Being awarded a leadership role within an organization may feel like an amazing accomplishment, but that is only half the battle. The second, and arguably most important half, lies in building and maintaining a highly effective team.
However, according to a recent survey conducted on UK workers, managers are failing miserably at this task, and are instead fostering feelings of hate and resentment among their workers. The survey states that while 22% of the UK public say they hate their boss, a staggering 52% identify their boss as their primary source of job dissatisfaction. So, where is it that managers are going wrong, and what can they do to improve their employees’ perception of them?
Interesting research during the 1970s–found that managerial failure had little to do with IQ or personal attractiveness. Rather, it was linked directly to interpersonal competence. And, since personality is at the core of interpersonal competence, our guest today developed one of the globe’s leading personality assessments to identify the 11 personality scales that cause leaders to fail time and time again.
We welcome creator of The Hogan Assessments, Dr Robert Hogan
Full Transcript:
Dr Robert Hogan
[00:00:00] Aidan McCullen: [00:00:17] Being awarded a leadership role within an organization may feel like an amazing accomplishment, but that is only half the battle. The second and arguably most important half lies in building and maintaining a highly effective team. However, according to a recent survey conducted on UK workers, managers are failing miserably at this task and are instead fostering feelings of hate and resentment among their workers.
[00:00:45] The survey States that while 22% of the public say they hate their boss, a staggering 52% identified their boss as the main source of jobs dissatisfaction. So where is it that managers are going wrong and what can they [00:01:00] do to improve their employee’s perception of them? Compelling research from the 1970s found that managerial failure had little to do with it IQ or personal attractiveness, rather it was linked directly to interpersonal competence. And since personality is at the core of interpersonal competence, our guest developed the lobes leading personality assessment to identify the 11 personality scales that cause leaders fail time and time again. We welcome creator of the Hogan assessments, dr. Robert Hogan. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:33] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:01:33] Thanks for inviting me
[00:01:34]
[00:01:35] Aidan McCullen: [00:01:35] It’s great to have you on the show. I’m going to, I was talking to one of your colleagues Blake earlier on, and he asked me to ask you this, the top of the show and get you to answer it at the end of the show. So we’re going to plant this now. So how many psychologists it takes to screw in a light bulb?
[00:01:52] We’re going to ask that now we’ll leave it hanging. I will come back and get you to give us the answer at the end of the show, Robert, but [00:02:00] I thought the best way to start the show today. Is that this work, your work is so important in this current work environment, this time of crisis, because it helps leaders by providing insights about their counterproductive tendencies or risk factors . These characteristics become heightened during times of stress and result in poor leadership and relationships with employees and other key stakeholders. But let’s hold onto that thought for the moment and we’ll come back to it because. I think it’s worth sharing the origins of your work because after leaving the Navy, you worked with youthful offenders and your interest in psychology derives from these times, and you became enchanted by the task of understanding how these young people, many of whom were really smart and good at sports had arrived at this point of delinquency.
[00:02:47] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:02:47] Yes, I worked for two years as a probation officer in East Los Angeles, dealing with delinquent kids. And I discovered that there was no help. That is to say, i was flying blind. I was just operating on intuition. I would ask my senior managers [00:03:00] about the dynamics of the process and they had nothing to say.
[00:03:02] So I began haunting libraries at night and my lunch hour to see what the academics had to say about the origins of delinquency and it was completely unhelpful. The sociologists said, delinquents are kids who hang out with delinquents. And so, delinquency is caused by hanging out by delinquents
[00:03:17] I decided I would go to graduate school and solve the problem of crime , but I couldn’t get anybody to pay attention. Along the way, I became really interested in the problem of leadership .
[00:03:28] I worked my way through college and when I was commissioned as an officer, I’d already had a couple of years of experience getting working class boys to do dirty jobs, that’s what Navy’s all about. So, I took over all my brother officers on the ship were from very privileged backgrounds, Ivy league schools and fathers were very successful.
[00:03:48] From their point of view, working class kids were put on earth to serve them. For me they were part of my peer group.
[00:03:53] I was a gunnery officer and for the first the entire first year on the ship, we were unable to fire guns. [00:04:00] And I thought, what happens is the Russians come?
[00:04:05] So, I was put in charge of the guns and I fixed them. I fixed them really well. We won fleet-wide gunnery excellence awards. So on the one hand, I took a failed operation and turned it into to an absolute Paragon or performance. On the other hand, my brother officers gave me nonstop shit because they said, I didn’t understand leadership.
[00:04:25] I kept thinking if I’m the guy that doesn’t understand leadership, why is it that my part of the ship is working? And you’re part of the ship is not. So off, I went in graduate school to study delinquency, but I had the secret interest in leadership. And what I discovered in graduate school was that the prevailing opinion among academics was , this would be the 1965, that there is no such thing as leadership.
[00:04:45] That leadership is a function of the situation I always call this. The shit happens theory of leadership. If you’re in charge and things go, well, you got lucky. If you’re in charge of things, go badly. you were unlucky, but leadership had nothing to do with the outcome of the good but that that’s just nonsense . My first [00:05:00] job was at Johns Hopkins university in Baltimore. And. Just as I was moving to Baltimore, there was a legendary football coach named Vince Lombardi. He’d been the coach of the Green Bay Packers.
[00:05:10] He had taken the Packers and turned them from a doormat into an almost unbeatable program. And he quit because he said the expectations for success in Green Bay were just impossible. And he moved to Washington DC to become the head coach of the Washington Redskins. The Redskins had been doormats for 20 years.
[00:05:29] And I said to everybody who would listen, I said, if there’s such a thing as leadership, then Lombardi will fix the Redskins. But if the academics are right, that it’s all a function of situation, then he’ll fail because the situation in Washington will be entirely different than the situation in Green Bay.
[00:05:43] So he goes to the Red Skins and in his first year he takes him to the playoffs. it wasn’t until about 2000 that I had time in my life, to actually drill down on the subject of leadership. And when I did, I discovered what you always do, which is you ask an important question and academic psychologists have nothing to say [00:06:00] about it.
[00:06:00]In 2000, there was still no consensus – as of today, it’s still the case – there was no consensus at all among academics regarding the characteristics of effective leadership. I thought, well, if there’s no consensus about the good ones. What about the bad ones? This is a page out of Freud’s handbook and Piaget’s handbook.
[00:06:17] They didn’t study success, they studied failures. Freud called it the parapraxis of everyday life I said, if there’s no consensus about good leadership? What about bad leadership? First question is how much is there?
[00:06:27] So I did a bunch of data snooping and fiddling around, and I concluded that the base rate for failure in public and private sector organizations, management failure is about 65 to 75%. And that’s a pretty good number. There’s six or seven out of every 10 managers is driving their staff crazy. The next question is why is that number so high?
[00:06:48] And the answer is, it has to do with how they get put on the job.
[00:06:51] I should also say academics, define leadership in terms of who’s in charge, but says moi “who gets to be in charge of a large hierarchical, [00:07:00] bureaucratic male-dominated organization?
[00:07:01] And the answer is a politician who may or may not have talent for leadership. So academics define leadership in terms of who’s in charge. That’s a mistake. Proper way to define leadership in terms of the ability to build and maintain a high performing team.
[00:07:14] Leadership is all about building a team. It’s not about getting to the number one job.
[00:07:19] So those are very different process and it turns out the psychology of getting to the top is very different from the psychology of being an effective leader.
[00:07:26]Aidan McCullen: [00:07:26] I’d love to hone in on what you said there about the Packers, because I also pulled a quote, but this time by John Wooden and the reason I did is because, I thought it was useful to get your definition of personality.
[00:07:40] Cause I know you’ve deeply studied Freud Piaget etc. the definition of personality is quite subjective and I’m a reader of John Wooden’s work and he said, ” Be more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
[00:08:00] [00:07:59] And you point out, our external personality or reputation is unbelievably important because it’s based on that, how we’re hired, fired, promoted people lend us money, vote for us and so on. So personality from the outside becomes ultra important.
[00:08:17]Yes, Your reputation is, what we can expect out of you. The question is why do you have that kind of reputation and W ooden’s correct, the characteristic of a leader is integrity. They have to have integrity. The troops, the staff, the team picks up on that almost immediately. the most powerful, single predictor, of leadership performance is the degree to which the team or the staff trusts you. And that trust comes enqtirely from integrity.
[00:08:38] I thought that difference between personality based on how we think of it us versus how others think of it is really important because you talk about Freud here and you say that there’s the you that we know and the you that, you know, and then there’s the, you we fabricate because we all fabricate our version of her own personality [00:09:00] based on the stories we tell.
[00:09:01]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:09:01] I make the distinction between identity and reputation. Identity is the you, the, you know, reputation is you that we know and Freud’s line is ” The you know, is hardly worth knowing because you just made it up.
[00:09:13]Aidan McCullen: [00:09:13] and this becomes really important because, it all depends on how others see us, including building those teams.
[00:09:19] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:09:19] Well, it’s more than that. I mean, other people own your record, own your your personality, and that’s the basis on which everything happens is how other people see you. So you have to be very careful about maintaining your reputation.
[00:09:30]What you say about yourself is only modestly related to how you perform. What other people say about you is a really powerful predictor how you perform.
[00:09:38] Aidan McCullen: [00:09:38] Even if you’re a startup or a founder of an organization, what people say about you, when you leave the room becomes really important. I’d love to come by back to something you said about Freud. I watched one of your talks and loved how you drew on two areas of your expertise.
[00:09:52] One being that time in the Navy and the other is your deep understanding of psychology , and you said, “Freud is to psychology, what [00:10:00] Ptolemy was to navigation.”
[00:10:02] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:10:02] was wrong, the earth is not the center of the universe, but if you want to sail a boat from the East coast of Scotland to South America, you’ll use Ptolemaic astronomy. And it’s the same thing. Freud is wrong, but if you want to navigate everyday life, you better pay very close attention to some of the fundamental insights of psychoanalysis.
[00:10:20]Aidan McCullen: [00:10:20] And what are those Robert, I’d love to hear what the things we should really hone in on from your experience are from Freud’s work.
[00:10:26] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:10:26] Three or four things. First is the unconscious drives everyday behavior. Mostly, we don’t know what we’re doing when we’re doing it or why we’re doing it. I would say 90% of what we do we do for unconscious reasons.
[00:10:38] That’s a direct Freudian insight. That’s what Tversky and Kahneman got this Nobel prize for behavioral economics. That’s all they were talking about was unconscious biases in reasoning processes. So people have finally today catching onto the original Freudian insight, that mostly what we do we do for irrational and unconscious reasons.
[00:10:55] Second, really powerful Freudian insight, I think is, development matters. [00:11:00] Particularly 0 to 10. Development matters and things that you in your little shape, your career for the rest of your life in ways that you don’t understand.
[00:11:08] The third thing is, Freud was a big fan of Darwin and, , I think we’re basically biological the deadliest invasive species in the history of the year, but we are biological creatures.
[00:11:18] And products of our evolution. So if you want to understand people , in the full range, you need to understand our evolutionary history. That takes us the last thing about Freud, that I really liked his, his writings on leadership. Freud was at first and one of the few people that actually have a full blown, fully articulated theory of leadership.
[00:11:34] It’s in his book called “Totem and Taboo”, which many people think is horrible, but which he always thought was his most important work. His argument is that, it’s just like life in a chimpanzee troop that what goes on inside organizations is a struggle for power and control.
[00:11:47] And if you’re in charge, they will be coming after you. And it’s just a matter of time until they get you. Politics is the one profession in which every career ends in failure. Freud would have said that.
[00:11:58]Aidan McCullen: [00:11:58] It’s really fascinating for [00:12:00] this period of stress and downturn that we’re coming into or we’re already in, because , as you talk about in your assessments, this is when the true self shows up. And I mentioned at the top of the show that in order to lead a team more successfully, leaders need to be aware of 11 personality scales, or derailers that you call them on.
[00:12:20] You detect for all of these in your tests. I’d love if you’d give a top line of each of them Robert and how they impact us in the workforce. And at the end, I’d love to come back to the ones. I told you, I took the assessments and some of them showed up that are very common to change makers within organizations or innovators within organizations.
[00:12:38] And I’d love to hone in on those, I’d love for you to start with “excitable.”
[00:12:42]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:12:42] there was a really smart guy at Sears in the seventies named John Bence.
[00:12:47]a friend of mine and he. hired all his new executives, all new managers at Sears using an assessment center and an IQ test. every new manager. It was smart and had a glittering Brightside. They looked good in an interview and two thirds of them [00:13:00] failed. And he found that they failed for 11 reasons.
[00:13:04] And when I read his 11 reasons, I said, my God, that sounds just like the DSM-IV axis 2 personality disorders. I mean, exactly like them and so that’s where this comes from. so there’s real consensus regarding a taxonomy for managerial failure. Managers fail for these 11 recurring reasons. I don’t think these tendencies show up when people are stressed or drunk or so they just show up when people let down their guard. And typically when they let down their guard is when a manager is dealing with subordinates. these tendencies never show up when a manager is dealing with his or her boss, they only show up when they’re dealing with their subordinates, because that’s when they think they can get away with it .
[00:13:41] another fundamental principle of personality psychology is that there’s good news and bad news at the high end and low end ofvery dimension.
[00:13:47] So the first dimension is called excitable and people high scores on excitable. bring a lot of passion, enthusiasm, and then drive to the task and they have a reason, sense of urgency and an energy. but the [00:14:00] problem is that they can get frustrated and then when they get frustrated, they blow up and walk off and quit.
[00:14:05] So they’ll have a life history of, failed relationships where I’ll never speak to you again, so it’s boom.
[00:14:11] Again, they bring a lot of dynamism and energy work enthusiasm and push, , but they can become frustrated and quit and stomp off. You see a lot of it in sales.
[00:14:20] People with low scores on excitable, take all the energy out of the room. It’s like being in a bingo game in a senior citizens home. So you want some energy on this or else nothing’s gonna happen
[00:14:31] Aidan McCullen: [00:14:31] the next of the 11 traits then is skeptical, Robert
[00:14:33] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:14:34] My word for paranoia. People with high scores on “skeptical” are very astute about politics. That’s a reality of organisational life is there are people are plotting against you. So if you want to know, who’s out to get you go find a person with a high score on “skeptical”, and they will know who’s out to get you.
[00:14:52] Henry Kissinger who would be a poster boy for a high score on skeptical. The problem is that they take things way too [00:15:00] personally, something goes wrong, they think it’s a personal insult when it’s not, and then when they think they’ve been wronged, they’ll sue you they’ll hit you. they’ll counter attack in various ways.
[00:15:07] So the strength is the political awareness and astuteness. The short coming is taking things too personally, and then overreacting. The people with low scores on skeptical, they’re like deer in the headlights. they just don’t have a clue. They don’t see what’s coming at them and they get run over.
[00:15:22]Aidan McCullen: [00:15:22] the next one, it’s like a pandemic winning organizations at the moment because of the way they’re run with quarterly earnings , where leaders are so afraid of making a mistake. And this one is “cautious”.
[00:15:31] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:15:32] Oh, Yeah, these are the people, their great strength is they don’t make any stupid mistakes. The bad news is they won’t take any chances. So you have to take a chance in order to make mistakes. Very good at not doing dumb things. Very good at staying out of trouble, but there is no possibility of innovation or creativity with these people in charge. And then the the problem at the low end is you get crazy guys like Elon Musk, wild free swingers who pay no attention to errors.
[00:15:58] Aidan McCullen: [00:15:59] next the leader [00:16:00] that locks themselves away, and doesn’t come out to communicate even in times of crisis within the organization. And this is what you call “reserved” leaders?
[00:16:08] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:16:08] Yeah, the poster boy for this would have been Barack Obama. The strength of these people is they’re really tough. They can really take it. They can take heat, they can take criticism, they can take brick bats, they’re just tough. The bad news is they don’t communicate.
[00:16:23] Obama talked to about four people. He didn’t know the names of his own cabinet secretary. He had four people, he talked to, he sat in his office with the door shut and read memos all day. So the result of this is that there’s no communication and people need to hear from you
[00:16:38] The problem with low scores is they’re too tender hearted. too easily wounded. I mean, to be in charge. You have to have a tough hide cause the criticism are inevitable, but too much is too much.
[00:16:47] Aidan McCullen: [00:16:48] This leads nicely to leasurly leaders, because I thought I thought this one was really interesting, going back to sport because you have this idea of fairweather fans. Those fans that show up when [00:17:00] you’re winning and this reminded me a lot of “leisurely leaders”.
[00:17:03] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:17:03] Yeah. The slogan for these folks is, “Aways say yes, never say when”. Isn’t that great. So yeah we can do that for you. Oh, absolutely. You bet. They always tell you what you want to hear, but they’re , great at procrastinating. It comes from the British army in world war one, where there was a lot of really bad leadership as there still is.
[00:17:25] And this came from the army psychiatry, psychiatric studies in world war one. The way of dealing with intolerable authority, you smile and pretend to agree. It’s a way of being aggressive and not get caught. So you smile, you agree. And then you say, ” I’ll get to it when I feel like it”. So it’s overtly, a lot of charm and then privately real resentment and hostility.
[00:17:48] Aidan McCullen: [00:17:48] The next one is a real bug bear for people who work in innovation, because a lot of innovation workers have to hand over their credit for their work to the organisation when they’re successful the organization or [00:18:00] perhaps the leader takes charge or takes control of those wins. But if it’s a failure, it’s your fault.
[00:18:05] So it’s that idea of the window and the mirror. And these are what you call bold leaders.
[00:18:08] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:18:09] That’s my word for narcissism, and this is “the problem” in failed leadership. this is the big, topic, in my view these days. So, with a shareholder revolution in the early seventies, the guys like Carl Icahn and T Boone Pickens, they’re investing in these companies.
[00:18:24] in the fifties and sixties, The average CEO earned maybe four, five times as much as the average employee. Whereas today they earn several hundred times as much. So what happened with these activist investors, they said, I’m not getting a proper return on my money in your organization. I need better results.
[00:18:43] So this led to get better results out of CEOs, you would tie their compensation to the stock price. And so companies then began looking for CEOs or candidates for leadership positions who would promise to deliver financial results.
[00:18:57] As in, , “I can take this company to the next [00:19:00] level.” I can make America great. Again, I can get this company moving. I can give you the financial results that you deserve and who says things like that? Narcissists , and the data are really clear on this.
[00:19:14] Narcissists get much greater variance in firm financial performance. They give you a higher highs but they give you much lower lows.
[00:19:21] And iton form, they destroy companies, but they win the political battle because they promise the financial results that you so richly deserve.
[00:19:29]There’s an epidemic of narcissists at the top of organizations.
[00:19:33] The very best performing CEO’s very invest. Performing leaders are actually quite humble. There’s a really, really important piece of research that no one knows about a guy named Fred Lutherans did this study back in the seventies in Nebraska, he studied several hundred managers in six different companies, he studied him for 4 years and he had really detailed data on these guys at the end of four years, he said, okay, let’s see what predicts winning.
[00:19:57] He said, well, it turns out there are two groups of winners. There was a [00:20:00] group of people who. who got rapid raises these are the folks that are typically called high potentials. So these are folks with lots of raises and lots of rapid promotions and high profile assignments.
[00:20:10] And there was a second group whose teams were performing really well. Now what’s the definition of leadership. The ability to run a high performing team, right? So you’ve got two groups of successful people, group of people who are getting lots of raises and promotions and a group of people , whose business units are performing at a very high level.
[00:20:28] Those were not the same people. there was almost no overlap between those two groups. I called the first group emergent, I call the second group effective. they had all this behavioral data and said, how are they spending their time? Will the immersion group, the people who went through rapid promotions and pay raises.
[00:20:42] Spent their time doing politics and the group whose business units were performing at a high level, spent their time working on their teams. if you’re a business owner, who do you mean running things? You want a guy who’s going to spend his time on the phone and going to meetings.
[00:20:58] You want a guy who’s going to build a team.
[00:20:59] [00:21:00]Aidan McCullen: [00:21:00] That one is torturous because you see those people in organizations raise to the top, and it reminded me of a quote by Ken Blanchard, he said, ” If you don’t blow your own trumpet, others will use it as a spittoon”. And a cane came to mind when I read about these bold leaders, because they take credit for major wins they’re bad at recognizing and rewarding, the hard work of others.
[00:21:20] They don’t even recognize that it was their team, but the worst thing is the board or whoever they’re reporting to, don’t see it. You see this in sports where you have players who don’t do the hard work and hang out and wait for the ball and do all the ball carrying and all the flamboyant work.
[00:21:36] But a good coach will spot that and not pick those players because they’re not good for the team. And there was a quote, I pulled from you. And I read about your work in a brilliant book. We had a guest on the show a few weeks ago, Craig LeMasters. And he, quoted you in his book and he said, “Organizations often overlook humble employees for leadership positions in favor of those who were charismatic. Charismatic. [00:22:00] people are charming and inspirational, but many turn out to be narcissistic, arrogant and potentially exploitative. In contrast, humble leaders, empower followers and promote team learning.” That’s your quote. and that is the huge shift needed in organisations today
[00:22:16] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:22:16] Yes, exactly. Exactly. This is the main push in our businesses these days the other guy who gets what gets us right as Collins in his book. Good to great. He has these 11 companies that had 15 years of a farmer significantly below the standards for the industry.
[00:22:30] And then 15 years of sustained performance substantially above the standards for the industry. And he said the key to success of those 11 organizations was the CEO and all those CEOs were the same kind of guy. They were all quite humble. When you went in the room, you couldn’t tell who the CEO was.
[00:22:45] They were quite humble, but they were fiercely competitive. And that’s what you want in an effective leader is humility combined with fierce desire to win,
[00:22:53]Aidan McCullen: [00:22:53] one of the things I found underlying a lot of these traits were fear, because maybe you need [00:23:00] to feel, you need to be bold, even though if you’re humble because you feel actually I won’t get credit here and I’ll be ousted by the organization. I’m sure that’s happened.
[00:23:07] Many people listened to the show,
[00:23:09] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:23:09] yeah. I think it’s the existential dilemma in careers and in organizations, I mean, you do a good job, but you have to have an advocate. You have to find someone that someone who will toot your horn for you because folks figure it out right away. who’s just blowing their own horn. It’s a really hard problem
[00:23:26]Aidan McCullen: [00:23:27] I see this all the time and I get people ask me about this. And I kind of, I, it really depends on who that person is. Who’s got your back because you need to go back to your Naval roots. You need, you need aerial cover. You need somebody up there watching, covering you. And, but you need, as you said, trust at the heart of it because.
[00:23:47] Sometimes, you know, you know, it’s like one of those movies where you think it’s, it’s twist in the movie, you think the person who’s got your back, you get it to them. And then they turn around and shoot me in the back or something like that. That happens to people to where the [00:24:00] kind of going crap. I thought person that had my back and all they were doing was taking all the credit.
[00:24:04] It
[00:24:04] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:24:04] doesn’t Ihappen to guys with high scores on skeptical.
[00:24:06]Aidan McCullen: [00:24:06] the balance come through and all of these, the balances needed, going back to the idea of duality in life, but we’ll, we’ll move on. Cause we won’t get through them all. But mischievous is the next one. I scored
[00:24:17] myself
[00:24:19]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:24:19] High scores are mischievous are really quite charming. and they’re, they’re very pleasant.
[00:24:23] Aidan McCullen: [00:24:23] You don’t have to say that Robert cause I scored highly.
[00:24:25] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:24:25] It’s how they’re characterized. The other people see them as charming and pleasant and, well, charming period. The problem is, theyt t can be quite manipulative with commitments and promises and they betray people.
[00:24:38] But some elevation on that’s going to be essential because it’s all about spcial skills
[00:24:41] Aidan McCullen: [00:24:41] Yeah, I spoke to early on that one by being flattered.
[00:24:44] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:24:44] there’s something like a tent. It’s the ordinary language term for it is psychopath. And the estimate is that about 10% of all CEOs there’s I think probably 50% of all politicians.
[00:24:58] They have high scores on it, and [00:25:00] it’s essential for big time career to have social skill and charm
[00:25:04]Aidan McCullen: [00:25:04] coming back to something you said already on narcissism again. the quote I heard was there’s about 1% of the population are psychopaths. Point five of them are in prison. The other 0.5 lead organizations, but there’s, there’s a huge percentage of people who are narcissists as well, who lead who lead organisations
[00:25:21]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:25:21] Oh, absolutely. the corporate psychopath is a real phenomenon.
[00:25:25]Aidan McCullen: [00:25:25] Let’s move on to colorful then Robert, ,
[00:25:27]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:25:27] colorful or psychological language is called the histrionic personality. These are people who love to be the center of attention, come into a room and take over .Who know how to command a crowd and really get agitated when no one’s paying attention. So it’s pretty much essential for a career in sales or politics to be high colorful. The is the good news is they absolutely light up a room. They’re the life of the party. They’re are a lot of fun to be around. The bad news is that they’re really distractible. And, uh, they, they have trouble staying on task and, delivering on promise they’re just following following the spotlight following the spotlight and not getting things [00:26:00] accomplished.
[00:26:00]Aidan McCullen: [00:26:00] These are the people that are full of ideas and this links closely then to the next one, one which is ” Imaginative”
[00:26:05] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:26:05] Actually, I shouldn’t say colorful is that is the scale with the highest correlation with IQ, colorful scores correlate about 0.3 with IQ. So they’re all quite smart people.
[00:26:15] It’s
[00:26:16] Aidan McCullen: [00:26:16] smart not by the traditional sense of things, which links closely to imagine, which is next. And again, I’m sure a lot of the people who listen to this show innovators or change makers, score high on the imaginative, but there’s a downside to imaginative as as well?
[00:26:32] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:26:32] Yeah, high scores in imaginitive are essential for entrepreneurship and creativity. That’s where it comes from. Imaginative is are, is a proxy for being able to think strategically, there’s a really important difference between fast-growing strategic thinking and, and, and they’re very different people. Tactical people can’t be strategic and strategic people have a hell of a time being tactical.
[00:26:49] So you need both on the team. The biggest single correlative with imaginative is strategic. So it’s a very powerful, but it’s a powerful predictor of strategic thinking, but it also associated with kind of eccentricity. And [00:27:00] my sister is the poster girl for high scores on imaginative.
[00:27:04] my favorite quote from her was this is a typical thing. She said, To look at my own nation. You know, she said, sometimes I can feel my molecules There There you go. And that’s what I mean, you get that to me, that’s the sort of stuff you get out of them. I think probably a little bit of that when Trump said, you know, you ought to think about drinking bleach to cure the coronavirus.
[00:27:25]Aidan McCullen: [00:27:25] also overlapping with bold there, one thing I wanted to draw on there. You mentioned it. So you sparked the thought for me was the importance of diversity. You can’t be all these people, you can’t score the perfect score and all these people.
[00:27:39] So diversity in your team becomes really important. And I think it’s worth noting, in the light of all the crises we’re seeing beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the States in particular with race and bias, et cetera, you were one of the leaders in this, you and your sister, Trish went out to identify and try and influence [00:28:00] more diversity within the police force back in the seventies.
[00:28:03]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:28:03] there are two, things about personality first. The personality predicts occupational performance significantly better than IQ. And second is it doesn’t discriminate. IQ, always discriminates minorities get lower scores on IQ measures, but personality is perfectly color and gender blind men get the same scores as women. Minorities get the same scores as majority’s and older workers get better scores than younger workers because they’re more mature. So personality is the way to make decisions about people.
[00:28:33] Aidan McCullen: [00:28:33] It’s not, gender or it’s not race. It’s neurodiversity is key. And this shows that why that’s so important. when we move on, because the flip side, I suppose of imaginative for the side that you would hire for, if you’re this imaginative CEO who comes up with great ideas, but doesn’t really like the execution of those is “diligent”?
[00:28:54] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:28:54] Diligent is my word for obsessive compulsive. People with high scores on diligent, have [00:29:00] really high standards, intense work ethic, really concerned about doing a good job following through to paying attention, to details and getting things done right. The first time, every time. I think you get aligned in good high level coaches like bill Bellacheck, it’s going to be a hundred percent on diligence, the problem is of course is they don’t know how to delegate and they micromanage they disempower your staff.
[00:29:22] So you get a lot of high quality and a lot of attention to detail, but you also get disempowerment of subordinates
[00:29:27]Aidan McCullen: [00:29:27] closely aligned to that one then is the dutiful leader, which is so common in organizations where, you know, , you worked in the Navy, you know, that the organizational structure, the hierarchy within organizations came from the military and came from the Catholic church or religion and unfortunately, those dutiful leaders are the ones, ones who often both can play politics, but also play by the rules and get themselves to the top of organizations
[00:29:53]The poster boy for this in modern American life would be Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state. He graduated first in his class [00:30:00] at the military Academy. He’ll do anything his bosses tell him to do, and you notice he never, ever, ever gets out of line with Trump, despite the fact that he’s probably twice as smart as Trump.
[00:30:12]Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:30:12] if you want to have a successful career in a hierarchical organization, you need to have a high score in “dutiful”. Entrepreneurs and innovators have low scores on dutiful. This is the Freudian superego. this is right back in Freud. People with high scores on beautiful are people who really respect and will do anything authority says, So they’re useful people to have in organizations, but, won’t bring you any innovation or progress.
[00:30:35]Aidan McCullen: [00:30:35] It’s interesting. you say that we had Alex Osterwalder on the show a couple of weeks back, and Alex talked about this, that. For example, if you’re imaginative, one of the things that comes up there is you will come up with loads of ideas. Many of them won’t go anywhere. Many of them will fail. And the dutiful leader or the diligent worker will listen for the ones that don’t work and refer to those and go, Oh, but that’s like your other idea, [00:31:00] Aiden, right?
[00:31:01] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:31:01] Yes
[00:31:01] That’s exactyly what they do, yes.
[00:31:03] Aidan McCullen: [00:31:03] But they won’t let them for the gold. And this is the world we live in this world of VUCA of ultimate change of incessant change requires such a collaboration of all these different mindsets within an organization. The other thing he said was you can’t just have an imaginative leader. You need almost two, you need a dual leadership, the dutiful leader, that’s dependable and works on the business as it is today. And then the imaginative leader who imagines a new tomorrow. And it’s interesting because Jeff Bezos said in an interview recently that he has delegated all his duties of the present to his team focuses almost exclusively three years out in the future and works his way back from there
[00:31:46] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:31:46] that’s very smart. I see it as the distinction between the CEO and the COO, the CEO is supposed to be outside in the world, running around, doing things in the field. So that CEOs need to be imaginative and the CEOs [00:32:00] need to be dutiful. And by the way, there’s tension. I mean, those are not, those are not people who naturally get along with each other.
[00:32:07] It’s incumbent on the CEO to understand that he or she needs a high dutiful person to follow up and make things happen.
[00:32:15] Aidan McCullen: [00:32:15] Yeah, I love that. I love that idea of tension. And another guest we had on was Iain McGillchrist, he’s an expert on the brain and he talked about the tension between left and right brain, you know, so the more organized side and the more imaginative side, but he said without that tension, there is no force to propel things.
[00:32:31] And he said, think of it like the bow of a bow and arrow. If it’s not taut, it can’t propel an arrow forward. And I love that analogy for successful organizations, it’s that mix of tension of the present and the future working together. But, what I really loved about the assessments and I’d love your opinion on this is, you detect for three versions of self. The me that emerges when I put my best foot forward in an interview then there’s the me that emerges when I let my guard doqw, like you say when [00:33:00] nobody’s looking or close the door,
[00:33:01] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:33:01] We call that the dark side.
[00:33:03] Aidan McCullen: [00:33:03] The dark side and then the purpose me itself. the me that drives me, so gets me out of bed in the morning.
[00:33:10] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:33:10] And we call that the inside
[00:33:12] Yeah. So you, you do really reflect everything. And what I said to you off air before we started was I love where you came from here. Your work in the Navy to see successful units; unsuccessful units; to turn them around.
[00:33:28] Then your work in criminology to help those adolescents that were on the right path and some way, lost our way. And then your drive to make the world a better place. Because I think that’s why this is so important because we need to listen to the inner voice because you were saying there, but that beautiful Mike Pompeo type that.
[00:33:46] Aidan McCullen: [00:33:46] I personally can’t live like that, where I’d have this sick feeling. If I felt I was playing the game to get ahead and just keep my job, I can’t live like that. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with somebody that can, but I just would love [00:34:00] to see a world that didn’t feel it had to wear a mask
[00:34:04] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:34:04] Good luck with that. And instead I just, I’m assuming we’re at the end here. my summary metaphor for this stuff is that, people in organizations everyone’s concerned. With who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down. who’s the future, who’s the next one gonna be?
[00:34:21] They’re all concerned about the competition inside the group, within the group. That’s what everyone’s focused on that who’s, you know, who’s going to be the next president of the U S but that, but so there’s, there’s competition within the group for status and control, but there’s competition between groups for survival.
[00:34:37] If you lose the battle for survival ,it doesn’t matter who’s in charge, who’s up and who’s down. There’s competition within the group for status there’s competition, between groups for survival, and if you lose a battle for survival, you’re done. People confuse leadership with status within the group. No leadership is what keeps you going. vis-a-vis the Russians, the Chinese, or whoever else your potential threats are. And I think that’s a [00:35:00] really important distinction that most people don’t make or maintain. Competition within the group for status competition between the groups for survival and survival is much more important.
[00:35:09]Aidan McCullen: [00:35:09] And it’s so important in this world of absolute flux in every way, you know, we’ve technology, we’ve pandemics. We’ve trade wars. There’s so much going on that we can’t afford for infighting within organizations. asked at the top of the show when I planted that seed, that Blake gave me about how many psychologists it takes to screw in a lightbulb . I’d love you to give us the answer?
[00:35:30] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:35:30] So every talk I give, people say, well, can personality change? And the answer is. the old joke. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is one, but the ball has to really want to change. And so how much do people change? Well, not much.
[00:35:46] I mean, the only way I can change it, they have to really, really want to change. And mostly they don’t. People are pretty happy with themselves
[00:35:52]Aidan McCullen: [00:35:52] Robert, before I finish up, where can people find out your work et cetera?
[00:36:00] [00:35:57] Dr. Robert Hogan: [00:35:57] Www.hoganassessments.com.
[00:36:01] Aidan McCullen: [00:36:01] And I’d like to thank our sponsor of the show, Microsoft for startups, creator of the Hogan assessments. Dr. Robert Hogan. Thank you for joining us
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