Famed management consultant Peter Drucker, PhD, once described leadership as being about followership. This may sound redundant, but from our perspective, there’s much more to it. At Hogan, we’ve been studying leadership for decades. In fact, we’re an international authority in the subject—specifically in the relationship between leadership, personality, and job performance. But we realize that, if you’re not an expert, the topic can seem incredibly complex.

Let us explain.

In 2018, Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 experienced engine failure. Debris from the engine struck the wing and a window, causing rapid decompression in the cabin and one passenger fatality. The flight’s captain, Tammie Jo Shults, who was one of the first women to become a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, calmly worked with air traffic control to land the plane successfully. Organizations always have crises, but they don’t always have leaders as skilled, self-possessed, and decisive as Captain Shults. What does it take to lead effectively through an organizational crisis?

First, we’ll explore what leadership means. Next, we’ll review characteristics of leaders who succeed through crises. Finally, we’ll touch on what organizations can do to develop crisis-resilient leaders.

Are luxury possessions and speeding tickets indicative of CEOs who will cultivate scandal and commit fraud? They can be. Recently on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, chief science officer, and Blake Loepp, PR manager, spoke with Aiyesha Dey, PhD, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, about how CEO personality influences CEO behavior.

By researching the personal lives of CEOs and their behavior outside of the workplace, Aiyesha has identified data that can be quite predictive of how they may perform on the job.

Let’s dive into how the personality characteristics of materialism and rule breaking can affect CEO behavior.

Dezvoltarea liderilor este un subiect foarte „hot”. Programele si practicile folosite pentru a dezvolta talentele de top sunt prolifice si diverse, iar 95% din organizatii intentioneaza sa-si mentina sau sa isi sporeasca investitiile in dezvoltarea liderilor. In mod paradoxal, doar 10% dintre CEO spun ca programele lor de dezvoltare a liderilor au un impact vizibil asupra business-ului si peste 50% din CEO declara ca dezvoltarea celor care sunt pentru prima oara in roluri de conducere este una dintre cele mai mari provocari cu care se confrunta in prezent. Si angajatii considera ca aceast aspect reprezinta o problema. Nivel de angajament al angajatilor este la un nivel de doar 32%, in scadere de la 36% in 2020, iar „dissengagement-ul” activ este in crestere, cu un procent fata de 2021. Relatiile lor cu liderii reprezinta un factor determinant. Un procent uimitor de 84% din angajatii din SUA de exemplu atribuie stresul lor managerilor, iar jumatate spun ca performanta lor s-ar imbunatati daca managerii ar beneficia de oportunitati de dezvoltare.

Leadership development is big business. The programs and practices used to grow top-level talent are prolific and diverse, and 95% of organizations plan to maintain or increase their current leadership development investment. Paradoxically, only 10% of CEOs say their leadership development programs have clear business impact, and more than 50% of CEOs say that developing next-generation leaders is the biggest challenge they face today. Employees paint a similarly bleak picture. Employee engagement is at just 32%, down from 36% in 2020, while active disengagement is on the rise, up one percentage point from 2021. Their relationships with leaders are a contributing factor. A startling 84% of US workers attribute their stress to their managers, and half say their performance would improve if their managers were to receive development opportunities.

A group of five professionals seated around a conference table discuss business metrics, perhaps including the benefits of metrics-driven leadership development programs, such as enhanced team performance. A couple of laptops are atop the conference table, along with a mess of papers. The professionals are all wearing business attire. Two of the professionals in the foreground are gesturing at a piece of paper displaying pie charts.

In the past, product and service delivery were expressed in abstract terms like “as soon as we can” or “the best we can.” Gradually, time of product and service delivery became metrics driven. Yet many organizational functions — specifically those guided by people and so-called “soft skills” — were still not considered to be measurable.

Nearly all leadership development programs target individual growth and the development of soft skills, which are personality-based behaviors such as emotional intelligence, influencing skills, relationship management, etc., and 63% of organizations use executive coaching to support leader growth.Efforts to change or improve soft skills are hard to quantify, study, and measure, making ROI difficult to calculate.

This raises a question that we get from clients every day: Can you really change your personality? If so, how much? What strategies or interventions work best?

Reading the business news makes it obvious that CEOs have a huge impact on organizational success. When corporations succeed, their CEOs are usually credited for company performance. When corporations fail, sometimes in colossal fashion, their CEOs are blamed and unceremoniously removed. At Hogan, we are no strangers to this conversation, frequently emphasizing the critical role of leadership in organizational success and failure. But just how important is it for organizations to get the right person in charge? What is the value of an effective CEO?

The black swan of COVID-19 came from out of nowhere to disrupt daily life and derail an historically strong economy, with social and economic aftershocks that will reverberate for years to come. The pandemic has also revealed some things about the state of play in leadership that we have to face.

Gross disparities in how leaders have responded make it painfully obvious how unprepared many of them were for the crisis. Further, a distinguishing quality of those who were able to rise to the challenge is versatility: They drew on a broad range of mindsets and behaviors in leading their teams and organizations through constantly shifting, and often conflicting, priorities and challenges.

This highlights a distinct form of leadership that’s well suited for disruptive change and simultaneously exposes significant problems with the way leadership is typically defined, assessed, and developed.

The new realities shaped by the disruptive and complex moment we are experiencing are completely different for each organization. This situation is forcing some companies to completely reinvent themselves, while others are unable to operate as needed. Others are seeing turnover grow at unexpected levels. The personality characteristics of the CEOs of the companies influence the consequences that each of the companies is experiencing as a result of the pandemic.

The Leader in Times of Crisis Program

This article will focus on how the CEOs scored on the Hogan Personality Inventory (bright side of personality), or HPI, which evaluates seven aspects of personality that tend to appear during everyday situations and the Hogan Development Survey (dark side of personality), or HDS, measures the 11 aspects of personality that can derail performance during times like these.