Too often, coaching begins with broad conversations, subjective impressions, or goals that are not clearly anchored in evidence. While these discussions can be valuable, they do not always lead to meaningful or measurable change. For organisations investing in leadership capability, that creates a challenge. The question is no longer whether coaching is helpful, but whether it is focused enough to drive the outcomes that matter. That is what stands assessment-based coaching apart from the rest.

Assessment-based coaching turns insight into action—helping leaders make meaningful, measurable shifts in how they show up at work. By combining validated assessment data with skilled coaching, organisations can create a clearer, more personalised path to development. The result is coaching that is more targeted and better aligned to business priorities.

What Is Assessment-Based Coaching?

Assessment-based coaching is a development approach that uses psychometric, behavioural, or leadership assessment data to inform and guide coaching conversations.

Rather than relying only on self-reflection or informal feedback, this method starts with objective insights into how an individual is likely to lead, respond under pressure, engage with others, and approach work. This creates a much stronger foundation for development.

Assessment-based coaching gives every leader a clear, evidence-backed path to improving performance and unlocking potential. It helps identify strengths to build on, risks to manage, and areas where focused development can create the greatest impact.

Why Traditional Coaching Can Fall Short

Traditional coaching often depends heavily on what the participant chooses to share, what the coach observes, and how both parties interpret the issues at hand. While this can still be useful, it may miss important blind spots or fail to uncover the underlying patterns affecting performance.

Without robust data, coaching can become too general, too reactive, or too difficult to measure. Participants may leave with greater awareness, but not necessarily with a practical roadmap for sustained behaviour change.

For organisations, this can make it harder to evaluate return on investment or connect coaching to broader leadership and business outcomes.

How Assessment Data Improves Coaching Outcomes

The strength of assessment-based coaching lies in its precision.

When coaching is informed by valid assessment data, the conversation becomes more focused from the outset. Leaders gain richer insight into their behavioural tendencies, leadership style, motivators, and potential derailers. Coaches can then use this information to shape a development approach that is highly relevant to the individual and their context.

By personalising development through assessment data, coaching accelerates growth and delivers results that matter. Instead of taking a generic approach, leaders receive support that is tailored to who they are, how they operate, and what success requires in their role.

This makes coaching more practical, more efficient, and more likely to create lasting change.

The Link Between Assessment-Based Coaching and Behaviour Change

One of the most important benefits of assessment-based coaching is that it supports real behaviour change, not just reflection.

Insight is only valuable if it leads to action. When leaders understand the specific behaviours that are helping or hindering their effectiveness, they can work with a coach to translate that insight into clear, realistic development goals. This might include strengthening communication, improving decision-making, managing stress responses, or adapting leadership style to different stakeholders and situations.

Combining rich assessment insights with expert coaching creates targeted development that drives real behaviour change. With a clear starting point and a structured focus, coaching becomes more than a conversation. It becomes a disciplined process of growth.

Why Assessment-Based Coaching Is More Strategic for Organisations

For organisations, leadership coaching should not sit in isolation from business goals.

Assessment-based coaching offers a more strategic approach because it can be aligned to leadership frameworks, succession priorities, team effectiveness, and organisational capability needs. It allows businesses to support leaders in ways that are both individually meaningful and organisationally relevant.

Assessment-informed coaching ensures every conversation is focused, personalised, and aligned with organisational goals. This helps organisations move beyond ad hoc development and invest in coaching with greater confidence, consistency, and clarity.

It also supports stronger evaluation. With assessment data as a benchmark, organisations can better understand development needs, track growth over time, and connect coaching outcomes to broader performance objectives.

The Value of Objective Insight in Leadership Development

Leaders do not always receive clear or honest feedback in the workplace. Seniority, organisational dynamics, and competing priorities can limit how much useful feedback people receive about their leadership impact.

Assessment tools help bridge that gap by providing objective insight that may not surface through day-to-day interactions alone. They can uncover patterns that leaders may not recognise in themselves, particularly under pressure or in complex environments.

This objectivity strengthens the coaching process. It reduces guesswork, surfaces blind spots earlier, and ensures development is grounded in evidence rather than assumption.

Why the Human Coach Still Matters

While assessment data is powerful, it is the quality of coaching that helps bring it to life.

A skilled coach helps leaders interpret their results in context, make sense of patterns, challenge unhelpful habits, and commit to practical action. They create the space for reflection, accountability, and sustained development.

Assessment-based coaching works best when robust data and expert coaching are brought together. The assessment provides clarity. The coach helps convert that clarity into meaningful progress.

Final Thoughts: A Smarter Approach to Leadership Coaching

Organisations are under increasing pressure to invest in development that is evidence-based, targeted, and capable of delivering measurable value.

Assessment-based coaching meets that need. It offers a more focused and personalised approach to leadership development, grounded in objective insight and designed to support real change. Rather than relying on broad conversation alone, it helps leaders build self-awareness, improve performance, and develop in ways that align with both personal and organisational goals.

For organisations seeking a stronger return on their coaching investment, assessment-based coaching is not just a better option. It is a smarter one.

Ready to Make Coaching More Targeted and Impactful?

At PBC, we combine robust assessment insights with expert coaching to help leaders grow in ways that are practical, measurable, and aligned to organisational priorities. Our evidence-based approach supports deeper self-awareness, sharper development focus, and meaningful behaviour change over time.

If you are looking to strengthen leadership capability through a more personalised and data-informed coaching approach, get in touch with PBC to explore how assessment-based coaching can support your people and your organisation.

The post Why Assessment-Based Coaching Delivers Better Leadership Outcomes appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

While change is prevalent, it doesn’t always arise from the same circumstances. Some leaders face mergers or acquisitions, some face role changes, and some face new organisational strategy or culture. When delivering development feedback to a leader, Hogan practitioners need to understand the context. For example, a leader who was hired to address a specific problem and a leader who is part of a high potential program have two distinctly different contexts for development.

The Hogan practitioner’s role is to help leaders build strategic self-awareness about their approach to change management so they can enable their teams to succeed. To explore the best practices for coaching leaders through change, we interviewed three experienced coaches in the Hogan Coaching Network. These experts in personality assessment interpretation and feedback shared insights about how to prep for leadership coaching sessions, tried-and-true techniques for feedback delivery, and how they advise leaders about change management.

How to Prepare for Coaching Through Change

The first step is understanding the leader’s personality assessment data. When interpreting the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) in a change management context, it is important to consider Adjustment and Interpersonal Sensitivity. Adjustment can indicate a leader’s stress tolerance and resilience, while Interpersonal Sensitivity can describe their communication style and approach. A leader with a low Interpersonal Sensitivity score might be oblivious to morale, while one with a high score might avoid necessary conflict. These two HPI scales can also reveal a leader’s socioemotional skills, such as perceiving and influencing others’ emotions or responding to stress with composure. This matters because a leader whose team is undergoing change will need to cope personally while also guiding team members through a similar experience.

Regarding the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), a Hogan practitioner should assess the leader’s broad category of derailers: Moving Away, Moving Against, or Moving Toward. This can indicate whether the leader’s tendency during stress is to withdraw, manipulate or persuade, or seek approval, respectively.

Practitioners should also read assessment results across the HPI, HDS, and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) to evaluate the leader’s likelihood to embrace change. HPI Prudence and Inquisitive, HDS Skeptical and Cautious, and MVPI Tradition and Security can all suggest how a leader might respond to the need for change. “People don’t resist change as much as they fear their ability to cope with it,” explained HCN Coach Ray Harrison.

In addition to interpreting assessment results through a lens of change, Hogan practitioners should also gather additional data for leadership coaching. Harrison emphasized the need to be explicit about the details of the appointment charter. Other data might include the critical few objectives of the role, identification of what person or group is driving the change, employment history and education, stakeholder analyses, 360-degree interviews, previous performance assessments, employee survey data about culture, leadership and organisational values, and more. Contextual research can be effective for leadership coaching when paired with Hogan Leadership Forecast Series (LFS) results, which provide robust feedback about a leader’s performance capabilities, challenges, and core drivers.

Hogan practitioners should keep the big picture in mind when prepping for a development session. It’s important to encourage leaders because change initiatives are stressful. Emphasize positivity to counteract fears. Help them understand the strengths and skills they already possess to succeed.

How to Deliver Feedback About Leading Through Change

Ideally, the assessment debriefing and developmental coaching should take place over several sessions over several weeks or months. The sessions will likely move through three broad phases: (1) advance data gathering, (2) the Hogan debrief, and (3) leadership coaching. The advance phase with the leader is one or two sessions to get to know them and discuss their expectations for coaching. The debriefing phase might also take place over two sessions, the first to present the data and the second to discuss their response and takeaways. The leadership coaching phase could be six to eight sessions in which the practitioner and the leader build the leader’s development plan and evaluate its implementation.

As in other types of debriefing sessions, a practitioner’s main approach should be asking a lot of open, nonjudgmental questions to elicit self-reflection. What characteristics of your personality do you see as assets? What expectations does your organisation hold for you? What is your biggest concern about success? What alignment do you notice between your values and the organisation’s values? What do you think the effects of the change will be on your team? How do you tend to feel or respond when . . . ? What surprises you? What resonates with you? What messages are you hearing? What have we not talked about yet?

“In times of massive change, there are dangerous opportunities to grow,” said HCN Coach Brian Chitester. Hogan practitioners can give leaders a behavioural repertoire to help them moderate overused strengths and manage their derailers. Personality data can help identify occasions when leaders might need to act against their inclinations. For instance, a leader with an extremely low Interpersonal Sensitivity score can learn how to balance their direct, candid communication style with sensitivity and active listening skills. Leaders who understand how behavioural change can affect their reputations positively will be most motivated to grow.

Above all, practitioners should start and stay positive. Chitester advised practitioners to help the leader see which characteristics give them natural advantages in achieving their goals.

Change Management Advice for Leaders

Although each leader’s personality is unique, some common pieces of change management advice are likely to apply to leaders in nearly every situation. “Just about every leader is leading through change. Most organisations are trying to change in one way or another,” HCN Coach Betsy Reeder pointed out.

1. Use a change model.

Having a model for change is helpful to keep leaders and teams on track. Leaders should adopt a model and stick with it. While there are numerous effective change frameworks, each of the three HCN coaches separately mentioned Leading Change by John Kotter. Kotter presents an eight-step process for organisational transformation founded on the viewpoint that “only leadership can motivate the actions needed to alter behaviour in any significant way.”

2. Build up the team.

Effective change starts with team alignment and grows from there. Communicating well with the team is necessary throughout every phase of change management. Of particular importance is securing the team’s commitment. Instead of imposing a unilateral decision, leaders should allow team members to participate in decision-making whenever possible. This will increase the team’s sense of ownership and control of the change initiatives.

3. Listen, listen, listen.

Reeder advised leaders to be intentional about listening to and understanding the team. Team members who are heard can become positive change agents within their organisations. Leaders also need to listen to feedback about themselves. Strategic self-awareness is developed through understanding, commitment, and action, a process that relies on listening.

4. Be optimistic.

Everyone handles change differently. Leaders who choose to speak and act with positivity can leverage what makes them successful with confidence. Optimism is catching, after all.

Contributors

We thank our HCN contributors for sharing their collective decades of experience in using Hogan assessments to help leaders navigate change:

• Brian Chitester is the president at Chitester Leadership and Executive Development.
• Ray Harrison is the managing director at Executive TransforMetrics.
• Elizabeth “Betsy” Reeder is the regional vice president at The Leader’s Edge/Leaders by Design and executive coach at A.J. O’Connor Associates.

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To understand why, it is important to understand how AI systems work. GPTs do not have “understanding” of medical science or poetry or the Roman empire in the sense that humans can understand these topics. Instead, these systems have learned associations between words and pieces of text.ⁱ When GPTs see a piece of text that says, “Write me an essay on the fall of Rome,” they see the words “write,” “essay,” and “fall of Rome.” They interpret that input as a request to generate a logically coherent (and possibly factually accurate) series of words and phrases connected to the text “fall of Rome” in essay format. The system learned these associations through a long series of trial-and-error efforts using massive computing power on vast amounts of text (i.e., the internet).

Because AI systems can take virtually any input and produce some logically coherent and possibly accurate output, it should come as no surprise that they can also take scores from Hogan assessments as inputs and generate text-based outputs. Given Hogan Personality Inventory scores as inputs, ChatGPT will provide interpretive text for those scores. For example, I asked ChatGPT to provide an interpretation of a score of 5 on the HPI’s Ambition scale, and it said:

“Your score in the Ambition scale is low, which suggests that you may not be particularly driven to achieve power, status, or wealth. You may be content with your current position and not feel the need to constantly pursue advancement or recognition. This can be a positive trait as it may allow you to focus on more important things in life.”

This is a logically coherent and reasonable interpretation. However, the interpretation does not say much about potential for leadership, the degree to which the scorer has a sense of direction in life, or the degree to which the scorer is comfortable in front of a large audience—all of which are captured by Hogan’s Ambition scale. Although the interpretation may seem accurate and valid, it may not be driven by any connection to Hogan at all, but simply by how the word “ambition” is used broadly in language.

Keep in mind that Hogan interpretative reports and guidance are based on empirical relationships between our assessments and outcomes. Scores on our assessments mean what they predict, and our reports reflect those relationships. This not to say that GPT-based interpretations of Hogan scores will not be valid or accurate now or in the future. In fact, training GPT models to reflect Hogan nomenclature is possible, and we are working on such tools currently.

But we must caution against using general artificial intelligence systems to generate interpretations of Hogan reports. Our own testing indicates that, at least on some occasions, the AI systems generate interpretations that are grossly incorrect and completely erroneous. While we may change our stance on this in the future as AI systems improve and more test results come in, for the time being we strongly recommend that any Hogan report interpretations come directly from Hogan or a Hogan-certified practitioner.

This blog post was written by Hogan Chief Science Officer Ryne Sherman, PhD.

Note

1. Some might argue that human understanding of these things is also simply association between words and text; we are not so sure we are ready to make that equivalency yet.

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Recently on The Science of Personality Live, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, chief science officer, and Blake Loepp, PR manager at Hogan Assessments, spoke with Michal Kosinski, PhD, associate professor in organisational behaviour at Stanford University, about the evolving technology of artificial intelligence.

Michal’s primary research focus is studying humans in a digital environment using cutting-edge computational methods, artificial intelligence, and big data. He was also behind the first press article warning against Cambridge Analytica, the privacy risks they exploited, and the efficiency of the methods they use.

Let’s look at how AI language models have evolved, what AI-assisted communication might become, how AI affects the future of personality assessment, and whether AI language models can be creative.

The Evolution of AI Language Models

Within the next few months (as of March 2023), AI language models will become exponentially more capable and ingenious. How does that explosive growth happen?

The approach to the development of AI language models started with chess. At first, software engineers and data scientists fed AI chess programs with archives of chess games played by humans. Then they equipped two AI programs with a virtual chessboard and instructions for how to play without any human intervention. “For the first few million games, those models were completely stupid,” Michal said, explaining that the rate of play was millions of games per second. “But soon, after a few hours, what emerged was this alien, superhuman software that could play chess at a level completely unachievable to human players.”

Software developers and artificial intelligence specialists used the same adaptive strategy to teach AI models how to craft language. Humans learn language through conversation, context, and correction. They make mistakes, learn, and make mistakes more rarely over time. “At some point they stop making mistakes and reach new levels of language. The same approach was used to train ChatGPT and similar models,” Michal said. The AI programs were given sentences with one word missing, failed millions of times to fill in the blank correctly, and then began to get it right. After a few million dollars of electricity and a few billion sentences, Michal quipped, the programs showed language mastery at an extraordinary level.

The AI revolution originated by teaching machines to solve problems using the same strategies that we use to teach humans: reinforcement and feedback. At first, the machines make obvious logical mistakes, but then they don’t. “The AI is responding to you as if as if it’s another person, which is the most incredible thing,” added Ryne. Because computers can exceed humans in logical ability, they are well suited to both playing chess and using language.

AI-Assisted Communication

“AI is a revolution comparable with the invention of written language,” Michal said. Manual writing gave humans the ability to communicate across time, sometimes thousands of years in the past. Knowing how to use a stylus, quill, or pencil was an essential method for communication before computers. Now, knowing how to use a keyboard is essential. Very shortly, the same fundamental change will happen with AI language models, Michal predicted.

“I think that GPT is potentially a new language for humanity to communicate at speed and convenience unheard of and impossible before,” Michal said.

An AI language model won’t just help humans write emails. It will craft the perfect message in the language that is most readily understood for the recipient. Here’s how.

Imagine that Michal wants to send Ryne an email. An AI language model knows and remembers all the events of each person’s life and has consumed every piece of digital communication each has produced. If Michal asked the AI to send a message to Ryne, he could make the request in very few words as if speaking to a good friend with intimate knowledge of him. But because the AI knew Ryne at that same level, it could “translate” Michal’s message into the perfect form for Ryne. The AI could use not only Ryne’s preferred language, such as English or Mandarin, but also a highly personalised form of that language unique to Ryne.

“In terms of the potential for translation, it knows the meaning of what you’re trying to say. It can translate that into a meaning that somebody else can understand in the way they understand,” Ryne said.

Another sense of AI-assisted communication is searching the internet. You wouldn’t ask the AI language model to find a website for you; you’d ask it the question you wanted to learn. It would search all websites and tailor its answer to any length or depth for your individual understanding of the world.

AI in Personality Assessment

Artificial intelligence is great at knowing and remembering what has been written, both words and data. For an AI language model to predict personality based on language, you’d need to first collect a lot of quality data. Michal pointed out that AI language models already understand language, of course, and can translate words into analysable numbers. “They already understand psychological concepts like personality,” he said. These models have read texts written by introverts and extroverts and could theoretically detect, based on a fragment of a text, whether a person is introverted or extroverted.

Ryne imagined whether personality assessments of the future would have questionnaires and self-reporting. “One of the big questions surrounding this topic is to what degree I’m a willing participant in this endeavor,” he said. The quality of publicly available information versus data gained from individuals intentionally taking a personality assessment will differ substantially. The AI-assisted analysis would likely be higher quality in the latter case. Voluntary participation would also address questions of ethics.

Using big data models to predict personality characteristics is not a new notion. It has positives: it can analyse millions of people in a minute, and it can match people with compatible work or suggest workplace training and development. It also has negatives: it can be used to invade privacy or manipulate people. “As with many other technologies, we focus on the risks of the technology itself, completely forgetting that the real risk is in the intentions of the users,” Michal responded.

Artificial Intelligence and Creativity

A new fronter in AI language models is innovation and creativity. Humanity has taken generations to refine speech and writing. Individual humans spend over a decade learning to speak and write. AI language models have mastered written communication in a few years at a high level that continues to increase.

Michal compared AI creativity to human creativity in that most of us learn and combine elements of what we know or have experienced in new, creative ways. Perceiving computers as nothing but glorified calculators is short-sighted thinking, he said. That computers can incorporate and build elements into new results makes them fundamentally creative too.

“Many other animals are also creative in their own ways that we do not always recognize because it’s just not our type of art. The same applies to computers,” Michal said. “They learn from us, they learn from each other, and they become extremely creative with what they are good at—and they’re increasingly good at anything we ask them to do.”

Note: When ChatGPT (March 23 version) was asked to provide a quote in fewer than 120 characters about how it learned language, this was its response: “Words woven, sounds spoken, meanings grasped. A symphony of curiosity, immersion, and connection. Language learned, world unlocked.”

Listen to this conversation in full, and find the whole library of episodes at The Science of Personality. Never miss a new episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts.

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By researching the personal lives of CEOs and their behaviour outside of the workplace, Aiyesha has identified data that can be quite predictive of how they may perform on the job.

Let’s dive into how the personality characteristics of materialism and rule breaking can affect CEO behaviour.

CEO Personality Matters

Even with systemic fixes and the right incentives, not everyone will behave the same. That’s why corporate scandals still occur despite layers of regulation. Individual managerial styles matter.

“We know managers matter, but what about them is important?” Aiyesha asked. “What should we care about, and how does it matter for corporate outcomes?” Those questions inspired her research into about 1,000 public companies and executives in the US. Her findings? Certain personality characteristics, observable in off-the-job lifestyles of executives, correlate with actions executives take within organisations.

Regulators can step in and uncover fraud and scandals after they’ve already taken place—after shareholders have lost resources and employees have lost jobs. The goal of looking at lifestyles of executives is to know some indicators of risk beforehand. Stopping these actions before they take place by using an empirical measure of character is the underlying motivation driving the research.

Understanding CEO Risk Factors

Aiyesha’s research has shown two characteristics that could lead to major corporate blunders: materialism and an inclination toward rule breaking. However, organisations often ignore evidence of these values when hiring CEOs, especially for internal hires. Why?

First, there’s no need to dismiss a CEO candidate because they have multiple luxury assets or a few speeding tickets. They likely bring many other desirable strengths to the table, such as innovation, creativity, and a certain comfort with risk.

“But leaders can be a strong force in establishing the culture of the firm,” Aiyesha pointed out. Someone who breaks rules might inspire a culture that rewards rule breaking, for instance.

Most firms focus on education, experience, and accomplishments in selection. Including behavioural attributes in selection criteria can add to the educational and professional qualifications already in consideration. “Boards can definitely take more cautionary measures in their hiring practices, like expanding background checks for internal candidates,” Aiyesha added.

Repeated legal infractions or a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption are not reasons to dismiss a candidate. Candidates with these behavioural attributes bring very strong upsides to the table, but the attributes can be warning signs about questionable behaviour or values. Knowing what strengths and potential shortcomings a person brings to the role is the first step in establishing a system or process to mitigate the individual’s risks.

CEO Behaviour: Materialism

Measuring materialism in a CEO can be a challenge. For one, the signs must be observable. For another, the signs must be indicative of values, which is more difficult to discern.

When psychology researchers talk about materialism, they mean a set of values that define how individuals weigh intrinsic motivations, such as spirituality, benevolence, or community, relative to extrinsic motivations, such as image, status, or material possessions. “A very materialistic person will seek material acquisitions at the cost of community values,” Aiyesha said.

Merely possessing a lot of luxury goods is not sufficient to make one materialistic. “When someone has a zeal to pursue material possessions at the cost of the welfare of others and potentially themselves, they are exemplifying a materialistic value system,” Aiyesha said. The observable assets of executives like houses, cars, and yachts compared to their wealth level shows how intent they are on acquiring material possessions. If someone possesses five times the value of luxury assets as another person at the same wealth level, then it’s safe to say they probably have a tendency towards materialism.

Materialism is potentially a problem in a corporate setting if a CEO is willing to waste shareholder resources or damage the welfare of others to get material goods. This value held by a leader affects the values of the organisation, as well.

CEO Behaviour: Rule Breaking

Like materialism, external rule-breaking behaviour speaks to internal values. The underlying construct is a lack of self-control and disregard for rules and laws. If you believe rules don’t apply to you, you’ll be more likely to violate them to achieve your goals.

In looking at executives’ legal records, Aiyesha found that executives with legal infractions had a higher propensity to commit fraud and manipulate earnings numbers than those without. The results were true even for executives with only traffic or speeding violations. “Even minor violations can give an indication of deeper personality differences,” Aiyesha observed.

Here’s a twist: executives with prior legal infractions tend to be involved in committing the fraud themselves, while materialistic executives tend to create a culture where other people are implicated in the fraud.

Given that corporate fraud is an extremely rare event, Aiyesha also looked at the tendency to profit from insider trading. Rule-breaking CEOs profited more; the outsized profitability and lucrative timing suggest that they could have benefited unfairly. There also seems to be a correlation between these profits and the severity of the legal infraction—the more severe, the more profitable.

So, what should organisations do?

How to Hire a CEO

Based on Aiyesha’s research findings, these are the steps that organisations hiring for C-suite positions can take.

In general, boards should not dismiss a candidate simply due to luxury possessions or speeding tickets. They should, however, be aware of the risks that could point to a red flag.

Expanding selection criteria to include background checks and looking at behavioural attributes in addition to professional successes could be useful. Where necessary, organisations can also implement risk management and compliance measures as guardrails. Lastly, organisations can also help executives to develop strategic self-awareness and encourage them to define personal guardrails to manage their behaviour.

A Vote for CEO Frugality

“I want to end on a positive note and celebrate another characteristic that is linked to materialism. The opposite of materialism is frugality,” Aiyesha said. “Our research shows very strong consistent results of how frugal executives benefit companies in terms of stewardship of shareholder resources.”

The values of leaders set the culture of organisations. Materialistic or rule-breaking CEOs can tacitly foster an environment of materialism and rule breaking. Frugal CEOs, on the other hand, tend to have tighter controls and risk management systems. They tend to take a long-term focus and shape ethical cultures. These CEOs tend to focus on socially responsible activities.

“Creating a culture of frugality in organisations, either through hiring that mindset or by celebrating such an attitude so that it inspires everyone to have this notion, can take companies a long way in creating shareholder values,” Aiyesha said.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 58 of The Science of Personality.

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You’re giving feedback during a debrief, and suddenly the leader goes quiet. You can feel the rapport evaporate. This unpredictable shift caught you by surprise, and you wish you could have anticipated it in preparing for the feedback session. Predicting feedback resistance is not impossible, however, with all the Hogan personality data you have at your fingertips.

Hogan practitioners can successfully navigate feedback sessions and ongoing development discussions with leaders who compartmentalize or resist feedback, turning resistance into receptivity. Practitioners need to be aware of the likelihood of feedback resistance while interpreting results and during the session itself. By understanding the characteristics that might dispose people to resist feedback, practitioners can purposefully direct a feedback session toward a positive and empowering outcome: helping leaders cultivate strategic self-awareness and behavioral modification strategies to improve their performance.

In this article, we will cover five types of feedback resistance. The hostile, defensive, arrogant, and indifferent feedback resistance types all tend to be individual, while the fifth type, cultural, emerges from the organizational environment. Our next article about feedback will cover strategies for overcoming feedback resistance.

Let’s dive right in.

Types of Feedback Resistance

Certain scores or scale combinations on the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) might point to a likelihood of feedback resistance. For instance, someone who scores moderate (70%–89%) or high (90%–100%) on the HDS Cautious scale may resist change in how they work. By no means does this imply that every person with a high Cautious score will seem defensive during feedback or development. It does, however, indicate that a Hogan practitioner should deliver feedback mindfully, taking care to ask questions and demonstrate openness.

Note that the following overview of types of feedback resistance is not exhaustive. Neither are the scale scores we highlight for each type. Remember, feedback resistance is as unique and complex as each personality.

Hostile

Someone who offers hostile feedback resistance may have some combination of these scale scores: low Ambition (HPI), high Excitable (HDS), high Sceptical (HDS), and low Altruistic (MVPI).

Negative performance implications associated with low Ambition are lack of vision, energy, and drive, and lower confidence, which may cause them to view change as too hard. High Excitable is associated with moodiness, feeling easily frustrated and disappointed, emotional volatility, and being prone to quit in frustration. Someone with a high Sceptical score may take criticism personally and seem tense, upset, or angry. A person who scores low on the Altruistic scale can be perceived as tough, assertive, forceful, outspoken, and willing to confront problems.

Depending on the unique circumstances of a feedback session—up to and including the leader’s momentary frame of mind—hostile resistance might manifest as argumentation, emotional outbursts, or rejection.

Defensive

Defensive feedback resistance might be more likely in a leader who has some combination of these scale scores: low Adjustment (HPI), low Interpersonal Sensitivity (HPI), low Learning Approach (HPI), high Excitable, high Sceptical, and high Science (MVPI).

Someone who scores low on the Adjustment scale, while generally responsive to coaching and feedback, might seem overly self-critical, stress-prone, and anxious. Negative performance implications of low Interpersonal Sensitivity are criticism and scepticism. A low Learning Approach score may indicate an intolerance of development and a belief that traditional or non-skills-based learning is unpleasant or unhelpful. High Sceptical and high Science scores together could suggest someone who is suspicious about or mistrustful of claims not backed up by objective, verifiable data.

Defensive feedback resistance likely stems from negative beliefs about the reliability, purpose, or usefulness of development and may emerge in self-deprecation, anxiety, or doubt.

Arrogant

People who exhibit arrogant feedback resistance may have some combination of these scale scores: high Sociability (HPI), high Learning Approach, low Cautious, high Colourful (HDS), and high Recognition (MVPI).

A high Sociability scale score is associated with attention-seeking behaviour and competition for the centre stage. A high Learning Approach scale score is associated with valuing learning above doing and seeming like a know-it-all. Someone with a low Cautious score is likely to seem comfortable with risk and nonchalant about making mistakes. A high Colourful score may indicate someone who seems self-promoting, overcommitted, easily angered, and quickly bored. A leader with a high Recognition score probably values attention and public acknowledgement and may be described by others as seeming self-important or conceited.

Arrogant feedback resistance may emerge as a disbelief in or denial of the need for change and an attempt to preserve an inflated self-image by using performance, authority, or charm.

Indifferent

Indifferent feedback resistance may appear in someone who has some combination of these scale scores: average or high Adjustment, high Sceptical, high Reserved (HDS), high Leisurely (HDS), and high Imaginative (HDS).

Someone with average Adjustment might seem nonchalant about work, whereas someone with high Adjustment might tend to discount or ignore negative feedback because of strong self-confidence. A person scoring high on the Sceptical scale may seem indifferent to feedback because they are unpersuaded that change is necessary. Negative performance implications of high Reserved scores include interpersonal insensitivity, self-absorption, distant or absent communication, and disinterest in matters perceived as unrelated or unimportant. A person with a high Leisurely score could exhibit passive-resistant behaviour by appearing neutral or agreeable but feeling resentful and ignoring feedback. A high Imaginative leader may discount others’ opinions and behave in an eccentric, distractable, or preoccupied manner.

Indifferent feedback resistance in a leader may resemble a lack of enthusiasm, withdrawal, unresponsiveness, distraction, or boredom, and it may also conceal other emotions.

Cultural

In a workplace environment in which individual growth and change are not celebrated, feedback resistance or compartmentalisation may be more likely to occur. This may appear in an environment characterised by some combination of these values: low Power (MVPI), low Altruistic, high Tradition (MVPI), and high Security (MVPI).

A culture with low Power values would be unlikely to reward growth and challenge or display interest in achievement. Negative cultural implications of low Altruistic are an emphasis on personal responsibility and self-reliance to the degree that support or resources for development are lacking. A high Tradition culture is comfortable with established procedure and consequently tends to be resistant to change. A high Security culture will tend to favour rules and conformity and resist ambiguity, risk, performance appraisal, and innovation.

Cultural feedback resistance might appear as a lack of support for development or change and a fear of risk or failure.

Getting to Feedback Receptivity

Keep in mind that, for some scales such as Adjustment or Learning Approach, feedback resistance might be a behaviour that can emerge with more than one score range. Low Adjustment could be a factor in feedback resistance in one leader, but so could high Adjustment in another. As always, individual self-awareness, the context for development, and scale combinations influence how feedback resistance might appear. After predicting the likelihood and type of feedback resistance that the leader might exhibit, a Hogan practitioner can strategize the best ways to minimize that resistance during a feedback session.

When we perceive and appreciate the everyday personality strengths, potential derailers, and the motives, values, and preferences that underlie individuals’ actions and choices, we gain a more complete picture of how to enable their success.

Look out for our upcoming blog about techniques for overcoming feedback resistance to learn how to personalise feedback to empower leaders.

Contact us for more information Learn about the Hogan 360

The post From Resistance to Receptivity: Predicting Feedback Resistance appeared first on Peter Berry Consultancy.

This robust study highlights findings from over 600 coaching executives across various industries and corporate demographics. It provides a useful base from which to develop executive and leader development programs.

Leader development is important because a leader’s actions, interactions and outlook all impact their team’s culture, engagement and ultimately, performance. Great leaders engage their teams in a way that unifies members to share a common goal and strive to optimise organisational performance. Here we list the seven executive coaching trends shaping leader development in 2021.

1. Focus on social justice
   Coaching has recently shifted to include a focus on social justice and ensuring workplace equality. Beyond equality it also brings a focus on wellness, work life balance, diversity and inclusion.
2. Coaching is expected to gain momentum
   91% of respondents reported that the use of executive coaching has either increased or remained the same, demonstrating that it is maintaining impact when it comes to leader development. In addition, Coach certification and group coaching have increased in prominence since 2018.
3. Coaching is no longer just for fixing performance problems
   It was found that where once coaching was used for remediation of ineffective leaders, today it is used more for leader development and succession planning, to help leaders transition to leadership roles, and to develop executive presence.
4. Coaching for middle management
   No longer the realm of top executives, career coaching is exceedingly being used at the middle management level. This ensures middle managers are well prepared to take senior leadership positions, rather than coaching for the role once they are in it.
5. Soft skills are more important than ever
   Employees and coaches alike report that target development areas for coaching include executive presence, emotional intelligence, ability to influence others and communication skills. In addition, practice managers identified communicating vision and strategy as key development areas. These are the skills that influence a leader’s ability to get along with others, impacting their reputation and ability to lead effectively.
6. Coaching hours are increasing
   The average engagement timeline for coaching is now six months with an average of one to two sessions per month. Most coaching programs include 11-20 hours of coaching, followed by those including 21-30 hours, with face to face coaching preferred.
7. Measuring return on investment is gaining importance
   Measuring the impact of an executive coaching program is steadily gaining importance as businesses look to ensure any investment makes a positive contribution to the bottom line. 23% of respondents report linking coaching to business results, while 36% do not currently, but would like to. Measurement comes from self-assessment, manager assessment, surveys, 360 assessments and business impact.

The coaching industry continues to evolve in response to our fast-changing work environments. Leaders and teams alike can benefit from the support of an external coach to help navigate the uncertainty and complexity of our current environment.

PBC is a multidisciplinary global consulting firm with more than 30 years of experience designing and implementing customer-focused, evidence-based people solutions. Underpinned by rigorous inhouse research, our programs enable organisations to select the right people, develop key talent, build better teams, drive leadership capability, and enhance organisational performance.

With a network of partners and distributors globally, our team of highly qualified and accredited coaches support leaders and teams to understand strengths and opportunities for enhanced effectiveness.

We are the Australian distributor of Hogan Assessments and the author of a range of diagnostics including the Hogan 360 Suite, Agile Leader 360, Graduate Talent Assessment (GradTA), High Performing Team Assessment (HPTA), and co-author of the Hogan Safety Climate Survey, all of which can be used as a scaffold for coaching individuals and teams.

Whether developing executive presence, emotional intelligence, the ability to influence, or enhancing communication, PBC believes that all talent can be nurtured, to optimise their performance. Watch our “Coaching for success” presentation to learn about coaching trends and our scientific approach.

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