Quality control: Why leaders need to understand personality

M

Quality ControlWhy Leaders Need

to Understand Personality

Every individual has a personality, and because the primary

responsibility of managers is dealing with people, it’s important for

managers to grasp the different types of personality and the

implications of each type for the work world. With a clear

understanding of how people are alike and the important ways in which

they differ, managers are in a strong position to be effective leaders. In

particular, knowledge of personality translates into effectiveness in

hiring employees, leading employees, and managing yourself.

by Rober t Hogan and Rober t B . Ka i ser

L I A • VO LU M E 28 , N U M B E R 5 • N OV E M B E R / D EC E M B E R 20 0 8

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anagers tend to be prag-matic, and for good reason. They areresponsible for managing valuableresources, including time, money,and materials. But the most impor-tant resource that managers overseeis people; managers are first andforemost in the people business. Itfollows then that to perform well,managers need to know somethingabout personality.

Personality involves two maincomponents. The first is humannature—what all people are like,deep inside. The second is individualdifferences—the important ways in

which people differ from oneanother. Managers who don’t under-stand human nature and individualdifferences are poorly equipped tomotivate people and help them per-form. But with a clear understandingof human nature and individual dif-ferences, managers are in a strongposition to be effective leaders.

The study of personality has along history. Early societies, fromthe Chinese in the East to theGreeks in the West, speculatedabout human nature and humanuniqueness. A key lesson from thehistory of thought about personality

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is that it is important to start withthe right assumptions.

Sigmund Freud was the pioneerof modern personality psychology.Despite his important contributions,he started with the wrong keyassumptions—he postulated that themost important generalizations thatcan be made about people are thateveryone is neurotic and that thebasic problems of life involve over-coming one’s neuroses. Althoughmost people enjoy analyzing them-selves, research shows that doing sodoesn’t provide much guidance fordealing with other people at work,in close relationships, and else-where. Moreover, it is simply nottrue that most people are neurotic.

Business school faculties tend topromote the views of American psy-chologist Abraham Maslow on per-sonality. Maslow, a humanist, wasmore concerned with politics thanwith science. His ideas about self-actualization closely resemble KarlMarx’s view that the role of thestate is to help each person reach

his or her full potential. And just asMarxism has failed as a theory ofeconomics, self-actualization hasfailed as a theory of personality.After half a century, psychologistsare still unable to measure self-actualization. However, the pursuitof self-actualization was a drivingforce, and often a justification, formuch of the self-indulgence andcultural excess of the 1960s, 1970s,and 1980s.

TWO CONDITIONSA useful view of personality shouldsatisfy two conditions. First, it mustbe consistent with what is knownabout human evolution—otherwiseit is unlikely to adequately charac-terize human nature. Second, it mustidentify the most consequentialways in which people differ—waysthat can account for important dif-ferences in job performance, careersuccess, relationships, health, andlongevity, among other factors.

Human NatureTaken together, anthropology, soci-ology, and evolutionary biology pro-vide a view of human nature thatcenters on a robust generalizationwith powerful practical implica-tions. Primates are the most socialof all the animal families, andhuman beings are supersocial pri-mates—we evolved living in groups.This fact holds the key to under-standing human nature.

Group living was a survival strat-egy that provided a buffer againstharsh elements and powerful preda-tors. Humans have always lived ingroups, and this reflects strongneeds for social interaction andbeing a part of something largerthan ourselves. Every human groupalso has a status hierarchy—thereare people at the bottom, in the mid-dle, and at the top, and everyoneknows who is where. People at thetop exert more influence and enjoy


more privileges than those belowthem; consequently, there are realbenefits to status. Finally, everyhuman group has a religion that pre-scribes and justifies its rules regard-ing acceptable behavior. These rulesand belief systems provide guidanceand a sense of group identity; theyalso reduce ambiguity and help peo-ple interact, recognize members oftheir own group, and determinewhat is valuable.

The fact that group living, statusstriving, and religion are universaltraits among humans suggests thathuman nature rests on three innateand fundamental needs—gettingalong, getting ahead, and findingmeaning in life.

Getting along involves gainingsocial acceptance and avoidingrejection; it is rewarding to be likedand accepted, and stressful to becriticized or rejected. That’s whysolitary confinement is the mostaversive form of punishment.

Getting ahead involves gainingstatus and respect and avoiding lossof power. Winning a promotion atwork or defeating a competitor onthe court triggers a pleasurable neu-rochemical bath of serotonin; losingtriggers the release of the stress hor-mone cortisol.

Finding meaning involves devel-oping a purpose in life that is valuedby one’s social group; a sense ofmeaning also provides some degreeof structure and predictability in theenvironment. Those who see nomeaning in life are listless and dis-engaged, and everyone becomesdistressed by chaos and a loss ofcontrol.

Humans’ universal needs to getalong, get ahead, and find meaningare rooted in biology—these needsfacilitated the survival of our ances-tors. Moreover, people with lots ofsocial support, power, and sense ofpurpose do better today. As super-social creatures, people use socialinteraction to fulfill these important

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Robert Hogan is president

of Hogan Assessment

Systems, which uses person-

ality assessments to help

companies select employees,

develop leaders, and identify

talent. He holds a Ph.D.

degree from the University

of California, Berkeley.

Robert B. Kaiser is a part-

ner at Kaplan DeVries, which

provides leadership consult-

ing to executives and execu-

tive teams. He holds an M.S.

degree from Illinois State

University and is co-author

of the Leadership Versatility

Index, a 360-degree feedback tool.

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R S

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needs. Much of modern social lifetakes place at work, among otherorganizational settings, and there-fore the workplace provides oppor-tunities to gain acceptance, increaseone’s status and power, and identifywith a larger group and its purpose.These three needs provide managerswith their most important levers formotivating people.

Individual DifferencesNot all people are equally skilled atgetting along, getting ahead, andfinding meaning. People differ intheir ability to meet these needs,and these differences are reflectedin their values, beliefs, dispositions,talents, and typical behaviors. Thisis what we mean by the term per-sonality.

It is useful to distinguishbetween personality from the insideand personality from the outside.Personality from the inside entailshow people think about them-selves—their hopes, dreams, goals,fears, and strategies for gettingalong, getting ahead, and findingmeaning; these self-views form aperson’s identity. Personality fromthe outside entails how other peoplethink about a particular person,which is that person’s reputation—the things others need to know inorder to be able to deal with thatperson effectively.

Identity is the you that you knowand reputation is the you that weknow. These two forms of personal-ity are different in important ways.Freud said that the you that youknow is hardly worth knowingbecause you made it all up. He waspartially right; for example, there istypically little correspondencebetween self-ratings and co-workerratings in 360-degree feedback.Nonetheless, identity is importantbecause it explains why people dowhat they do, even if their behavior,and the reasons they give for it,make little sense to observers.

Individuals’ reputations deter-mine how others interact with them;for example, if others think that anindividual is overly critical, theywill tend to avoid him or her.Reputation is a summary of howindividuals have behaved in the pastand is the best information availableabout how they are likely to behavein the future—because the best pre-dictor of future behavior is pastbehavior. Reputation determinessome of the most consequential out-comes in life: it is the basis onwhich people are promoted, mar-ried, collaborated with, loanedmoney, and liked or despised.

There are two distinct aspects ofreputation—the bright side and thedark side. The bright side reflectsindividuals’ social performancewhen they are at their best. The darkside reflects individuals’ social per-formance when they let their guarddown—when they are stressed out,overworked, or simply do not carewhat kind of an impression theymake. The bright side describes theperson met in an employment inter-view; the dark side describes theperson evaluated at the end of theyear.

Researchers have identified fivebasic dimensions that form thebright side of personality; they areknown as the Big Five. Thesedimensions are adjustment, extra-version, likeability, prudence, andopenness, and they reflect the com-mon terms that people use todescribe other people in the earlystages of a relationship. All peopledescribe and compare one anotherin terms of these five dimensions.

Adjustment involves poise andself-confidence, a key ingredient forsuccess in both getting along andgetting ahead. Extraversion splitsinto two components, sociabilityand ambition, that seem similar butserve different needs. Sociabilityinvolves being affable and outgoing,which is important for getting

along. Ambition involves competi-tive status seeking and directly con-cerns getting ahead. Likeability isabout being considerate and congen-ial and is a key factor in gettingalong. Prudence involves followingrules and working hard, which arerelated to both getting along andgetting ahead. Openness is the keyto creativity and includes seeming

curious and intellectually engaged,which facilitates finding meaning.

The role of the Big Five in jobperformance has been widely stud-ied and there is substantial dataindicating that they predict job per-formance at every level in everyorganization.

Dark-side tendencies typicallycoexist with well-developed socialskills, which mask or compensatefor the dark-side tendencies in theshort run. Over time, however, aswe get to know people better, theirdark-side tendencies emerge. Thedark side concerns behavioral ten-dencies associated with gettingalong and getting ahead that can beeffective in the near term. For exam-ple, arrogant people may at firstseem poised and self-confident.However, dark-side tendencies reston flawed assumptions about one’scapabilities and others’ reactions(for instance, “There is nothing Ican’t do!” or, “Other people find meirresistible”), and these flawedassumptions and their associatedbehaviors tend to undermine rela-tionships in the long term. In manyways the dark side can be under-


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Individuals’ reputations

determine how others

interact with them.

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performance requirements can iden-tify the configuration of personalitycharacteristics suited for a givenjob.

Personality inventories are partic-ularly useful for identifying leader-ship potential. Research shows thatthe Big Five predict leadership bet-ter than IQ does. Effective leadersare adjusted (optimistic and calmunder pressure), ambitious (drivenand competitive), sociable (ener-getic and communicative), prudent(hard working and industrious),open (visionary and eager to learn),

and somewhat likeable (agreeablebut also objective and tough-minded).

Assessing the dark side of per-sonality is also helpful in selection.Because well-developed social skillsusually mask dark-side tendenciesin the short run, these destructivetendencies are hard to detect usingbright-side measures, interviews, orassessment centers. However, ameasure of the dark side can helphiring managers determine whenself-confident applicants are actu-ally arrogant or when attention todetail may be a sign of microman-agement. Ironically, many derailedmanagers were fired for the samereasons they were hired—theirstrengths became weaknesses, asCCL researchers have put it.

Competent personality measureshave two distinct advantages asselection devices. First, they predictperformance quite well. Second,unlike IQ tests, personality mea-


sures do not discriminate againstany protected category of job appli-cants—minority applicants andwomen achieve similar scores tomajority applicants and men. It isalso worth mentioning that theclaim that personality inventoriescan be deceived is simply false. It isone thing to fake an answer to a sin-gle item—for instance, “I havenever told a lie”—but it is impossi-ble to manufacture a fake profile ona multidimensional inventory.

Leading EmployeesWe have noted that the universalneeds to get along, get ahead, andfind meaning provide the mostimportant levers for motivating peo-ple. Employees perform better whenthey have positive relationships withtheir managers and co-workers, asense of community, and protectionfrom bullying and harassment.Employees also want a goodincome, opportunities for advance-ment, freedom to decide how to dotheir work, and a clear vision fromtheir leaders to give their workmeaning and purpose. Effectivemanagers have the skills to fulfillthese needs for their employees.

Personality is also about individ-ual differences, which means thatpeople vary in their degree of moti-vation to fulfill their needs to getalong, get ahead, and find meaning.Savvy managers understand thesedifferences. For example, ambitiousemployees want opportunities totake on leadership roles, demon-strate their competence, and earnbonuses and other forms of recogni-tion. Employees who are low inambition, however, find extraresponsibilities and challengingassignments stressful. Employeeswho are highly likeable are con-cerned about peaceful relations atwork and being accepted by theirco-workers; employees with lowlikeability are comfortable with con-flict and dislike working on teams.

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stood as a set of otherwise attractivequalities that are overdone; forexample, confidence turns into arro-gance, creativity becomes eccentric-ity, tact becomes sucking up, and soon.

Psychologists have identifiedeleven counterproductive dimensionsof personality that constitute thedark side—excitable, skeptical, cau-tious, reserved, leisurely, bold, mis-chievous, colorful, imaginative, dili-gent, and dutiful. There is lessresearch on the effects of the darkside at work than there is on thebright side effects. However,although some of the dark-sidedimensions may at first glanceappear to be tendencies that aredesirable in managers, they havebeen linked to long-term weaknessesthat lead to poor judgment, bad lead-ership, and derailment. Moreover,everyone has at least some of thesetendencies, so career developmentdepends on coming to terms withthem.

WHAT IT MEANSWhat we have discussed so far is anoverview of personality at the con-ceptual level. These concepts havewide-ranging, practical implicationsfor managers, notably in the areas ofhiring employees, leading employ-ees, and managing yourself.

Hiring EmployeesOver the past twenty years,researchers have found overwhelm-ing evidence that personality inven-tories based on the Big Five predictperformance in every job in the U.S.economy. However, different jobsrequire different personality charac-teristics. For example, researchshows that good long-distance truckdrivers are not particularly sociableor ambitious but are very prudent.Conversely, good salespeople arehighly sociable and ambitious butnot very prudent. Careful analysis of

Different jobs require

different personality

characteristics.

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Prudent employees need clear rulesand a structured environment,whereas employees low in prudencefind structure stifling. Employeeslow on adjustment need a lot ofreassurance, find criticism verystressful, and ignore positive feed-back; employees high on adjustmentneed no reassurance and ignore crit-icism. These examples make thepoint that sophisticated managerstailor their methods to the personali-ties of the individuals being man-aged.

A knowledge of personality isindispensable for leading teams.Research shows clearly that thereare team player personalities andteam killer personalities. The best-performing teams are composed ofpeople high on adjustment, likeabil-ity, and prudence—team players areeven-tempered, cooperative, andconforming. Team killers aremoody, quarrelsome, and independ-ent. Moreover, the old adage aboutone bad apple pertains to teams:research shows that it takes only oneperson who is low on adjustment,likeability, and prudence to degradethe performance of the whole team.

Effective teams are also charac-terized by a range of complementaryskills, perspectives, and talents. Thebiggest challenge is to find the rightmix of people to play the variousroles needed for a high-performingteam. Most models of team compo-sition stress the importance of fourroles tied to personality—leader-ship, production, problem solving,and relationship maintenance.Leadership roles are best played byambitious employees who want tocoordinate and guide the team’swork. Production roles need prudentemployees who are good at imple-mentation and driving tasks to com-pletion. Problem solving depends onemployees with high scores foropenness. Finally, the crucial role ofrelationship maintenance requireslikeable and sociable people who

are good at building cohesion andfacilitating communication.

The diversity of a team producesa second challenge—establishingtrust and respect among the differentpersonalities. Creating an atmos-phere of trust is the central task ofthe leader, who needs to understandand respect the unique contributionsof different approaches, emphasizecollective goals and shared fate, andpoint out how cooperation leads tobetter performance than does com-petition.

Managing YourselfBeing able to manage yourself is atleast as important for your career asbeing able to manage others. Self-management begins with self-aware-ness, which means understandingyour personality. This is compli-cated by the fact that individualsinevitably think of themselves dif-ferently from how other people viewthem. The you that you know can bethought of as the protagonist in yourinternal narrative who makes senseof the world. However, you aremerely part of the supporting cast—or perhaps even an antagonist—inother people’s internal narratives.

It is interesting to note thatderailed managers are oftendescribed as self-absorbed. Thissuggests that they are unaware ofhow they are perceived by others.The data suggest that successfulmanagers do understand how theyare perceived by others and areskilled at creating a favorable repu-tation.

Managers can use self-awarenessin two ways to better manage them-selves. First, they need to know theirnatural tendencies—the types ofactivities they gravitate toward andare good at and also the activitiesthey tend to avoid. For instance, amanager high in openness but low inprudence is likely to be creative andto see possibilities that others over-look. Such a manager is well suited

for strategic leadership but is alsounlikely to be good with the detailsof implementation and tactical prob-lem solving. To be effective thismanager will need to put extra effortinto developing operational leader-ship skills or will need to hire andempower a team member with acomplementary profile to fulfill theoperational roles.

Second, managers must under-stand their dark-side tendencies andthe kinds of situations that provoke

those behaviors. This is particularlydifficult because dark-side tenden-cies rest on flawed, self-servingassumptions. One’s best bet is totake a dark-side personality assess-ment and muster the courage toreview the results honestly. It is alsohelpful to get co-worker feedbackon how one’s dark side plays out.Then, using this information andperhaps working with a coach, man-agers can develop strategies and tac-tics for managing the potentiallydisruptive effects of their dark sides.

Ignorance may be bliss in somesituations, but in the case of the darkside, ignorance is a lethal careerstrategy.


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Employees perform bet-

ter when they have pos-

itive relationships with

their managers and

co-workers, a sense of

community, and protec-

tion from bullying and

harassment.

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Quality control: Why leaders need to understand personality