As a recent alumnus of the job market, I can personally attest to the fact that while there is a shortage of available jobs, there is apparently no shortage of inane interview questions:
Organizations Are Like Relationships, It’s All About The Fit
A Blizzard of Bad Judgment
In the past 10 days, much of the country has been blanketed by snow, courtesy of a blizzard that swept through the Midwest and buried the Hogan offices under nearly 30 inches. Stores closed, events were cancelled, businesses sent everyone home, and most of the area hunkered down and braced for the worst. The local meteorologists provided marathon sessions of analysis and updates, warning everyone not to go outside unless absolutely necessary. In the following days, the city cleanup crews described their efforts to clear the streets, noting that the largest obstacle was the number of abandoned cars on the road. This included cars deserted in the middle of the street, on the side of the road, on highway ramps, and just about everywhere.
Losing Jobs: The Problem of Succession Management
Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs recently announced that he will take yet another medical leave of absence with an unspecified return date. His announcement was followed by much discussion and debate about when and whether he will return. This news re-awakened the debate among worried stockholders and industry analysts who are sweating out the question of whether or not the Sultan of Silicon Valley can be replaced. As reported by the LA Times, Apple’s shares fell 6.45% immediately after markets opened the day following Jobs’ announcement. Consequently, stockholders are putting the pressure on the board to publicize a succession plan. Why the sudden iPanic? Many believe that Jobs’ vision and innovation is integral to the success and brand image of Apple, and that he simply cannot be replaced. Admittedly, Jobs’ uncanny ability to predict, or even create, market demand for consumer technology products has catapulted Apple to undeniable success over the years. So the question remains – can Jobs be replaced?
Competency Mapping & Assessments
You don’t have to be in the professional world long before you will likely encounter some form of a competency model in your organization. While the development of an effective competency model is no small task, the end result is simple, easy to understand, and very effective at establishing a framework for success. When developed correctly and with the support of the organization, a competency model can be an effective foundation for strategic staffing, training and development, and performance management. However, that is where the simplicity ends.
The Kids Are All Right…Derailers and All
I am the proud father of three children: a 4-year-old boy, a 4-year-old girl, and a 7-month-old baby girl. As you might assume, the 4-year-olds are twins. I have observed many things that have amazed me with the twins over the past 4 years. One observation was that a multitude of people, from strangers at the shopping mall to professionals with PhDs, would ask me if the boy and girl were identical. I would, of course, politely respond “no.” I wanted to say that not only did these children not result from the splitting of a single zygote, but there is a very fundamental difference between the anatomy of a boy and a girl that prevent them from being identical!
Why Freud Matters
Engagement: Part II
The data are quite clear: employee engagement is the “g” factor in organizational life. Engagement, which is easy to measure, predicts every important organizational outcome at both the individual and the group level. Higher levels of engagement bring better financial results in terms of lower turnover, lower absenteeism, higher productivity, and higher customer satisfaction. When organizations pay attention to engagement, they make more money.
Narcissism and Leadership
In his NY Times Health section article on November 29, 2010 entitled “A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored,” Charles Zanor described practicing psychiatrists’ responses to omitting Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a mental health diagnosis. For professionals who select, develop and supervise decision-makers, the central concerns about powerful, arrogant managers are more immediate than diagnostic nosology. They include:
1. What is the cost to the organization of failure to identify and coach arrogant, self-absorbed managers?
2. At what point does a manger advance from self-confidence to derailing arrogance?
3. Why can’t we detect that potential risk with in-depth interviews, assessment centers, and detailed examinations of past roles?
4. Are there benefits to the organization to have supremely confident leaders? In fact, aren’t many business books written about just those individuals?
5. How do we harness the strength of bold and arrogant leaders while preventing them from derailing both themselves and the organization?
The potential costs of hiring arrogant leaders are seldom recognized during recruitment interviews. Arrogant leaders seem confident and forward looking in initial interactions, even when they involve multiple interviewers. Arrogant people often perform well in assessment centers because they seem inspiring and resilient. Their arrogance is often not easily seen in the job history because we do not see the wake that arrogant leaders leave behind them. In addition, their former roles were often sufficiently restricted to keep their arrogance in check. The costs of hiring arrogant leaders is substantial, however, because of their disrespect toward team members, failure to develop their direct reports (often out a concern for creating a rival), inability to assess risk, and their penchant for making rash decisions based on a supreme belief in their own skills.
The Hogan Development Survey (HDS), especially the Bold scale, goes much further in assessing the strengths and risks of arrogant managers than do other selection procedures. When a decision-maker’s Bold scale is very high (above 90), the individual is making two basic assertions. First, the individual is claiming “I achieve better results than do most people I know because I am more talented.” Second, the individual is claiming “Because of my superior talent and results, I am entitled to greater recognition, authority and status.”
Many of the negative impacts, both the organization and to the other team members, usually arrive in the medium and long-term rather than immediately upon assuming the role. For example, anyone who has been awake during the past four years has witnessed the costs to the world’s economy of over-reaching decision-makers who failed to assess looming threats, and often also failed to respond to offers of help until it was too late (e.g., Richard Fuld at Lehman Brothers). In addition, the Whitehall study in the UK has demonstrated that supervisors who are disrespectful and demeaning toward direct reports increased those direct reports’ heart disease and death rates. Clearly, arrogant managers (very high Bold scorers) are often not skilled at engaging competent team members.
In fact, part of the risk of high Bold managers is their selection of direct reports. They tend to surround themselves with subordinates whose posture is “If I hitch my wagon to this star, I can become confident too, and will be part of the new vision. This manager is moving up, and I want to be there, cheering. I don’t want to miss this golden opportunity. I get the impression that this individual has the guts to throw the nay-sayers under the bus, but I’ll be one of the people with a good seat on that bus.”
Though extremely high Bold scorers can achieve a great deal, it is prudent during recruitment to recognize the risks. When the organization decides to take the chance that the individual’s self-confidence seen on Bold is a net plus, constraints need to be put in place on the person’s scope of authority and financial discretion prior to his/her first day on the job. “Waiting until there is a problem”, a popular if misguided management strategy, is not a winning formula for extreme Bold scorers. Caution is especially critical if the individual will be chief executive or other senior manager. In those cases, the Board needs to know in advance of the blessings and potential curses that accompany powerful but arrogant executives.
As Zanor’s article indicated, the psychiatric diagnosticians are jettisoning some of the “type” diagnoses in order to adopt a “dimensional” approach, a strategy that Hogan Assessment Systems values. However, we can select “consistent pattern” plus “dimensional” descriptions of individuals. We can pay attention to candidate’s individual qualities (e.g., arrogance as measured by Bold) as well as recognizable patterns (very high scores on Excitable, Skeptical and Bold, usually predicting an abusive autocrat). The HDS, especially when combined with the HPI and the MVPI, can give us a rich picture of an individual that cannot be seen with interviews, assessment centers or job history.
Why Validity Matters
Personality psychology concerns three questions. First, in what important ways are people all alike? This question involves analyzing the nature of human nature. Second, in what important and systematic ways are people all different? This question concerns individual differences. The third question concerns how to measure, in a reliable and valid manner, important individual differences in personality? These measures can then be used to predict practical outcomes—e.g., job performance, career and financial success.
But why are personality data so useful? The reason is simple: (1) The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior; (2) A person’s personality (defined in terms of observer’s ratings) is the summary of that person’s past behavior; so that (3) Personality (defined in terms of observers’ ratings) is the best data source we have regarding a person’s future behavior. Our assessments are keyed into observer ratings and provide an objective way to predict a wide variety of life outcomes, including life expectancy, marital satisfaction , substance abuse, and career and financial success.
The principal statistic used in our research (as well as research in economics, sociology, and medicine) is the Pearson correlation coefficient (r). The value of r can range from -1 (a perfect negative association between two variables) to 0 (no relationship between two variables) to +1 (a perfect positive association between two variables). The validity coefficients found in most medical research are below .20. For example, the correlation between smoking and contracting lung cancer within 25 years is .08; the correlation between taking ibuprofen and reduced pain is .14. Typical validities in psychological studies tend to be higher. For example, the correlation between applicants’ scores in a personnel selection interview (which is an inefficient form of personality assessment) and subsequent job performance is .30, and the correlation between IQ scores and school grades is .70. Our research over the past 30 years has produced validity coefficients that are significantly higher than those typically found in published medical or economic research.
Personality and industrial/organizational psychologists use correlation coefficients to predict individual differences in peoples’ present or future performance. The best way to interpret a correlation is in terms of hits and misses. Imagine we have tested 200 sales candidates on the HPI Ambition scale, and then hired all of them; Figure 1 shows the expected percentages of high and low performers as a function of the validity of the ambition scale, using validities of .00, .20, .30, and .50.