On episode 151 of The Science of Personality, Melvyn Payne, commercial director at Advanced People Strategies (APS), an authorised Hogan distributor in the UK, discusses finding the right balance between team engagement and psychological safety.

“In the perfect ideal, everybody’s equal in the team,” Melvyn said. “Everybody has a voice. Everybody is comfortable putting their hands up if they make a mistake but then wanting to improve performance.”

What Drives Team Engagement and Psychological Safety?

The environment a leader creates for their team affects both their engagement and sense of safety. High-performing teams exhibit the right balance between engagement and safety. However, many teams tend to overdo one and underdo the other, particularly on senior leadership teams where everyone is a functional expert. These top executives might be more worried about job security, high stakes, and reputation than about sharing responsibility for successes and failures.

Team development sessions can reveal how leader behaviour creates an environment of balance or imbalance. Using the lens of Hogan personality assessment data, APS began to offer a tactical twelve-item questionnaire around safety and engagement. This offering was developed from team sessions where participants seemed to resist confronting issues that were holding back performance. “We’re interested not only in the team working together, but also in individual development scenarios, where [a leader’s] individual behaviour has an impact,” Melvyn explained.

Four Zones of Team Engagement and Psychological Safety

Many teams struggle to function with optimal equality and balance across engagement and safety. The model that APS uses to characterise teams can be described as zones in a four-zone grid:

• The High-Performance Zone – (high safety, high engagement). This team likely feels comfortable expressing opinions and admitting failures and wants to innovate, collaborate, be accountable, and improve. Melvyn described it as a balance between everyone heading in the same direction and having a safe space to operate in along the way.
• The Comfort Zone – (high safety, low engagement). On this team, members likely feel free to speak openly and make mistakes, but they may not hold people accountable for results or focus on achieving outputs.
• The Anxiety Zone – (low safety, high engagement). This team likely has a lot of accountability and drive for results but also high tension, discomfort, or anxiety about how failure will be treated.
• The Apathy Zone – (low safety, low engagement). On this team, members likely lack openness and drive. Melvyn mentioned that absentee leadership can generate apathy in teams.

These zones give information about the overall team, but insight at the individual level is helpful too. Even teams in the high-performance zone may have individuals respond to the questionnaire that they don’t feel comfortable asking questions, for example. “Although on the surface it looks good as a collective, that’s a great discussion point for the team. How do we make these colleagues feel more comfortable around asking questions?” Melvyn said, adding that results are always anonymised.

Even more than individual team members, leaders have a responsibility to respond to team data. If an imbalance is revealed, leaders must acknowledge the personality drivers behind their behaviours that are impacting the team culture. To do that, Melvyn directs leaders to a deep understanding of their Hogan data.

How Personality Shapes Team Environment

The three core Hogan personality assessments provide a portrait of how someone is likely to show up at work, including how they lead. The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) describes the values and drivers that motivate behaviour from the inside. The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) measures the bright side of personality, or everyday personality strengths. The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) measures the dark side of personality, or potentially overused strengths that can emerge under stress, pressure, or complacency.

A person’s personality data show the degree to which they naturally feel safe in a group setting and how engaged they tend to be. A leader with high HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity will tend to create an environment where people feel welcome to share their thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, high HDS Excitable, Sceptical, and Mischievous scores could indicate a leader who creates an environment where openness might receive negative consequences. An indicator of engagement is the degree to which someone’s MVPI values match company values, with stronger alignment leading to higher engagement. Someone with a high HPI Ambition score will tend to show high engagement, although not universally. Anyone can become disengaged, just as anyone can feel unsafe.

Personalities on Anxiety Zone Teams

When team engagement is high and psychological safety is low, a team is operating in the anxiety zone. This anxiety can be an unspoken cause of behaviour. For instance, one of the APS questionnaire items says: “I’m willing to assert my perspective to get the best result.” Someone who tends to show up as assertive would probably have higher HPI Ambition and Sociability scores. Someone with lower HPI Ambition and Sociability might also be willing to assert their opinion but feel uncomfortable about doing so.

On such a team, even someone with high HPI Ambition scores might be worried about making mistakes. Melvyn finds that members of senior teams don’t want to participate in team development sessions because they are concerned about trying something new and failing. Someone highly ambitious with a high MVPI Power score could feel anxious if they aren’t sure they can win.

A leader with high scores on HDS Bold or Colourful could readily share thoughts and feelings without hesitation while not realising the effect of their behaviour on others. Melvyn told a story about a team session where members reported they did not feel at ease speaking up or asking questions without feeling stupid. The leader’s Hogan data showed they had a risk of shutting others down and dominating the team. Directly after the team session closed, the leader reverted to familiar unhelpful behavioural patterns, telling a team member, “Don’t ever say that to me again.” This exemplifies how a leader’s derailing tendencies directly affect team culture.

Personalities on Comfort Zone Teams

When psychological safety is high and team engagement is low, a team is operating in the comfort zone. Melvyn identified MVPI Affiliation and Altruism as values related to caring for and cooperating with one another. High HPI Interpersonal Sensitivity also relates to getting along. On the dark side of personality, the HDS scales of Cautious, Dutiful, and Leisurely can influence someone’s desire to maintain relationships at the expense of engagement—to ignore the elephant in the room, so to speak.

Melvyn described a senior HR team with high MVPI Altruism and Affiliation scores that prioritised a high degree of psychological safety. Leaders outside of the team wanted the HR team to challenge their thinking around business and strategy as well as deliver HR solutions. Within the team itself, members were highly engaged and clear on expectations, but they paid less attention to their reputation across the broader organisation. “What people wanted from them was over and above what they thought people wanted. It’s all about reputation, perception, and other people’s reality,” Melvyn explained.

How to Rebalance Teams

Rebalancing a team rarely calls for big changes. Often a leader needs to adapt specific behaviours to build more accountability or trust. This begins with recognising gaps between how they see themselves and how others see them, or their identity versus reputation. “The premise behind Hogan is creating that self-awareness about how we come across,” Melvyn said. “We always suggest to leaders, how do you create feedback loops so you can calibrate how the behaviour is playing out?.”

Teams need that rebalancing process also. A psychologically safe team that doesn’t hold itself accountable can learn to ask sharper questions that drive improvement. Although engagement and safety can differ greatly by team, the key is alignment. “For teams, do we have an agreed, consistent approach that’s right for our context?” Melvyn said. What matters is that everyone agrees on the method up front and calls it out when the method stops working.

Balance isn’t a fixed state but an evolving practice. As leadership effectiveness, team dynamics, and ways of working shift, the relationship between team engagement and psychological safety alters too. High-performing teams keep asking two questions to maintain balance: what’s working well, and what do we need to focus on next?

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 151 of The Science of Personality.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

The post Balancing Team Engagement and Psychological Safety appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

Overall global employee engagement may be down three percentage points since 2022,¹ but the manager engagement numbers are even more concerning. Global manager engagement, which was 31% in 2022, fell to 22% in 2025.¹ That’s nine percentage points in four years. Manager engagement has never dropped so much so fast.

Declining manager engagement is the primary driver of the broader downturn in employee engagement, which cost the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity last year.¹ The steep downward trajectory of manager engagement also bodes ill for many other crucial organisational outcomes: the well-being of employees, team effectiveness, and leadership pipelines.

How should organisations respond? First, understand why manager engagement is declining. Then, implement a data-driven talent management strategy to identify and support managers.

Why Is Manager Engagement Declining?

The role of manager is under stress from all sides. Executives expect managers to carry out strategic vision with fewer resources, smaller staff, and less operational support. Teams expect managers to show both technical expertise and leadership skills, even when no management training is provided. Externally, the rise of an AI-driven workplace creates uncertainty about job transformation. Internally, millennials—now the greatest share of managers in the workforce—are struggling to balance caring for their children and their parents while earning less, paying more, and maintaining mental well-being in an uncertain global economy and job market.²

Disproportionately, the managers whose engagement seems to be affected most are women.³ Not only is management challenging, but systemic issues seem to impede women at work generally. Nearly half a million women left the US workforce in 2025, 58% of which were voluntary exits.⁴ Why would so many women leave? Hogan research proves women leaders do not lack ambition. But the gender pay gap widened for the second consecutive year in the US.⁵ And the US does not have a national paid parental leave law. And the cost of childcare has increased faster than inflation since 2024.⁶ And while more women work from home than men,⁷ companies are shifting back to fully in-office jobs.⁸

Organisations cannot control economic uncertainty, AI disruption, or the caregiving pressures reshaping the workforce. But they can control one critical variable: who they put in management roles and whether those people have the capability to lead effectively under pressure. Without objective assessment of personality and leadership capability, organisations risk promoting high performers who succeeded as individual contributors but lack the resilience and interpersonal skills to lead teams through ambiguity, conflict, and stress.

Understanding Manager Personality

Leadership, which is the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team, requires organisations to redefine how they identify effective managers. All too often, managers are high-performing individual contributors who were promoted as a reward. However, the skills of a technical expert are not necessarily those of an effective manager. Managers accomplish work by means of their teams, so how they lead is integral to how successful they are in management.

The capability to lead an engaged, driven team has more to do with how someone tolerates pressure, makes decisions, and fosters trust than how charismatic they seem. A manager needs to show integrity, accountability, teamwork, and resilience. Organisations must focus on objective qualifications such as personality when selecting managers.

Personality Predicts Performance

Data from personality assessments can predict how an individual is likely to perform in a management role. For instance, measuring someone’s degree of resilience shows how they will likely handle stress, manage conflict, and deal with ambiguity as a manager.

Of course, resilience isn’t the only characteristic of a good manager. Organisations should assess managers for adaptability, emotional intelligence, learning mindset, influence, and other key capabilities. Workplace context, from company size and culture to team dynamics, also influences which competencies are essential at different managerial levels. A more equitable selection process based on personality and skills may reduce similarity bias, benefit women by increasing representation in the manager role, and mitigate future disengagement. Consider this: women comprise only 42% of US managers and 39% of senior managers.⁹

By selecting managers based on personality characteristics that predict performance in the role—rather than past individual achievement—organisations are more likely to identify people who can actually succeed in management. This reduces the likelihood of placing someone in a role where they’re likely to struggle. Yet selecting the right person is only the starting point. Even managers with the right personality characteristics need support. This includes training and development opportunities, clarity about expectations, and policies that signal the organisation values their well-being. These investments work together to cultivate manager engagement.

Improving Manager Engagement

Organisations can improve manager engagement through targeted development. People with strong support are more likely to succeed in a role than those without. But as of 2024, 56% of global managers had received no formal training or development support at all.³ This gap harms revenue, increases stress and inefficiency, and drives turnover.

Manager development includes training, coaching, and support informed by talent insights. Training might look like a virtual seminar about conflict resolution or a framework for performance reviews. But data-driven talent insights make development more strategic and targeted. Knowing that delivering results is an essential competency for managers in finance, a savvy investment company could design development that addresses this specific need.

The ROI on Manager Development

Development initiatives are worth it. Organisations that provide management training and development see a rise in manager engagement and performance, as well as team engagement and performance.³ The outcomes of such training and development (increased retention, increased productivity, and lower HR costs) could readily yield an ROI of 500% or even greater.¹⁰

Supporting Managers Benefits Everyone

In addition to development, organisations can also improve manager engagement by implementing policies and practices to support occupational well-being. For example, conducting a pay equity analysis signals a commitment to fairness for all employees. These supports help everyone, but especially women, who had the steepest engagement decline. Even if paid parental leave is not legally required, an organisation can still create policies to support new parents. Investing in the people who lead teams improves team engagement too.

Improving Team Engagement

Manager influence accounts for 70% of team engagement, meaning that manager engagement has a multiplier effect on everyone they lead.³ The relationship people have with their manager ranks among the top factors in overall job satisfaction, second only to relationships with coworkers.¹¹ Strengthening the manager-team relationship may be one of the most impactful ways for organisations to improve engagement.

Our definition of effective leadership focuses not on the leader’s performance but on the performance of their team. This positions managers as a resource for their teams. Refining talent strategy around management therefore yields downstream dividends for team productivity. In fact, one study showed team engagement rose by 18% when leaders received best practice training.³

Simply put, engaged teams result from engaged managers.

The manager engagement crisis signals a pivotal moment for organisations ready to rethink their talent strategies. Organisations must objectively select effective managers using personality assessment. They should equip managers with opportunities for training and development and build supportive policies. They must cultivate manager engagement since motivated managers inspire high-performing teams. These strategic efforts will pay dividends across every level of the organisation.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

References

1. Gallup. (2026). State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx
2. Lichtenberg, N. (2025, July 23). Millennials Are Officially the Majority of Managers—So Get Ready for a Combination of Burnout, Buddy Vibes, and Boundary Issues. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2025/07/23/millennial-managers-burnout-cool-boss-boundary-issues-glassdoor-worklife-trends-daniel-zhao/
3. Gallup. (2025). State of the Global Workplace: 2025 Report.
4. Travis, M. (2026, January 29). Women Exiting Workforce at Record Pace, New Catalyst Data Reveals Why. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelletravis/2026/01/29/women-exiting-workforce-at-record-pace-new-catalyst-data-reveals-why/
5. US Census Bureau. (2025, September 9). Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2024. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/income-poverty-health-insurance-coverage.html
6. Elkeurti, A., & Miller, C. C. (2026, March 5). Why Does Child Care Seem Less Affordable Than Ever? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/upshot/child-care-expensive-prices.html
7. US Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2025, June 6). Telework or Work at Home for Pay. https://www.bls.gov/cps/telework.htm
8. Merritt, K. (2026, April 23). Remote Work Statistics and Trends for 2026. Robert Half. https://www.roberthalf.com/us/en/insights/research/remote-work-statistics-and-trends
9. Krivkovich, A., Goldstein, D., & McConnell, M. (2025, December 9). Women in the Workplace 2025. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/women-in-the-workplace/
10. SHRM Labs. (n.d.). Measuring the ROI of Your Training Initiatives: Unlocking Insights into the Effectiveness of Your Employee Development Programs. SHRM Labs. https://www.shrm.org/labs/resources/measuring-the-roi-of-your-training-initiatives
11. Lin, L., Horowitz, J., & Fry, R. (2024, December 10). Most Americans Feel Good About Their Job Security But Not Their Pay. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/12/10/job-satisfaction/

The post Inside the Manager Engagement Crisis appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

On episode 150 of The Science of Personality, Hogan’s Managing Director of Asia Pacific Krista Pederson, PhD, and Senior Consultant of Asia Pacific Nicole Dickie, MS, discuss key findings of the Global Leadership Effectiveness Study and implications for leaders around the world.

Our report, The Leadership Divide, contains personality assessment data from more than 21,000 executives in Hogan’s global database and survey responses from nearly 10,000 full-time employees around the world. Let’s explore.

What Is the Global Leadership Effectiveness Study?

As the global authority on leadership and job performance, Hogan Assessments differentiates between effective leadership and emergent leadership. Effective leaders focus on supporting their teams to perform and compete; emergent leaders focus on getting into positions of leadership and reaching the top. “We challenge people to think about what actions a leader needs to do to become effective,” said Krista.

Generally, effective leaders excel at casting a vision, making good decisions, and showing integrity, competence, and humility. But instead of surveying only leaders, the Global Leadership Effectiveness Study focuses on the perspective of employees. How do workers from different global markets describe effective leaders? Are those the people that organisations tend to promote?

Theoretical Background and Methodology

Implicit leadership theory informed the background of our study. “Every person has an unconscious, personal idea of what makes a leader,” Nicole explained. “When you evaluate someone as a leader, you’re willing to follow them. Our goal was to use information about respondents’ perceptions of an ideal leader to help develop current and future leaders.”

We used Hogan’s Job Evaluation Tool, or JET, to administer our survey. While a typical job analysis would survey subject-matter experts and incumbents about what success requires in a particular job (for example, accountant), this survey considered anyone who has ever had a boss to be a subject-matter expert on what success requires in an ideal leader. For each item, the survey presented a behavioural statement and asked respondents to rate the behaviour on a five-point scale (very good to very bad) for an ideal leader. For instance, global respondents said that the ability to see things from the perspective of others was very good for ideal leader performance. Perspective-taking was the top endorsed behaviour for ideal leaders around the world.

After collecting data on the leaders that people want, we compared their responses to the personality data of existing leaders. Our findings? We uncovered a concerningly large leadership divide.

The Leadership Divide: A Gap Between the Leaders We Have and the Leaders We Want

The leaders that organisations promote are not necessarily the leaders people want. Compare the five highest-ranking competencies of current global leaders with the competencies that global respondents want to see in their leaders.

The Leaders We Have

1. Inspiring others
2. Competing with others
3. Presenting to others
4. Taking initiative
5. Driving innovation

These behaviours correspond closely to those of emergent leaders, or leaders who strive to attain positions of leadership.

The Leaders We Want

1. Effective communication
2. Effective decision-making
3. Accountability
4. Integrity
5. Leadership ability (supporting team performance)

Respondents prioritised effective leadership characteristics, such as communicating to the team, making good decisions, and being willing to admit mistakes. “The leaders that we have are emergent leaders, and the leaders that people want are effective leaders,” Krista said.

What Employees Around the World Want from Their Leaders

The Global Leadership Effectiveness Study produced clear themes on how global employees view ideal leadership. First, they want their leaders to value teamwork and relationships. This relates to the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) scale Affiliation, which measures preferences for teamwork. Global executives score only moderately on Affiliation. However, their followers want them to foster a sense of belonging, help people work together as a team, and place importance on relationships in organisations.

Respondents also want people-first leadership. They positively described their ideal leaders as having energy and drive, being empathetic and caring about people, and being curious and strategic. These characteristics relate to higher scores on the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) scales Ambition, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Inquisitive. Global leaders do tend to have these characteristics. However, both high and low HPI scores have positive and negative behaviours associated with them. Someone who scores high on Interpersonal Sensitivity is likely to be tactful, empathic, and caring, but they may be reluctant to confront others. This can be an opportunity for development.

Finally, global workers emphatically do not want leaders who show Hogan Development Survey (HDS) behaviours associated with the scales Excitable, Cautious, Leisurely, and Bold. Excitable concerns emotional volatility, Cautious concerns fear of risk or failure, Leisurely concerns being outwardly agreeable but inwardly resentful, and Bold concerns entitlement and arrogance. Global leaders tend to have high HDS Bold scores, positioning themselves as the superheroes who will save their organisations. “The facet of Bold where leaders are entitled was really, really disliked by respondents,” Nicole said. Instead, employees desire humble leaders who admit their mistakes and listen to feedback.

Does Effective Leadership Look the Same Around the World?

Our data show that employees are overall consistent in what they want in a leader (see above). But there are intriguing differences in regional data, Nicole explained. High MVPI Science was more desirable in some regions than others. The demand for making data-based decisions was particularly strong in Latin America (Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia), Europe (Spain, Lithuania, Romania, Czech Republic, Greece), and Asia Pacific (Mainland China and India). Fifty percent or more of respondents in these countries said that high Science behaviours are good to very good for ideal leadership.

High HPI Prudence was more desirable in other regions. Respondents in these markets want leaders to organise work, adhere to rules, strive for quality, and initiate structure: Middle East (specifically United Arab Emirates), Asia Pacific (Vietnam and Greater China), Europe (France and Spain), and Latin America (Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, and Mexico).

Each country showed individualised and nuanced results. Indian leaders tend to have high Excitable, high Leisurely, high Bold, and moderate Cautious scores. Yet most respondents in India did not want Excitable, Leisurely, Bold, and Cautious behaviours in leaders—a significant misalignment. Conversely, respondents did not prioritise HPI Ambition in Japan, where harmony and group consensus are valued, and this is consistent with how Japanese leaders tend to score. However, in Denmark, where executives tend to have extremely high Ambition scores, respondents did not prioritise Ambition either. Danish respondents perhaps have less concern with competition and prefer cooperation and collaboration.

How to Use These Findings to Develop Better Leaders

“We hope the results of this report can inspire organisations to think about how leadership development programs can better support the needs of the followers,” Krista said. Most organisations assume that leaders know what their followers need from them. Instead, organisations can increase engagement by knowing what teams say they need and providing leadership development to close any gaps. “We should think beyond a leader who can drive profitability and think about leaders who can support the team members,” she added.

Executive coaches can increase developmental impact by focusing on top gaps and themes. Nicole called out MVPI Affiliation, MVPI Science, and HDS Bold. Leaders who prefer operating independently (Affiliation) should learn relationship-building techniques. Practical techniques include informal check-ins, team rituals, cross-team collaboration, and meetings without agendas to prioritise connection. Leaders who rely on intuition and experience to make decisions (Science) should make their reasoning clear to teams, test their assumptions, and use data as an input rather than an afterthought. Leaders who are confident and decisive (Bold) should be wary of overusing these strengths. “We see in the data from respondents that they don’t want to be steamrolled,” Nicole said. “They want their leaders to be open to feedback. They want their leaders to be humble.” She added that coaches equipped with regional data can tailor development goals to align with specific trends.

Overall, the Global Leadership Effectiveness Study shows that employees know what they need to be successful. They desire leaders who are emotionally intelligent and people oriented, driven for excellence and quality, thoughtful and structured, and confident and goal directed. “Let’s listen to employees and see if we can align to meet their expectations to better engage them,” Nicole said.

Download the full report here

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

The post The Leadership Divide: Global Leadership Effectiveness Study Findings appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

Some leaders are more concerned with appearing loyal to executives than earning their team’s trust. It can make them seem ingratiating toward authority and unwilling to protect their employees. At Hogan, we describe this type of behaviour as Dutiful.

Characteristics of Dutiful Leaders

The Hogan assessments measure personality strengths, counterproductive tendencies, and values. The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) measures the dark side of personality in 11 behavioural patterns, called derailers. These characteristics may be strengths on a day-to-day basis, but they can cause career derailment when an individual stops self-monitoring under pressure, stress, complacency, or boredom. The HDS’s Dutiful derailer concerns seeming supportive and loyal, at times to a fault.

A Dutiful leadership style can have strengths. In addition to being dependable, these leaders typically have reputations for being flexible, agreeable, and compliant. They can be easy to work with because they accommodate whatever’s asked of them. But when overused, this behaviour style turns into people-pleasing, ingratiation, and reluctance to take independent action. Leaders might seek approval before acting, hesitate to speak up, depend on others for advice, and wait for direction. They tend to be unwilling to challenge their superiors or question the status quo. (Think of TV workplace comedy characters Gabe Lewis from The Office and Tom Wambsgans from Succession.)

Why People-Pleasing Doesn’t Help Leaders

The same dependability that earns trust early in a career can damage a leader’s reputation when used in excess. Without strategic self-awareness, leaders who have Dutiful tendencies can limit their careers, alienate their teams, and hinder organisational outcomes.

Leaders at higher levels are expected to be independent, self-reliant, and willing to take and defend a position. Advancement in most organisations requires a degree of self-sufficiency, decisiveness, and tough-mindedness.

If a leader is unable to make decisions without supervisor approval, their employees might lose trust in them. If they’re too ingratiating to authority, they might not stand up for their direct reports. (Some might describe this as “kiss up, kick down” behaviour.) People-pleasing often means difficulty providing critical feedback, especially in a formal setting. If a leader always withholds their opinion for fear of contradiction, no one can tell what they actually think.

How to Manage People-Pleasing at Work

Dutiful leaders should first acknowledge that deference could be a problematic behavioural response. Understand the conditions that prompt people-pleasing, including general states such as stress, pressure, and complacency, as well as specific triggers. Perhaps a previous work environment discouraged speaking up or unclear instructions resulted in blame.

Then build coping strategies or alternate behaviours by setting development goals. This might look like roleplaying expressing disagreement or giving negative feedback. Deciding on specific criteria for when supervisor approval is needed promotes independent decision-making. Creating a list of ideas for process or strategy improvements and sharing them can be another development exercise for Dutiful individuals to gain practice taking a stance.

The direct reports of a people-pleasing leader should gauge their level of psychological safety in the team or environment. If the environment feels safe, the team could request support or express needs related to business objectives, thus giving the leader a strategic reason to speak up for them. When providing an opinion that the leader might perceive as dissenting, team members can support their case with data and consensus.

Building and maintaining a high-performing team will earn esteem for a leader more successfully than people-pleasing behaviour. Effective leadership sometimes requires the assertiveness to contradict superiors and the autonomy to make an impact.

Expert Contributor

Ryan Rush, PhD, is a cognitive psychologist who works as a senior consultant on the talent solutions team at Hogan Assessments.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

The post The Fine Line Between Dependability and People-Pleasing at Work appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

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.

The post A Quick and Dirty Guide to Validity & Reliability appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

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.

*This article originally appeared on Hogan Assessments.

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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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