A&D Resources to Host Event on Dealing with Poor Leadership Posted May 8, 2018 by Blake Loepp *This press release originally appeared on Business Wire on May 8, 2018. A&D Resources, an international consultancy company, operating with 15 years’ experience with assessment and development of individuals, teams and organisations, and an authorized Hogan Assessments distributor, will host an event featuring Dr. Robert Hogan, well known authority on personality and business psychology, at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 30 at Hotel Sofitel Legend the Grand in Amsterdam. The event is about “Dealing with Poor Leadership,” and Dr. Hogan will address “Absentee Leadership,” a current topic of concern in the HR and talent management circles, even though, it has plagued organisations for centuries. “Absentee leadership is a real factor that slowly unhinges otherwise well-run companies,” says Hogan. “Absentee leaders are everywhere, they destroy employee engagement, and they are very hard to identify because they are invisible.” Read More »
Distributor Spotlight: IAssessment Overcomes Adversity to Thrive in Spain Posted May 8, 2018 by Blake Loepp The phrase “Fortune favors the bold” is appealing on the surface, especially to those who watch others take extraordinary risks without anything to lose themselves. And, in reality, often times fortune does NOT favor the bold, particularly when starting a new business. However, that did not deter our friends at IAssessment from launching their business under extreme conditions of risk and uncertainty. And, even in the direst of circumstances, the company has thrived and grown Hogan’s presence exponentially in the Spanish market. In the latest edition of the Distributor Spotlight Series, IAssessment’s Managing Partner, Juan Antonio Calles, tells the story of how the company started and the work they’ve done to improve the Spanish workforce. When we signed our collaboration agreement with Hogan, we were at the dawn of the worst economic crisis in decades in Spain. Our friends and colleagues showed concern and surprise for the launching of a new venture in such uncertain and turbulent times. Now? Why not wait? Are you crazy? These were the words we most commonly heard in those days. Read More »
Leadership and Humility Posted May 2, 2018 by Hogan Assessments *This is a guest post authored by Rob Field, Learning and Development Director at Advanced People Strategies. Leadership… A pretty vast topic. The debates around effective leadership always evoke some pretty heated debate and numerous perspectives. We all have our stories of the successful and inspirational leaders we have worked for and with, the qualities they possess and how they have engaged those around them. In leadership it can be easy to become caught up in status, power and control, however, for leaders, focusing on those around them and within their teams is crucial to success. Cheryl Williamson wrote in Forbes ‘You cannot be an effective leader if you feel you are better than your subordinates’. Teams with these types of leaders tend to have higher turnover and experience lower productivity. Read More »
The Psychology of Economic Development Posted May 2, 2018 by Robert Hogan I find it annoying that Economics is regarded as a more advanced discipline than Psychology. For example, there is a Nobel Prize in Economics but not in Psychology; this is odd because the field of “behavioral economics” is nothing more than applied cognitive psychology. Several years ago, I started reading The Economist magazine in order to understand what the economists have to say about how to organize human affairs. The big question in economics concerns identifying the policies that are best suited to develop national economies. Therefore, if Economics is a useful discipline, then economists should have something to say about how to grow an economy. If they do, then we can take their (very important) message to sub-Saharan Africa, Cuba, or Venezuela. The April 14th, 2018 issue of The Economist contains a startling admission: professional economists have no clue about how to promote economic development; specifically, economists have no idea why rich countries became rich in the first place. The problem is, economists study “structural factors” (e.g., tax policy, access to capital, property rights legislation)—objective features of government that can be quantified—and this is the wrong place to look for answers.Consequently, economists have no serious advice for poor countries—or anyone else. The Economist magazine goes on to note that the most promising approach to understanding economic development is to study “…the ways in which culture and politics constrain economics…” This is because economic development depends on “…decisions about economic governance taken by…leaders, which will in turn be influenced by social and geo-political forces that economists scarcely understand and generally ignore.” Read More »
Hogan Cares About Validity; Most Test Publishers Do Not Posted April 26, 2018 by Hogan Assessments The test publishing industry is unregulated. As a result, many commercial test publishers ignore validity, and sell the psychometric equivalent of snake oil. However, when most reputable assessment vendors care only about their bottom line, they have little incentive to care much about the validity of their assessments. And, because of the high stakes involved in global employee selection and development, this is one of the most deceptive and harmful business practices of the 21st century. Simply put, valid assessments predict performance; assessments that lack validity cannot predict performance. In this new video, Bob Hogan expands on the importance of validity in assessments, and explains the steps necessary to establish validity.
Thoughts on: New(ish) Directions for Vocational Interests Research Posted April 25, 2018 by Hogan Assessments *This is a guest post written by Joel A. DiGirolamo, Director of Coaching Science for the International Coach Federation. I enjoyed reading the thought-provoking paper “New(ish) Directions for Vocational Interests Research”by Hogan and Sherman. It is jam-packed with concepts, models, and logic that offer fodder for many thought exercises. I certainly agree with the assertion that “values are the real underlying subject matter of vocational psychology.” When looking more broadly, however, it seems to me that the following hierarchy exists: Read More »
RECAP: Hogan Assessments Makes Waves in Budapest and Chicago Last Week Posted April 24, 2018 by Hogan Assessments Hogan European Summit April is a hectic time of the year for the crew at Hogan Assessments, and this year was no different. In fact, our staff was widely represented in both the US and Europe during a week full of events. The week began with a group of Hogan representatives traveling to Budapest, Hungary to attend the Hogan European Summit, which was organized by Hogan’s Managing Director of Europe, Zsolt Feher. Held at the famous Gerbeaud Café in historic downtown Budapest, the event aimed to foster collaboration among our European distributors to facilitate growth across the continent and enhance Hogan’s brand visibility. Dr. Hogan delivered the opening keynote address to set the tone for the Summit, which was followed by discussions regarding EU PR and marketing strategy by MITTE Communications, 360 and Global Talent Survey updates by Peter Berry Consultancy, an interactive strategy session, and product updates. Hogan CEO Scott Gregory discussed absentee leadership on day two. This is a relatively new topic in the industry, and was thoroughly covered by Scott in an article he wrote for Harvard Business Review. The keynote was followed by sessions covering strategy for selection research and presentation, a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) update, distributor case study presentations, a Q&A session with Hogan Leadership, and an afternoon of sightseeing in Budapest. We’re truly honored to have such a strong network of European distributors, and we look forward to future opportunities to bring everyone together in an effort to boost Hogan’s global presence. Read More »
Charisma: Not a Recipe for Better Leadership Posted April 23, 2018 by Hogan Assessments *This is a guest blog post written by Nicholas Emler, Ph.D., a Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Surrey. Leadership was for too long grievously neglected by mainstream psychology, so it is good to see the topic more regularly getting serious scholarly attention; there is now a substantial body of informative research, in marked contrast to the situation 25 years ago. However, not all the scholarly attention has been beneficial. My concern on this occasion relates to some recent work (Antonakis, 2018) on the link between leadership and charisma. Antonakis makes useful points in this article, noting that charisma has suffered from fuzziness of definition. And his interpretation of charisma as persuasive signalling is an interesting route to rigour in research on charisma. However, the idea that successful leaders use rhetorical and presentational devices to enhance their persuasive impact on audiences is not new (see Atkinson, 1984) and many of the insights of this earlier work have clearly been absorbed by professional politicians. Witness the now ubi Read More »
Bob Hogan on Workplace Culture Posted April 18, 2018 by Robert Hogan Culture can best be defined in terms of the values that guide the behavior and decision making of a social unit—a team, a family, a business, etc. Culture is not vague and touchy-feely; cultures can be easily and reliably assessed using any number of commercially available survey instruments. Cultures have real, concrete behavioral consequences, and they directly influence the performance of business organizations. As Peter Drucker, the founder of modern management practices, observed: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” That is, no matter what strategy a company might adopt, the culture will enable or prevent that strategy from being implemented. A concrete example might help. Several years ago, we were contacted by a newly opened, high end hotel in London because it was struggling financially. We assessed the top management team using our measure of values and found the following. On the one hand, the top management team had very high scores on the Customer Service, Aesthetics, and Hedonism scales, which meant that they cared deeply about quality, style, and providing a superb and enjoyable customer experience; these values are perfect for hospitality. On the other hand, the top management team scored low on the Power and Commerce scales—which meant that no one cared about making money or beating the competition—and this explained their poor financial performance. Read More »
How the Best CEOs Differ from Average Ones Posted April 16, 2018 by Hogan Assessments *This article was written by Dean Stamoulis of Russell Reynolds Associates, and was originally published by Harvard Business Review on November 15, 2016. We all know the stereotypes: Great CEOs are extroverted. They’re self-promoting. They’re risk takers. But are these stereotypes true? Which traits actually differentiate CEOs from other executives? And, most important, which attributes separate successful CEOs from other CEOs? There is a great deal of conjecture and mythology about CEOs and the attributes that define their success.Russell Reynolds Associates, in partnership with Hogan Assessment Systems, has led a research effort to separate myth from reality, identifying key indicators of leadership that have a measurable impact on a company’s growth. The results demonstrate that intensity, an ability to prioritize and focus on substance, and an ability to know what one doesn’t know (and utilize the best in what others do know) are more strongly related to best-in-class CEO leadership than traditional traits like extroversion or self-promotion. Read More »
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