it was fed resumes submitted tothe company over the last decade. In theory, the program would learn what resume terms lead to successful candidates and which terms lead to rejection. In reality, the program learned to reject female candidates.

The show-stopping side effect was the result of Amazon’s own hiring patterns – most of Amazon’s employees are male. Based on that set of data, the program taught itself that male candidates were preferable. Resumes that included the word “women’s” or the names of all-women colleges were downgraded. Since there was no guarantee the program wouldn’t find other blatantly discriminatory ways to reject candidates, executives pulled the plug.

In short, Amazon’s mistake in this experiment was using biased criterion to judge the resumes, and then give the program free reign. Ryne Sherman, chief science officer at Hogan summed up Amazon’s problem:

“If the criteria are deficient, contaminated, or otherwise systematically biased, big data algorithms will pick up the bias and run with it.”

Today’s supercomputers are immensely powerful and capable of amazing feats. They’re also unfailingly literal. No matter how much power you’re working with, if you set up bad parameters, you’ll get a bad result. Amazon’s mistake was easy to find, but even subtle mistakes made by emerging job screening technology can lead to catastrophic results.

The key takeaway from Amazon’s failure is that big data still needs a human touch. Any type of analysis requires clearly-defined parameters before the supercomputers are even turned on in order to eliminate bias or any other type of noise. Start gathering data without a structure, and your efforts will be wasted.

At Hogan, our assessments were built from the ground up to be free of bias. Even though the database we use to determine scoring and job fit has grown to millions of assessments and has become ever more complex, our results remain valid because of the assessments’ focused structure. In fact, company founders Drs. Joyce and Robert Hogan were inspired to create the company in part out of a desire to eliminate bias from assessments.

Today, amateur and professional trolls work to stir up arguments and divisiveness. Casual social media discussions frequently devolve into arguments with all kinds of questionable bits of information casually thrown around like wadded-up paper balls. Did the Pope really endorse Donald Trump? Is Kid Rock really running for Senate? Time to run to a fact-checking website – but how many people will trust what they say?

It’s enough to turn anyone into a skeptic. And our research on global personality trends shows more people are becoming skeptical, largely due to this contentious atmosphere. As you can see on the graph, average skepticism scores from the Hogan Development Survey have steadily increased nearly every year since 2002. On the other side of the coin, our research team noted skepticism was much lower in 2001 and 2002, potentially due to recent events such as the 9-11 terrorist attack that had an impact on people around the globe. It is possible that, on average, the trauma of the event caused people to become more supportive of their government, at least temporarily.

At healthy levels, skepticism can be a virtue that prevents you from falling for harmful hoaxes and scams. Some of the best business leaders regularly harness their skepticism to steer clear of overly-risky schemes or emailed phishing attempts. But, since the HDS is the only personality assessment that delves into the dark side of human personality, we also know the negative effects of skepticism.

As you navigate the information wars, here are some behaviors to watch out for in yourself (or the family member arguing with you during Thanksgiving dinner):

• High cynicism: assumption others have bad ulterior motives, overly negative, quarrelsome.
• High mistrust: generalized mistrust of people and institutions, worrisome, alert for signs of perceived mistreatment.
• Holding grudges: unwilling to forgive real or perceived wrongs, unsympathetic, fault-finding.

If you find yourself assuming the worst and becoming that argumentative jerk no one wants to talk to, it’s time to step back. Here are some developmental recommendations:

• Recognize that the world is not made up of purely “heroes” and “villains,” and that most people have at least some good intentions.
• Realize that others’ actions aren’t necessarily attempts to demean, frustrate, or take advantage of you.
• Build confidence in others by confiding in them and realizing they will not use such information against you.

*This post was authored by Hogan’s Michael Tapia, Dena Rhodes, and Ryne Sherman.

The New Zealand All Blacks is one of the most successful sports organizations of all time. For over a century they dominated the world stage as a premier member of the international rugby union, competing with such foes as the South Africa Springboks and Australia Wallabies. In 2015, the All Blacks became the repeat champions of the quadrennial Rugby World Cup (2011 and 2015). Even more astonishing, the success of New Zealand Rugby persists across squads. New Zealand’s women’s (Black Ferns) and men’s (All Blacks) Rugby Sevens teams both won the 2018 Rugby Sevens World Cup held in San Francisco.

The achievements of the All Blacks have yielded global recognition and a collection of media projects exploring the methods behind their success. This includes the documentary All or Nothing and James Kerr’s book, Legacy. Kerr spent time with the team and learned about their unique culture, which he believed was essential to their dominance. According to Kerr, the key to this team’s culture is dedication to character, and “character begins with Humility.”

As the reigning world champions, the team members continuously show humility by asking themselves, “How can we do this better?” The team recognizes they must steadily evolve – a necessity to combat their opponents’ own improvements. Coaches, leaders, and players facilitate a positive learning environment in which “not knowing all the answers” is a strength, helping the team to adapt and grow.

According to James Kerr, humility is “a vital part of a well-adjusted character.” At Hogan, we know personality plays a critical role in the success and failure of organizations. For over 30 years, we’ve been describing the strengths, weaknesses, and values of effective leaders and employees. We also stay committed to using data and scientific progress to improve our assessments. In 2018, our research team created an assessment designed to predict leader Humility, which is currently in production and expected to launch in 2019. This new measure relates to greater in-role job performance (r = .35), organizational citizenship behaviors (r = .23), job satisfaction (r = .18), and engagement (r = .15), and is associated with fewer counterproductive work behaviors (r = -.29), and turnover intentions (r = -.20).

Kerr recalled one instance of superb leadership in the All Blacks locker room after a match: After a team debrief, the players left the room and the captains stayed back to clean up – they stayed to “sweep the sheds.” Humble leaders stay grounded, stay productive, and most importantly, gain the respect of their teams. In turn, selecting leaders with humility helps to safeguard future growth, achievements, and organizational success. Humility is a key personality dimension related to greater individual performance and organizational effectiveness, and Hogan is committed to delivering solutions centered around a well-validated Humility measure in the very near future.

*This article was written by Kimberly Nei and Darin Nei, and was originally published by Harvard Business Review on September 10, 2018.

Just becoming a leader is enough to exacerbate some people’s unethical tendencies. But power does not corrupt everyone. Our research suggests that key personality characteristics predict unethical leadership behavior.

We collected personality data and supervisor ratings of ethical behavior (e.g., integrity, accountability) on 3,500 leaders across 30 organizations we had worked with. The organizations included in our study were largely multinational, represented several industries, and varied in size from medium to large. We combined data across these 30 independent studies to examine the relationship between personality and ethical leadership across a range of different settings and situations. We found that characteristics related to certain traits have stronger relationships with unethical behavior.

So, what should today’s leaders do to build trust with their teams and the public? Here are a few tips, based on our findings:

Be humble; not charismatic. It is natural that we are attracted to people whom we perceive to be inspiring, fun, and engaging. It makes sense that you need a little charisma or pizzazz to stand out from others and get noticed. Charisma can also be useful for engaging and inspiring others towards the organizational mission. However, too much of this may be a bad thing in the eyes of your team members. Unchecked charisma will lead to a reputation of self-absorption and self-promotion. When team members get the sense that you are focused on your own concerns and ideas, they feel unsupported. The team may start to worry that you will no longer do what is best for the team or organization, and that you will instead do what is best for your own agenda.

Be steady and dependable; it will get you further. While you may have been noticed and promoted based on your charisma, being reliable, rule-following, and responsible is more important for your team. As a leader, you have a tremendous amount of autonomy and decision-making power. If we are to entrust our leaders with such power, we need to be confident in their ability to remain true to their word and to do what’s right for the organization. Showing your team that you exercise caution, take calculated risks, and will adhere to organizational principles will go a long way toward gaining their trust.

Remember that modesty is the best policy. At times, we may all enjoy working in an environment that is less formal, or working for a boss who knows how to keep things light-hearted. However, there is still a degree of responsibility and professionalism that people come to expect from those in charge. Trying to be liked and known as “the fun boss” can tarnish your reputation in the long run. It’s OK to stay out of the limelight and keep some space between you and your team. It sends signals that you are there for their professional benefit and that they can rely on you when needed.

Balance analysis with action. Although people appreciate a degree of logic and rationality in the decision-making process, be careful to not get so focused on data and analysis that you forget the larger context or the impact of your decisions. Spending too much time analyzing data can hold you back from making important decisions, especially in high-pressure situations that call for quick action. The data may indicate the best course of action for the bottom line, but this may not be the best decision for the broader team or relevant stakeholders. Leadership must be able to make a decision and take corrective action quickly, even if it initially hurts the bottom line.

Be vigilant; vulnerability increases over time. Learning and adjusting to a new role, especially a high-visibility leadership role, can take some time. It’s during the first few months in a new role that we usually spend more time observing what’s going on around us. We also tend to be more mindful of our interactions with others and may spend more time managing the impressions we make on others. Over time, we become more comfortable in our surroundings and we stop paying attention to our reputations. It’s usually after the six-month mark where we see an increased risk of our dark-side tendencies impeding our success or derailing our careers. Keep your guard up, stay vigilant, and continually seek feedback.

The personality characteristics that will get you chosen as a leader are not always the same as the ones that will make you effective in that role. Spending too much time trying to get noticed or having a “win at all costs” mentality to get ahead can put you (and your team) at a higher risk of engaging in unethical behavior. Having awareness of your surroundings and an understanding of the ways you influence your team will help to keep yourself (and your team) on track.

*Kimberly Nei is a manager of client research at Hogan Assessments where she manages the design and implementation of legally defensible assessment-based selection and development solutions.

*Darin Nei is a senior consultant with Hogan Assessments’ Global Alliances team where he works closely with international consulting partners to deliver science-based solutions and ensure assessment quality across a variety of cultures and languages.

Every year, accidents at work cause unnecessary human tragedies and have serious financial consequences for companies. For decades, organizations have been investing, with good results, in three of the pillars of safety: laws, regulations and procedures; equipment, and training. However, these accidents still happen.

Why is that? What more can companies do to determine and minimize the possibility of these accidents? The answer is the fourth pillar: personality.

Regardless of the industry in which you work – factories, mining, oil, gas, transportation, telecommunications, systems, or banking – there are several security risks that you should consider within your organization, from the simplest drops to security breaches, problems with energy sources, or the hauling of goods.

On October 25 in Madrid, Hogan’s Ryan Ross, Zsolt Feher, and IAssessment Managing Director Juan Antonio Calles will be presenting on the topic of safety to help the audience gain useful and reliable knowledge on how determine safety-related behaviors within organizations.

Here’s a brief preview of the event:

Click here to register or email eventos@iassessment.es.