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.

“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” This quote, attributed to Helen Keller, is as true today as it was in the 1920s. A cohesive team is one of the most effective ways to accomplish work and achieve goals. Virtual team-building activities for bringing remote teams and hybrid teams together encourage successful collaboration and employee engagement.

At Hogan, we have recently seen an uptick in client concerns regarding employee turnover. This developing concern parallels a general increase throughout the workforce in employees’ desires to quit their jobs after experiencing organizational changes sparked by the pandemic. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of 4.3 million employees per month quit their jobs between March 2021 and March 2022. This trend, termed the Great Resignation, can harm organizational effectiveness due to replacement costs, reduced efficiency, loss of clients, lower customer satisfaction, overburdened HR, and a decrease in workforce morale.

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.

Hiring Gen Z is essential to surviving in this talent market.

You know the story: The skills gap is cavernous. The Great Resignation is here. Baby boomers are retiring at record pace. The employment climate is changing too quickly, and you have jobs to fill — you need to adapt. But how?

First, know it’s not just you. Organizations across industries and around the globe are confronting these issues and more. As Industry 4.0 technologies change how businesses operate, employers are seeking candidates who have strong digital skills, including the ability to learn quickly and easily to use new technology and aptitude for data and analytics.

To say the current talent market is competitive might be an understatement. Concerns about the skills gap have intensified as the number of open jobs has grown considerably in the past year and a half. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has also risen, and many workers have been unable to find new work due to skill misalignment with the available openings, concern for their health, issues with childcare, distance from opportunities, and more. In other words, jobs are opening, the size of the talent pool is shrinking, and the skills that were in-demand pre-pandemic are even more so now.

For many employers, finding the right people to hire right now may seem near impossible. There are numerous ways organizations can improve their talent management strategies to not only hire but also retain top talent. One in particular entered the spotlight this summer when a LinkedIn post went viral: cutting back on interviews to reduce time to hire and gain candidates’ loyalty. Interview fatigue is a critical flaw in the candidate experience at many organizations — and thus an insidious threat to your talent acquisition strategy.

Pandemia COVID-19 a modificat în mod dramatic modul în care și locul de unde ne desfășurăm munca. Întrucât în numeroase industrii angajații au fost determinați să lucreze exclusiv de la distanță, persoanele aflate la fiecare nivel organizațional au fost nevoite să își regândească relația cu locul de muncă și să învețe un nou mod de a-și desfășura interacțiunile cu colegii și clienții în condițiile distanțării virtuale. Conform datelor LinkedIn, înregistrările privind munca la distanță au crescut cu 357% în perioada mai 2020-mai 2021. Cum pandemia continuă, iar restricțiile fluctuează, trebuie să începem să ne punem o întrebare importantă: cum vom redefini normalitatea?

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?