The values that drive our decisions are the most intimate part of personality. When we speak of values, we do not refer to universal moral principles, such as integrity, respect, or solidarity, but more specific qualities that are shaped by culture, upbringing, and more.

As pillars in our decision-making, our core values and beliefs determine the type of environment we strive to cultivate at work, the people with whom we prefer to associate, and the kinds of attitudes and behaviors we find distressing or dislikable. Hogan’s Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) measures several highly influential values on 10 scales: Recognition, Power, Hedonism, Altruistic, Affiliation, Tradition, Security, Commerce, Aesthetics, and Science.

The Leader in Times of Crisis Program

As part of the Leader in Times of Crisis program, Hogan’s strategic partner Thuoper collaborated with the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce to study the personality traits of more than 200 CEOs in Colombia. The program’s main objective was to help leaders achieve a higher level of strategic self-awareness, understand how to manage the crisis, and emerge stronger than before.

As part of the program, the CEOs completed Hogan’s personality tests — the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory — and attended a webinar during which Liliana López, CEO of Thuoper and expert in organizational leadership, explained the methodology and key personality characteristics for handling crisis effectively.

Subsequently, Thuoper’s research and development team analyzed the CEOs’ personality test results and found important patterns between their results and their companies’ economic sectors. This article, the third in a three-part series, will focus on how the CEOs scored on the MVPI.

Financial

In the financial sector, we found Power and Altruistic to be the CEOs’ main values ​​or motivators. The Power scale refers to the desire for success, achievement, and control. This is an unsurprising finding in a sector where status is valued. On the contrary, it was surprising to find Altruistic to be one of the top scales in this sector. The Altruistic scale refers to the desire to help others and contribute to the betterment of society. This finding refutes the general perception that the financial sector is one of the most greedy and least altruistic; its CEOs demonstrate interest in the well-being of others.

Industrial

What we found in the industrial sector was expected. Altruistic, Security, and Commerce were the main MVPI scales on which CEOs scored high. Many companies in this sector demonstrate a growing interest in care for the environment and dialogue with impacted communities, suggesting altruism in the sector’s leaders. Security is the scale that refers to the need for stability, safety, and the minimization of risks, which is totally relevant for this sector, since it poses greater risk to the physical well-being of its employees. Commerce is about interest in making money, making investments, and finding business opportunities. The industrial sector is one of the largest sectors and is among those hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis, so the ability of its leaders to focus on financial results and generate new business to survive is vital.

Health

CEOs in the health sector, one of the most relevant at this time, scored high on Recognition, Power, and Altruistic. The importance of Recognition, which has to do with the desire for public attention, approval, and congratulations, is not surprising. In a sector where competition is high, the circumstances of the pandemic only increase the need for organizations to maintain good reputations. Like the financial sector, the health sector is characterized by high social standards, so that the CEOs tended to score high on the Power scale was not a surprise either. However, balance is maintained with the CEOs’ high scores on Altruistic, since the ultimate goal of a company in this sector is the collective good.

Services

In the services sector, CEOs tend to value Security and Commerce. This sector traditionally has been very conservative in its proposals to the market, hence the value for security. But obviously, this is also one of the sectors hit hardest economically by the pandemic, so the CEOs’ high scores on Commerce, in combination with Security, suggest a desire to stay in a known area but with the mentality of searching for monetization opportunities.

Technology

As for the technology sector, Altruistic and Security were the scales with the most high scores. This goes hand in hand with the widespread perception that companies in this sector are creating technology beneficial to society and vulnerable populations. The CEOs’ scores on Security are not a surprise, either — the leaders of this sector must be constantly alert to possible cyberattacks, which happen more often than we think.

Textiles, Transportation, and Tourism

The textiles sector did not offer any new impressions regarding CEOs’ highest values, ​​in general. Altruistic, Security, and Commerce represent the most recurring values ​​among the leaders whose results we analyzed. The same happened with the transportation and tourism sectors, although the latter showed an important and interesting difference: the leaders of this sector had Aesthetics among their highest values. The Aesthetics scale refers to the need for self-expression and concern for the quality and appearance of work products. Bringing this definition to the reality of this industry, we can conclude that one of the things that most interests the leaders of the tourism sector is keeping their hotels or tourist sites attractive, even during the pandemic.

*This post was authored by Sara Ruiz, Research and Development Talent Management Model Lead at THUOPER, Hogan’s authorized distributor in Colombia. 

Derailers are important because they are the habitual behavioral patterns that can get in our way. Typically operating below the level of conscious awareness, these behaviors are often easy to ignore. But when overused, they hinder performance. Coaching people to learn to work with derailers and manage stress can be a gateway into new understanding and help them increase their effectiveness.

The Stress-performance Curve

The relationship between stress and performance level can be summarized by the bell-shaped stress-performance curve, also referred to as Yerkes-Dodson law (figure 1).

At very low levels of stress, a person may feel lethargic and not very motivated. This is a zone of too little stress. As a person climbs the stress-performance curve, the amount of stress increases, and the level of productivity also climbs. This is a zone where the level of stress may be motivating and energizing. A positive relationship exists between the level of challenge and the positive reward cycle of getting things done, accomplishing things, concentration, and feedback. One may experience in this zone even a state of optimal experience or what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow.¹

However, as the amount of stress continues to rise, performance level ultimately peaks and then begins to decrease. When a person enters a zone of too much stress, his or her performance can be characterized by reduced capacity and narrowed judgment and behavioral resources. A person in this zone tends to rely on habitual patterns and go-to behaviors with limited attunement to circumstances and to others. As stress continues to increase, a person will increasingly enter a state of overwhelm and the range of resources contract to fight, flight, or freeze responses in order to address and minimize perceived danger.

The Hogan Development Survey (HDS)

Helping people understand where they are on the stress-performance curve is a starting point for helping them manage their derailing behavioral tendencies and their reputations under conditions of stress.

The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) captures common patterns of behavior and coping mechanisms that emerge under stress and pressure. Each behavioral pattern, or HDS dimension, has an adaptive and functional feature. Each also has a maladaptive quality, which is typically an exaggerated response or an automatic, inflexible response to situations. The top of the stress-performance curve is a place where these behaviors become more prominent and tend to dominate responses. As an important note, HDS behaviors can also be present when someone is relaxed (i.e., not self-managing), and some people might even have HDS traits present most of the time. The focus for this article, however, is on behavioral responses triggered by stress.

What happens for a person at the top of the stress-performance curve has a significant impact on that person’s ability to lead and collaborate. This is because each HDS tendency has a way of hindering the ability to “get along” with others and maintain effective interpersonal relationships. This is a zone that is important for awareness, and it can be a gateway into greater versatility and effectiveness.

Behavioral Modification

Many people talk about behavioral modification, yet behavior does not change because someone wants it to. In other words, it isn’t a matter of will. Behavioral modification comes from shifting patterns and responses to habitual stimuli. This involves a change in perceptions and a change in the internal responses that drive behavior. It is only the latter can be observed by others.

Working with the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) in combination with coaching techniques of self-observations and practices can be powerful methods for growing self-awareness. This makes it possible to shift into more effective responses and behaviors under pressure.

The Role of Coaching

I am trained in Integral Coaching, an approach that uses self-observation and practices for developing ways of responding to situations and developing more versatile ways of being in the world.

To describe these two techniques,

• self-observations involve a semistructured process for taking time to observe oneself and reflecting on what behaviors arise in particular situations, and
• practices are repetitive and intentional actions aimed at building a new ability.

Self-observations are effective in discovering unconscious behavioral patterns and habitual responses. Practices allow a person to introduce and build familiarity with a new behavior.

HDS behaviors can be challenging to work with, in large part because most stress responses lie below the level of conscious awareness. The power of self-observation and practices is that, once we can see how we are disposed to respond, we have the opportunity to introduce alternatives.

Working with Stress and Derailer Tendencies in Coaching

In working with a client, I may introduce the stress-performance curve and ask the person to mark an X on the part of the curve that matches his or her stress level. I may have the person take this diagram into the workday and stop multiple times a day (e.g., three times a day) for a fixed period of time (e.g., two weeks) to mark the stress-performance curve. The exercise gets a person to stop and notice their regulation state. It also creates familiarity with the concept of the curve. Through this activity, people are usually able to start to see where their energy and stress levels are during the day and bring this into discussion. This can help determine which behaviors a client may want to focus on based on their actual experiences.

Once someone can notice their state, then they have the possibility to look more closely at stress-based patterns. Here is where I may introduce a self-observation. I may ask the person to observe themselves in a specific stress behavior-inducing situation. I ask them to take notes afterwards on three areas: the context (i.e., who was there and the kind of event), their perceptions (i.e., their thoughts, interpretation, and emotions), and the kinds of actions that the situations provoked them to want to take. These reflections are often insightful to the client and increases their awareness about internal perceptions, habitual responses, and contextual triggers.

This process of self-observation creates a space to possibly introduce a new behavioral practice. A coach can help design a customized practice for a person and gauge readiness.

Practices may include the following:

• A productive alternative and a new behavior to use more frequently (“do more of”)
• A repair behavior (to mitigate impacts of habitual patterns)
• A stress management practice to re-regulate and move down the stress-performance curve (to recharge and minimize spending time in the too-much-stress zone)

As an example, a leader with a high Bold tendency, who is known for not listening to feedback during meetings, may benefit from a self-observation in instances when they are the only person in the room talking. Via a semistructured self-observation, they may look to see if they could self-observe in a real instance. Using the three questions, they can independently reflect on what this observation reveals. Observing first on their own and then discussing this in session may open up new awareness and catalyze greater choice in how to respond (versus react). One example practice which may be fruitful would be to experiment with asking one to three questions, listening, and corroborating prior to sharing a new idea. A component of the practice would be to observe the impact of this new behavior on themselves and others in the real-time behavior practice.

Developing awareness of patterns and stepping into practicing new behaviors is an individualized process. It is supported by curiosity, experimentation, and nonjudgment. New patterns require multiple forms of feedback to develop. The attention of a focused coach and a big dose of curiosity can allow a person to work with derailers and have significant payoffs.

Summary

Managing one’s derailers means growing a capacity to observe oneself, respond differently, and develop practices that are more productive. Growing this capability will increase a person’s effectiveness and their ability to work with others under pressure.

While behavioral change takes attention, self-reflection, and ongoing practice, it is something people can take with them into their lives outside of work, and derailer behaviors are a powerful area to target. The HDS in combination with coaching can help to build this capacity and improve performance.

Reference

1. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial: New York.

*This post was authored by Rebecca Ghanadan, PhD, founder of Aspis Coaching Group member of the Hogan Coaching Network.

Some personality traits can pose risks to companies’ success. These traits, which Hogan calls derailers, tend to arise when people are stressed, fatigued, or bored (that is, when we do not exercise self-control). These are the most challenging elements of personality to work with, and they are the most damaging to our careers. Because crises such as the one we are currently experiencing cause almost constant stress, these characteristics are particularly notable right now.

The Leader in Times of Crisis Program

The Hogan Development Survey, or HDS, measures the 11 aspects of personality that can derail performance during times like these. As part of the Leader in Times of Crisis program, Hogan’s strategic partner Thuoper collaborated with the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce to study the personality traits of more than 200 CEOs in Colombia. The program’s main objective was help leaders achieve a higher level of strategic self-awareness, understand how to manage the crisis, and emerge stronger than before.

As part of the program, the CEOs completed Hogan’s personality tests — the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory — and attended a webinar during which Liliana López, CEO of Thuoper and expert in organizational leadership, explained the methodology and key personality characteristics for handling crisis effectively.

Subsequently, Thuoper’s research and development team analyzed the CEOs’ personality test results and found important patterns between their results and their companies’ economic sectors. This article, the second in a three-part series, will focus on how the CEOs scored on the HDS.

Financial

In the financial sector, we found that the greatest risk involves behaviors associated with the Colorful scale. People who score high on this scale seem gregarious, entertaining, and jovial, and they enjoy being the center of attention. The crucial risk with this scale lies in a tendency to exaggerate the facts and, as a consequence, create panic in the team. As is evident, this characteristic can be disastrous in a sector as delicate and with as much social impact as this.

Industrial

Among CEOs in the industrial sector, we found two main risk factors: Excitable and Reserved. People who score high on the Excitable scale work with passion and enthusiasm, but they can also become easily frustrated, irritated, upset, and inclined to abandon projects or remove support from people. The main problem is difficulty with emotional self-control, which can lead to hurt relationships or put projects, processes, or ideas at risk when they do not go as expected. An industrial sector CEO with these characteristics may have difficulties managing the current situation and effectively leading a team.

Those who score high on the Reserved scale, on the other hand, may appear mentally strong, distant, and unconcerned for other people’s feelings. For leadership to be effective, regular communication with the team (especially in critical circumstances) is essential, and CEOs who are high on the Reserved scale might tend to cut this communication under stress.

Health

The results from the health sector were very interesting. We found three primary risk factors: Bold, Mischievous, and Diligent. High scorers on the Bold scale tend to appear confident, fearless, self-promoting, and unable to admit mistakes or learn from experience. Obviously this is a very high-risk scale for this sector because the ability to learn from experience and correct mistakes is required (and to correct them, you must first admit them).

The Mischievous scale refers to seeming bright, charming, adventurous, risk inclined, and limit testing. If we look at it from this perspective, it can seem positive for this high-pressure sector. However, the risk factor lies in exceeding the limits and overlooking security protocols or basic nonnegotiable principles.

Finally, high scorers on the Diligent scale appear to be hardworking and detail oriented, with high performance standards for themselves and others. Like the Mischievous scale, this may sound positive; however, the risk factor is reflected in “paralysis” behaviors. That is, when this trait arises, the leader (or the team, under the leader’s direction) might not produce the necessary results, because they are not ideal.

Services

CEOs in the services sector also tended to score high on the Bold and Mischievous scales. Obviously, it will always be a risk to have difficulty with accepting feedback or with owning mistakes (Bold) and the possibility of blurring the limits in every sense of the word (Mischievous).

Technology

Technology sector CEOs tended to have high scores on the Bold and Imaginative scales. As it may be evident, arrogance is one of the most common personality traits of people under stress. The Imaginative scale refers to appearing innovative, creative, possibly eccentric, and sometimes self-focused. The risk factor stems from behaviors such as difficulty landing or executing ideas and difficulty communicating in a practical and easily understandable way. In circumstances like these, it is of great importance to work from practicality, because theorizing, analyzing, thinking and rethinking projects will not monetize what little you can.

Textiles

In the textiles sector, the Leisurely scale is the main risk. This refers to appearing friendly and cooperative but actually acting on personal priorities while resisting the priorities of others in a passive but stubborn way. Real and open synergy is a necessary condition for the survival of teams and companies, and behaviors such as being privately uncooperative can put synergy at risk. For leadership to be effective, it is important to control these types of scenarios.

Transportation

Turning to the transportation sector, we found behaviors associated with the Colorful scale to be the main risk factor. Just as in the financial sector, a high score on this scale can be a double-edged sword that leads to making one-sided decisions or generating panic in teams.

Tourism

Finally, in the tourism sector, we identified three main derailers: Cautious, Bold, and Diligent. The Cautious scale measures risk aversion, fear of failure, and avoidance of criticism. This scale can be challenging because it can lead to difficulties in making risky decisions or decisions without all the necessary information (which is every day in these new conditions).

It is important to emphasize that these are behaviors that arise only under stress, tiredness, or boredom, and do not determine leadership skills, but they can negatively influence results (both human and financial).

Please look out for the third installment of this series to learn about the motivators and values ​​of these CEOs.

*This post was authored by Sara Ruiz, Research and Development Talent Management Model Lead at THUOPER, Hogan’s authorized distributor in Colombia.

The new realities shaped by the disruptive and complex moment we are experiencing are completely different for each organization. This situation is forcing some companies to completely reinvent themselves, while others are unable to operate as needed. Others (the least common group, especially in Colombia) are seeing turnover grow at unexpected levels. The personality characteristics of the CEOs of the companies influence the consequences that each of the companies is experiencing as a result of the pandemic.

The Leader in Times of Crisis Program

In alliance with the Bogota Chamber of Commerce, Thuoper, one of Hogan’s strategic partners, built the Leader in Times of Crisis program to study the personality traits of more than 200 CEOs in Colombia. The program’s main objective was help leaders achieve a higher level of strategic self-awareness, understand how to manage the crisis, and emerge stronger than before.

As part of the program, the CEOs completed Hogan’s personality tests — the Hogan Personality Inventory, the Hogan Development Survey, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory — and attended a webinar during which Liliana López, CEO of Thuoper and expert in organizational leadership, explained the methodology and key personality characteristics for handling crisis effectively.

Subsequently, Thuoper’s research and development team analyzed the CEOs’ personality test results and found important patterns between their results and their companies’ economic sectors. This article, the first in a three-part series, will focus on how the CEOs scored on the Hogan Personality Inventory, or HPI, which evaluates seven aspects of personality that tend to appear during everyday situations.

Financial

Among CEOs in the financial sector, we saw a pattern involving the Sociability and Inquisitive scales. Sociability refers to interest in frequent and varied social interaction — these are leaders who facilitate and promote communication and socialization in virtual spaces with their teams. Inquisitive refers to creativity and openness to new ideas, which is highly positive for this sector, as the sector is typically rigid without much change. This shows that they are leaders willing to rethink the way they do business and create new strategies different from the traditional ones.

Industrial

In the industrial sector, CEOs scored similarly on the Prudence, Inquisitive, and Learning Approach scales. Prudence has to do with self-control, being conscientious, and having a good work ethic. The CEOs’ overall results demonstrate that they can make good decisions guided by planning and structure, while balancing flexibility and challenging traditional paradigms. The Learning Approach scale describes a person’s learning style. In these particular results, CEOs demonstrate a good balance between learning through practical experience, which is key during times of uncertainty, and an interest in learning in academic spaces, which today are virtual. Curiosity, one of the characteristics measured by the Inquisitive scale, also plays a key role in this sector due to the creativity and willingness to rethink problems that this crisis requires.

Health

We found that Interpersonal Sensitivity, Prudence, and Learning Approach were the scales on which CEOs in the health sector scored highest. It is not a surprise to find that the Interpersonal Sensitivity scale appeared in this sector. This scale measures warmth and social ability, which are of great importance during this difficult time for humanity. Our analysis shows that CEOs of companies in this sector have the ability to transmit these skills as values ​​within their organizations.

Services

Our findings were equally as interesting within the services sector. We found that the Inquisitive and Adjustment scales prevailed among these CEOs. Adjustment is particularly important during these times, as it has to do with the ability to manage stress, control emotions, and listen to feedback. These results show that these CEOs have the ability to maintain a balance between acting with a sense of urgency, openly listening to feedback from the environment, and managing their emotions in the face of the crisis to avoid creating panic in their companies.

Technology

Technology CEOs’ most notable scores were on the Prudence, Inquisitive, and Interpersonal Sensitivity scales. For this sector, the importance of the Inquisitive scale is highlighted because it is the one that allows the industry to remain at the forefront under realistic and achievable parameters. The scale of Interpersonal Sensitivity is also striking in this sector, as one might think that technology companies would be removed from people and the human factor. This demonstrates the ability of these CEOs to integrate technology and innovation with the human side. From a team perspective, these CEOs should also be able to keep their teams engaged.

Textiles

In the textiles sector, we noticed a pattern in the leaders’ Inquisitive and Interpersonal Sensitivity scores. This sector will be one of the ones that will have to reinvent itself the most, given the new commercial and market conditions caused by the pandemic. Consumer habits are changing, and this turn will be even more marked post-pandemic, so curiosity will help these CEOs design new, nontraditional strategies.

Transportation

Among CEOs in the Transportation sector, scores on the Sociability and Prudence scales prevailed. This sector is one of those that will have significant reinvention challenges since it requires people to be face to face. Sociability will play a crucial role within organizational culture to keep employees involved and connected to each other.

Tourism

Finally, in the tourism sector, we obtained very interesting findings. Given that this is one of the sectors hit hardest by COVID-19, these CEOs are facing challenges never before imagined. We found their Ambition and Adjustment scores to be their main strengths. The Ambition scale predicts leadership, drive, competitiveness, and initiative — which are essential to getting out of a situation as complicated as the one many tourism companies find themselves in. These results indicate a good prognosis. Surely many of these organizations be strong enough to withstand the impact of this crisis once it has passed.

We invite you to stay connected with us for the second part of this series to learn about these CEOs’ behavioral risks, which could derail their companies’ survival goals in this time of crisis.

*This post was authored by Sara Ruiz, Research and Development Talent Management Model Lead at THUOPER, Hogan’s authorized distributor in Colombia.

Despite the thousands of print and internet resources available on the subject of effective leadership, it remains elusive. The number of leaders who fail is consistently estimated to be greater than 50%. The impact that ineffective leaders have on their teams and entire organizations can be devastating from both a human and financial perspective. It’s no wonder that leadership effectiveness continues to be at the top of organizations’ agendas.

At the heart of ineffective leadership is the concept of leader derailment. “Derail” is defined as “to cause to become deflected from a purpose; to reduce or delay the chances for success.” The Hogan Development Survey (HDS), sometimes referred to as the Derailer Report, is a tool that assesses 11 derailers that get in the way of leaders’ success. These behaviors typically emerge when leaders are under stress or when they become complacent and stop monitoring their behavior. Leadership involves building and maintaining a high-performing team, and the 11 behaviors identified by the HDS can potentially undermine leaders’ performance and make them and their teams less effective. Derailing moments can also have a lasting negative effect on leaders’ reputations because they tend to be memorable.

Once leaders’ derailers are identified via the HDS, coaches spend quite a bit of time helping them mitigate and rein in these behaviors. But how about getting a step ahead of derailers and preventing them from appearing in the first place? Just think of the angst and negative impact that could be avoided if leaders were to prevent derailing moments from even occurring. This is a subtle but meaningful difference in the coaching approach.

Case No. 1

Susan was high Excitable and visibly showed her frustration during staff meetings by raising her voice and using a confrontational tone with her direct reports. She and her coach identified some coping tools for her to use in these Excitable moments, including taking a deep breath, counting to 10 before saying anything, and trying to be cognizant of her tone of voice. Unfortunately, even though she made a midcourse correction during one of her Excitable moments, some damage had already been done, and her behavior gave her a reputation for being hotheaded. How much better would work be for all concerned if Susan could prevent Excitable moments altogether?

She and her coach worked to determine what triggered her Excitable moments so she could get ahead of them. She discovered that one of her triggers was when her direct reports did not meet agreed-upon deadlines. She began to try to anticipate discussions about missed deadlines before staff meetings, and she and her coach practiced how she would handle these situations and control her derailing behaviors. Ultimately, her calmer handling of missed deadlines promoted more effective team performance and also prevented reinforcement of her reputation as a hothead.

Case No. 2

John was high Mischievous and had earned a reputation for making snap decisions. Some of his decisions involved ill-advised risks, had made his team uncomfortable, and had resulted in negative consequences for the company. John had received feedback on his behavior in his Mischievous moments, and he tried to modify it by being less cavalier — but that wasn’t enough.

John and his coach did a deeper dive into trying to understand his behavior, and they determined that his trigger was when he was very comfortable with the subject matter. If he had done something successfully in the past, he wanted to act immediately, and he didn’t explore possible consequences. To get ahead of this derailer, he and his coach agreed that he would slow down his decision-making to afford time for a realistic appraisal of the likely consequences and possible alternative courses of action. He created a T-chart of pros and cons, and he developed a list of standard questions to explore the possible implications of his actions. When John learned to avoid being derailed, his team appreciated his more deliberate approach, and the quality of his decisions started to dispel his former reputation.

The Lesson

In both Susan and John’s situations, “forewarned was forearmed” in that they knew their derailers, they knew their triggers, and they stopped their derailing behaviors before they emerged. By managing their behaviors upstream, they were able to change the trajectories of their interactions, thus making their teams more effective and certainly making themselves more effective leaders.

The keys for coaches to help leaders prevent derailment are:

• identifying the leader’s derailers via the HDS assessment;
• enhancing the leader’s awareness of the effects his or her behavior has on others;
• enhancing the leader’s self-monitoring;
• identifying triggers that cause derailers to emerge; and
• developing coping strategies and tools to get ahead of derailers so derailing moments do not occur.

The old adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” applies to getting ahead of derailers, and leaders and coaches will do well to implement this impactful approach.

Note: For more on avoiding derailment, please join our July 16 webinar to hear Trish Kellett, director of the Hogan Coaching Network (HCN), and Karin Fulton and Kevin Asbjörnson, both highly experienced HCN coaches, elaborate.

According to the World Economic Forum 2022 Skills Outlook report, the growing workforce skills that will be imperative to businesses in the coming years include a more holistic approach to leadership incorporating complex, analytical, innovative, and creative thinking in combination with social influences and emotional intelligence. Lessening in demand will be traditional/transactional and isolated skills such as manual dexterity, memory, personnel management, quality control, time management, and technology management.

There has been intensive publicity and buildup around Industry 4.0 and IoT 4.0. However, the most significant, pending transition of the global workforce concerns preparing people for the future of work. Organizations looking to implement foundational change should look to the Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0, a contemporary, 21^st century model of engaging or inspiring leadership.

The Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0, developed by Inspire Imagine Innovate Pte, Ltd., addresses these growing skills gaps through a new model which enables the global workforce to engage the goals and opportunities of Industry 4.0 and IoT 4.0 through:

Personality & Emotional Intelligence (EQ-i)

Perseverance & Resilience

• Interdependent Collaboration
• Synthesizer
• Comprehensive Learning Agility

Perspective

• Global Mindset (Diversity & Inclusion)
• Coaching Mindset
• Whole Brain® Thinking

In our experience, organizations are now realizing that their employment engagement surveys are revealing very limited insight into their employees and actually reflect an overall leadership deficiency and a lack of engaging or inspiring leadership with a coaching mindset, within their organizations. Global citizens are also expressing their dissatisfaction with and disapproval of the leadership of their governments as well as their educational and healthcare systems — which clearly have not advanced to Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0.

The fields of leadership, employee engagement, talent management, personality, and coaching have simultaneously converged, and the collective imperative of leading organizations has become ‘Engage Your Potential, Develop Your Talent, and Focus Your Performance.’ This confluence of disciplines presents a challenge to organizations, as many universities, business schools, consulting firms and leadership development service providers have not progressed their faculty, consultants, trainers, and coaches to align with these changes.

Based on our extensive experience working with global multinational organizations across the globe to improve their leadership performance, potential and well-being, we felt that a new ‘lens’ was needed, through which the talent development conversation would shift. To correct this perspective, I created Future Talent / Future Leader 4.0 — A Human Centric Model Preparing People for the Future of Work, to address the ever-increasing complexity and distributed nature of leadership and to align the global workforce with future leadership capabilities, one individual at a time.

The Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0 Model is built upon 15 years of global executive coaching experience with emerging, high-potential and senior level leaders, and Hogan Assessments.

In spite of a lack of confidence in leadership within organizations, government, and non-government organizations (NGO) that is prevalent throughout the world today, individuals, citizens, and stakeholders are realizing the value and path forward through Future Talent / Future Leader 4.0’s contemporary, 21^st century model of engaging or inspiring leadership, to help them achieve their goals.

We are also beginning to realize that the original 70/20/10 guideline for talent and leadership development (70 percent of their knowledge is acquired from job-related experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others, and 10 percent from formal educational events) has shifted to 60/30/10, to reflect the following characteristics of the global workforce:

1. Leaders are now expected to be engaging/inspiring leaders who recognize, acknowledge and develop others
2. Leaders and managers are now expected to develop into leaders and managers with a coaching mindset
3. Mentors are frequently assigned to leaders, by corporations, to assist with the learning and development of managers and leaders
4. The outcome of executive coaching and leadership development initiatives is increasingly focused on enhancing the productivity and effectiveness of teams and work groups
5. Peer-to-peer-based learning and interactive learning groups, with executive sponsorship, have replaced lectures and presentations in the classroom

To find out more and learn how you can help your organization engage the goals of Industry 4.0 and IoT 4.0 via the path forward through the Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0 (‘3 P’s’ Model), please visit https://www.inspireimagineinnovate.com/the-future-talent-future-leader-4-03ps-model.

*This is a guest blog authored by Kevin Asbjörnson, an advanced practitioner of Hogan Assessments and global leader and teams’ coach in the Hogan Coaching Network (HCN). The Future Talent/Future Leader 4.0 Model is not a Hogan model. 

*Kevin may be reached in Singapore  at his email address, at Kevin.Asbjornson@InspireImagineInnovate.com or on LinkedIn at the following URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinasbjornson.

References and Internet Links:

• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/future-of-jobs-2018-things-to-know
• https://www.hoganassessments.com/coaching-network
• https://www.inspireimagineinnovate.com/a-path-forward-future-talent-future-leader-4-0-a-human-centric-model-preparing-people-for-the-future-of-work/

The quality of people’s lives depends on their careers. The quality of people’s careers depends on the organizations in which their careers are embedded. The success of these organizations depends on their leadership. The effectiveness of the leadership depends on the characteristics of the people in leadership roles. Ultimately then, personality drives leadership, leadership drives organizational performance, and who is in charge matters greatly for the fate of organizations and the people in them.

These statements are true, and we can use this line of reasoning to improve the functioning of any organizational unit, from a football team to a sales team to a military team to a city council. As obvious as this line of reasoning may seem, it is radical news to most business school professors for three reasons. First, until the mid-1990s, academics denied that personality exists, or that it affects occupational performance in any significant ways. However, a series of research studies in the early 1990s showed, for those who believe in data, that people differ in meaningful ways (personality), that these differences can be assessed (personality measurement), and that these differences predict occupational performance. Second, until the early 2000s, academics denied that leadership matters. However, a series of research studies in the early 2000s showed that personality predicts leadership performance, and leadership performance predicts team or organizational performance. The personality of the CEO is the most important determinant of firm financial performance other than the industry sector in which the firm operates. And third, as of today, academics ignore the topic of organizational effectiveness—the term “organizational effectiveness” doesn’t appear in the index of any major research compendium. But clearly Singapore has a better economy than Somalia, and South Korea has a better economy than North Korea; moreover, the differences in their economic performance have a huge impact on the well-being of the residents in those countries.

This argument is so important that it deserves repeating. It goes as follows:

1. Personality is real: people are different, but their differences are consistent across situations, and this allows us to predict their typical behavior.
2. Personality matters: well-validated measures of personality predict every consequential life outcome (i.e., health, marital satisfaction, occupational performance) better than any alternative indicator.
3. Personality predicts leadership performance better than any other alternative indicator, including IQ. But personality doesn’t discriminate: women get the same scores as men; ethnic minorities get the same scores as ethnic majorities. This means good leadership can come from anywhere.
4. Leadership predicts firm performance; good leaders guide profitable enterprises and bad leaders ruin organizations. This is the lesson of James Collins’ book Good to Great.

The next question concerns the personality characteristics of successful leaders. The data suggest that good leaders have most or all of the following seven characteristics.

The first and in many ways the most important characteristic is integrity. People need to know that they can trust their leaders not to betray, deceive, or exploit them. This is so powerful that a team’s ratings for the degree that they trust their leader is a proxy for team or business unit performance. People will not work for leaders they mistrust. Leaders need to take great care to gain and maintain the trust of their subordinates.

The second characteristic is competence—leaders need to know what they are talking about, they need to be well-grounded in the business at hand. Competence inspires trust, but more practically, staff need to be able to ask their managers for advice in solving the problems that come up constantly. In athletics, the team captain is often the best player on the team, and the best athletic managers know more about their sports than their rival managers.

The third characteristic is good judgment—subordinates need to know that their leaders will take them in the right direction. In the Vietnam War, a surprising number of newly minted US officers were killed by their own troops precisely because the troops thought their officers would get them killed.

The fourth characteristic is vision—leaders need to be able to explain to their staff why they are doing what they are doing and why it matters. A recent DDI survey of several thousand HR managers reported that 70% of the HR managers thought the leadership of their organization lacked any vision.

The fifth essential characteristic is ambition—wanting to be in charge and to outperform rival organizations.  Ambition concerns enjoying competition, wanting to win, being persistent and resilient in the face of defeat, and never being satisfied with or complacent about current levels of performance. Leaders without ambition are empty suits.

The sixth characteristic concerns “the dark side” of personality. Dark-side characteristics are strengths that, when overused, turn into problems. Passion and intensity can turn into bullying and tantrums, a keen work ethic can turn into micro-management, self-confidence can turn into arrogance and the inability to learn from experience. These tendencies are almost impossible to detect during interviews. Left unchecked they will cause leaders to fail—because they destroy trust.

The final characteristic is “global mindedness.” This characteristic is important if an organization is operating on the world stage. It is a personality syndrome that includes: being curious about other cultures and life styles; being tolerant of those other ways of living; and being able to adapt to strange circumstances while remaining focused on one’s competitive goals.

These are the essential ingredients of leadership. Needless to say, no one person has all these characteristics, every potential and existing leader has challenges as defined by these seven characteristics. But this profile provides a template against which people can compare their performance and determine how to improve it—providing they have the requisite ambition. People can only improve their performance if they understand their performance limitations.

As governments around the world are under increased demands to reopen, leaders everywhere are making decisions in the face of staggering uncertainty and conflicting information. In many ways, the decisions that first closed down businesses and quarantined cities, although certainly difficult, were much easier exercises in short-term decision making and execution than those that leaders will have to make for the longer-term journey.

And now everyone is asking, what will this “new normal” look like?

Let’s start with what we know. As our coaches at Hogan Assessments will tell you, in order to gain something new and worthwhile in your life, you will inevitably face choices. You won’t lose weight without changing behaviors around your eating and activity levels. You won’t strengthen your family relationships without investing in quality time with your loved ones. You won’t learn a new language without reprioritizing your time in consistent study and practice.

For leaders, 2020 has thus far been an intensive exercise in making hard choices. I would hypothesize that, for both leaders and teams, the remainder of 2020 will be an exercise in cultivating appropriate strategic self-awareness to make choices that will carry their organizations and talent into the future.

In many of these forthcoming decisions, identifying the right choice and the wrong choice might be difficult. In those times, it will be critical for leaders to reflect on the appropriate questions:

1. What did you have to let go of against your wishes in 2020? How have you been forced to change the way you lead? The way your team operates?
2. Where are you still using approaches or processes that brought you and your team success in the past? Where are these working? Where are they not working?
3. Are you paying attention to signals telling you that an approach or process isn’t working today? What are those signals?

Leading in a “new normal” season will require deliberate management of the tension between the “normal” and the “new.” At Hogan, we know that innate personality characteristics and motivators may lead some people to crave returning to the past, to the pragmatic, to solutions that have worked before, to the “normal.” These individuals often look for certainty, for steadiness, and for signals that remind them of past success. They might be hoping desperately to regain a sense of normalcy in their life. They might also be working diligently right now to apply processes or systems that brought them success in the past.

We also know that others naturally will find an abundance of freedom in the ambiguity. They will come up with new ideas or methodologies quickly, worrying little about appropriate application or execution. These creative innovators might be looking to drive significant change in the way they have operated before. Their comfort with ambiguity often frees them from a need for process and possibly even short-term expectations. If these individuals also have higher levels of ambition, they might be very quick to take on new challenges and run into the unknown.

In the second half of 2020, effective organizational leadership must balance these inevitable perspectives, deciding when to lean toward “normal” and when to lean toward “new,” and then lead others in that direction.

Our research on humility in leadership shows that the leaders with the most potential to effectively manage the tension through this next milestone will be those who are naturally open to coaching and feedback, as well as admitting when they make mistakes along the way. These humble leaders will quickly value and respect other points of view and new ways of thinking. They will help keep the focus on aligned team performance and a healthy organizational culture.

Humble leaders will also keep both the humanity and accountability in organizational processes in the coming months. They will keep lines of communication and therefore critical knowledge open. They will encourage sharing insights, and they will celebrate mistakes. Because of their focus on learning and development, humble leaders will raise up other leaders around them without being threatened or fearful of losing positional power or credibility.

At Hogan, we have seen time and time again that having a strategic self-awareness rooted in the science of personality provides leaders with a competitive advantage. Having this awareness across your team increases your organization’s competitive advantage. As we step into this season of our “new normal” and everything that it brings, that competitive advantage just may make the difference between companies that remain healthy in the coming months and those that do not.

The choices you make today will determine the strength you have tomorrow.

I was talking recently with a very smart psychologist about IBM; I noted that IBM’s stock has gone down steadily for the past six years, and he said: “IBM is well managed but poorly led.” This perceptive observation assumes that managers’ jobs change as they move from supervisor to manager to executive. I have always thought that leadership is the same at any level, but many people believe that the roles of managers, and the competencies needed to perform in those roles, change as they advance in organizations. I know little about this, so I asked Rob Kaiser and, as usual, he was helpful—in part because he organized an entire issue of The Psychologist-Manager Journal (2011, Volume 14) on this subject.

The particular strength of the articles in Kaiser’s issue of the journal is that they present real data, based on good measures and a comprehensive set of managerial competencies, data that show clearly how the requirements of management jobs change with changes in organizational status. The published literature on this topic is quite large and somewhat complex. I believe I can summarize the major lessons of the literature in terms of four points.

Managerial Competencies

The first point is that management levels can be usefully conceptualized in terms of three categories:  (1) Supervisors, who are responsible for organizing employees’ work, assigning tasks, and holding people accountable for their performance; (2) Managers, who coordinate the efforts of work teams with the requests of top management; (3) Executives, who set the direction for the organization. Even with these simple definitions it is apparent that people do different things at different levels of management.

The second point is that De Meuse, et al. (2011) show that certain prominent competencies (e.g., Humor, Personal Disclosure, and Compassion), are irrelevant. Specifically, ratings for sense of humor, willingness to disclose, and showing compassion are uncorrelated with managerial performance at any level. Consider Personal Disclosure. It is defined as “…willing to share thoughts about personal strengths, weaknesses, and limitations; admits mistakes and shortcomings; is open about personal beliefs and feelings; is easy to get to know for those who interact with him/her regularly.” Personal Disclosure is the core of Authentic Leadership theory and these data indicate that it is irrelevant for managerial performance.

The third point is that certain competencies are in fact important at any level. These include Customer Focus, Functional/Technical Skills, Decision Quality, and Ethics and Values. I can’t resist noting that these competencies are at the core of the “Hogan Leadership Model.” The data provided by Kaiser, et al. (2011) contain two interesting findings. The first concerns the importance of being decisive versus being participative when making decisions. Effective Managers are rated as high decisive, low participative, whereas effective Executives are rated as low decisive, high participative. Second, Kaiser’s data indicate that “learning agility” is needed at every managerial level, and that “abrasiveness” is undesirable at any level. These data are consistent with Kaiser’s claim that adaptability (i.e., learning agility) is the “g” factor in managerial performance.

The last point is that certain competencies are important for Supervisors, even more important for Managers, and crucial for Executives. These competencies are Managerial Courage, Command Skills, Business Acumen, and Perspective. This is also consistent with our leadership model.

These four points summarize what we know in a data-based way about how managers’ jobs change as they move up organizational hierarchies. I would like to close with two observations, the first concerns the practical consequences of these data, the second concerns a shortcoming in these analyses. Regarding the practical consequences, executive coaches all know that many managers fail after being promoted. A common cause of failure concerns being unable to adapt to the promotion. We distinguish between working in the business and working on the business. Working in the business involves assigning tasks, giving clear instructions, and holding people accountable. Working on the business means putting problems in perspective, evaluating past decisions based on present evidence, and anticipating problems based on potential changes in customer demands. This involves the distinction between tactical and strategic thinking. Tactical thinking concerns implementation issues, budget allocation, and short-term deadlines; strategic thinking concerns innovation, profit generation, and longer-term opportunities. Smart, hardworking, honest executives often fail because they focus on tactical issues at the expense of strategic opportunities.

The second problem with discussions of leadership based on competency models concerns the problem of derailment. The data show that 65% to 75% of existing managers struggle to perform well at any level. Competency models focus on strengths, but as Rob Kaiser tells us, strengths become problems when they are overused; thus, more of any competency is not always better. Conversely, more versatility (or learning agility) is always better. In addition, Kaiser’s data also show that unpleasant tendencies (e.g., abrasiveness) can co-exist with important strengths, and the unpleasant tendencies can cancel the benefits of important strengths. All of this suggests that competency-based analyses of leadership need to be qualified by considerations of versatility and the dark side of personality.

Bibliography

De Meuse, K.P., Dai, G. & Wu, J. (2011). Leadership skills across organizational levels.  The Psychologist–Manager Journal, 14, 120-139.

Kaiser, R.B., Craig S.B. Overfield, D.V., & Yarborough, P. (2011).  Differences in managerial jobs at the bottom, middle, and top.  The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 14, 76-91.

Many people are involved in a basketball game: A coach provides strategy, a shooting guard is agile, and a point guard assists in providing direction. In the heat of the game, the coach knows when to put in strong players, when to bench someone, and when to encourage every player to step up and give 110%. But winning does not depend on just the coach. Winning depends on each player contributing, whether by hustling down the court, putting up a three-pointer, or being in the best possible position when the game is on the line.

The same applies to business. Every person’s role in a company matters, and every person contributes to the company’s success. While responsibilities and titles vary, we all serve customers, drive revenue, and strategize for the future. A good leader encourages team members to develop their individual strengths so the team will perform better.

But what about during a crisis? Today we all find ourselves in uncharted territory, and many businesses are being forced to adapt. Some are changing their business model, some are reinventing their business purpose, and others are collaborating across industries. The most successful companies will be those whose leaders practice humility, admit mistakes, listen to new and innovative ideas, and create space and opportunities for employees to help. People who are truly “helpers” can help their companies succeed.

Battling the business impact of a crisis requires a team of helpers. Leaders should provide vision, be open and honest, make critical decisions with care and efficiency, and create a platform for cooperation and team effort. Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson recently took these actions, reassuring employees in a companywide address that “we can — and we will — overcome this, and we’ll thrive once again.”

Thriving again is what we all want, and each person will play a different role in helping to make that happen. Our research has shown that certain team member characteristics lead to team success in the long run. These include being results oriented, relationship focused, process oriented, innovative, and pragmatic. Acknowledging these strengths in a team and knowing when to tap into them is crucial.

But what if a leader is unsure of a teams’ strengths or how to encourage an individual to better develop his or her strengths? Hogan can help. We understand the science of personality and have created many assessments that will help you understand the strengths of your team.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that every role in a company matters, and every person contributes. Think of this current moment like the heat of the game — when leaders look to their helpers, they know who is dependable and agile and that, in order to thrive again, we have to rely on each other.