In recent preparation for some out-of-town company, I panicked at the state of my house. The carpets had not been vacuumed, the bathtubs not scrubbed, and the mirrors needed glass cleaner, desperately.

A friend happened by as I was starting the feverish effort to get my house clean. When I explained the source of my stress, she asked how I could possibly think my house needed hours of attention. I pointed out the dust on the baseboard and dog hair in the entryway. She shrugged. Soon, we realized the obvious variable in this disagreement: the eye of the perceiver. Although the house didn’t meet my standards for how I wanted to present it to others, my friend considered it clean and tidy.

This interaction reminded me of similar conversations I have with my peers and clients. The observations of others may vary based on the lens through which they view the world. The direct communicator appears honest to her colleagues who communicate in the same manner, yet abrasive to her softer, more diplomatic associates. The micromanaging boss appears rigid in the eyes of his flexible and relaxed subordinates. However, to those with the same adoration for details and control, this behavior is appreciated and supported.

The eye of the perceiver and even our own viewpoint is insightful, but is still based on one individual with unique views and biases. It is the collective views of our friends, peers, and coworkers that solidify our reputation and, ultimately, what matters for success. Ignoring such information or considering only our own viewpoint may lead down a path of ineffectiveness, derailment, or dissatisfaction. Valid assessments provide a reliable platform for one to receive such aggregated feedback; however, for those who don’t have the opportunity to receive this information, there is certainly still value in the words of a trusted friend.

Ideas worth spreading. TED’s tagline has been sending thrill-chills down the spines of knowledge-hungry dilettantes and the curious erudite alike. TED, one of the most well-established non-profit organizations that pedestals the pursuit of knowledge, showcases some of the greatest minds in the Technology, Entertainment, and Design sectors. In one short, neatly packaged talk, presenters share their current and sometimes futuristic perspectives on fascinating and ground-breaking ideas. Topics have ranged from enlightening Americans on the origin of General Tso’s chicken to proposing a self-repairing underwater architecture to keep Venice from turning into an Atlantis, and featured speakers from Malcolm Gladwell to Bill Gates.

On October 8th, one of Hogan’s own, Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, joined the ranks at TED@NYC with a presentation based on his latest book, Confidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt.

Photo by Ryan Lash

Cheers to you, Tomas!

“Happy are they who can hear their detractions and put them to mending”
 - William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

If Shakespeare is right then no one can perform optimally without feedback. Yet according to the revered American psychologist Abraham Maslow most of us are torn about giving and receiving critical feedback. He referred to this as “the need to know and the fear of knowing.”  Managers especially have a hard time obtaining useful feedback. In power relationships such as between the boss and the bossed people will not speak “their truth” if they believe it will come back to bite them. Therefore, in my experience the best solicited feedback is confidential feedback. To maintain the confidentiality you need an unbiased third party to do the surveying.

Beyond confidential feedback, managers, if they are to improve, need what my colleague Robert Hogan calls Strategic Self-Awareness. Allow me to explain; things that are known to us and known to others is public knowledge. What is known to us and unknown to others is private knowledge. The fascinating knowledge is the information that is known to others but unknown to us, commonly referred to as blind spots. When that information is revealed to us, those are illuminating moments that facilitate dramatic change. These blindside moments are sometimes hurtful but always instructive. What is unknown to us is usually well-known to others. To see ourselves as others see us is strategic self-awareness.

Through the use of assessment tools (personality tests, 360 evaluations) managers can systematically enhance learning and gain self-awareness. However, not all assessment instruments are equally effective in building strategic self-awareness. Firstly, the assessment should be designed for the workplace. This means that managers are profiled and compared to other managers along dimensions that are relevant to job performance.  

Secondly, the assessment should be able to detect two types of performance problems: deficiencies when managers display too little of an important leadership behavior and excesses when managers apply a particular behavior too much. Deficiencies normally fall in the category of public knowledge. However, excesses which ironically are strengths overused constitute blind spots. Feedback delivered in terms of too little/underdoing and too much/overdoing makes it instantly clear what you (the manager) needs to do to improve. Regrettably, most leadership assessment operates on the assumption that more is better.

First Seek Feedback, then Feed Forward

We all require feedback to determine where we stand, to establish the direction we are headed and to measure our progress along the chosen developmental path. Feedforward, the brainchild of renowned executive coach Marshall Goldsmith comes in the form of ideas you can put into practice in the future. Simply put feedback is about yesterday and feedforward is about tomorrow. The procedure is easy to implement: Describe your developmental goal in a one to one dialogue with anyone you know, ask for two suggestions and end by saying thank you. No evaluation or discussion around the ideas put forth are permitted by the solicitor of ideas. The beauty of feedforward is that it does not arouse defensiveness. In fact, it is energizing and forces us to follow-up: by asking, listening and enlisting others in our initiative for personal change. So remember first seek feedback then feedforward.

Guest author: Jorge Fernandez

When thinking about personality, one thing that we know is there is no such thing as a good or bad personality. It really depends on the job and situation. This is a point that we regularly emphasize to individuals and organizations. Along these same lines, we know that high scores on personality assessments do not inherently mean good things, and low scores do not always mean bad things – there are positives and negatives to both ends of the continuum. Having stated that, our scores do represent our reputations. Over the course of time people come to expect certain behaviors from us based on our past performances.

One of the main goals of personality assessment is to provide individuals with strategic self-awareness. Through feedback, we can help the individual understand his or her tendencies and reputation in the work environment. As such, we can help the low Prudence individual understand that others view him or her as being impulsive and lacking attention to detail, or aid the high Prudence individual with recognizing that he or she may be somewhat inflexible and resistant to change. Having stated that, we are not out to change personality, rather we are looking to make people more aware of their tendencies so they can change their behavior moving forward.

Nevertheless, change is a difficult and ongoing process. To illustrate this point, take a minute to write a few sentences using your opposite hand (i.e., your right hand if you are left-handed and vice-versa). At first, it’s a challenging and awkward thing to do. However, with practice this behavior will become easier to execute. This analogy represents what we are trying to accomplish with feedback and coaching. We should not be trying to convert lefties to righties, and the same is true with personality. We are not trying to convert the low Prudence to high Prudence (or vice-versa), rather we are aiming to help individuals understand their strengths and shortcomings of what their scores represent, and provide developmental tips to leverage these strengths and mitigate these shortcomings.

So, the next time you are confronted with a challenging situation, don’t throw up a white flag and hide behind your personality scores. If you’re low Prudence and the project requires attention to detail, or are high Prudence and the project demands flexibility and openness to change, don’t allow your personality to be a barrier to your success. Instead, take some time to reflect on your natural response tendencies and decide if this is the most advantageous response option given the situation, or if a different course of action would be more beneficial. Through persistence and ongoing coaching, we can learn to overcome the dark side of our personality and let the bright side shine.

Within the past year or so, the topic of authentic leadership keeps surfacing around the Hogan office, with our clients, and at a few conferences. The repeated references to and different explanations of this buzzword in the leadership development world caused me to pause for a minute. What exactly is authentic leadership, and how can you achieve it? Or, better yet, what can stand your way?

To answer these questions, I started with the authentic leadership guru, Bill George. Mr. George has penned two books on the topic: Authentic Leadership and its successor True North. In his blog post “Authentic Leadership Revisited” he defines authentic leadership as “being genuine, real, and true to who you are.” Another blog post  states that, “to become authentic, each of us has to develop our own leadership style, consistent with our personality and character.”

I think the concept of achieving authentic leadership boils down to strategic self-awareness. Knowing your strengths and challenges, being willing to point out the chinks in your armor, and demonstrating a certain element of humility can all lead to becoming a more authentic leader. Of course, this is more easily said than done. However, Hogan’s personality assessments, development-focused reports, and feedback process can certainly help start the strategic self-awareness conversation.

Additionally, the bigger question here remains. Are there certain personality characteristics that can stand in your way of being seen as authentic? The moving against cluster (Bold, Colorful, Mischievous, and Imaginative) on the Hogan Development Survey can affect your perceived ability to be authentic. It’s important to keep in mind that HDS behaviors often arise under stress, pressure, boredom, or complacency. These are not every day behaviors, but can still impact your perceived authenticity or leadership brand. For example, high scores on this cluster suggest that leaders with these derailing behaviors may not express humility (Colorful) and be unwilling to admit mistakes (Bold). The graph below highlights the impact these derailers can have on authentic leadership.



So, how do you derail? Given these implications for authentic leadership, it’s worth looking into. 

“What is your greatest weakness?”

A Google search using that common interview question yields more than 2 million articles, most of which outline ways to artfully dodge the answer. The most common trick is to list a weakness in the form of an exaggerated strength. However, the line between strength and weakness isn’t always clear. The personality characteristics that help launch promising careers can turn into crippling derailers down the line. But they don’t have to.

Download How Your Greatest Strength Can Become Your Greatest Weakness and learn how to identify and mitigate potentially destructive behaviors.

Are you convinced you are too busy to keep up with your inbox?

Do you regularly apologize to people after failing to return correspondence?

Does your staff send you multiple follow-up emails covering the same topic?

Technology helps teams connect instantly to members across the globe. Yet, there are many among us who routinely take more than 72 hours to return emails, if they return them at all. These “email black holes” cause serious bottlenecks in workflow and decision-making. Are you part of the problem?

Download our white paper for five reasons you may be creating an email black hole.

On Monday night the University of Kentucky beat the University of Kansas to claim the 2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. Didn’t watch it? That’s okay; I wasn’t that interested either. However, this sporting event has given us an opportunity to observe some basic social psychological phenomena in action that have implications not only for sports fanaticism but for the workplace as well.

The phenomena are known as BIRG, or Basking In Reflected Glory, and CORF, or Cutting Off Reflected Failure. Grounded in Social Identity Theory, BIRGing and CORFing represent two strategies people employ to enhance or protect their self esteem. BIRGing occurs when someone attempts to enhance their self esteem or image by aligning themselves with a success or “glory” for which they had little to no role. Often times this behavior or cognition is unintentional and somewhat subtle. In the context of the basketball championship, I have seen plenty of BIRGing from Kentucky fans this week as their tweets, Facebook posts, and water cooler conversations include some reference of “we” in relation to the Wildcats’ win. “We won!” “We played so well!” “We kicked KU’s butts!” We are also more likely to see them sporting their Kentucky apparel. These fans are aligning themselves with Kentucky in order to bask in the reflective glory of being national champions, despite the fact that they did not spend a single minute on the hardcourt defending shooters or sinking three-pointers.

Many of the Kansas fans, on the other hand, have been CORFing, wherein we attempt to distance or separate ourselves from some failure that may have a negative impact on our self esteem, reputation, or self image. Whether intentional or not, we likely hear many Jayhawk fans using the pronoun “they” instead of “we” when referring to the Kansas basketball team. “They couldn’t finish.” “They let Kentucky get too far ahead early on.” “They weren’t strong enough.” Many of those same fans who were likely declaring “We are the best” (BIRGing) after each of the great comebacks KU enjoyed leading up to the final have now turned to CORFing by a simple change in pronoun.

These phenomena are easy to witness within the world of sports, but they also make their mark in the workplace. Within organizations, employees are motivated to align themselves with successful projects and products and distance themselves from failures. Although the point can be made that employees are doing it for the same basic self image benefits, they are also motivated to BIRG and CORF for job security, keeping themselves off the radar in bad times and calling attention to themselves in good times.

Despite the fact that this is a very common and innate tendency, we do tend to see some individual variability in the expression of it and I believe it is often a function of personality. Specifically, I see scores on HDS Bold functioning as a moderator of the expression of BIRG and CORF. Individuals who have higher scores on the Hogan Development Survey scale of Bold tend to have an inflated view of self-worth and are very motivated to protect that image. Our research indicates that our high Bold managers are likely to overstate their accomplishments and blame mistakes and failures on others. Hence, we are likely to see high Bold managers BIRGing and CORFing more often or to a greater extent than your average Joe as they jockey themselves into position for ego-preservation.

Such behavior can erode followership or a productive team atmosphere as others start to recognize that Bold Bob is a fair-weather fan, only aligning himself with us when the going is good and “throwing us under the bus” (trust me, I loathe that phrase too) when we hit some rough patches. An effective leader must be willing to weather the storm, sharing in the collective successes but also standing up for their team when things don’t go to plan. For most, BIRG and CORF can be more difficult to accomplish in the workplace as our affiliation with a particular team or project is often more obvious. Bold Bob and others like him will find a way to do it, though. It may come in the form of claiming to have always disagreed with the failed approach the team took (CORF), or claiming to have been a staunch supporter/leader of a successful project that, in reality, they demonstrated ambivalence toward (BIRG).

In our efforts to develop and coach our Bold managers, we need to cast light on past occurrences of this behavior and the fallout or ramifications it caused. However, we must remember that BIRGing and CORFing are not always intentional and that these managers may not have realized the subtle (and not so subtle) ways they have exhibited it. By helping to create strategic self-awareness of this tendency and the effect it has on team relations, we can hope to curb its prevalence. Only then can we hope for them to be more like my non-Bold colleague and staunch Kansas fan who owned the big loss in her Facebook post, stating “Well played Kentucky...you deserve it. Love that our Jayhawks fought the whole way though...what a ride! Rock Chalk!”