Drinks with Hogan | Identity vs. Reputation

In the first installment of our Drinks with Hogan video series, Global Alliances Consultant Rebecca Miller discusses identity, reputation, and the importance of strategic self-awareness to an individual’s ability to lead.

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Australian researcher identifies least narcissistic CEOs in U.S.

 

It is alarmingly easy to come up with a list of narcissistic CEOs – Donald Trump, the late Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are the first three that pop into my head, as do an endless number of banking and finance industry executives (full disclosure: I just saw the excellent The Wolf of Wall Street, so my feeling here may be a little skewed).

What about coming up with a list of the least narcissistic CEOs? That, it turns out, is a little more difficult. Fortunately, someone did it for me. Alex Frino, the Dean of Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, content analyzed quarterly earnings call transcripts for the 100 largest companies in America and calculated the ratio of how frequently CEOs used the pronouns 'I', 'me', or 'mine' versus 'we', 'our', or 'ours'. According to this metric, the three most humble CEOs in America are Pat Gelsinger (CEO of VMware), Gregg Steinhafel (CEO of Target), and Omar Ishrak (CEO of Medtronic). You can check out a more complete list here. As the article points out, the link between CEO humility and performance is possible, although uncertain – VMware and others are high performers in their categories, while Target and Medtronic are struggling. And, the story points out, there is a conspicuous absence of leaders from the tech or financial industries – hotbeds of high-performing companies lead by word-class narcissists. “Many leaders dominating the workforce today possess narcissistic leadership traits, and in this era of constant change and innovation, it seems natural that charismatic, risk takers would take charge,” Frino said. “Is narcissism, generally viewed as a personality defect, actually a good thing? Does the world in fact need more narcissistic CEOs? Or is this a trait we should be actively teaching future leaders to avoid?”  

What’s Keeping HR up at Night?

As Big Data and technology swoop in to change the face of HR forever, it’s no wonder HR practitioners are having a few nightmares about their future. We’ve identified 5 problem children for the HR industry this year:

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Selfie Vs Science

Two major online dictionary publishers released their choices for 2013's Word of the Year. The contrast between these terms struck us as an excellent metaphor for a key tenet of personality assessment - identity versus reputation.

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Are You Vain Enough to Get Ahead?

“You don’t have to be a total narcissist to be a successful executive – but a solid dash of ego can help,” Rachel Feintzeig, a management reporter for the Wall Street Journal, writes in WSJ’s At Work blog. And she’s right. Citing sources from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Hogan Assessments, she delves into the controversial topic of narcissism in the workplace. Hogan’s managing partner Rodney Warrenfeltz discusses the implications of Bold scores in the 70-90 range and above on the Hogan Development Survey. Despite its stigma, narcissism and “being able to influence people is a crucial part of effective leadership” writes Feintzeig.

Read the whole article here.

Toxic Leaders

For me, nothing is better than a good Bill Murray movie – especially the underappreciated 1981 classic Stripes. In case you aren’t familiar, here is the plot synopsis on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Hogan to Speak at SIOP 2014

It’s the start of a new year which means our researchers have already started preparing for SIOP 2014 where they will present recent Hogan research, attend sessions, and learn about other advances in the I-O community. As a little teaser preview to this year’s Hogan SIOP lineup, here are the dates and presentation titles of Hogan presenters and panelists.

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