Your Reputation Matters More Than You Think

Between skull-crushing boredom, pressing deadlines, and demanding bosses, the professional life can be a drain on your emotional resources. As such, it’s no surprise that at some point everyone’s dark side, your less-than-desirable interpersonal tendencies, makes an appearance. And when it does, it can severely damage your reputation.

Read More »

Using Social Media to Measure Personality: A New Chapter of Old Fiction

  On February 19th 2015, CBS Evening News presented a story about using social media to measure personality. It featured a Stanford professor using algorithms on over 86,000 Facebook users to measure their personalities based on what they ‘Like’. Those who click on Shakespeare and 2001: A Space Odyssey were described as artistic, whereas those who clicked on Rush Limbaugh and Ford were described as conventional. Liking boxing was linked to being organized, and liking vampires was an indicator of being spontaneous. The story also featured similar work at the University of Cambridge, and a New York-based consulting firm using social media to screen applicants. When seeing these institutions named, one might think that examining a person’s fingerprint on social media is a sound method for assessing personality. However, as Brian Williams and Bill O’Reilly have recently demonstrated, just because something’s on the news doesn’t necessarily make it true. Read More »

Mythbusters Series: Right-Brained vs. Left-Brained

Sorry folks, there is no such thing as being right-brained or left-brained. The myth that people’s personalities and skills are based on the dominant side of their brain has been the darling of the pop psychology world for years, spurring on the creation of numerous internet quizzes and facebook posts. But contrary to popular belief, there are not two archetype personalities based on which side of your brain is dominant.

According to research from the University of Utah, individuals do not show a more dominant functioning side of the brain. There indeed are specific functions that occur in separate hemispheres and areas of the brain, however research did not find any evidence for people being right or left-brained, or any other evidence that suggests personality stems from brain hemisphere dominance.

Read More »

Can a Great Boss Lead to Burnout?

Nobody likes a micromanaging boss. There are mountains of evidence that show micromanaging bosses are bad for employee engagement and office morale and productivity. In fact, when we asked 1,000 people to describe their worst boss, 48% said micromanaging. Read More »

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

On my way to the Human Resources Professional Association conference in Toronto last week, I was reading the popular book, The Signal and the Noise, by statistician Nate Silver. If you are not familiar with this book or the author, Mr. Silver is interested in applying probability and statistics to understand predictions and decision making using real-world examples. I’m probably a little late to the party, but for a self-professed nerd like myself, the book is a fascinating read and something I would recommend to others.

As I was reading the book, there was a line that resonated with me – “Wherever there is human judgment there is the potential for bias.” As an Industrial/Organizational psychologist, I couldn’t help but connect this to the workplace. It was somewhere around 35,000 feet above Lake Erie that it dawned on me; the quality of the decisions we make is directly related to how well we perform our jobs. In fact, it is probably the biggest determinant of organizational performance. The most successful people and businesses are those that made the right decisions at the right time.

Read More »

2015 Hogan Workshops

  Even the most advanced assessment tools won’t do any good if you don’t know how to use them. Facilitated by seasoned professionals and tailored to an audience of executive coaches, HR directors or generalists, organizational development or training professionals, and industrial-organizational psychologists, Hogan’s workshops give participants the information they need to effectively administer, interpret, and implement the Hogan assessments. The two-day Hogan Certification Workshop gives participants a basic understanding of and certifies them to administer and interpret the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory. February 17-18 in Atlanta March 18-19 in Minneapolis April 15-16 in New York May 19-20 in Atlanta June 16-17 in New York July 14-15 in Atlanta August 25-26 in Atlanta September 29-30 in New York October 20-21 in Las Vegas December 1-2 in Atlanta Read More »

Coachable or Lost Cause?

In a perfect world, good coaching would lead to good results. Every great American football coach would lead his team to a national championship, and every great executive coach would turn out world-class leaders. In the real world, however, no matter how talented a coach may be, the result of any coaching effort depends in large part on the coached.

Read More »

Journey to the East

Operating in the country that features the second largest economy in the world (and the first in terms of purchasing power) brings with it a higher level of business development and delivery expectations. It has been a pleasure to witness our Greater China distributor Mobley Group Pacific, Ltd (MGP) along with their local Taiwan partner Infelligent Coaching & Consulting consistently live up to these lofty goals.

Read More »