Every group I speak to about identity vs. reputation, it seems, contains at least some people who are outraged by the notion that, at Hogan, we focus on reputation while ignoring identity. I think I have heard cries of “Witch!”  “Scofflaw!”  “Heretic!”  “Hotdog!”  from the back of some conference rooms (OK, I might have heard that last one at a baseball game) when I have stated that we focus on making predictions on the basis of one’s reputation, and that we really don’t care so much about trying to make predictions (about job performance, potential, etc.) from one’s identity. Given the outrage that statement produces from some people, I thought it might be useful to clarify 3 points here for those clinging to the notion that identity is the most important—or only—thing to study about the individual if you want to make predictions about the workplace.

The first reason Hogan focuses on reputation is that it is well-understood and easy to study. After all, at Hogan, we like to save time at the end of the day for happy hour, so why not use time efficiently by focusing on phenomena that are scientifically observable, well-researched, and well-understood, rather than spending time on issues like identity, for which there is no measurement base and no consistent measurement taxonomy despite about 100 years of discussion and research. When the Big 5 emerged 60 years or so ago, the study of personality changed; modern views of the structure personality start with the Big 5, or the structure of personality from the observer’s point of view, rather than starting from one’s identity. Using identity as a starting point for studying personality in the workplace at this point in history would be akin to the modern medicine using the medieval diagnostic technique of discerning imbalances in the 4 bodily humours. 

Second, let us assume for a moment that you don’t believe in science as a method for problem solving, so our focus on using science is disturbing to you. It’s important to note that science is not a belief system, so you might as well state that you do not believe in dominos or concrete. Science is a method for problem solving, whether you believe it or not. Moreover, the fact that you believe that you are dashingly handsome, ravishingly beautiful, and the smartest guy or gal in the room (aka, your identity) hasn’t exactly resulted in members of the opposite sex beating down your door, now has it? So perhaps belief shouldn’t be the standard by which you make judgments about science. Science is not a belief system, and the science used in personality psychology is the same as the science used to send a person to the moon; both use the same scientific methodology and the same standards of verifiability, neither of which is subject to belief.

Third, even if we assume for a moment that your disbelief in science nullifies all of the research that leads us to focus on reputation vs. identity, there is a practical matter that you would be wise not to overlook, and it is perhaps the clearest reason why one would want to focus on personality defined as reputation. Please answer true or false to the following questions:

1. Someone other than me decided whether I would be hired into my current role.
2. Someone other than me decides how my performance will be evaluated.
3. Someone other than me decides who will agree to date and/or marry me.
4. Someone other than me decides whether I will get a promotion.

Scoring and interpretation (count each “True” answer as 1 point)       

• If you scored 4 Points, you now understand why reputation is superordinate for study in the workplace and identity is not; all consequential decisions in life involving other people are based on who they think you are, not who you think you are.
• If you scored <4 points – you may be self-employed and lonely, independently wealthy and lonely, or schizophrenic and lonely.
• As a practical matter, other people make and act on decisions about you all day every day—and those are based on your reputation, not on your identity. Given the importance of reputation, don’t you want to understand something about it?

Here at Hogan we have a lot of conversations about pretty complicated stuff, and odds are, if you are reading this, you have at some point been on the other end of one of those conversations. It is always our goal to simplify concepts into language that is more readily understood. It’s not that we are more intelligent than those with whom we speak, but we live and breathe personality assessment and the vast majority of people (read: normal people) don’t. One concept that seems frequently misunderstood is identity vs. reputation. Identity is how we view ourselves, reputation is how others view us.

The easiest way to explain this concept is in terms of American Idol. Even if you don’t typically watch the show, you have probably seen at least one audition from someone who either blew the judges away with their talent, or their horrendous lack thereof. Let’s focus on the latter: the people we’ve watched get crushed by the judges’ words. What’s fascinating is that at some point those poor souls decided that they possessed the vocal vigor to become a star. According to their identity, they could actually do something great. Their reputation is what the judges perceived, and as we’ve all seen, there is often a significant disparity between the two.

Why is this so important? If the contest were to be based on performers’ own perceptions of their talent, the show would need to be called “American Idols,” as everyone would be a star. The truth is that performers’ assessment of their own talent is largely irrelevant – success depends on how others rate their ability to sing and perform. The same can be said for the vast majority of our daily activities and interactions, particularly in occupational settings. Business success depends on results, not sense of self. Challenges to getting along and getting ahead emerge when we fail to realize that our internal story is trivial to others; it is the external perception of our behavior that truly matters. As harsh as it sounds, unless you are on a first date or sitting around a table of drinks with friends, the story that makes you you just doesn’t matter.

Now, I can see your wheels turning and hear the words formulating in your head: “But wait a minute…I have seen a Hogan assessment and it asks people to answer questions about themselves. If reputation is more important, then why do you ask someone about their identity?” It’s an excellent question and the answer is much more straight forward than the means through which it was accomplished. The Drs. Hogan found that, although relatively irrelevant, identity is a very reliable means of predicting reputation. The assessments do ask identity based questions, however, the results report how others generally perceive people who answer the questions in that way. To make that simple, we are not going to tell you about yourself, as you know a lot more about you than anyone else. We will, however, tell you how others are likely to describe you based on how you describe yourself. Furthermore, we will help to provide you with the wisdom to become an American Idol, or perhaps to know when you should walk away from the stage.

Two major online dictionary publishers released their choices for 2013's Word of the Year. The contrast between these terms struck us as an excellent metaphor for a key tenet of personality assessment - identity versus reputation.

SELFIE - 2013 Word of the Year from Oxford University Press

self-ie /sel-fee/ n. In use since 2002, selfie saw a 17,000% increase in use over 2012 - thanks in no small part to everyone from Miley Cyrus to Barack Obama keeping it in the news.

Definition - According to Oxford press, selfie refers to a photograph taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media site. Most teenagers, college students, or celebritites will tell you the perfect selfie can be elusive, requiring repeated poses to get just the right look.

Personality Perspective - Identity relies on personality from the inside - the way we see ourselves. As with a selfie, identity doesn't tell anyone much about the real you. Finding the right angle with the camera is really just impression management, showing others only what we want them to see. And as Sigmund Freud used to say, "the you that you know is hardly worth knowing."

SCIENCE - 2013 Word of the Year from Merriam-Webster

sci-ence /'si-en(t)s/ n. First used in the 14th century, science saw a 176% increase in lookups this year over last, and remained at the top of the list throughout the year.

Definition - Merriam-Webster defines science as knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. At Hogan, that means using a massive volume of proven data to predict job performance.

Personality Perspective - Reputation refers to personality from the outside - the way others see you. Hogan's scientific assessment of reputation produces a data-based, multi-dimensional picture of who you really are, giving you strategic self-awareness to build and maintain successful careers and relationships. And unlike identity, reputation remains stable over time.

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The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology posed this question using standard game theory – strategic decision making – in a recent social experiment. In the experiment, two people interact, each with the option of competing or cooperating. If both cooperate, both win; if one competes while the other cooperates, the selfish person wins even bigger.

Participants were provided information regarding the other person’s reputation as either selfish or cooperative. As expected, if a person expected to interact with someone with a reputation for selfishness, he or she would behave selfishly, but if a person expected to interact with someone with a reputation for cooperation, he or she would tend to cooperate.

The real kicker, however, concerned a particular wrinkle. In some cases, researchers would provide participants with both data regarding the other person’s performance and description of that person’s reputation. Participants invariably trusted the reputation rather than the data.

What does this mean? That reputation trumps fact in some cases. That’s why self-awareness and reputation management are essential to the success of our daily interactions. To learn more about how reputation can affect every aspect of your work relationships, check out our ebook Who Are You?

For most people, there is a vast disparity between identity (how you see yourself) and reputation (how others see you). This disparity causes them to overestimate their strengths, ignore feedback, deny their shortcomings, and, ultimately, damage their reputations.

Take Michael Scott from The Office, for example (possibly the worst offender of this disparity). Reputation descriptor that comes to mind? Clueless. How would he describe himself? Well…

How his coworkers would describe him? Impulsive, poor attention to detail and social cues, terrible listener, offensively insensitive…the list goes on. While his staff is consistently loyal, most employees wouldn’t put up with a boss this unaware.

Gossip, Reputation, and how Whispered Words Kill Careers

“It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” – Errol Flynn

From celebrity gaffes to political scandals, if we can learn something about ourselves based on what makes the news, it’s that people love a good piece of gossip. Although many people condemn gossip as slander or hearsay, a person’s reputation can have serious consequences for his or her career.

Download Sticks & Stones and find out how reputation can make or break someone in the workplace.

Socioanalytic theory draws on key ideas of Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and George Herbert Mead to explain why people act as they do. All three writers noted that humans evolved as group living animals; this suggests that the big problems in life concern: 

• Getting along with other people
• Gaining status and power
• Understanding one’s place in the world

In modern life, individual differences in the ability to solve these three problems translate into individual differences in career success. Successful people live longer and healthier lives and are better able to care for their dependents - and that is the definition of fitness in biology.  Thus, Socioanalytic theory is about career success. 

Socioanalytic theory defines personality from two perspectives: Identity and Reputation.  Identity concerns who you think you are; reputation concerns who we think you are.  Research on identity has produced few useful generalizations; in contrast, research on reputation has been highly productive; e.g., the Five-Factor Model - a taxonomy of reputation - is a useful way to organize personality research findings. Past behavior predicts future behavior; reputation is a summary of past behavior; thus reputation is the best possible data source for predicting future behavior. 

Socioanalytic theory focuses research in four broad areas: 

1. Personality and job or occupational performance
2. Personality and leadership effectiveness
3. Personality and managerial incompetence
4. Personality and effective team performance (team research historically ignored effectiveness)

Occupational performance, leadership effectiveness, and managerial incompetence can be predicted with valid personality measures. Team effectiveness depends on putting the right people (defined by personality) in the right positions (defined by team role). 

Socioanalytic theory argues that social skill is the key to career success - because social skill translates identity into reputation. Socioanalytic theory also maintains that feedback from valid personality assessment can create strategic self-awareness which allows ambitious people to maximize their career potential and minimize their issues.

Gone are the days when all job seekers had to worry about were their résumés and cover letters. Today, those documents still remain a staple of the job search process, but they are joined by a significant and growing pre-screening phenomenon: reviewing an applicant’s social-networking websites (SNW). Some job seekers are even being asked for their Facebook passwords during or right after an initial interview. Even Terror outfits are using Facebook as a recruitment tool to recruit loners from Western nations to their cause, claims a leading counter-terrorism expert.

Employers are increasingly turning to Facebook and other social-networking sites to pre-screen new hires because it may be a fairly accurate reflection of how good they’ll be at the target job, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology last month.

Researchers hired HR types to rate hundreds of college students’ Facebook pages using questions that reflected Big Five personality characteristics (Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience). The researchers asked HR professionals to rate the Facebook profiles to predict how well the students would fare as employees.

Six months later, the researchers followed up by contacting the current employers of the people whose profiles had been rated. They found a strong correlation between the predictions made by the Facebook raters and the actual performances as rated by the employers. 

Furthermore, the psychometric properties of the study were fairly decent:

• First, SNW ratings demonstrated sufficient inter-rater reliability and internal consistency.

• Second, ratings via SNWs demonstrated convergent validity with self-ratings of the Big Five characteristics.

• Third, SNW ratings correlated with job performance, hirability, and academic performance criteria and the magnitude of these correlations was generally larger than for self-ratings.

• Finally, SNW ratings accounted for significant variance in the criterion measures beyond self-ratings of personality and cognitive ability.

In this virtual day and age, it is critically important to remember that what you put online, even if it’s a mistake, may not be reversible and may not go away. The red flags for most employers seem to be drugs, drinking, badmouthing former employers, and lying about one’s credentials or qualifications. Yet, Facebook profiles usually contain a wealth of information that employers are prohibited, under federal, state and local laws, from using in discriminatory ways. Photos and posts can reveal race, gender, age, national origin, disability, even sexual orientation. 

Key takeaway? Your online presence may be used as an initial screening interview about your personality or your reputation—be circumspect about what you post and get onto that privacy policy page and limit who can see what about you. In Othello, Shakespeare’s Iago may have had it pegged: “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving . . . ”

I recently celebrated my 31st birthday, which, in today’s world, qualifies me to begin sentences with the phrase “back in my day.” I admit this begrudgingly; back in my day, it seemed that statement was reserved for an individual well out of his or her 30s. Still, from time to time, I do find myself sounding a bit curmudgeonly. No, I never claim to walk uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow to school, but I do sometimes struggle to grasp the rate at which technology has changed life since I was in school.

Over the past decade, technology exploded, and although the changes affected countless areas of our lives, they all had the same common thread: the sharing of information. We are a society saturated with data; individuals are in constant connection with one another, and details on virtually any topic can be obtained in a matter of seconds.

Why does that have to do with business? These connections have evolved from innocuous social interaction to business-relevant posting capable of promoting or destroying an organization’s reputation in a matter of minutes. The trend is the wave of the future. In the informed, well-connected prosumer, it has created what can either be a strong ally or an unstoppable adversary. Fortunately, as technology increases, so does its usability. Gone are the days when “I don’t know how” was a viable excuse; the response now will be “well, you’d better Google it.”

There are some steps we old folks can take to keep current, and they are steps that will build a foundation on which your organization can effectively evolve:

1. Blog – Hey, I’m doing it, how bad can it be? Blogging about your company lets the world know that you are there, that you are thinking, and that you are a human being.
2. Use social networking sites – And not just those aimed at the professional population. Facebook may still be banned by your IT department, but it is likely the best medium on the planet through which to reach young adults. Set up a page for your organization and regularly post relevant material and links to new product information.
3. E-mail – You’re probably thinking “E-mail? I do use e-mail.” I’m sure you do, but probably not to the capacity at which younger professionals wish you would. The technology boom resulted in youth with little desire to physically interact with anyone else. Even at 31, my first reaction to most events is to try to get someone on the phone; I would just rather talk to them. That is not a sentiment shared by those a bit younger than me; more often than not, I receive an e-mail in lieu of a call back when I have left someone a voicemail.
4. Update your website weekly, if not daily.

Heraclitus coined that “change is the only constant,” and while this has proven true, there has perhaps never been a period marked by such rapid change as the present. As humans we must now continually adapt, as what is new today will not just be old tomorrow, it will be archaic. Stay current my friends.

 

We heard it all before: leaders behaving one way in public, then very differently behind closed doors.

Right now in the UK, ex Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling is spilling the beans over the leadership style of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Seemingly placid, timid and shy on the surface, rumours of an explosive, temperamental and potentially bullying Brown gradually started emerging from Number 10 in the final months of his presidency. These allegations were quickly dismissed by government officials and no further action was taken. Mr Darling is now telling the world about the “hellish” behaviour he experienced and the “brutal regime” he suffered at the hands of Mr Brown. And while, admittedly, we have only heard one side of the story (Brown has yet to comment), Darling painfully refers to this period as "hellish... very personal. It left a scar on me... you just can't get over it." Once again, a leader’s personality is on the front cover of all newspapers.

It is not hard to see why Brown’s personality captured the attention of the media. Reports of Brown’s behaviour away from the public eye appeared like two inexplicable sides of the same coin – and the difficulty in the reconciliation of the two once again highlighted our inner challenges with ambiguity and conflicts.

This is not surprising; human beings do not like to consider themselves conflicted and it is known that most of us find inconsistencies in behaviour unsettling. In the history of personality research, these conflicts were once considered discrepancies and thus wrongly attributed to assessment and measurement errors. Today, consultants specialising in the assessment of the bright and dark side of personality are aware that conflicting behaviours can be exhibited in different circumstances or even days (e.g. emotionally composed and mature one day, volatile and abusive the next). In fact, we often encounter these conflicts when interpreting psychometric reports and delivering feedback to organisational leaders. Addressing intrapersonal conflicts is a complex task that requires careful analysis, introspection and a desire to change.

Years of research conducted by the Centre for Creative Leadership and Hogan Assessment Systems, as well as an increasing number of publications (see Dotlich and Cairo’s Why CEOs Fail), demonstrate that leadership derailment can be attributed to recurrent, measurable and most importantly, manageable themes (or derailing tendencies).

Darling’s testimony is a stark reminder that these derailers do not only represent barriers to leadership effectiveness and well-being at work, but also constitute significant barriers to individual, team and organisational performance (in this instance coming in the way of something as important as tackling the country’s financial crisis). These destructive tendencies affect the ability of leaders to gain trust from subordinates and form coalitions at work, which in turn negatively affect a range of executive functions, such as decision-making, the objective analysis of crucial facts and figures, and the ability to build and maintain a high performing team.

Brown’s example of leadership style characterised by an excessive focus on managing relationships publicly with external customers and stakeholders, while ignoring the quality of the interactions with internal ones: colleagues, peers and subordinates. Leaders adopting this style have a tendency to release their frustration upon team members, disregarding the consequences of their behaviour, either because they think that the behaviour is acceptable (it’s between us) or simply because they can get away with it (no one will know).

We never fully know what goes on behind the closed doors of an organisation. But leaders who keep smiling in public, only to behave carelessly towards their team members, have an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson from this story.

After all, reputations are powerful and enduring things; they can be buried, but they never fully go away.

Andrea Facchini, MSc.
Business Psychologist and Guest Blogger