An easy way to think about this concept is with a bullseye metaphor: The very center of the bullseye is exactly what you want to assess.

What is Validity?

Validity refers to the accuracy of the assessment. In essence, does it measure what it is supposed to measure? While there are several types of validity to pay attention to, the most important for our purposes is predictive validity.

Predictive validity tells us how accurate a tool is at predicting a certain outcome. In the case of personality assessments, a good tool will be able to predict how well someone will perform their job. Validity is typically measured with a coefficient between 0 and 11 (called the Pearson correlation coefficient). The closer to one, the more accurate the predictive power of the test. The predictive validity of the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) is .29 for predicting performance across job families. However, when the HPI is combined with the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) and Motives, Values, and Preferences Inventory (MVPI), that number jumps to .54. While this may not seem very high, a good comparison is to look at the validity for something completely unrelated. For example, the predictive validity of ibuprofen for pain reduction is only .14. For another, more closely-related example, the correlation between structured job interviews and job performance is .18. There are many ways of measuring validity, some more useful than others. Any assessment provider worth their salt should be able to provide you with evidence of validity. If they don’t, it’s worth considering why not.

What is Reliability?

Reliability, on the other hand, refers to the consistency of the test. The reliability of an assessment can be evaluated in two broad ways: 1) internal consistency, and 2) test-retest reliability.

Test-retest reliability is a measure of consistency of responses over time. In other words, are people responding to questions the same way each time they take the test? Inconsistent responses can indicate that assessments results are not actually measuring personality, which should be relatively stable over time. Test-retest reliability uses a correlation of scores (again, using the Pearson coefficient) from a first assessment and a second assessment sometime later. For Hogan, the short-term test-retest reliability is .81 for the HPI, .70 for the HDS, and .79 for the MVPI. Internal consistency relates to the questions that are used in each assessment. Test takers will notice that many questions appear to measure the same thing. This is on purpose. Asking a question in a few different ways helps us to ensure that we are getting an accurate measurement of the concept. Like validity, reliability scores are also measured between 0 and 1 (this time with a coefficient called Cronbach’s alpha). The closer to 1, the higher the reliability. The average internal consistency for the HPI scales is .76, .71 for the HDS, and .76 for the MVPI. 1Absolute value. Scores between -1 and 0 indicate a negative correlation.

The important thing to note is that there is no one right way to measure reliability or validity. In fact, assessment publishers should constantly be monitoring their products to ensure they maintain the accuracy that they claim. Hogan Assessments are far above industry standards with continual evaluation of our own assessments. We are partial though, and we encourage you to seek out this information with any assessment system you choose. Hogan Assessments have appeared in over 400 peer-reviewed publications to ensure that our tests are hitting the bullseye.

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On episode 149 of The Science of Personality, Gustavo Razzetti, CEO and founder of Fearless Culture and author of Forward Talk: The Bold New Method for Getting Teams Unstuck, discusses why teams get stuck and what it takes to get them moving again.

“If you want to change your culture, you need to start by changing your conversations,” Gustavo said.

The Avoidance Trap

Teams get stuck when they avoid having conversations that help them move forward. Anyone who’s worked on a team knows exactly how that feels.

Gustavo describes a two-by-two matrix for diagnosing stuck teams. One axis is whether the team is focused on the past or the future. The other is whether the team is addressing the issue or avoiding it. Three of the four quadrants are unhelpful:

• Blame (past + addressing) – The team focuses on what went wrong and who’s at fault instead of moving forward.
• Avoidance (past + avoiding) – The team neither addresses past issues nor moves past them.
• Groupthink (future + avoiding) – The team agrees to move on, creating the illusion of progress while leaving the real issue unaddressed.

The fourth quadrant is forward talk. This means the team has conversations that address the issue and focus on the future rather than the past.

Why Teams Avoid Difficult Conversations

Our emotions keep us from having challenging conversations. Fear is one reason why team members don’t engage in conversation, share their perspectives, or ask questions. When Gustavo surveyed team members about why they thought others don’t engage in important conversations, most said their colleagues were afraid.

Resignation is another reason why team members don’t, can’t, or won’t communicate. When Gustavo asked team members why they themselves didn’t engage, most said, “Because nothing’s going to change.” When organisations ignore the results of engagement surveys or handle change management poorly, trust suffers.

When teams avoid important conversations, they accrue what Gustavo called conversational debt. He compared this concept to credit card debt: the debt exists whether you open your credit card statement or not. The same happens with unresolved conflict. “The more we avoid it, the worse it’s going to become,” he said. On the other hand, when people engage in a genuine, authentic conversation, even if it is tough, they usually perceive that it went well. They also feel relief from their fear.

Personality and Conflict Avoidance

People with certain personality characteristics are more likely to avoid conflict than others. These people are more sensitive to or influenced by the workplace environment, such as the degree of psychological safety. “If a context is safe, people are going to speak more than if it’s not,” Gustavo said. The opposite is also true.

Other people are more likely to speak up or push back no matter the context. In Hogan terms, these behaviours are likely related to groups of scales on the Hogan Development Survey, which measures how people tend to behave when they aren’t self-monitoring. Someone who has a low Cautious score or a low Dutiful score would be more likely to speak up and challenge authority. Conversely, someone with a high Cautious score might be more likely to avoid conflict, and someone with a high Dutiful score might be particularly prone to groupthink.

The Leader’s Role in Team Communication

The personality of the leader also plays an important role in how teams communicate and respond to their environment. Leaders who dominate conversations need to learn to facilitate conversations instead. Effective leadership means building and maintaining a high-performing team. That means leaders accomplish work by means of their team and shouldn’t provide all the answers themselves. “You [a leader] should be curating the answers from your team, getting the best out of people. You need to make sense of those different personalities to inform your decisions,” Gustavo said.

How to Tell If Your Team Is Stuck

The team seems to be performing well. Then suddenly their metrics start to suffer. Why? “If you’re not addressing the real topics, that’s going to hurt the team,” Gustavo explained.

Signs that a team is stuck include a lack of consensus and relitigation of decisions. Blaming others, whether another employee, the budget, the timeline, or anything else, is also an indication that all is not well with team communication.

Gustavo told a story about an executive team he worked with whose CEO was leaving the organisation after many years of leadership. The team was definitely stuck. Some team members thought they would become the next CEO. Others wanted the current CEO to stay longer so they could accomplish their goals. None of them faced the reality of the CEO’s departure. They didn’t have a conversation about next steps for themselves and their organisation.

For a leader to notice that their team communication is stuck, they need humility to realise they don’t have all the answers. They need to build a psychologically safe environment for their team members to speak. And they need to take the lead on modelling courage by admitting their mistakes. Leaders who only hand down orders are unlikely to be aware that their team even has a leadership problem.

The Link Between Team Communication and Trust

One excellent place for leaders to start is by asking for feedback. Gustavo points to Steve Jobs, who got only silence at Pixar town halls until he started asking two simple questions: What’s working? What’s not working? The questions gave employees permission to acknowledge what was going well and to name what could improve.

This openness, even when starting small, fosters trust. “Trust is the foundation of effective conversations,” Gustavo said. “Trust gets built through actions and interactions.” The two questions also signal positive intent toward improving team communication and reducing team dysfunction.

Advice for Leaders

When team members have worked together for weeks, months, and years, difficult conversations can be challenging. However, avoidance only contributes to the problem. “We all play a part in the conversations. If other people are not participating, that’s not an excuse for you to not do so,” Gustavo said. He urged leaders not to regret the conversations they avoid having. Team communication can improve . . . but only if the leader has enough courage to address why the team is stuck.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 149 of The Science of Personality.

The post Is Your Team Stuck? What Personality Reveals About Team Communication appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

What is personality?

While there are many definitions of personality, our perspective on the subject derives from socioanalytic theory, which integrates interpersonal theory with evolutionary psychology.

Socioanalytic theory assumes that human nature is characteristically social. People always live in groups, which always have a hierarchy with a well-defined structure of power and a leader. People need to have a system of meaning, such as religion, philosophy, or science, that helps them make sense of the world. As a consequence of these three things, people will always have three main motives: getting along with others (i.e., cooperation), getting ahead of others (i.e., competition), and finding meaning. Personality is what determines how people work toward those goals and the extent to which they achieve them.

More specifically, three components of personality shape our interactions: identity, reputation, and social skill. Identity is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves—it’s the person you think you are. While there might be some takeaways in how we perceive ourselves, we are usually wrong. We often have an inflated idea of our own talent, or we might be unnecessarily hard on ourselves.

Reputation, on the other hand, is what everyone else thinks of us, and it’s based on our overt behaviours and social skills. Your reputation is the person other people think you are. Your success in the workplace is dependent on your reputation, and this is the part of personality that the best personality tests are based on.

Does personality change over time?

If changes to someone’s personality do occur, they happen very slowly. Individual behaviour can change on a day-to-day basis, but personality refers to behavioural patterns that we see consistently over time.

It’s helpful to think about the following analogy about the weather to describe personality changes. While we can’t predict daily weather very accurately, we have an idea of what’s likely to happen. It’s much easier to predict regional and seasonal weather patterns. Like the daily weather, behaviour can change moment to moment and context to context. But personality is more like the regional and seasonal weather, where it takes time to see change.

Think about development coaching. You have a reputation for behaving a certain way, but through coaching, those behaviours can change. It’s just going to take time before others notice, and those changes aren’t going to deviate much from your natural tendencies. Personality is quite stable; that is, people do not change very much once they reach a certain age.

Scores from personality tests also can be quite stable when the assessment is well constructed. A person retaking a quality personality test will get very similar results most of the time, while retaking a poorly made personality test can have dramatically different results. But just like scores on many other types of tests, including cognitive ability tests and certain medical tests (e.g., blood pressure), personality assessment scores can fluctuate, even over short intervals.

At Hogan, we’ve found that fluctuating scores on reassessments typically fall within two points of the original assessment score. This degree of variation does not usually affect the interpretation of the overall personality profile. In fact, when these changes do occur, they tend to be a result of a change in methodology and not reflective of a change in the individual.

How are personality tests made?

We spend a great deal of time thinking about the difference between identity and reputation when we build our personality assessments.

Identity, or how we think about ourselves, is frequently changing and often self-serving, and that makes it a poor basis for building personality assessments.

Reputation, or how others think about us, is often more stable and a more useful way to build personality assessments that predict job performance. The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. Because reputation reflects past behaviour, reputation is the best predictor of future behaviour.

We validate our assessments by having people take those assessments. Then we ask other people who know them, such as peers, direct reports, and managers, to describe what they’re like. The assessment data and observer ratings—along with job performance review data, objective performance data, and 360-degree data—are stored in a database with personality data from several million people. Once someone has taken our assessments, we can use the information from our database to predict whether the person will be able to do a job, how they will behave on the job, and even whether they will like the job.

How do personality tests predict job performance?

Personality assessments should measure personality from the perspective of reputation, which is how others are likely to describe or experience us. Reputation is a collection of past and present behaviours described by others, and we know it to be the best predictor of future job performance. We have found that personality helps us to describe the characteristics and behaviours that are required for or important to job performance—things like resiliency and strategic self-awareness and collaboration.

Hogan’s personality tests are based on decades of research on personality psychology and measurement, and they have been validated against external criteria, including job performance and peer ratings. This allows us to describe the reputation that a job candidate likely has in the workplace.

We also compare the way a job candidate scores to thousands of other people to determine how that person will likely behave at work. Using custom research involving job analysis, we can also create personality profiles to determine how well candidates will fit into a particular job role or organisational culture.

Are personality tests accurate? What is validity?

In the case of personality assessments, a good tool can predict how well someone will perform their job. Not all personality assessments are accurate. Because the assessment industry is largely unregulated, many personality assessments on the market do not measure what they claim.

There are two main questions that determine whether an assessment can deliver accurate results. Does it measure what it’s designed to measure? And does it measure it consistently? In short, accuracy requires evidence of validity and reliability. There are many types of validity. Criterion validity is the best type of validity to use for personality tests. Criterion validity refers to the accuracy of predicting a desired outcome. So in the case of personality tests, the outcome is predicting performance in specific jobs. Reliability refers to the consistency of the measurement. One way that you can evaluate this consistency is with test-retest reliability. Test-retest reliability refers to consistency of measurement across multiple test administrations. For example, using a ruler to measure height will produce the same measurement every time. That’s because a ruler is a reliable measure of height. We want our personality assessments to function in the same way.

We take pride in the validity and reliability of our assessments; they have a proven track record of predicting job performance.

Do personality tests discriminate or violate privacy?

We believe that personality assessments should be valid and fair to every job candidate and we have worked hard over the past three decades to democratise access to employment. Our validation research meets the highest professional standards, which means our assessments provide equal opportunity based on occupational qualifications and have no adverse impact on the candidate.

Broad research on personality has been conducted around the globe. When we look at that research, it shows that people are quite consistent. There aren’t really meaningful differences—based on things like age, gender, or ethnicity—in how individuals score on well-validated and accurate assessments.

The Hogan assessments are used to predict and measure workplace-related outcomes. They’re not diagnostic or clinical tools, which means we don’t use them to identify or diagnose any sort of clinical disorders. Because of that, and because they are well-constructed and valid instruments, they comply with all industry and professional regulations and don’t violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Hogan’s researchers spend a lot of time and effort ensuring that our assessments are predictive of the workplace outcomes we care about, applicable to a broad audience, and non-invasive.

Can people fake personality tests?

Despite the name, personality tests are not actually tests but rather an assessment of an individual’s personality. That means that there are no right or wrong answers, so faking is extremely difficult. When you answer a personality question, it’s actually a consideration of job fit. Do you fit with that job?

Another thing to consider is what experimental studies on faking tell us. When people are instructed to fake an assessment for a particular job deliberately, they get different scores than they would have gotten by answering honestly. But in the real world, when someone is actually trying to apply for a particular position, faking has no impact whatsoever on the person’s overall scores. That is, the person won’t get better job-fit scores.

In fact, in studies we’ve done here at Hogan, we’ve found that people who try to fake on personality assessments often get worse job-fit scores than they would have gotten if they had just applied for the job and taken the assessment in a more natural way.

In sum, the big picture on faking is that it’s not really an issue for personality assessments.

How can businesses use personality tests?

Talent acquisition and talent development are two primary applications for personality tests in the workplace.

Organisations can use personality tests to determine if candidates have the key personality characteristics to be successful in a job and if they fit the company culture. Assessments can also be used to uncover performance risks, improve interview techniques, and compare candidates side by side.

In industries that have a high risk of injuries and accidents, such as construction or oil and gas, safety assessments can be used for preselection. This allows companies to hire the right people to develop a culture of occupational safety.

For talent development, personality assessments can be used to identify employees’ strengths and weaknesses. Personality tests can encourage employees to take proactive steps to improve performance and help employees avoid career derailment.

What are the benefits of using a personality test?

Personality tests have many benefits for employment decisions, including identifying a match with core competencies and reducing bias in hiring.

First of all, the core competencies for most jobs are linked to personality characteristics, and a well-constructed assessment can measure those. This can be beneficial for hiring decisions as well as performance management. The benefits of hiring the right candidates and promoting the right employees can help an organisation to improve its business outcomes—for example, by increasing the bottom line and reducing turnover.

Second, while there are many valid ways organisations can identify and develop talent, personality assessments offer the unique benefit of reducing the impact of bias on personnel decisions. Personality assessments are less discriminatory than classic evaluation methods, such as interviews and cognitive assessments. By reducing the impact of bias on employment decisions, personality assessments can also promote increased diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.

How can you assess a personality assessment?

You don’t have to go too deep into the science to assess a personality test. There are three things to consider: job relatedness, reliability, and validity.

Job relatedness is an important scientific and legal standard that helps determine whether an assessment measures what is important for success on the job. Job relatedness is established through the process of job analysis. The assessment provider should be able to explain how the job analysis process works and how the process supports the use of the provider’s assessments for specific purposes.

The second factor to consider is reliability, which refers to the consistency of the assessment. Does the assessment reliably measure the same thing each time? This is what ensures that the results you get from the assessment aren’t a one-off. If the assessment is supposed to measure enduring characteristics, such as extroversion, it should be able to measure the same level of those characteristics each time. Ask the assessment provider to provide evidence of the assessment’s reliability.

The third factor to consider is validity, which refers to the accuracy of the personality test. Does the test measure what it’s supposed to measure? A valid assessment is one that helps you make accurate predictions. Just like with reliability, you should ask the assessment provider for documented scientific evidence that the assessment will help you make the predictions you need to make.

Finally, while making your evaluation, remember that decisions made using assessment results affect people’s lives for better or worse.

Peter Berry Consultancy is the Authorised Distributor for Hogan Assessments in Australia. Click here for certification workshop dates.

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Rather than leave this question to speculation, we sent out a global candidate experience survey. All 2,000 of our survey respondents were job candidates within three months before completing our survey. We asked candidates what a positive candidate experience means to them and if their candidate experience influenced their decision to move forward or pass on prospective positions.

Respondents replied to our survey with some decisive answers about the hiring process. A whopping 75% of respondents take their candidate experience into account when deciding whether or not they will accept a company’s offer. On the other end of the spectrum, only 7% of job seekers said the hiring process does not affect whether or not they view a company positively. Based on this data, we can unequivocally say that first impressions do matter. Candidates clearly take a company’s candidate experience to reflect its overall employee experience and organisational culture.

These findings mean that the risk of losing applicants due to a noncompetitive candidate experience is real. If the best applicants go elsewhere and the quality of the candidate pool drops, even the best selection tools will not be of much use.

If you want a high caliber of candidates in your hiring pool, then you need to carefully manage the first impression your company makes. A candidate experience audit is the perfect opportunity for your company to take charge of its reputation among job candidates and their social networks.

Our survey data show that personality tests should be at the top of your to-do list during this audit. They help with creating a positive candidate experience, which attracts and maintains candidate interest in your company. Here are four reasons why personality tests boost the overall candidate experience.

1) Personality tests give the candidate experience a cutting-edge feel.

The business environment is increasingly vulnerable to new technologies.  When job searching, candidates are well aware of how quickly emerging technologies can transform their professions.  Competitive candidates look for companies that are on the forefront of innovation in their respective industries and that will keep them up to speed professionally. Candidates’ forward-thinking attitudes means that a positive candidate experience increasingly depends on how tech-savvy they perceive a company to be.

A company’s reputation for innovation starts with the hiring process. Our survey data shows that personality tests imbue the hiring process with a modern feel. Nearly 60% of candidates describe personality tests as state-of-the-art and professional, 58% say they are creative, and 53% characterize them as scientific and serious. By extension, candidates who undergo personality testing will also view their candidate experience as state-of-the-art, professional, creative, scientific, and serious.

2) Personality tests will not deter applicants.

Although candidates are impressed by personality tests, some employers may fear that the time they add to the hiring process will deter candidates. Surprisingly, our data show that the candidate experience is not negatively influenced by adding assessment to the hiring process as an additional requirement.

The majority of candidates, nearly 60%, would not stop applying for a job because of an assessment requirement. Not to mention, research indicates that those who decide to drop out during the assessment process are unlikely to be your strongest candidates anyway.¹

Research shows that assessment length is not much of a deterrent either. According to the decreasing risk model, candidates are most likely to quit an assessment right after its start, and then the dropout rate rapidly decreases thereafter.¹ As a consequence, the difference in candidate experience between long and short assessments is likely minimal.

In fact, more than 70% of candidates do not place importance on a quick application process. Our survey data shows that the majority of job seekers are actually more interested in longer assessments. They see lengthier assessments as an opportunity to perform and as an indication that the company is serious about their application.¹

3) Fairness of personality tests boosts the overall candidate experience.

What do candidates say is most important to them during the hiring process? First and foremost, 73% of candidates said that they most value a fair application process. The next most important thing to candidates (67%) is that the most qualified applicant gets the position.

Integrity appears to be the consistent element of positive candidate experiences; job seekers want the hiring process to be fair and for evaluation methods to provide the best representation of their candidacy. These two factors were ranked well above the process being fun or fast.

Candidates’ focus on fairness explains why they prefer personality tests to other hiring methods. The predictive power of personality testing ensures that the hiring process is equitable and objective. Well-validated personality tests accurately predict how well someone is likely to perform on the job with no meaningful score differences across protected groups.In contrast, what elements of the hiring process create a negative candidate experience? Slow responsiveness to applications leads to a negative experience for 26% of candidates. Another 26% of candidates said they have a negative perception of companies that do not handle offers and rejections with sensitivity.

It is clear that, in addition to treating applicants fairly, creating a positive candidate experience also means treating applicants with respect.

4) Creating a positive candidate experience is not all about fun and games.

A trend in talent acquisition is to use game-based assessments, which measure candidate attributes through gamified problem-solving. Traditional assessments, on the other hand, feature a standard questionnaire to measure personality, behaviours, or cognitive abilities.

At first, games may seem like an easy solution for creating a positive candidate experience. Games are less tedious than traditional assessments and thus should be enjoyable for job seekers. But there is a problem with this line of reasoning. Our survey data show that 69% of candidates do not place importance on the application process being fun. As we know, candidates prefer fairness in the hiring process and nearly two-thirds of respondents think traditional assessments are fairer than game-based assessments.

Similarly, 60% of candidates believe that traditional assessments represent their qualities as a candidate better than game-based assessments. More than half actually prefer a traditional assessment style to games.

Altogether, these results indicate that candidates are not concerned with being entertained during the application process. In fact, they overwhelmingly prefer assessments that relate to the job at hand, provide instant feedback, and allow them to accurately represent themselves as candidates.

Conclusion

The goal of the candidate experience is to leave all candidates with a positive view of the company, regardless of the hiring decision. Companies that are already using personality tests for selection can rest assured that they are doing the right thing and that candidates consider it to be mutually beneficial. Meanwhile, companies that have not yet delved into using personality tests for hiring purposes should reserve a spot for it in their next candidate experience audit. These tests are meant to ensure that those selected from the hiring pool reflect what is best for the company.

Want to learn more about crafting a positive candidate experience? Check out our complete candidate experience survey insights!

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This behaviour, which Hogan calls Colourful, can be both an asset and a liability. Leaders who seem talkative, drawn to drama, and entertaining can be excellent at engaging and influencing others. However, if taken too far, their approach can also make them appear boastful, distractible, and attention-seeking.

Signs of Attention-Seeking Behaviour

The Hogan assessments measure three aspects of personality: the bright side (everyday personality), the dark side (potential derailers), and the inside (motives and values). The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) describes dark-side personality characteristics that can cause career derailment when unmanaged. The Colourful scale on the HDS concerns behaviours that range from self-restraint and blending in to self-display and standing out. Colourful is just one of the 11 derailers described by the HDS.

Using their dynamic social skill to win a room is a clear strength of a Colourful leader. But that strength can stop being an asset if overused during stress, boredom, or complacency. A leader with unchecked Colourful behaviour can act like an outlandish showboat, such as fictional soap opera star and matriarch Moira Rose of Schitt’s Creek. Attention-seeking behaviour can damage a leader’s reputation and hinder productivity. Thus, it’s beneficial for leaders to have strategic self-awareness to adapt or modify their attention-seeking behaviour based on their context.

How Excessive Self-Display Disrupts Teams

Talking loudly, expressively, quickly, and assertively can be appropriate and effective. But a leader who habitually interrupts, repeats themselves, wastes time, and feeds off attention will eventually cause friction that doesn’t serve them or their team.

A leader who has high Colourful behaviour may expect others to find their public performances fascinating. To win attention, they might adopt a noticeable style of fashion or body language. At work, their outgoing nature and social skills can make them seem easily distracted or in need of constant stimulation. They may miss or ignore signals that they should share attention with others. Without control over these tendencies, they will likely seem unfocused and busy without accomplishing tasks.

Managing Colourful Behaviour

As a derailer, Colourful can be more complicated than it might seem. Higher Colourful people often mistake attention for validation. Their theatrical behaviour can mask underlying insecurity and self-doubt. Identifying the underlying need can help with managing the behaviour effectively. Using the stop-start-continue framework, a leader might stop reading silence as an invitation to keep talking, start identifying the triggers that turn this strength into a derailer, and continue using their social skill to engage and influence others.

A socially skilled leader always accounts for the audience. Colourful leaders should let others know that they tend to be talkative and sometimes take a while to make a point. They should be mindful about how often and how long they speak. Leaders who develop strategic self-awareness monitor their own performance and learn when to lean into their Colourful behaviour and when to dial it back.

Expert Contributor

Erin Lazarus, MS, is a senior director of business development on the talent solutions team at Hogan Assessments.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

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On episode 148 of The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Victoria Grady, PhD, associate professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, to talk about the psychology of change.

“I am inherently a change-averse person,” Victoria said. “As I studied change to help myself become more flexible, I became fascinated with the role that attachment theory plays in how we manage through the change process.”

Read on to learn about the tension between innovation and change, how attachment theory affects our responses to change, and the importance of strength anchors.

Resistance to Change Versus Innovation

“Based on my experience in studying attachment behaviour for 15 years, I don’t believe that it is the change that people are resisting. Instead, I think it is more about the loss that they will experience because of going through the change,” Victoria stated. People don’t resist the change itself but rather the uncertainty of the transition from a current state to a future state. Psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott published on this concept about the transitional space in the 1950s.¹ Resistance to the transitional space can be rooted in uncertainty, instability, and anxiety about loss.

Innovation inherently brings change—and risk. The demand for innovation and the fear of uncertainty are often juxtaposed. People feel justifiably concerned about what losses might result from change. This includes intangible losses, such as productivity, creativity, and innovation itself.

Victoria described a tech startup that moved locations from a one-room space to an office suite. About half of the company was excited and half uncertain. After their move, productivity plummeted. Victoria found that the creative connections of the small space had become siloed by the new office. Once Victoria restored a space for connection, the startup’s performance increased.

“Identifying and providing support mechanisms for individuals who are experiencing change is critical to success,” Victoria said. In that scenario, the support mechanism that fuelled the startup’s innovation was feeling connected. Regardless of whether the individuals were resilient or resistant, they all needed that support mechanism to regain productivity.

How Attachment Theory Affects Responses to Change

Resistance to change may be rooted in our attachment style. Attachment theory suggests that emotional bonds with others affect how we respond to stressors. Development during early childhood—mainly our relationship with our primary caregiver from birth to age five—affects our disposition to attach.

Attachment Styles

While everybody feels some degree of stress during change, individual differences in attachment style affect how much resistance we may show:

• Secure attachment – Likely to respond in a resilient, proactive way
• Fearful attachment – Reluctant to trust others for fear of being let down
• Dismissive attachment – Likely to seem distant or even shut down
• Preoccupied attachment – Likely to need approval or seem dependent on others

Someone with a dismissive attachment style tends to be skilled at finding support mechanisms during change. Those with secure attachment are also nuanced in the types of support mechanisms they seek. These support mechanisms, also called strength anchors, are extremely important in our responses to change.

Strength Anchors

Strength anchors can be individuals, objects, environments, or values. “The strength anchor is what helps you reset when you feel that initial uncertainty or instability or anxiety related to a change,” Victoria explained.

Victoria worked with a government organisation that was losing a leader after 35 years. Members of the organisation felt sad about the loss and struggled to reconcile their grief with wanting to celebrate the leader’s next phase. The leader held an all-hands meeting to acknowledge their feelings and give each member a fidget toy printed with the organisation’s mission. “The leader created a culture that flourished at a level even more productive, more innovative, more effective in his absence because he empowered his people to believe that they could do it on their own,” she said.

Many organisations fail to acknowledge what is hard and talk about how to move forward. Although the leader was previously the strength anchor, the new strength anchor became not the toy itself but the shared values of the organisational culture. Effective leaders help their teams find the object, whether tangible or intangible, that can provide support during a transition.

Resistance to Change and Team Dynamics

Just as personality affects team dynamics, so does attachment style. One team that Victoria worked with had representatives from various attachment styles. “Once they realised how to work with each other, it became a powerhouse team. But it took a minute,” she said, explaining that a team member with a preoccupied attachment style caused frustration until all understood each other’s styles.

From a change perspective, understanding what it looks like to work together is an important component to navigating the change process and avoiding change fatigue. Organisations that assume healthy team dynamics will form without any transition time have unreasonable expectations. An activity to improve team dynamics might identify how attachment styles and personality tendencies affect workplace performance.

There is no perfect combination of attachment styles for a high-performing team. “The magic formula is to take the time to understand who you have on your team,” Victoria said. Effective leaders learn how each team member contributes, what makes them feel supported, and what anchors them to the team’s mission. That understanding is also what reduces resistance to change when transitions inevitably occur.

Strategies for Introducing Change

How organisations and leaders introduce change can have a huge impact on how it’s eventually received. Victoria advised using these strategies for introducing change:

• Be aware of the role that attachment plays in the workplace. Every leader and team member can observe the behaviors of others at work and infer how they attach. Attachment is part of our biological instinct and stays with us through our entire life.
• Select a framework to suit the team. The framework that will best guide the change process will be specific to the organisation, the change, and how the change will impact people.
• Affirm a commitment to mission or values. Change management processes can become positive when they connect to people’s job satisfaction. For instance, Apple has weathered significant change because the spirit of innovation acts as a strength anchor, not the specific person of Steve Jobs.
• Provide the team with a strength anchor. Leadership through change should equip others with the transitional object that helps carry them through despite uncertainty and loss.

“My biggest takeaway for leaders would be to take the time to recognise that you and everybody who works with you need the support that comes from a transitional object,” Victoria said. “A strength anchor has the power to influence the change strategy, whatever framework you pick.”

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 148  of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts.

Reference

1. Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena; A Study of the First Not-Me Possession. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34(2), 89–97. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1954-02354-001

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

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A single 360 captures a moment in time. Repeat 360s create a leadership development cycle—insight, action, and evidence of change.

When organisations move from doing a 360 to embedding repeat cycles, feedback becomes more than reflection—it becomes a practical, measurable tool for development and organisational capability.

Why repeat?

Repeat 360 feedback helps leaders understand how they are experienced, focus their development, and demonstrate improvement over time. It turns good intentions into follow-through.

With a repeat cycle in place, organisations can:

• Make progress visible over time
• Measure behaviour change with credible feedback data
• Increase accountability for development goals

The result is a practical development tool that links insight to action—and action to outcomes.

How the repeat 360 cycle works

1) Baseline: Establish a clear picture of strengths, blind spots and leadership reputation.

2) Development: Translate feedback into a focused plan supported by coaching, goal-setting and deliberate practice.

3) Re-measure: Repeat the 360 at the right cadence to confirm what has changed and what to strengthen next.

When leaders can see their results shift—particularly in how they are experienced by others—momentum builds and development becomes meaningful and sustained.

Organisational impact

High-performing organisations treat leadership effectiveness like any other critical capability: it is tracked, reviewed and improved. Repeat 360 feedback provides credible, longitudinal data that shows whether development investment is translating into observable behaviour change.

When embedded into performance and development cycles, repeat 360s help organisations build:

• Consistency: clear, shared expectations of leadership behaviour
• Credibility: data-informed conversations that reduce reliance on anecdote
• Engagement: leaders role-model openness to feedback and growth
• Sustainability: development momentum that continues beyond a single intervention

A repeat 360 is not about “scoring higher”. It is about becoming more effective—as seen by the people who work with a leader every day.

What good looks like

• Integrated into performance and development cycles
• Aligned to your leadership framework and strategy
• Supported by skilled debriefing and coaching
• Focused on a small number of priority behaviours
• Repeated at an agreed cadence to track improvement over time

Using data well is what makes the difference

Not all 360 programs deliver meaningful change. The strongest outcomes come from validated tools, clear expectations, high-quality interpretation, and a commitment to act on the feedback. In these environments, repeat 360s are not about compliance or comparison—they are about sustained effectiveness.

Outcomes you can expect

• Stronger leaders with clearer development priorities
• Higher-performing teams through improved day-to-day leadership behaviours
• Leadership capability that improves year on year
• Evidence of impact to support development investment decisions

Next Step 

Consider the cadence and support you want around your 360 process—baseline, development, and re-measurement—so feedback becomes a sustained system for leadership growth, not a one-off event.

The post Turning insight into measurable leadership growth appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

When evaluating leadership potential, cognitive ability and personality are often considered separately: one reflecting how individuals think, the other how they are likely to behave. However, recent research conducted by PBC suggests that leadership effectiveness is shaped not by these factors in isolation, but by how they interact.

Drawing on this research, PBC in collaboration with JVR recently produced an Interpretive Guide examining the interplay between cognitive ability and dark‑side personality tendencies, as measured by the Hogan Development Survey (HDS). This work aimed to support more informed interpretation of assessment data in leadership selection contexts, particularly where decisions involve increasing demonstrated leadership capability.

How cognitive ability shapes the expression of dark-side tendencies

A central theme emerging from this research is that cognitive ability plays an important role in moderating the relationship between dark‑side personality tendencies and demonstrated leadership capability (quality of work, technical proficiency, self-development and dealing with complexity). Dark‑side tendencies represent behavioural risks that are most likely to emerge when individuals are not at their best, such as when they are under pressure or have become complacent. The extent to which these tendencies influence leadership outcomes appears to depend, in part, on their interaction with cognitive ability.

The interaction between cognitive ability and personality tendencies also provides insight into a leader’s likely ability to reflect on their thinking processes and how this may influence their workplace reputation for being capable. In this sense, cognitive ability may shape not only how leaders approach complex problems, but also how effectively they manage the behavioural implications of their personality profile over time.

Implications for performance and leadership risk

A key implication for leadership selection is that cognitive ability may mitigate some of the risks associated with higher scores on certain dark‑side personality tendencies, allowing those tendencies to be channelled more productively. Conversely, when cognitive ability is lower, dark‑side tendencies may be more likely to have negative effects on decision‑making and task performance.

Importantly, the findings also highlight that the relationship between personality tendencies and performance is not simply linear. For some HDS scales, moderate levels of these tendencies, when paired with stronger cognitive ability, may be associated with increasingly higher levels of performance. This demonstrates the importance of considering not only the presence of particular tendencies, but also their intensity and how they interact with cognitive ability when evaluating leadership capability.

Moving beyond a risk-only view of dark-side personality

Consistent with existing interpretations of the HDS, dark‑side personality tendencies are best understood as overplayed strengths rather than inherently negative attributes. The insights from this research demonstrate that these tendencies can contribute positively to leadership effectiveness, particularly when supported by higher levels of cognitive ability. Rather than viewing dark‑side tendencies purely as risks, leadership selection decisions benefit from understanding how they may function in combination with reasoning ability.

From a practical perspective, these findings underscore the value of integrated assessment approaches in leadership selection. Considering both personality tendencies and cognitive ability provides a more informative basis for identifying individuals who are likely to succeed in leadership roles, particularly in complex and high‑pressure environments.

Conclusion: Implications for leadership selection decisions

In conclusion, the key message from this research is that leadership effectiveness is shaped by the interaction between cognitive ability and personality tendencies. By accounting for these interactions, organisations can make more informed leadership selection decisions: identifying individuals who are capable of managing complexity while also navigating the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural demands associated with their personality profile. Recognising dark‑side tendencies as potential strengths, rather than risks alone, allows leadership selection to move beyond avoiding derailment and toward understanding the conditions under which leaders are most likely to demonstrate capability over time.

Download the full paper here

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