On December 4, Hogan Managing Consultants Amber Burkhart, PhD, and Erin Laxson, PhD, were the featured speakers at the Rotary Club of Tulsa’s weekly meeting. One of the most notable speaking engagements in the Tulsa area, the event was attended by 200 business leaders, one of whom described Burkhart and Laxson as “world-class professionals.”
As featured speakers, Burkhart and Laxson joined the likes of prominent business magnates, such as oil and gas entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens and billionaire philanthropist George Kaiser. Notable elected representatives, such as Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. James Lankford, and Gov. Kevin Stitt, have also spoken at the Rotary Club of Tulsa.
Here are just a few of the highlights of Burkhart and Laxson’s presentation.
Using Personality Assessments to Identify Effective Leaders
Using personality assessments is key to targeting your leadership development investment for organizational success. But this doesn’t mean that you’ll end up with a homogenous organization or team. Effective leaders are those who are concerned with building high-performing teams that have the right mix of skills and characteristics. They recruit talented people. They put people in the appropriate positions. And they create employee engagement based on trust.
Effective leaders promote diversity and inclusion. In our research, we’ve discovered that effective leaders are more optimistic and diplomatic and less arrogant and critical. In the workplace, leaders who have these attributes will discourage discrimination and prejudice, show respect for others, value diverse perspectives, relate well to a variety of people, recognize each person’s unique potential, and treat employees fairly regardless of their differences.
Hogan recently collaborated with a global beverage company to improve the company’s practices for identifying and developing future leaders. We examined relationships between assessment results and performance data to create a selection profile with individual characteristics most predictive of future leader performance.
We then placed candidates into five leadership fit classifications based on the number of scales passed in the profile. The more scales a candidate passed, the greater the candidate’s potential as a future leader. Looking at the correlations between the profiles and specific key performance indicators, Hogan’s researchers were able to identify candidates who were three times more likely to have higher performance overall and three times more likely to have higher leadership potential.
The Bottom Line
The quality of your organization’s executive leadership has a major impact on the potential bottom line. Studying the ROI of leaders, economists have found that CEOs, for example, account for 14% to 29% in firm performance. When a company’s CEO changes, business performance does too.
Management quality drives business performance at every organizational level, and well-managed organizations are more profitable for everyone—including the employees. In fact, compared to average performers, high-performing executives can add $42 million to company profits over the course of their tenure. Knowing these facts, wouldn’t you want to know which leaders your organization should invest its time and money in before those investments are made?