The cases of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor represent just two recent and horrific examples of police brutality resulting in unnecessary loss of human life. The awfulness of these cases is amplified by fact that African Americans—both George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are black—are more than 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police than white Americans. Although statisticians, social scientists, and activists dispute the root cause of this difference (e.g., systemic racism, crime rates, culture, socioeconomics), one thing is for sure: when a police officer takes the life of another person the responsibility for doing so lies ultimately with that officer.

Personality refers to the ways in which people think, feel, and act differently from one another. Some people think doctors can be trusted, others do not. There are movies that some people love and other people hate. Some people make their bed every morning, others do not. Virtually every difference between people is related to personality. Police officers, like all people, differ in how they respond to situations they encounter. Where one police officer sees threats and responds violently, another does not.

The deadly encounters with the police over the past decade or have led to repeated calls for police reform. In 2018, for example, the NYPD began a program for implicit bias training. Similar programs had already been adopted across the US, though the effectiveness of these programs has been seriously questioned. Most recently, the city council of Minneapolis voted to defund the police department. Although some attempts at police reform are better than others, it is important to ask ourselves whether training, education, and policy reforms are even the right place to start in dealing with police brutality.

In a stand-up comedy routine that went viral, Chris Rock begins by stating what many of us already know. Police work is difficult, risky, and inherently dangerous. The people who dedicate their lives to serving and protecting their communities deserve the utmost respect. But, as Mr. Rock further points out, “in some jobs everybody has to be good.” You cannot have mistakes. You cannot have “just a few bad apples.” The best way to keep bad apples out of your barrel is to avoid picking bad apples in the first place. The best way to avoid police brutality is to avoid hiring people who are likely to resort to unjustifiable, violent, and life-ending tactics when they are under pressure.

Hogan has a long history of helping communities hire better police officers. Unlike clinical assessments used to diagnose personality disorders (e.g., the MMPI), our assessments are used to predict everyday work behavior, how effectively people do their jobs, and how people respond under stress. Moreover, our assessments promote diversity and inclusion by providing an unbiased view of a job candidate’s fit for a given job. That is, men and women get the same average scores and people of different ethnicities get the same average scores. In short, scientifically validated personality assessments provide an accurate and fair way to hire quality police officers, reduce police brutality, and rebuild the respect and admiration that police officers deserve.

*This post was authored by Hogan Chief Science Officer Ryne Sherman and Hogan Talent Analytics Consultant Chase Winterberg.

The amount of text data we send out in the world is staggering. On average, there are 500 million tweets sent per day, 23 billion text messages, and 306.4 billion emails. Everything we say, every email we send, and every word on our resumes can be used to understand the world around us, and it also gives us clues about the individual speaking or writing. Hogan’s Data Science team is exploring how best to capture text data and harness its power in understanding human nature. Below are some frequently asked questions that people unfamiliar with text-based machine learning often ask us.

Q: What is NLP?

A: NLP is a type of artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to break down, process, and quantify human language. NLP helps us understand the hidden stories within text-based data.

Q: Why is NLP important?

A: Up to 95% of usable organizational data is unstructured, resulting in an increased drive for using this data to remain competitive. The competition and consistent advancements in computational power, data access, and open-source research initiatives have led the field of NLP to evolve and grow constantly.

Q: How do NLP, artificial intelligence, and machine learning relate to each other?

A: Broadly speaking, artificial intelligence refers to using machines to mimic human decision making. The decision making can be either rule-based (the machine is told which rules and procedures to follow explicitly by the designer) or learned (the machine learns the rules and procedures based on data).

Machine learning refers to machines learning from data. A machine is said to learn if its performance increases on a particular task in response to exposure to a new experience or new data that tells the machine how to perform a task better. Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence.

Natural language processing refers to using a machine to quantify human language. NLP includes both rule-based and machine learning techniques. So, NLP is a type of artificial intelligence centered around human language that often uses machine learning. 

Q: What are some common NLP techniques?

A: There are several common techniques used in this research, including:

• Bag of words – A list of all the words used in a training sample.
• Inverse document frequency – The number of documents a word appears in.
• Lemmatization – Removing inflections from a word. For example, “studies” would become “study.”
• N-grams – Word combinations where the N indicates the number of words to be combined. For example, a bi-gram could be “computer science.”
• Stemming – Reducing a word to its stem. For example, “studies” would become “studi.”
• Stop words – Frequently used or extremely common words often removed in NLP analyses.
• Term frequency – How often a word occurs in a document.

Q: What are some everyday examples of NLP?

A: There are several applications in which NLP might drive something you encounter and use daily:

• Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant
• Spell-check
• Autocomplete
• Voice-to-text messaging
• Search engines
• Spam filtering

Q: How is Hogan using NLP?

A: One way we are using NLP is by streamlining the coding process of focus group notes for personality scale relevance. We’re injecting NLP into our job analysis strategy to increase the efficiency of the approach and improve the quality of our results. Manually reading and coding focus group notes is a time-intensive and cognitively draining process. Using NLP, on average, we can decrease the overall time it takes while maintaining predictions that are both consistent and accurate. This approach has already shown promising results for correctly identifying the relevance of personality characteristics from focus group notes. When compared against human raters (i.e., subject-matter experts, or SMEs), our model was consistent and had an average accuracy score higher than the average accuracy of the SMEs. Please see our blog post on NLP from February 11, 2020, for more details.

Q: What are some new research directions Hogan is exploring with NLP?

A: Hogan’s Data Science team has several projects in the works using NLP to expand our insight from available text data housed internally as well as from open-source applications (e.g., O*NET):

• Job family matching using job descriptions – Hogan is exploring using NLP to allow someone to enter their job description and receive the job family and relevant Hogan assessment scales linked to their job description.
• Automatic item writing – Hogan is exploring using natural language generation to automatically generate assessment items that (1) tap specific Hogan personality domains, (2) are equivalent in difficulty and readability to our current items, and (3) are interchangeable with our current items to ensure both test security and fairness of the assessment process.
• Automatic feedback generation – Hogan is exploring using natural language generation to provide accurate, quick, and unique feedback to every user based on that user’s assessment results.

We’re excited to announce that Hogan has officially launched The Science of Personality podcast, which explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and organizational success.

The Science of Personality is hosted by Hogan Chief Science Officer Ryne Sherman, PhD, a world-renowned personality psychologist, along with Hogan Public Relations Manager Blake Loepp. In each episode, Ryne and Blake will discuss current trends in personality psychology, leadership, and popular culture and how these affect our personal and professional lives.

“Our goal with this podcast is to simplify the very complex nature of personality psychology and make it relatable to a broader audience,” said Sherman. “Psychologists have struggled for decades just to define personality, yet it has a tremendous impact on how we communicate, build relationships, advance our careers, and live our lives. The goal of this podcast is to help people understand why personality is so important.”

The podcast will feature some of the world’s leading experts in personality psychology as guests and will cover topics such as women in leadership, diversity and inclusion, artificial intelligence, big data, and the dark side of personality. Episodes will be released every other week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and thescienceofpersonality.com.

“This is something Blake and I have been talking about doing for a couple of years,” said Sherman. “Once we found ourselves working remotely and unable to travel due to a global pandemic, we decided to make this a priority. It’s our hope that the audience finds this podcast both informative and entertaining.”

About The Science of Personality

Personality affects the way we relate to the world and the people in it, how we work, who we love, and how other people see us. Although the study of personality is centuries old, our ability to understand such a complex and abstract concept is relatively new in the context of history. Featuring some of the world’s leading experts in personality psychology and business, this podcast explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and organizational success.

We’ve all experienced that feeling of excitement and energy on the first day of a new job. The feeling that emerges after walking through those doors is almost entirely dependent on the organization and its selection and onboarding processes. Many resources from Hogan discuss the importance of selecting the right candidates, including a variety of case studies from clients who have successfully implemented our assessments in their selection processes. But onboarding, while tremendously important, is often overlooked as a factor in the success of new hires.

The Case for Onboarding

K. Kellogg, the founder of Kellogg’s, once said, “I’ll invest my money in my people.” Without people, no organization can function. Over the years, we have seen case studies and data that clearly demonstrate when organizations treat their people poorly it leads to negative outcomes, such as lack of engagement, lower productivity, increased turnover, and poor organizational performance. From the moment they walk through your doors as new employees, it is imperative to invest in and support your people to avoid these negative outcomes. This is especially true in our current environment, where virtual work and decreased interaction between new hires and peers are commonplace.

According to Leadership IQ, a leadership consulting company, 46% of new hires leave within the first 18 months of beginning a new job.¹ Click Boarding, an onboarding software company, found that organizations that have standard onboarding practices have 50% greater new hire retention.² Finally, Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report found that only 12% of respondents believe that their organization does a good job with onboarding.³ It goes to show that the onboarding processes of most organizations have room to improve. Furthermore, improving the onboarding process is likely to have positive results for the organization’s culture and overall performance.

The Role of Personality in Onboarding

Many organizations have formal onboarding plans of various lengths that include a variety of paperwork, performance check-ins, training, and socialization. Some of these plans are as short as 90 days, and other plans last upwards of 18 months following the employee’s start date. So what differentiates a 90-day plan from an 18-month plan?

Longer, more comprehensive onboarding plans tend to have a more thought-out approach to employee development. These plans tend to involve more check-ins, coaching, and formal mentorship. This is where insights from personality assessment can play a critical role.

When using Hogan for development we always look at a person’s assessment results through the lens of his or her current role and future career goals. Getting this context helps us understand the individual and guides current and future development conversations. Starting these development conversations early in the employee’s tenure at the organization is beneficial, as it demonstrates that the organization is prioritizing the employee’s personal growth, which can lead to increased engagement and retention. These conversations also give new employees direction on the characteristics they should be leveraging, while also helping them be mindful of behaviors that could impede their success and potentially damage their reputation in those critical first days and weeks.

If you use Hogan to help with your selection process, you can easily generate a series of reports, such as the Leadership Forecast Series, and use this to help guide onboarding coaching conversations. As a certified Hogan user, we would recommend focusing on the following:

• Alignment with the job role – Why did you hire this individual, and what characteristics do you want to see him or her leveraging in this new position?
• Possible challenges – What aspects of personality could get this employee off-course? What parts of this person’s personality might not be well received by his or her new peers?
• Leadership style and the type of team environment – What are the things that this employee will likely find rewarding in his or her new role? What types of tasks and projects will he or she likely invest a lot of energy and passion in?
• Stress management skills – Starting a new position can be challenging, so how is this stress likely to manifest in the new environment. How are others likely to perceive it?

Ultimately these coaching sessions should lead to the creation of a formal development or onboarding plan with developmental goals outlined and check-in points clearly stated for accountability. For example, if networking and connecting with others could be a challenge for an individual as they start a new role, build in a development action that involves creating stakeholder maps and a plan for interaction with critical individuals in the employee’s network. As always, we recommend the employee share the development plan with his or her leader, so they can have conversations about development throughout the onboarding process.

In addition to providing the new employee with an individual development plan, these coaching conversations allow the employee a confidential space to discuss challenges and frustrations they might experience in a new environment. This kind of support may be most helpful coming from an internal advocate or sometimes an external coach. The Hogan Coaching Network is ready to help with any onboarding coaching needs your organization might have.

Closing Thoughts

There are many ways in which Hogan data can be used to guide onboarding. In addition to what we have addressed here, you can also leverage Hogan data to understand the dynamics of a new team, pair new hires with mentors, and understand interpersonal dynamics between a new hire and leader. At Hogan we understand the critical role people play in the success of an organization. We know that investing in your organization means investing in your people, so we encourage you to leverage Hogan assessments in your onboarding process.

References

1. Schawbel, D. (2012, Jan. 23). Hire for Attitude. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/01/23/89-of-new-hires-fail-because-of-their-attitude/#254d8cc1137a
2. Click Boarding. (2015, Dec. 3). The 3 Best Ways to Retain Job Hoppers. https://www.clickboarding.com/the-3-best-ways-to-retain-job-hoppers/
3. (2017). State of the American Workplace. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238085/state-american-workplace-report-2017.aspx

The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on how critical essential and frontline workers are in supporting the health and safety of our communities. Essential organizations and industries are hiring in large numbers to keep up with the demands of their customers and stakeholders. These new demands also require organizations to implement new policies to ensure their customers and workers are healthy and safe from potential infection. Now more than ever, essential organizations need methods to identify workers capable of following and adapting to these new safety policies.

Understanding Safety

When it comes to workplace safety, employee personality and behavior are as relevant as on-the-job training, equipment, and protocols. However, it doesn’t really matter what protocols are in place if employees are not prone to adhere to the protocols. Identifying safety-conscious personnel who will adhere to protocols, as well as people who exhibit potential for dangerous behavior, is a key step toward preventing costly and sometimes fatal accidents. Hogan researchers have distilled six factors that help organizations identify workers who will maintain and contribute to a safe work environment:

• Compliant – The tendency to follow the rules. Low scorers ignore authority and company rules, while high scorers follow guidelines and protocols.
• Strong – The ability to handle stress with confidence. Low scorers tend to panic under pressure and make mistakes, while high scorers are steady and reliable.
• Poised – The ability to handle pressure without becoming irritable. Low scorers lose their tempers, blame others, and make mistakes. High scorers are calm and composed.
• Vigilant – The ability to stay focused when performing monotonous tasks. Low scorers tend to make mistakes because they are easily distracted, while high scorers stick to the task at hand.
• Cautious – The tendency to avoid risk. Low scorers tend to take unnecessary risks, while high scorers carefully weigh all options when facing a risky decision.
• Trainable – The tendency to respond favorably to training. Low scorers are overconfident and difficult to train. High scorers are receptive to advice and genuinely enjoy learning.

Essential and Frontline Workers’ Safety

Examinations of safety behaviors associated with essential and frontline workers in the medical, protective services, and transportation fields reveal high scorers on the Hogan Safety Report are more likely to encourage and promote safety practices, act professionally and accept responsibility for errors, and avoid taking unnecessary risks. We present examples of safety-specific results for three groups of essential and frontline workers below.

In the medical field, surgeons with high scores on the Safety Report are approximately twice as likely to promote patient safety and are 1.6 times more likely to accept responsibility for errors. Although our overall sample size was too small to confer significance, our evidence suggests nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants who score highly on the Safety Report are approximately 3.5 times more likely to observe and promote safety practices.

Workers in protective services, such as probation officers, who score high on the Cautious subscale are 2.4 times more likely to encourage safe behavior, 3.8 times more likely to avoid taking unnecessary risks, and 2.7 times more likely to follow on-the-job safety guidelines.

Among transportation workers, bus drivers who score high on the Safety Report are twice as likely to work safely and responsibly (according to their supervisors) and 1.8 times more likely to adhere strictly to rules and procedures. Bus drivers who score high on the Compliant subscale are half as likely to be involved in a traffic accident. Heavy and tractor-trailer drivers who score high on the Strong subscale are half as likely to be ticketed for speeding. Heavy and tractor-trailer drivers with high scores on the Cautious subscale are 2.7 times more likely set a good example to other drivers by following rules and procedures. And those with high scores on the overall Safety Report are four times more likely to act predictably and professionally.

Bottom Line

The importance of safe and healthy work environments in essential organizations cannot be underestimated. Hogan understands the core aspects of an individual’s personality that help create and maintain safe work environments. Not only is there evidence that the Hogan Safety Report can work across a broad range of jobs, but Hogan’s Safety Report predicts across a broad range of criteria (supervisor ratings, number of accidents, speeding citations). This ability to predict extends to the subscale level, such as the Cautious subscale, providing an opportunity for more nuanced interpretation.

The broader outlook is that we, as a global society, have entered a new economic environment where safety is an important performance criterion for all essential industries and organizations. Hogan is prepared to apply knowledge from years of research to help navigate this new terrain.

*This blog post was authored by Hogan’s Nathan Hundley and Andrew Blake.

Last weekend, I did something I never thought I’d do. I donned personal protective equipment to run a basic errand. I put on gloves and a mask, and in spite of the warm spring weather, I even wore long sleeves to cover as much of my skin as possible. It felt like I was walking into an operatory for surgery, not like I was walking into a liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine.

Despite the near-constant news regarding preventing the spread of the coronavirus, the salesperson in the liquor store wore no mask or gloves. He folded, refolded, creased, and re-creased the paper bag holding my purchase multiple times. By the time he finished, he had touched every square inch of the bag with his bare hands. A few months ago, I might have found his behavior a little obsessive. But considering the pandemic, the way he handled the bag, coupled with his lack of personal protective equipment, seemed dangerous. He interacts with hundreds of people per day — sometimes from behind a plexiglass shield but often by helping people find their favorite wine, which can involve handing bottles back and forth.

In April, more than 20% of consumers polled by Morning Consult indicated that they would not feel comfortable going out to eat, to a shopping mall, to a movie or theater performance, or to the gym for at least six months.¹ A recent International Food Information Council Foundation survey assessed consumers’ opinions about essential workers’ attention to safety. Of those who responded, 43% said that frequently wiping down commonly touched surfaces was important, 28% said that it was important to them for employees to wear gloves, and another 28% said masks were important to them.² If consumers perceive that front-line or essential workers are not attending to safety, their reluctance to shop may linger or even increase.

Safety: A Matter of Personality

So why would someone ignore basic safety precautions that so many people are concerned about? Because some people are more attentive to safety than others, and this is related to personality. Hogan’s research has identified six safety competencies that impact the prevalence of unsafe behaviors and on-the-job accidents. With our Safety report, we measure these safety competencies using the following scales:

Defiant – Compliant

Those who score high on this scale tend to adhere to organizational guidelines and are usually rule followers. Those on the defiant end of the scale often ignore authority and rules and can be reckless, causing accidents and injuries.

Panicky – Strong

Those who lean toward the panicky end of the scale often buckle under pressure and make mistakes that could prove to be costly or possibly even fatal. Those at the strong end of the spectrum are steady under pressure.

Irritable – Cheerful

Cheerful employees keep their temperament on an even keel, but those who are prone to irritability make mistakes by not staying focused.

Distractible – Vigilant

Those who remain focused on the task at hand usually score on the vigilant side of this scale and tend to be safer than those who are easily distracted.

Reckless – Cautious

Those who score on the reckless end of the scale tend to take unnecessary risks. Cautious scorers evaluate their options before making risky decisions.

Arrogant – Trainable

Low scorers tend to be arrogant, overconfident, and challenging to train. High scorers tend to be trainable, listen to advice, and enjoy learning.

Protection for Public Health

Screening employees for these safety competencies can help organizations do their part to keep their customers safe and flatten the epidemiological curve. As more state and local governments lift their shutdown orders, many business owners are finding themselves in positions to decide whether (or to what extent) they should reopen. When they do so, they assume some responsibility for the health of the public.

Many businesses are implementing enhanced sanitation protocols and new policies regarding personal protective equipment and social distancing. The success of these efforts relies on front-line employees being both safety conscious and trainable. Being able to identify employees whose personalities predispose them to be more attentive to safety can help mitigate the risk of inadvertent disease transmission through day-to-day business operations.

Protection for Your Business

Aside from helping to protect public health, screening staff for these safety competencies can also be good for business. Right now, consumers want businesses to be vigilant about safety. By knowing who will be more or less inclined to take it seriously, organizations can dramatically reduce costs associated with unsafe behavior and potentially increase customers’ willingness to shop, order takeout food, or use a delivery service.

These savings will add up, especially for businesses in industries affected most directly by the current economic crisis. We’ve estimated the comprehensive effect that the Hogan Safety report has had historically by analyzing our data on the reports we’ve generated for our clients, data on the report’s accuracy in distinguishing safe employees from their less-safe colleagues, and the most recent government statistics on workplace accidents. Our research shows a whopping $43.7 million USD in safety-related savings to organizations and an estimated ROI of 538% from using the Hogan Safety report.

Although employees’ safety precautions won’t necessarily increase the number of consumers who visit a store or use a service, unsafe employee behaviors will almost certainly have a negative impact on the bottom line. More importantly, the health of the public is at stake. It is time to ensure you are hiring and coaching employees who will be attentive to their own, their coworkers’, and their customers’ safety. Your future business may depend on it.

* Click here to register for our next webinar, “Safety Is No Accident – Using Personality to Improve the Safety of Your Organization,” on Thursday, June 4, hosted by Hogan’s Kristin Switzer and Kirsten Mosier.

References

1. Meyers, A. (2020, April 10). When consumers say they’ll feel OK about dining out and other activities. Morning Consult. https://morningconsult.com/2020/04/10/consumer-expectations-normal-activities-comfortable
2. International Food Information Council Foundation. (2020, April 14). Consumer survey: COVID-19’s impact on food purchasing, eating behaviors, and perceptions of food safety. https://foodinsight.org/consumer-survey-covid-19s-impact-on-food-purchasing

COVID-19 continues to upend our daily lives. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people die daily, millions of jobs are lost weekly, and people continue to adjust to a new world. So much has changed within the past few months. It is fair to ask if people are changing too. We examined this question empirically using personality and values assessment data collected over the past 15 months.

What We Did

We used data from everyone who took the U.S. English versions of the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) between March 6, 2019, and May 5, 2020, to determine COVID-19’s effect on assessment scores. We focused specifically on the United States to limit the effect of the disease’s varying onset times across different countries. We used March 11, 2020, the day the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed COVID-19 a pandemic, to divide our samples into pre- and postpandemic cases. These groups allowed us to estimate a baseline and a pandemic effect.

We grouped people using 61 seven-day periods, with 53 baseline periods occurring before and eight pandemic periods occurring after the WHO proclamation. We had complete HPI data for 175,619 people, complete HDS data for 140,071 people, and complete MVPI data for 119,930 people. We present the mean HPI, HDS, and MVPI scale scores for each period below.

Random variation from week to week makes interpreting these types of line graphs difficult, so we used linear regression models to determine (a) if mean scores changed when the WHO proclaimed COVID-19 a pandemic and (b) if scores continued to change as the pandemic continued. We note that we are running large number of analyses (28 scales x 2 analyses = 56 analyses), so we used a Bonferroni correction to limit the number of spurious results.

What We Found

We present results for the mean score changes in the figure below. We see slight increases in scores for MVPI Science and Altruism, which increased by .09 standard deviations from March 2019 to March 2020. Although these changes are statistically significant, a Cohen’s d value of .09 is widely considered a minimal effect. In absolute terms, MVPI Science increased by 2.63 percentile points and MVPI Altruism increased by 2.56 percentile points

Most scale scores did not change over the one-year period.

As to the question of whether scores continued to change over time, none of the results were statistically significant. This suggests that changes from one period to the next follow the same pattern before and after the pandemic proclamation.

What Does It Mean?

We do not see COVID-19 leading to consistent or pervasive changes in people’s personalities or values. We do see slightly higher mean scores on MVPI Science (wanting data and research to inform decisions) and on MVPI Altruism (wanting a society that helps people in need). Both values are relevant as countries around the world debate when and how to wind down shutdown and social distancing policies and how much aid to provide people affected by the disease and the resulting economic downturn. However, we note the score effects we see are quite minimal.

Why do we not see larger effects? COVID-19 is one of the worst pandemics in decades. The economic downturn it created has led to mass unemployment. If anything were to cause massive changes in how people act or believe, this should be it. We believe there are three reasons we don’t see larger changes:

1. Personality and values are more stable than many people believe them to be. Research consistently suggests that personality and values are less prone to changing over time or across situations than other individual difference characteristics.
2. Personality items function more as measures of self-presentation (i.e., how people want to be perceived) than self-report measures (i.e., what people do in a factual sense). This may help explain some of personality’s stability.
3. We also note that COVID-19 may affect people in different ways in terms of their personality scores. However, to find the results we did, it means that the pandemic would have to be simultaneously making some people’s scores higher and other people’s scores lower across most of the 28 scales. This would cancel out any effect at the group level. This seems relatively unlikely, particularly for some scales (e.g., Security).

Working from home is a not a new experience for many employees. In the United States, 50% to 70% of jobs can be done from home, but the number of remote workers is actually much lower. This trend is mirrored around the globe. That is, the actual number of remote workers trails the number of jobs that can be done remotely. At least, this was the trend before the current situation we find ourselves in with the COVID-19 crisis. What we have seen recently is that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many workers and organizations to officially make the shift to a remote working environment.

During the initial influx of new remote workers, organizations focused on ensuring that these workers had the necessary resources to work remotely effectively by addressing technology and infrastructure concerns (e.g., availability of smart devices, video conferencing platforms, internet security, etc.). However, it is important that we do not overlook the behaviors and characteristics that will be most important for individuals to be effective as they move to remote work.

Critical Competencies for Working Remotely

The current situation presents an opportunity for us to revisit what we know about effective remote workers. First, we know that being an effective remote worker requires the following:

• Self-managing by demonstrating self-control and motivation without direction from others.
• Communicating effectively with others.
• Working in a dependable and timely manner.
• Being able to adapt to different situations, approaches, and ideas.
• Developing collaborative relationships to achieve key objectives.

Personality Characteristics of Remote Workers

Our research shows that there are some personality characteristics that are more closely linked to these effective remote working behaviors. Individuals who are seen as reliable, structured, and conscientious tend to be more successful remote workers because they work in a predictable and dependable manner. Additionally, those individuals who are perceived as considerate, warm, and sympathetic are more likely to build the collaborative relationships that are important when working remotely. Self-management requires individuals who can handle daily stressors well, while effective communication is not just driven by extraverts but by those who are seen as taking initiative and working efficiently.

Qualities that might detract from effective remote working behaviors are those characterized by volatility, timidity, and avoidance. People who cope with uncertainty and stressful situations by moving away from others and disengaging might have a harder time being effective while working remotely.

Maximizing Success in a Remote Environment

At Hogan, we know that context is everything. To understand the elements of an individual’s personality that may be strengths at work (or conversely, weaknesses), you must understand the person’s work context. In our current situation, it is safe to say that everyone’s context has changed. Many people who used to spend their days in bustling offices interacting with coworkers are now spending hours working in solitude at home. Others have traded their coworkers’ banter and cooperation for their children’s conversation and education. Even those who worked remotely previously are significantly impacted as they may now have (1) family members intruding upon their previously sacrosanct home office spaces, or (2) teammates who are new to working remotely. As we all adjust, we can offer a few practical recommendations based on our research into the competencies and characteristics that promote success in a remote work environment.

Take Care of Yourself

Engage in self-care. While this storm may be lighter for some and heavier for others, it is a storm for us all. The stress associated with unexpected changes and an unknown future is likely impacting you and everyone around you to some degree. Tune into your own emotions and make sure you are utilizing healthy, effective coping mechanisms that work for you. Work with your team to recognize the volatility and ambiguity currently impacting your organization, locale, and industry and determine how you can navigate this storm together.

Establish a Schedule

Consider how your schedule and productivity might change in this new season. What would your ideal working hours be in your work-from-home environment, and what does your employer prefer? If you can work with your boss and team to establish and communicate a clear schedule — when you are likely connected and available, versus when you are likely to be out-of-pocket — it will help you build your reputation as a predictable, accessible resource.

Maintain Your Motivation

Identify the triggers that impact your motivation and productivity. In what situations do you find it difficult to work with tenacity and resolve? Define and act on things that you can do in your new context to maintain your motivation and engagement at work. This may mean volunteering for special projects, pursuing development opportunities, or offering to help others. Think of what really motivates you at work and try to create opportunities for yourself.

Adapt Your Objectives

Revisit your individual and team goals and how they align with the organization’s overall goals. What has changed in the season of COVID-19 and what remains the same? How do you need to adapt your objectives or those of your team? Collaborate with key stakeholders to set new expectations. Then make sure these are clearly communicated so everyone understands what you need to accomplish and how you are likely to get there.

Make Relationships a Priority

Reflect on your relationships at work and identify steps you can take to network and connect in this new, fully virtual environment. Are there past or currently unaffiliated colleagues with whom you could collaborate to achieve mutual goals? Are there individuals or teams with whom you could communicate to provide support or guidance? How can you help lift others’ morale? Once you have identified your critical connections, create a plan for meaningful collaboration. Take care not to overschedule people, which can happen too easily when people are trying to stay connected without physical proximity.

Some people may enjoy working in remote environments and find success easily. They might be naturally suited to a more distanced, independent approach to work. Others find remote work more difficult and less enjoyable, and they count down the days until they can get back to the office and their teammates. What is important is that we find ways to be effective during this time. This likely means we need to put more conscious effort into how we work, and it requires that we engage in honest self-reflection and self-evaluation to ensure we are leveraging our strengths and compensating for our weaknesses. But together, we can all get the job done.

Want to know more? Watch Hogan’s on-demand webinar, “Personality Characteristics of Effective Remote Workers.”

*This is post was authored by Hogan Senior Consultant Jocelyn Hays and former Senior Consultant Amber Burkhart.

Feeling the Sunday scaries? At the start of each workweek, we prepare ourselves for the stressful situations we are likely to face throughout the week. With the recent pandemic, the stress we are feeling is unprecedented. As we try to go about the workday facing new challenges in an abruptly virtual world, the way that we manage our stress might not be at the forefront of our minds. Nevertheless, strategic self-awareness is a critical concept when facing daily uncertainty.

Why Is Strategic Self-awareness Important?

At Hogan, we believe that strategic self-awareness has three components:

• Understanding our own strengths and opportunities for change and growth
• Understanding how our strengths and challenges relate to those of others
• Understanding how to adapt our behavior to increase our effectiveness

We have found that the ability to be strategically self-aware contributes to a person’s effectiveness. Individuals who are self-aware are more likely to seek, accept, and act on feedback. They are generally more successful than those who might miss, ignore, or fail to act on feedback.

Personality and Stress Tolerance

Stress tolerance differs from person to person, in that some people are more prone to stress than others. Think of stress tolerance as the length of someone’s fuse. We all experience stress, but those who are less stress tolerant tend to reach the end of the fuse sooner than those who are more stress tolerant. Those with a shorter fuse may need to work harder at managing it, as it occurs more frequently. Those with a longer fuse may benefit from increased self-awareness so they can identify when they might reach the end of their fuse.

Our research indicates that the Adjustment scale is predictive of stress tolerance. Those who score lower on Adjustment are more likely to feel and experience stress than those who score higher. Additionally, individuals low on Adjustment are likely to react in a quick and decisive manner when experiencing stress. Individuals who are higher on Adjustment are likely to be more stress tolerant, thus more likely to remain calm and collected, but they might also be slower to act.

Furthermore, our research on personality under stress is significant since we are plagued with disruption and uncertainty, which can trigger our derailers. While there are a variety of ways we may react to stress and derail, the Excitable scale has been empirically linked to lower scores on Adjustment, or a tendency to be more prone to stress. When people who are higher on the Excitable scale derail, they tend to react in one of three ways:

• Become more reactive or explosive toward others
• Lack the resilience to move past obstacles or setbacks
• Struggle to understand what needs to be done next to keep momentum going

While Excitable might look different from person to person, it is typically characterized by an inability to forge ahead when an individual experiences a trigger. So how do we learn to manage this unproductive behavior?

Strategies for Managing Stress

The key to managing our behavior is strategic self-awareness, which is often the gap between our identity (how we see ourselves) and our reputation (how others see or experience us). Typically, when people find a gap between identity and reputation, they are lacking self-awareness and have blind spots that they need to identify and address. One of the best ways to identify blind spots is through 360-degree feedback. If you don’t have access to a 360-degree assessment, it might be beneficial to have open and honest conversations with people you trust about how you react to and manage stress.

Another important strategy for managing stress is to know what types of situations trigger your derailing behaviors. Certain derailers may be triggered by particular situations. For example, someone who is high on the Excitable scale may find that his or her excitability is triggered when facing uncertainty or ambiguity. Understanding the situation you are in and whether you are at risk for derailing can allow you to think more strategically about the strategies you can use in the moment to manage that derailer.

Finally, think about ways to mitigate your reactions to stress. Behavior modification is the strategic aspect of self-awareness because it involves proactive adaptation as the way we manage stress. For example, if you know that you become explosive and overreact when faced with ambiguity, you might find it helpful to pause when you feel that reactivity bubbling up. One useful strategy may be to take a walk or a quick break to reset.

Conclusion

We live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world where stress is inevitable, even for the most stress tolerant. Regardless of the length of your fuse, knowing when and how to regulate your behavior through strategic self-awareness is a critical skill to be an effective leader or team member, especially in today’s unique environment. Strategic self-awareness is a skill that can be practiced and learned, and we can all take steps today to bridge the gap between our identities and our reputations through behavior modification.

*This post was authored by Jessie McClure, Delivery Consultant at Hogan, and Erin Laxson, Senior Delivery Consultant and Manager at Hogan.

Crises tend to bring out both the best and the worst in people. On one hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has people picking up groceries for their elderly neighbors, sewing masks, and sending hand sanitizer to those in need. At the same time, others are hoarding toilet paper, spreading conspiracy theories on social media, and failing to follow health directives from authorities.

Hardly anyone is going through the normal routine of getting ready for work, commuting to the office, spending the day with colleagues, returning home, and enjoying the evening with family and friends. People are struggling to work from home while simultaneously providing education and day care to their children. Healthcare workers and others deemed essential are working longer hours than ever before, whereas those in the restaurant, bar, entertainment, fitness, hospitality, airline, and cruise industries sit idle.  Consultants and gig economy workers have seen most sources of income dry up, and those who are still employed have no idea whether their companies will be in business next year.

The disruptions to our daily routines, uncertainty about finances, concerns about becoming infected or losing loved ones, and isolation are creating unprecedented levels of stress. No one is going to be at his or her best under these circumstances; the COVID-19 pandemic has created a perfect storm for our dark sides to emerge.

Dark-side personality traits were first identified by Robert Hogan, who defined them as counterproductive behavioral tendencies that emerge when people are not actively managing their reputations. Dark-side personality traits emerge during times of high stress and are essentially coping mechanisms people use to manage these situations. Hogan noted that seemingly normal people can blow their tempers, disappear, avoid making decisions, or micromanage others when stressed.

They are also more likely to demonstrate these dysfunctional behaviors at home because people tend to manage their public reputations at work more than they do their reputations with their families. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly increased the odds that leaders and employees will exhibit the dysfunctional behaviors associated with dark-side personality traits.

A few of us are lucky and do not have any dark-side traits, but research shows most of us have one to three of these dysfunctional characteristics. Those of us who have more of these traits are more likely to see them emerge during the pandemic. What can people do to keep their dark sides in check during these times of high stress? We’ve laid out some ideas to help people better cope with the challenges of the day.

First, know yourself. Be aware of how you react under stress. One way to do this is to share the table with those you trust and then ask them if any of these behaviors describe you lately.  A more scientific way to gather this information is to complete the Hogan Development Survey, which provides benchmarking feedback on the 11 dark side personality traits. In either case, knowing your dark side is an important first step in being able to cope with the stresses and strains of the coronavirus pandemic.

Second, use coping strategies:

Take care of yourself every day. People cope with stress better when they get plenty of sleep, exercise regularly, eat nutritious meals, drink only in moderation, meditate, and otherwise take some time out for themselves on a routine basis. Those who are waking up early or staying up late to get work done around their children’s schedules and who are not taking care of themselves are more likely to see their dark sides emerge. You need to take care of yourself and encourage your colleagues and family or housemates to do the same.

Focus on what you can control. Research shows people can tolerate high levels of stress when they feel in control, while even low stress levels can have debilitating effects when people feel they have little control. We cannot control what decisions our governments make or what is happening with the global economy, but we can control the practices we use to avoid getting infected, how we manage our schedules, how we divide our time between work and family activities, how we show up for work, and how we respond to team members. Helping everyone identify what they can control and stay focused on that will enable people to keep their dark-side tendencies in check.

Maintain support networks. Offer support to others, and take solace in others. You might not be able to do in-person visits with friends or extended family members, but you can connect via phone, video conferencing, email, and social media. This is also a good time to reconnect with old friends and clients with whom you have not spoken for some time.  Sharing difficulties with others who are willing to lend a sympathetic ear can go a long way toward keeping your stress level in check. Leaders should check in with employees on a regular basis to see how they are doing and if they are staying connected with family and friends.

Remember the Golden Rule. Just as you would want others to cut you some slack, do your best to lower your expectations of other people. They’re going through some tough times too!

This might be the most challenging situation we have faced on a global basis in our lifetimes, but it also provides opportunities for great personal growth. We can either be buffeted by the winds of the coronavirus pandemic or take control of our fate. Experience is the forge of leadership, and by maintaining focus and keeping your dark-side tendencies in check, you will emerge from this crisis even stronger. Your family, friends, team members, and company are counting on it.

*This is a guest blog post authored by Gordon Curphy, PhD, and Dianne Nilsen, PhD, of Curphy Leadership Solutions.