Does personality change? On the stability of personality assessment scores
Does personality change? This is a question we receive regularly from our clients, along with a lot of hypotheses about when and why scores shift. Answering this seemingly straightforward question actually requires addressing three related questions: How often do scores on assessments change? When scores on assessments change, how large are those changes? Why do […]
The value of Myers-Briggs type indicator
The Personality Brokers, Merve Emre’s interesting new book, is a kind of feminist treatise focusing on the lives and work of the two amazing women, Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, who developed and promoted the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI is the best known and most widely used personality “instrument” in the […]
How to flunk Uber
Delia Ephron, a best-selling American author, screenwriter, and playwright, published an essay in the New York Timesentitled “Ouch, My Personality, Reviewed” that is a superb example of what Freud called “the psychopathology of everyday life.” She starts the essay by noting that she recently used Uber, and the driver told her that if she received one more bad review, […]
Our assessments don’t discriminate, but many do
Recent EEOC agreements with two major US companies have once again raised concerns about adverse impact resulting from personality assessment use in hiring. Just as every automobile, electrical appliance, or medicine can negatively impact people’s lives if manufactured poorly or used improperly, assessments can be poorly developed, haphazardly applied, or purposefully misused to negatively and unfairly […]
Humility: The antidote for bad leadership
Popular wisdom will have you believe that a leader is someone who exudes confidence and charisma because they appear smart, interesting, and engaging. However, more often than not, these types of leaders wreak havoc on the workplace. A growing body of research suggests that humilityis a far more important quality in a leader than charisma. Organizations […]
Humility: What does it all mean?
Humility has been a hot topic at Hogan in 2018, and that won’t be changing anytime in the near future. However, many of those familiar with Hogan are probably curious what that means in relation to Hogan scales, and what we look for to identify humble leaders. Although we are still researching the topic, we […]
Self-deception and leadership
There is a fascinating connection between two seemingly unrelated topics: self-deception and leadership. The two themes often come together in the lives of prominent politicians, for example, in the career of Barack Obama. Let us explain. We are both fascinated by the idea that people often do things for reasons of which they are unaware. […]
Six Lessons on Leadership From Bob Hogan
I am obsessed with the topic of leadership. Organizations need leaders to make key decisions, anticipate and manage changing market trends, and set strategic vision. When competent leadership prevails, people and companies prosper. Bad leadership almost always creates disengaged workers, corporate chicanery, and, eventually, business failure. The problem with most leadership competency models is they […]
Another Shade of the Dark Side: Derailing Due to Underuse of Behaviors
The dark side of personality concerns behaviors and attributes that derail people – getting them into trouble and making them less effective as leaders. Typically, these derailers appear when people are under stress (e.g., they have a tight deadline, they are dealing with ambiguity, etc.) or when they are not self-monitoring (e.g., they are around […]
HR’s Biggest Challenge: Succession Planning
In the 1970s, only 8 percent of S&P 500 CEOs were recruited externally. That number grew to 22 percent in 2014. Yet, outsiders are almost 7 times more likely to be dismissed within a short tenure than homegrown CEOs. No matter how much a board learns about an outside candidate, executive stakeholders simply have a […]
