Virtually any job involves some level of decision-making; from simple, routine decisions that are easily trained and quickly learned (such as sorting or filing), to complex decisions with huge impact for which there may be no clearly correct answer (such as a major strategic shift at a multi-billion dollar global organization). The key to effective decision-making is exercising good judgment when assessing the situation, evaluating options, and choosing a course of action. This sounds obvious, but judgment is difficult to define and hard to develop. So how do you improve the exercise of good judgment in your organization?

First and foremost, it’s important to recognize that judgment is more than an individual attribute. Organizations can create a climate that promotes good judgment and decision-making. In a poor quality environment, even individuals with great personal judgment can make consistently poor decisions. Here are a few tips to help get things right on both fronts.

Practice Informed Skepticism

Informed Skeptics are critical consumers of information. They seek out data and listen to those close to the issue to build up their understanding of the subject. They question the assumptions underlying the data, and don’t take conventional wisdom for granted. They evaluate and consider information thoroughly in order to arrive at sound conclusions. They are informed by the data, but not beholden to them.

In Hogan terms, these people may score low-to-moderate Adjustment (detecting problems), low-to-moderate Interpersonal Sensitivity (challenging behaviors), and high Learning Approach (informed and analytical). They may also have an elevated HDS Skeptical score, a high MVPI Science score, or both.

In contrast, intuitive decision-makers rush to judgment based on their own experience. They rarely seek out new information, and tend to make decisions themselves without input from others. These people are often confident and charismatic, but may lack substance. On the other end of the spectrum, empiricists rely exclusively on the data, rarely questioning the underlying assumptions. They may fail to recognize when the external environment has changed, rendering previous assumptions invalid.

Identify relevant data points to inform decisions

Big data is a buzzword these days, and deservedly so. The amount of information available and the potential implications for virtually all business functions is enormous. But there are two things to consider in the big data movement. The first is that, although more data than ever are being collected, there are also more irrelevant data than ever. It’s critically important to identify relevant and meaningful data and metrics to help drive good judgment.

The second consideration is what I’ll call 'smart' data. Smart data allow you to link data points from one application or activity to related data points somewhere else, making new connections across functions to uncover new patterns. Smart data help link your recruitment activity to your candidate pool, your selection tools, your training and onboarding programs, your performance management system, your high potential identification program, and your leadership development program. New patterns for the entire employment life cycle can be explored. If the data you have all sit in separate silos and cannot be combined without colossal effort, then you have piles of 'dumb' data, and they can’t deliver the same value.

The generation of relevant, informative data is therefore a structural aspect of an organization. It takes deliberate effort and purposeful design to create databases that link meaningful data to one another. Poor quality information produces a 'garbage in, garbage out' result.

Make data widely available throughout the organization

Organizations often restrict access to information in varying degrees, but good judgment is required at virtually all levels of an organization. To improve the quality of decisions on a widespread level, data have to be available to inform these decisions. Absent that information, the ability to exercise judgment is constrained, and a culture of poor decision-making can develop.

A new trend emerging in startups is the transparent organization. In the most extreme cases, all data – from company financials to individual performance reviews – are freely available to everyone. Is that too much? Almost certainly (see the point about relevant data). But the spirit of providing information to those who need it is on target.

On the other hand, providing too little information leads decision-makers to rely on the information available, which may be outdated, irrelevant, or misleading. Consider the allegory of Plato’s Cave, in which captives grew up immobilized and could only see shadows of objects out of view, and hear sounds of those objects reflected and distorted off of a wall. The captives perceived the shadows and sounds to be reality, unaware of the reality of the objects casting the shadows and making the sounds. In the absence of information, decision-makers will act based on shadows and distorted sounds, all but ensuring that decision-making will suffer.

When it comes to understanding your employees, it boils down to three basic questions:

What do people want? What are the core motives, values, and interests that get them out of bed and into the office every morning?

How will they get what they want? What strengths and weaknesses do they display when they are at their best?

What will get in their way? What are their derailers, the characteristics that emerge during stress or pressure to erode relationships and derail their chances of success?

Armed with this powerful information, you can make better hires, identify and develop talented individuals, build better leaders, and impact your bottom line. To find out more, check out our recent eBook, Why Personality?

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of serving jury duty. I’ve never been summoned to serve on a jury. The holding room for potential jurors is in a hot, windowless basement. The thought of sitting in what Tulsans affectionately call The Cellar Club wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. I thought I’d pass the time catching up on work or finally finishing The Hunger Games. Instead, I found myself playing my new favorite game – Guess the Hogan Scales. People-watching is the best at the airport and courthouses apparently.

My name was called again to officially serve on a civil case after having answered several questions by the judge and lawyers. No, it wasn’t anything like Law & Order. The case itself wasn’t all that enthralling, and I’m still confused how the two parties couldn’t simply settle outside of court after 6 years. While listening to the arguments of both the prosecution and defense lawyers, I noticed that each exhibited similar styles. I couldn’t help but continue my Guess the Hogan Scales game as I watched them engage with witnesses and the judge.

Both lawyers seemed to become somewhat emotional during the trial. No tears were shed, but several sighs, eye rolling, objections, red faces, and a general look of frustration from both were ever present throughout the trial. During my guessing game I speculated these two lawyers likely scored in the lower range on Adjustment, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Prudence. The lawyers’ emotionality, direct and challenging communication style, and attempts to bend the rules of the court made me a bit curious about how lawyers behave in general. After serving nearly a week of jury duty, I returned to the Hogan office ready to see what existing research I could find around Hogan and lawyers.

As it turns out, Hogan published results from the Hogan Assessment Project of Lawyer Personality in 2009 (Understanding Lawyers: Why We Do the Things We Do). According to the study of 2,000 lawyers that used Hogan’s three core inventories (HPI, HDS, and MVPI), I wasn’t too far off from my predictions. Although lawyers are responsible for different tasks and work in a variety of capacities, there are certain personality traits that are characteristic of lawyers in general.

The study shows the average results are significantly below the midpoint on the HPI Adjustment (44th percentile), which indicates lawyers on average tend to be emotionally expressive and moody, yet open to feedback and more self-aware of these behaviors. Additionally, the lowest average score is on HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity (40th percentile), “indicating that lawyers are task-oriented and tend to speak their minds but may also come across as cold, critical, and argumentative.” Moreover, lawyers exhibit more Excitable and Leisurely behaviors as measured by the HDS, which may explain the eye rolling, red faces, and limited respect for the judge’s rules I observed in the courtroom.

Although my recent and only experience yielded me a sample size of 2, the study I found in the archives seems to match my observations for the most part. It appears that I’m winning my Guess the Hogan scales game. I left jury duty feeling rewarded for my service and enlightened with different perspective of lawyers than I see on my favorite prime-time crime shows.

Why is it that we give to others around the holiday season? Do we instinctively feel an innate desire (at the same time every year) to do something nice for them? Are we succumbing to marketing forces and great sales during the season of giving? Do we fear what would happen if we did not give gifts each December? (Tongue-in-cheek, this may be the case for some individuals.) Like a good scientist (Santa, I hope you are listening), I need to see what stories the data tell.

Analyzing a large community dataset, I found that the personality characteristic with the greatest relationship to those self-described as “giving” is the Hogan personality scale Interpersonal Sensitivity. This scale measures the degree to which a person is socially sensitive, perceptive, tactful, and skilled at maintaining relationships. This doesn’t necessarily answer whether we are sensitive and perceptive and thus react by giving gifts, or whether we give gifts to proactively build and maintain relationships. Nonetheless, this does suggest that, overall, those who are more socially sensitive and skilled at building and maintaining relationships are also self-described as giving.

Giving was also positively associated with good health practices and, when asked “How would you rate your health now?” giving individuals rated their health status more favorably than non-giving individuals. Finally, this study found that self-described “giving” individuals more positively endorsed the item “I am happy with my life.” Could it be that people in better mental and physical health are more likely to give? Perhaps. Conversely, giving to others may actually be what helps us to feel good. Either way, these results suggest that giving is associated with good health, and similar research corroborates a positive relationship between social relationships and health (e.g., House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988).

There are a couple key take-aways from these findings. Some people may be more pre-disposed to give during the holiday season based on their personality. However, if you don’t score high on the Interpersonal Sensitivity scale, don’t worry. Although not all individuals have innate tendencies driving them to give to others, overall those who are self-described as giving individuals are more likely to rate their current health status favorably and to be happy with their life.

So do we really give entirely for the benefit of others? Or do we attain some benefits ourselves through giving, such as positive emotions that motivate us to continue giving? Whatever the cause, the outcome of giving is likely to be positive for both the giver and recipient. So go ahead, and give a little.

 

Are you getting ready to head home for Thanksgiving and wondering how successful your reunion at the local bar with friends will be? You’re in luck! Just in time, I have returned to provide the third and final installment of this series on the physical attractiveness of your personality. To bring you up to speed, you can read Part I and Part II. Part I revealed that people, in general, are perceived to be physically attractive when they are seen as friendly, attention-seeking, and altruistic networkers. In Part II we learned that the story changes a bit when we are judging the attractiveness of men and women separately.

Specifically, women are found more attractive when they are charismatic, attention-seeking team players, while attractive men are unassuming team players. In this installment, we will be examining the pattern of results when separating the genders of both the target and the rater. Because of the complexity of these 2x2 analyses, I will start by providing a table that displays all of the significant predictors of physical attractiveness by target and rater, in descending order of predictive power. This should be particularly useful for those of you who speak Hoganese. You can also check out the Physically Attractive Profiles based on relationships between Hogan scores and ratings of physical attractiveness.

Once again, there is an overall finding worth note. Far and away, personality has a much stronger relationship with physical attractiveness when we are evaluating the same sex than when judging the opposite sex. There were twenty significant predictors (scales) related to physical attractiveness in same-sex pairings (males rating males and females rating females), but only six for opposite-sex pairings. As we get further into the specific gender pairings, it will become more apparent that the conclusions I have drawn in the past two parts of this series were being primarily driven by this stronger role of personality in same-sex pairings. If it is true that personality predicts attractiveness less in opposite-sex pairings and if we presume that the majority of this sample is heterosexual, as is found in the general population, these results may indicate that we tend to largely separate looks from personality when evaluating potential mates. When evaluating the attractiveness of peers, personality plays a much greater role. Does this mean that we can be more objective about the physical attractiveness of potential mates than of gender peers? It would be interesting to see if this pattern is replicated within an exclusively homosexual population – is it a gender or “love” effect?

Now let’s get into what makes men appear more attractive. There was only one characteristic that men and women agreed upon when it came to evaluating men; they both don’t care for the cynical, mistrusting types (a negative correlation for HDS Skeptical). Trust is apparently an important characteristic in determining the attractiveness of men, which makes particular sense for a woman who will find it unattractive when a man constantly doubts her intentions and actions. But how do we reconcile that people tend to find females more attractive when they are more mischievous in nature (as revealed in Part 2)? So we are more attracted to somewhat manipulative women who will keep us guessing, but then they don’t like it when we are skeptical of their ways? This is one interpretation but it could also be that the more unattractive parts of Skeptical turning both men and women off are the tendencies to be critical and argumentative, and it is clear to see the reasons for that. What is also interesting is that Skeptical has almost no relationship with attractiveness in women, regardless of who is evaluating them. We are tolerant of criticism, cynicism, and mistrust in women, but it is a major turn-off in men.

In addition to Skeptical, women are also not particularly fond of men who are emotionally volatile (Excitable) and party-boys (Hedonism). Taken together, these findings dispute the belief that women are attracted to the “bad boy” type. If that exists, it is likely a minority. It is also peculiar to note that none of the HPI scales was a significant predictor of male attractiveness through women’s eyes. This indicates that a man’s normal day-to-day behavior does not really interact with perceptions of a man’s good looks. I am having difficulty getting my head around this, but does this finding contradict the common convention that women’s interest in men is greatly affected by their personalities, wherein an objectively attractive female can love an unattractive man as long as he has a “good” personality? Or is it that the female is still attracted to and interested in the man, perhaps as a mate, even if she is not physically attracted to him?

Personality has the strongest relationship with physical attractiveness for men rating other men. As seen in the table above, there were seven positive and six negative correlations. The strongest predictor was Aesthetics, indicating that men find the creative, artistic types most attractive. Summarizing across so many dimensions can be difficult, but it would appear that men find other men attractive when they are creative and caring team players with big personalities that command attention but aren’t in it just for themselves. Men appear to take umbrage with other men who are quietly arrogant, more guarded, less transparent, micromanaging, and overly concerned with financial matters. It paints a picture of someone who is critical and judgmental of others but not forthcoming with their own ideas and intentions. Sounds like a great boss, doesn’t it?

Let us now move our attention to the ladies. There was no overlap in significant predictors of attractiveness of females by male and female raters; men and women do not seem to agree in what makes a hot personality. From men, there were three scales related to the physical attractiveness of women; positive correlations with MVPI Altruistic and HPI Sociability and Ambition. The strongest predictor (Altruistic) indicates that men are most attracted to women who display nurturing, perhaps maternal, instincts. This should come as little surprise as men are wired, from an evolutionary psychology perspective, to seek out mates who have a greater potential to care for their offspring. Even though men are looking for the nurturing type, they are not as attracted to the docile midwife. Instead, men have made it clear that they are looking for stronger interpersonal impact in women; they are attracted to assertiveness and gregariousness. What I find interesting is that men find these two qualities of Ambition and Sociability to be equally predictive of attractiveness in either sex, but women ascribe almost no importance to these two qualities in their appraisals of attractiveness. Why might that be? What is also surprising to me is that none of the HDS scales was a significant driver of attractiveness for men evaluating women. Can this really mean that men are indifferent to these “dark side” characteristics in potential mates? Perhaps we, as men, just assume some of that stuff will be there and must be willing to accept it or else there would be no women to choose from. I will await the backlash from that last comment.

Women see beauty in other women who are friendly, caring, and collaborative types with a flair for the dramatic. They are turned off by passive-aggressive, indifferent, book-smart worrywarts. If we view physical attractiveness in this vein as friend potential, it is easy to see how the prior would make their lives easier and a bit more fun, while the latter might be a recipe for the “high-maintenance friend” who is not approachable or forthcoming.

So what have we learned along this three-part journey? In summary, personality does appear to have an effect on perceptions of physical attractiveness. The extent to which it does is a matter of whom you are asking about whom. Largely, personality affects attractiveness more for members of our same gender than it does for members of opposite genders. That being said, I still have some dating advice that can be inferred from these analyses. Guys, if you want to appear more attractive to the ladies, ditch the bad boy attitude, don’t be so critical, and control the temper. Ladies, if you want to attract a man, play up your nurturing ways but look to be a peer, not the introverted, subservient type. And, for goodness’ sake, comb your hair.

In August I wrote about some interesting findings about how our personality makes us more or less physically attractive to others (read Part I). We learned that being friendly, attention-seeking, and demonstrating a genuine concern in networking with and helping others enhances perceptions of physical attractiveness, while being distant, indifferent, passive-aggressive, and eccentric can be real turn-offs. These results represented trends across people in general, regardless of their gender. To satisfy my insatiable curiosity, I decided to delve further by investigating whether there are personality characteristics that differentially relate to the physical attractiveness of men versus women.

Before getting into specific results for the sexes, I think there are some general results worth mentioning. Overall, I found that personality is far more important for predicting the physical attractiveness of women than for men. Chew on that for a second. Across 28 scales I found five predictors for men and eight for women. More telling is that HPI and HDS account for four and two times more variance (respectively) in predicting physically attractiveness for women than for men. Overall results for MVPI were similar between the sexes. What this means is the bright and dark side of our personalities may have a greater impact on the physical attractiveness of women than they do for men. What I believe this also says is that we men don’t have to worry as much about our behavior in attracting a mate; other factors may be more important (wallet size?).

Now that I have your attention, let us begin with the similarities between the sexes…all one of them! I found only one dimension of personality that provided a similarly strong relationship in predicting physical attractiveness in both sexes; MVPI Affiliation. For both men and women, we find attractive those who demonstrate an intrinsic interest in socializing with, networking with, and getting to know others.

As previously mentioned, I only found five predictors of mention for the physical attractiveness of males. I found positive correlations for HDS Dutiful and MVPI Affiliation. I found negative correlations for HDS Excitable, HDS Skeptical, and MVPI Science. In plain language, men are considered more attractive when they are the types who are more conforming team players who don’t rock the boat. For some reason, the ingratiating, deferential type is found to be more alluring. We also see that the emotionally volatile, cynical, distrusting scientists are considered less attractive. So apparently the type of guy who doesn’t believe it until he sees it and wants to see the proof in the form of facts is found to be unattractive. Yikes, that one hits close to home. Who knew that logic was a turnoff?

I find a few more things interesting about these results. First, I was a bit surprised that the attractiveness of the strong, alpha male archetype was not well supported by these data. Second, there were no significant effects for HPI, indicating that normal day-to-day behavior does not seem to have a noteworthy effect on the perceived physical attractiveness of males. Lastly, I think it is intriguing to see where the differences between the genders fall on these scales. For four of these five scales (all but MVPI Affiliation), there was a negligible effect for women’s perceived attractiveness. In other words, emotional volatility, cynicism, ingratiating behavior, and a desire for fact-based decision making have almost no effect on whether we find women attractive. I find that first one a bit surprising!

Now let us turn our attention to the fairer sex. I found eight personality predictors of physical attractiveness for females. There were positive correlations with HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity, HDS Mischievous, HDS Colorful, and MVPI Affiliation, while I found negative correlations with HPI Learning Approach, HDS Reserved, HDS Leisurely, and HDS Imaginative. In non-Hoganese, these results mean that we find women attractive when they are warm and friendly, charming (even if a bit manipulative), attention-seeking, and interested in teamwork and social networking. Altogether, this paints the picture of a charismatic type of woman as most attractive. At the same time, we appear to be turned off by the studious, aloof, passive-aggressive, and eccentric types. The first part is intriguing. According to these results, the diligent female students who tend to know more about many different subjects are less attractive to us. I hesitate to say, but this result seems to partially support the attractive bimbo archetype.

There are two more points of interest within these results for females. First, these data do not support other research indicating that masculine, assertive females are less attractive. Second, as before, it is interesting to look at the disparate relationships in some of these predictors for the other gender. HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity, although an important predictor for female attractiveness, had no relationship for males, indicating that friendliness or agreeableness has no bearing on perceptions of physical attractiveness in males. The other contrast of note is with HDS Mischievous. It is positively correlated with attractiveness for females but negatively correlated with attractiveness for males. Hence, we find the charming, manipulative, risk-taking females appealing while their male counterparts are more repelling. That is a result I have yet to understand.

In summary, personality seems to matter more for females than males in predicting physical attractiveness. According to this single study, males need only concern themselves with being a better team player and less of a Doubting Thomas to increase their hotness factor. For women, a little charm will go a long way to being seen as more attractive. Just make sure to keep the random factoids and wild ideas to yourself.

In the third and final installment of this series, I will split the data once more and investigate how the gender of both the target and the rater affect perceptions of physical attractiveness. Sneak preview: male personality does matter more; it just depends on who you are asking.

Although it sounds like the hook in a romantic comedy, recent findings indicate that your inner beauty (or lack thereof) might be affecting your outer beauty.

Let me back up. A few months ago I was analyzing data from a large community sample and I stumbled upon some interesting information. Specifically, I found peer ratings of physical attractiveness on a sample of people who completed the Hogan personality and values assessments. Considering that I am (a) distractible and (b) a nerd, I decided to investigate further.

It’s important to note that these were not ratings of likeability, friendliness, etc. Peers rated the extent to which the target person was “good-looking,” “unattractive,” “physically attractive,” and “not good-looking.” So the question became: does one’s personality affect their perceived physical attractiveness? The answer, to an extent, is yes.

There were significant effects on seven of twenty-eight scales across the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory. I found positive correlations between ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity, HDS Colorful, MVPI Affiliation, and MVPI Altruistic. Additionally, I found negative correlations between physical attractiveness and HDS Reserved, HDS Leisurely, and HDS Imaginative.

What does this mean in non-Hoganese? First, we are physically attracted to people who are nice, friendly, approachable, and considerate. No big surprise there; mean people are ugly (or is it that ugly people are mean because they are ugly?). Second, we are attracted to people who have a flair for the dramatic, drawing a lot of attention to themselves, and being the center of attention, even to a fault. These big personalities draw our eyes to them and we seem to find them attractive for that, even if they are acting in this way for self-serving reasons. Next, we find people who value networking, teamwork, collaboration, and social interaction physically attractive. This may indicate that we are attracted to people who have the inclination or desire to engage and get to know us. Finally, the altruists of our society are found to be attractive. These individuals are motivated by a concern for the welfare of others. The attraction is likely borne out of the perception that the person is taking a genuine interest and concern for our needs and well-being; perhaps a more generous lover?

Now let us turn our attention to our turn-offs. First, we are not fans of the cold, stoic, aloof types. These individuals appear indifferent to the feelings or concerns of others, so this finding is in alignment with the aforementioned factors of heightened attraction. Next, we find passive-aggressive behavior to be particularly unattractive. Although these individuals may appear friendly and cooperative on the surface, we seem to see through fa?ade and recognize that they are likely to act on their own agenda, which makes them less desirable. Finally, our eccentric visionaries are apparently persona non grata. Overall, results indicate that creativity is not related to attractiveness, but here we have an indication that extreme (and unconventional) creativity is actually a mild repellant.

These results come from a single (but large) community sample. Therefore, these are not necessarily universal truths. Nonetheless, the trends are clearly there and of mention. Also, the peers providing these ratings knew the target people, so there is no guarantee that these results would generalize to how attractive a stranger at a bar will find you. That being said, it is logical that personality affects physical attractiveness only at the point that someone gets to know us at least a little bit.

In summary, these results indicate that personality does have an impact on physical attractiveness. If you want to be perceived as attractive, stop acting like an inconsiderate jerk. Even if you have the face of Adonis (or Persephone), curt, brash, or uncaring behavior will likely downgrade your hotness factor.
 
The next installment on this topic dives into gender differences, explaining what it takes for men and women (separately) to be perceived as physically attractive. Sneak preview: there are clear differences and the results do not confirm what we may commonly assume…

Understanding the dynamics of a team is critical to successful goal attainment. What does the team value? What drives the team members and sets them up for success, and more importantly, what derailment obstacles may they encounter? 

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to experience the power of collaboration in action. Every year, Oklahoma City hosts a marathon in honor of those who lost their lives in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The 2011 race marked the 11th annual marathon event, which includes everything from 5k races to the full marathon and even a marathon relay. This year, I participated in the marathon relay with an amazing group of women. We called ourselves the Derailing Divas because over the course of 26.2 miles with six driven, socially self-confident, and engaging women there is bound to be a little derailment going on. Although the relay consisted of five legs, the Derailing Divas had six team members. The sixth, The Coach, ran the half marathon and served as the running expert for our team.

The race is not something that the Divas will forget anytime soon. As we left our hotel at 5:30am on Sunday May 1st, the sky was dark and cloudy. Within minutes of arriving at the race site, thunder and lightning came crashing around us and so did the rain…torrential rain. Visions of a beautiful and sunny race day quickly faded, but with these dreary conditions, the Divas’ determination increased.

After a 30 minute delay, I walked to the starting line with The Coach. As we worked our way through the thousands of runners to find our place on the wet pavement, a sense of urgency (HPI Adjustment) and fear of potential failure (HDS Cautious) emerged. Would we be able to complete the relay in these conditions? Am I going to let my team down if I run slower in the rain? In that moment of self-doubt something amazing happened -- the race started and as thousands of runners made their way past the memorial, the crowd began to cheer. It was at this point that I realized that the race wasn’t about my time; it was about our team goal to finish the race with a sense of pride for the cause, to have a fun, and persevere despite the weather.

As I started the last mile of my 6-mile leg, my shoes and clothes were soaked, and I was ready to throw in the wet towel. Then I started thinking about our team and the fact that the other Derailing Divas were waiting on me. I began running faster and met The Navigator at the relay station. She greeted me enthusiastically and took off to continue the race. The Navigator eventually met up with The Timekeeper, and as the race progressed, we continued to run faster. When The Timekeeper met The Networker she received updates on everyone’s progress and the weather conditions. On the final transition, The Finisher took the baton and ran with heart and determination to finish the race despite wind, rain, and hail.

When the race was complete, the Derailing Divas had a celebratory lunch and shared stories of their experiences throughout the day. I’m not sure if it was our competitive drive (HPI Ambition) or sensitivity to our teammates’ emotions (HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity) that pushed us to persevere and exceed our own expectations, but the Derailing Divas succeeded. We completed the race 30 minutes faster than we anticipated! The Derailing Divas’ success was impacted by a number of things, but most of all we were successful because we shared a few things in common. The Divas are driven and competitive (HPI Ambition), collaborative and sensitive to others needs (HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity and MVPI Affiliation), and like to have fun and tell a good story (MVPI Hedonism and HDS Colorful).  I would certainly be willing to run a race with these Divas again, only next time I hope for a little more sunshine!
 

When discussing the topic of selection assessment with human resources professionals, it can be rather easy to overwhelm a non-technical audience by carrying on about job analysis, criterion validation, correlations, legal defensibility, etc. A former colleague of mine who worked as a sales representative used to say I was getting “I/O-ish” (as in Industrial/Organizational psychology) when I started using such terminology. Keep in mind that I’m the first person to advocate the merits of assessment validation for ensuring effective talent management solutions. However, my colleague made an important point that sometimes, in an effort to provide the details behind the psychometrics of implementing an assessment for candidate selection, we may inadvertently add complexity to the conversation. 

In order to provide a simple structure to explain the process for implementing a selection assessment, I devised what I’ve coined the “which hunt.” That is not a typo. I’m not referring to a witch hunt as in the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, nor does what I’m proposing resemble the McCarthyism of the 1950s. My concept of a which hunt is a series of discovery questions that an organization must answer to create a solid foundation for a high-quality assessment strategy that will support the identification of high potential candidates during the pre-employment screening process. An effective which hunt will help a company to identify:
• WHICH characteristics should we measure?
• WHICH assessment(s) should we use?
• WHICH cut-score will increase our hit rate for identifying good candidates?

WHICH characteristics should we measure?
You cannot hope to measure the potential for a candidate to be successful until you define which characteristics lead to success in a specific job. The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) is an online resource sponsored by the Department of Labor that reports profiles for over 800 occupations.  O*NET provides 277 data points for each occupation covering abilities, skills, knowledge, work styles, and other characteristics. Clearly, if O*NET is any indication, the process of defining a job profile of required characteristics can be a daunting proposition to an organization looking to implement an assessment program to measure such characteristics.
 
Rather than immediately getting into the details of job analysis or competency modeling, I find that a simple description of “can-do aptitudes” and “will-do attitudes” helps communicate the likely outcomes of this first step in the which hunt process. Can-do aptitudes refer to the mental horsepower of candidates such as cognitive abilities, demonstrated capability for job-specific skills, and mastery of specific areas of job knowledge. Put simply, having these aptitudes indicates that you can do the job, but we all know that not everyone lives up to their potential.

The will-do attitudes are often those characteristics that allow employees to meet their potential and can even lead an employee with less raw ability to actually succeed beyond those seemingly more talented colleagues. These work styles include conscientiousness, interpersonal savvy, stress tolerance, and achievement orientation, among others. Very smart, very talented employees often fall short of their full potential or fail because they do not work hard, do not play well with others (customers and/or teammates), and do not effectively manage pressures at work. 

Taken all together the required can-do and will-do characteristics form the success profile for that specific job.

WHICH assessment should I use?
The next step is to identify an assessment that measures these characteristics in candidates. As we do with most ventures in life, we might begin the search for an assessment provider by using our good friend Google. When you type “candidate selection assessment” into Google, the result includes over 1.5 million hits! Which one should you choose?

My message to human resource professionals is that the best assessment is one that measures the critical components of the success profile you identified in the first step of the which hunt. Your assessment strategy doesn’t have to measure the entire success profile (that’s why we conduct interviews, administer basic qualification questions, collect resumes, etc.), but there should be significant overlap. This may require the implementation of multiple assessments. For example at Hogan, we offer the Hogan Business Reasoning Inventory to measure can-do characteristics, the Hogan Personality Inventory and Hogan Development Survey to measure will-do characteristics, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory to assess “will-fit” characteristics in terms of how a candidate might fit into the organization’s culture.

WHICH cut-score will increase our hit rate for identifying good candidates?
Now for the last leg of the which hunt – interpreting the assessment results. While this task seems easy enough – low scores fail and high scores pass –   the truth is that this can actually be quite challenging for multiple reasons. What do you do with scores in the middle? Is a 40 a good enough score or should I look for 50s and higher? If I have multiple scores for multiple characteristics, how do I know what scores are more important indicators of success? What if the candidate has high scores on some characteristics and low scores on others? It is a delicate process to draw the line in the sand and make appropriate sense of all the good information that assessments provide. 

This part of the which hunt gets a bit complicated despite my best efforts. The bottom line is that we must clearly understand the relationship between assessment scores and job performance. I find it helpful during this part of the conversation to use an analogy for the way a financial institution uses a credit score. If a bank is going to give someone a loan to purchase a house, they don’t just want to get a high level summary of age, income, salary, credit card debt, etc., and shoot from the hip on how to combine all of those data points into an estimation of investment risk for that person. Such an approach would be inconsistent, inaccurate, and not scalable. To make sound lending decisions over time, the bank leverages a proven, weighted equation to combine these data points into an easily interpretable credit score that is backed by research to increase the hit-rate for making profitable lending decisions (the recent housing market collapse aside). Standards have been set to categorize bad credit scores, good credit scores, and great credit scores. This is essentially how a validation study is used when implementing an assessment for candidate selection. We conduct research to give you overall low, moderate, or high evaluations of candidate potential that if used consistently will increase hit rates for selecting successful employees.

The which hunt guidelines break up the concepts of assessment implementation into concepts that are hopefully simple to grasp:  
• Before we can measure anything we must define a benchmark (i.e., success profile).
• We must use that benchmark to guide us to pick the right tool for the job (i.e., assessment).
• We have to know how to read the measurements the tool is giving us and do regular checkups to make sure the measurements are accurate (i.e., cut-scores).

Fun fact - I’m recently engaged.

And so far, wedding planning has been fast and furious. In two short months, I already have a venue, photographer, date, color palate, and budget. What can I say? I scored in the high range on the HPI Prudence Scale; details are kind of my thing.

But when it comes to choosing my bridal party, I’m dragging my feet. What’s holding me back? I’m worried about the drama.

Although it’s what makes pop culture hits like 27 Dresses, Bridesmaids, and Say Yes to the Dress so fun to watch, it’s a nightmare to live through, and I really don’t want any drama with the girls.

As a four-time bridesmaid, I’ve witnessed, and maybe caused, some reality show-worthy episodes. I may or may not have accidentally rolled my eyes, contributed to a power struggle, and/or complained about the dress “I’ll be able to wear again someday.” Guilty as charged.

As hard as I may try to avoid drama, it almost never fails. The bridesmaids’ individual motivators and drivers create a volatile mix. Something happens to one or more of the bridesmaids at some point in the process. Somebody yells, cries, or oversteps her bounds.

We run into the same dynamics in the office. The wrong mix of personalities can result in power struggles, a tense workplace and low morale, which is why screening for similar values and drivers can be so important.

Unfortunately, when it comes to my bridesmaids, at least a little drama may be unavoidable. While personality assessment would certainly help me screen for the differences between my lovely friends, it would also officially make me a Bravo-worthy Bridezilla.