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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This symposium will be held Thursday, May 15.

References available

I watch too much TV.  From my morning dose of sports and news to my evening schedule of news and comedy, the part of my day not spent at work is often spent in a familiar bluish glow. My wife has her dramas, I have my comedies, and with three kids we also have to endure our fair share of animation. So you probably think this blog is about my moment of clarity and a thoughtful effort to break this addiction to TV. Nope. Not a chance. BACK OFF.

At a recent dinner with friends, we saw a commercial advertising the premier of one of the fall’s new shows. Each fall TV schedule brings a few original ideas and a lot of garbage, and unfortunately the show we saw advertised fell into the latter group. So we started talking about how a few bona fide gems make it to air amidst a tidal wave of the mediocre and downright awful, and I considered what role personality and leadership play in this puzzle.

As with any industry, some television execs see their purpose as advancing their own agenda.  When this self-centered view is combined with a lack of self-awareness about one’s personality, what ultimately appears on millions of televisions is often uninteresting, dated, and quickly cancelled. However, when executives focus on creating and sustaining high performing teams and on proactively managing their own personalities, the products they create can be truly creative, thought-provoking, and starkly original.

Few of us work in jobs where our products are viewed and judged by millions of people, but each of us is responsible for producing something. Once we prove that we are able to meet the technical demands of our jobs, what determines our success or failure is our personalities and how we lead others. If we are actively involved in managing our personalities at work, we are better prepared to produce the next big hit in our own jobs. If not, we may create the next big miss.

I was browsing the internet one night a few weeks ago, and I came across a story that caught my attention. The story is one of a Los Angeles County traffic cop that, through 20 years on the job and 25,000 traffic stops, has never received a single complaint. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. This is an amazing statistic, especially when you consider that most interactions with traffic police will leave you with a citation and a bad mood. However, this officer has a flawless record and it is all due to one factor – personality. Instead of chastising and embarrassing commuters for speeding, failure to wear a safety belt, and the like, he puts his interpersonal skills to good use and leaves commuters with a ticket and a smile. It’s the perfect combination of charm without being too charming, being personable without being walked-on.

Organizations and individuals looking to hire or promote the right person for a job need to consider factors like an individual’s personality or values. In fact, these factors are the difference between having a good set of employees and a great set of employees. Someone can have all the intelligence, experience, and educational degrees needed to do the job, but if they don’t have the right blend of personality and values needed for the job or the organization, they will likely end up underperforming and may even leave or be fired. What I would rather have is someone with the right personality and values at day one, because skills are trainable and experience will come with time. Personality on the other hand is difficult to train.

You may be saying to yourself right now, “None of this is news to me. That’s exactly why I rely on interviews when hiring people.” Interviews are great for several reasons. They allow you the opportunity to ask follow-up questions and to dig further into interesting items on a résumé. However, there are several drawbacks associated with interviews. First, asking follow-up questions reduces the structure of an interview, which is a bad thing. Second, people are able to fake during interviews, making it difficult to know what the person will look like 6 months on the job. Third, interviews are expensive. Interviewers need to be trained on the concepts they are assessing, as well as how to rate the interviewee on those concepts. Then, there are the costs associated with paying someone to conduct the interview. Not to mention, the costs associated with bringing a candidate in to interview (Sure, there are ways of conducting virtual interviews, but if successful, most are followed up with in-person meetings).

Interviews are an inevitable and expensive part of the hiring process, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do things beforehand to make interviews more cost effective and efficient. This is where personality assessment comes in. First, personality assessments provide a standard set of items that each candidate responds to, therefore adding structure to the hiring process. Second, well-constructed personality assessments cannot be faked. Third, personality assessments are a cost effective way of gathering standardized information on a batch of candidates to trim down the amount of interviews.

To find the right employee to fit your organization (like the zero-complaint traffic cop), assess your candidates then interview. You'll have success every time.

Earlier this month, Hogan’s Global Alliances team was proud to host nearly two dozen individuals from around the world for the first edition of Hogan University, later coined Hogan U. Held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Hogan headquarters reside, the event featured three days of presentations, training sessions, and interactions with the Tulsa staff. As always, there were several opportunities for great food, drinks, and conversation to please all of us with high Hedonism and Affiliation scores.

Hogan U was created to accelerate the Hogan-related learning and orientation of our international distributors’ high-potential employees. The curriculum focuses on several primary interests from our distributor network, including direct selling techniques, marketing and social media tactics, competency-based solutions, and new Hogan products.

Further, the event provided significant takeaways for the Hogan team itself. For me, time with our global network always confirms an important perspective: each of our international distributors faces unique challenges in their respective territories; however, every market has an appetite for the use of personality assessments to predict performance. Our team is tasked with the challenge, albeit exciting, to understand each market intimately and address various challenges, all the while knowing that the need for valid, predictable personality assessments is everywhere.

We are thrilled that our international guests embraced the event whole-heartedly and received some great pieces of information to take back to their home countries and organizations. Personally, I’m also delighted our guests enjoyed Tulsa’s southern charm, honky-tonk and all.

For pictures of the Hogan U Welcome Reception and conference, please see our Facebook page.

Did you know that trust in one’s superior predicts the entire range of desirable organizational outcomes: productivity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment? Good leaders can build trust by embodying four essential qualities: integrity, judgment, competence, and vision.

Personality predicts leadership style, which in turn, directly impacts employee engagement. Companies whose employees are engaged show higher returns on assets, are more profitable, and yield nearly twice the value to their shareholders compared to companies characterized by low employee engagement. Disengagement, on the other hand, results in an estimated $300 billion in lost productivity in the U.S. each year!

Because leadership can make or break an organization, it’s imperative we find out all we can about what it means to be a good leader. So, let us share with you What We Know About Leadership and discover the answer to organizational success.

When I joined Hogan as creative manager in 2008, one of the first major projects I undertook was redesigning the logo. The existing logo had gone through a couple of iterations since 1987, and at that point was too visually complicated and not very versatile. Also, the logo at that time used the full Hogan Assessment Systems name, while it had become clear that a large part of our client and distributor base was referring to us simply as The Hogan or Hogan, both in noun and verb form.

With these factors in mind, my goal was to develop a bold and recognizable new brand identity that worked well across a number of applications. The prospect of distilling Hogan's business focus into a few simple shapes was not a simple one, and a good logo should maintain visual integrity whether reproduced digitally or in print, in color or black and white, whether large or small. For the sake of maximum flexibility, I also wanted an icon that was instantly recognizable independently of the Hogan name.

From my initial conversations with Robert Hogan, I knew that part of what needed to be conveyed was a sense of strength and boldness, an extension of the idea that Hogan is nothing short of a commanding presence in the personality assessment arena. The other element I wanted to incorporate was the idea of a bright side and a dark side, which is the unique and fundamental basis of our core assessments. Out of those ideas came the current logo's stylized H in black and white, on top of a bold red field.

From then to now.

#throwbackthursday #tbt

Life is determined by the decisions you make; from the mundane to major life choices. When it comes to decision-making, everyone is different. There are individuals who prefer to act swiftly and seem to generate their plan midstream, while others appear to become paralyzed by what could go wrong. 

Our decisions are influenced by our personality, values, biases, emotions, and past experiences. Chances are, the people you work with are different from you in what influences their decisions. These differences can lead to conflict among colleagues, teams, and direct reports, thus causing delays and impeding progress. So, how can you ensure decisions are made in a timely manner and everyone is on board?

1. Know yourself. The first step in understanding the decisions you make is to have self-awareness. How do you make daily decisions, are you strategic or pragmatic? How does stress affect your process, do you become stuck or reckless? Does the decision you are trying to make align with your values?
2. Know your team. Do you know what is important to the person or group with whom you are working? What information have they requested in the past to make a decision? Are they currently under stress or will your request cause additional stress. Understanding that your colleague's decision-making style can change under stressful conditions will help alleviate frustration on your part.
3. Communication. Individuals with a more direct communication style can feel as if you are trying to butter them up for a bad idea. Where individuals who tends to provide a lot of explanation, examples, and niceties might feel as if someone who communicates differently is not providing enough explanation. Pay attention to how others communicate with you. Use their communication style to relay your idea.
4. Political Savvy. As hard as it can be to navigate the political landscape of a corporation, it can be even harder getting ideas off the ground and making decisions. Becoming more adept and learning about what drives those individuals you work with can help you present information in way that speaks to their values and how they prefer to make decisions.

Driving change and influencing decision-making requires energy, savvy, and a lot of hard work.

I have been with Hogan now for just under 12 years. It’s been an incredible experience and I’m privileged to work alongside unbelievable intelligence and talent, but I have to be honest about something: in non-professional situations I dread the question, “So what is it that you do, Jesse?” I envy my wife, who when faced with the same question can simply say “I am a teacher,” or a friend who answers, “I’m an engineer.” You see, my response is something like, “I work for Hogan Assessment Systems. We publish personality assessments.” And so it begins….

There are several ways the conversation can go, but it usually consists of a joke in which the person asks what I see in his or her personality, and then a seemingly infinite stream of “Oh. So what does that mean?” It’s very similar to a conversation with a two-year-old, in which every answer is countered with “why?”  I am by no means comparing the inquisitive individual to a toddler; more stating that what we do at Hogan seems really tough to explain. But is it really? Does it have to be?

I’d like to think the answer is no. What we do is simple in its complexity and complex in its simplicity. Let me start with an example. Picture a successful long-haul truck driver. Now picture another individual, only this one is a commission-based sales representative. Take these two successful employees and swap them. Generally speaking, it doesn’t work. But why? The answer is personality; the personality characteristics that make one successful in the cab of an 18-wheeler are drastically different than those that make one successful in a sales role.

Everyone has their own definition of personality. For the most part, we all know what it means, but putting that definition into words can be challenging. Most everyone would describe the above individuals similarly, however the language used to depict them would vary drastically. Furthermore, subjectively applying those various languages to a specific job is inaccurate, ineffective, and could even result in legal trouble.

Enter Hogan. The Drs. Hogan obviously didn’t invent personality, but they did develop a very reliable taxonomy of its constituent parts. The structure and language they built provides the consistency required to accurately measure it, and the methods they developed made those measurements applicable to occupational performance. The science behind all of this is inherently very complex, but in general terms, we help organizations ensure that the right people are selling and the right people are driving. We can even provide a solid foundation for coaching designed to improve the performance of those already driving, selling, or virtually anything else…but that’s a whole different dinner party.

That’s honestly about as short and sweet of an answer I can provide to the initial question, so you might now understand why I dread it. To know what we do requires some understanding of Hogan, which from a marketing perspective is brilliant. To the fella opposite me at a happy hour, however, it may prompt a new set of questions in his bag of pleasantries.

Our comprehensive approach to personality assessment provides the depth and detail
you need to understand your people.

Survey results revealed that 82.1% of respondents feel personality
is most important in a romantic partner.