It is a highly effective experience and self awareness tool to have an assessment of your personality, strengths, and values done at least once in your career and ideally at regular intervals especially during career advancement and leadership development. I just had the pleasure of experiencing the Hogan Assessment as part of becoming certified and it was very interesting to see where my behavioral tendencies are and how this impacts my performance, others, and my own professional development. I now believe every leader needs a baseline personality assessment so they can have a greater understanding of their impact on others and their results.
How the Hogan Assessments Measures the Dark Side of Personality
It may sound like a Star Wars analogy, but the Hogan Assessments not only measure personality strengths based on reputation rather than identity, but it also measures the dark side or ‘derailers’ of personality that would adversely affect performance. I have always said to people that a strength can sometimes be a weakness if overused or mismanaged. What is fascinating about our dark side of personality, is its impact on others or when working in teams. Once someone becomes aware of their weaknesses and the corresponding results they create impacting others or their results, they can now consciously manage these.
What is particularly unique about the Hogan Assessments is that the strengths or their scores on personality drivers are linked with their Hogan Development Survey results, or the derailers, demonstrating to each participant their behavioral tendencies. This starts to describe a very clear picture of how they show up on a day to day basis, how they are perceived by coworkers or peers, and the effect it can have if overused. Every behavioral driver has both positive and negative elements and a high or low score is neither good nor bad, but rather relative to the role and context each leader needs to perform in.
Hogan Assessments Measure ‘Fit’ for both the Company and the Leader
If you are wondering if a leader will be a good fit for the company or the position you are trying to fill when recruiting or conversely, if you are a career executive looking for the right fit for yourself, the MVPI assessment score will help you predict this. MVPI stands for Motives, Values, and Preferences and it measures the following:
- Occupational Preferences or what one likes to do, what makes a good job, preferred work materials
- Lifestyles or the manner in which a person would like to live
- Beliefs – the ideals and ultimate life goals
- Aversions – attitudes and behaviors that are either disliked or distressing
- Preferred Associates – the kind of individuals desired as coworkers and friends
Ultimately finding a job or career that aligns with your values will not only produce greater fulfillment for the individual, but it will also increase their success and performance.
How Companies can use the Hogan Assessment with Teams
A team’s effectiveness and performance is influenced greatly by the compliment of strengths, the cohesiveness of communication between its members, and awareness to everyone’s values. If you are a company or leader wanting to improve a team’s collaboration, communication, performance, and results, implementing a team personality and values assessment is a great solution.
Not only will every team member learn about themselves and their strengths and weaknesses that impact their colleagues, but they will also be able to learn how the team functions as a whole. This will include discovering if the team is lacking a strength or a gap required for superior performance.
Hogan Assessments can be matched to core competencies required for a specific leadership position or by a company. Team’s can identify the core competencies required for success and then assess these to their own team members realizing if any gaps exist that may impact performance.
Hogan Personality Assessments for Entrepreneurs
I am an entrepreneur and as part of the certification process of being able to deliver Hogan Assessments, the pre course work began with my own report and debrief with a trained Hogan facilitator. As the results were revealed to me and explained in greater detail and as I viewed the report alongside the feedback, the reality of my behavioral tendencies showed me how I may be positively and negatively influencing my own business growth. Yes, at first it was a bit of a slap in the face in areas, but quickly I turned this new found knowledge into enlightenment of how I have been operating. All of a sudden, I saw this personality/reputation assessment as feedback on where I could challenge myself, what I could improve, and what I needed to manage in order to get the results I want.
So if you are an entrepreneur or definitely if you are a solo entrepreneur, these types of personality assessments can be an extraordinarily helpful feedback tool. In fact, a partner I was paired with to do a mock assessment review with was also an entrepreneur and as I gave this person feedback, I was able to give her ideas on how to build her business based on her strengths and managing her derailers to performance. As entrepreneurs we need to remember that our personality is in our brand, it creates interactions with our clients, and it absolutely impacts the growth or success of our business.
Hogan Personality, Strengths, and Values Assessments bring our unconscious behaviors that are on auto pilot into conscious awareness thereby positively impacting our ability to succeed as leaders and entrepreneurs.
Leadership Development and High Potential Leaders Assessment Tool
Developing your leadership skills or leaders in your company is the single greatest action step towards advancement, growth, and success. In order to develop yourself or other leaders, it is helpful to have a baseline assessment tool scientifically validated and proven from which to build on. I believe the Hogan Assessment tool is an effective report that benefits both leaders and the company as it provides results in 3 key areas:
- Personality Inventory or Key Strengths / Behavioral Drivers
- Personality Derailers or Weaknesses / Behaviors when Stressed
- Motives/Values/Preferences or the Indicators of Alignment for Best Fit
50% of Fortune 500 companies are using Hogan Assessments. It is particularly beneficial for developing leaders and growing high potential leaders. Often these reports are combined with leadership coaching to prepare and elevate leaders for new leadership positions. They can also be used to assess which leaders are the right fit for specific positions.
As one of my specialties is Women’s Leadership and women who are advancing into leadership roles are excellent at preparing themselves for leadership and developing their skills, the Hogan Assessment will provide excellent feedback for leadership performance.
Personality Assessments are a Leadership Development and Performance Tool
It was my first time experiencing a personality assessment when I completed the Hogan Assessment and it was accurate, humbling, and insightful. As a feedback tool, I gained a greater understanding into how I operate in the world and how this is perceived and how my reputation comes across to others. This insight has produced a strong self awareness and a heightened attention to my default patterns or behaviors that may or may not be serving my own leadership development and business success.
I do feel it is important for anyone who ever takes an assessment tool to not accept it as your identity or as fact for how you are all the time because people are powerfully unique and unique to specific situations. This is a feedback tool meant to provide insight, awareness, development opportunities, fit, and improve performance.
As a certified Hogan Assessment practitioner and coach in Vancouver, B.C., reach out with any questions or inquiries you have about bringing them to your company, team, leaders, or for yourself. There are a number of assessments to choose from and each provides a detailed report that can be used as a stand alone feedback tool or in conjunction with leadership coaching. Email [email protected] to discover more about the Hogan Assessments and how they can develop your leaders, grow your business, and increase performance.
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