Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely been hearing about the Mel Gibson audiotapes lately in the news. There’s no need to recount specific quotes in this family-friendly blog, but needless to say that Mel’s language could make a seasoned sailor blush. We’re obviously hearing Mel at a low point. He’s stressed about his finances, some negative publicity, and a recent divorce, not to mention that things clearly aren’t going all that well with his new love interest, who is recording their conversations. So it’s a tough time, and his behavior during this period is unfortunately playing out on a very public stage.So what does this have to do with assessments and business results? The Mel Gibson thing is a prime example of how critical our behavior is when we’re stressed, under immense pressure, or just fatigued enough to let our guard down. In Hogan parlance, he is “derailing.” His behavior under duress has invited a heap of embarrassment and bad publicity, and his career is in jeopardy. His long-time talent agency has dropped him. The film studios, producers, financers, and other assorted movie-industry folks that have invested in the Mel Gibson brand are watching the value of their investment plummet.In our world, I see this as a parallel to the growing movement to “focus on your strengths.” Such a perspective emphasizes what we do well, and essentially tells us not to worry about our weaknesses. Intuitively this is an attractive proposition – nobody likes to spend a bunch of time worrying about things we don’t do very well. But the reality is that these moments often occur during crucial periods such as when we have to make a critical decision or during a time of crisis. It is our behavior in these circumstances that can ultimately dictate how well we perform, how we are evaluated, and determine our reputation among others. People are quick to forget how we behaved when everything was going well.At Hogan we promote the view that strengths are important, but that it is essential to be aware of one’s derailers and to target risks to performance. Indeed, any list of figures who have derailed in spectacular fashion will be populated with immensely talented people. They have ascended to positions of influence and been granted wide latitude and discretion based on impressive bodies of work and dazzling talent. But left unchecked, their derailers eventually led to poor decisions, inexcusable behavior, or other things to initiate their fall from grace.Tying this back to our current subject matter, what were the first things that you thought of when you saw Mel Gibson at the top of this post? Was it a string of blockbusters? An impressive filmography that has grossed over $2B? An Academy Award for Best Director? Or was it a series of rants being played on the evening news? These brief periods of derailing behavior have dimmed what was otherwise one of Hollywood’s brightest stars.Jarrett ShalhoopSenior ConsultantHogan Assessment Systems
Employability and Personality
iPhone 4 – $200. Cardboard Box – Priceless.
A Closer Look At Validity
Benchmarking Personality?
The Value of Values
Personality has been one of the hottest trends in assessment over the last 10-15 years, as organizations and practitioners realize the value and utility a personality can provide in selecting and developing talent. Witness the rise of numerous personality instruments in the marketplace, the use of personality to develop the most highly-prized organizational talent, and the role of personality in the red-hot topic of derailment. While everyone at Hogan certainly would agree whole-heartedly with this movement, we’ve also been banging our drum about the role of values and culture in organizational performance. Despite ample evidence (both scientific and anecdotal), values just don’t seem to get the same degree of attention from organizations and practitioners.
This is a shame, because there is a lot of utility in these types of instruments, and the return on investment for assessing culture is tremendous. In a recent example, one of our financial services clients used the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) in an effort to reduce turnover in one of their frontline positions. After one year of using the MVPI, they had reduced their turnover by 66%. That’s not a typo – two-thirds reduction in turnover!
I’m not arguing that we should abandon personality and narrow our focus on values. Quite the opposite. Personality and values are very distinct constructs, and each adds incremental prediction and validity over the other. Personality has a lot to do with our abilities to perform certain types of tasks, while values have more to do with our motivation and satisfaction with an organization’s culture. An employee whose values align with the organization’s culture will be more satisfied, and likely to work harder and with a better attitude. If the values and culture don’t align, then even a very capable performer won’t be motivated to do his or her best.
Going back to the study above, we were able to find significant reductions in both voluntary turnover (employees who wanted to leave the organization) and involuntary turnover (employees who were shown the door). Voluntary turnover is naturally where we would expect to find the biggest impact; satisfied employees won’t be searching Monster.com on their lunch break. But the reduction in involuntary turnover means that the organization had employees who were capable of doing the job but just didn’t want to, and were subsequently being terminated for poor performance. By aligning the culture and values for these employees, these underperformers improved as a result of increased motivation.
So how much is this all worth to an organization? In the study above we estimated the cost of turnover at half an employee’s annual salary (a conservative estimate). The annual savings attributed to this program (the difference in the number of employees turning over each year) is well into the millions. Annually. With an ROI of greater than $30 for every $1 spent, this program has paid for itself over and over and over again.
Jarrett Shalhoop
Senior Consultant
Hogan Assessment Systems