The Leadership Divide: Global Leadership Effectiveness Study Findings

0:00People are the most consequential and dangerous forces on earth. Personality psychology is about the nature of human nature. It's about people. And wouldn't that be useful to know? I can't think of a more important problem. You're listening to the Science of Personality podcast, brought to you by Hogan Assessments, the global leader in personality and leadership. Guided by your hosts, Hogan Chief Science Officer and world-renowned personality psychologist, Dr. Ryan Sherman, alongside Hogan's PR manager

0:35and resident storyteller, Blake Lepp, this podcast explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and the nature of human nature.

0:46Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Science of Personality podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Sherman, along with my co-host, as always, Blake Lepp. Say hello, Blake. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Science of Personality podcast, episode 150. Today, Ryan and I are joined by Hogan's managing director of Asia Pacific, Krista Pedersen, and Hogan's senior consultant in the APAC region, Nicole Dickey, to discuss the findings of Hogan's global leadership effectiveness study. Anyone who uses Hogan's personality assessments or listens to this

1:20podcast knows that identifying effective leaders is at the core of what we do at Hogan. This study, which compares personality assessment data from over 21,000 executives in Hogan's global database with survey responses from nearly 10,000 full-time employees across more than 120 markets, reveals some really incredible insights, including a striking disconnect between the characteristics executives display and the qualities employees say define effective leadership. Krista and Nicole were two of the key people to get this study off the ground, and they're here with us today to discuss

1:54the new findings now that the results are in. But before we get to our conversation with Krista and Nicole, if you wish to give us any ideas for upcoming episodes or you want to ask Ryan or me a question, shoot us an email at hello at the science of personality dot com or follow the Science of Personality on LinkedIn. Now, let's get to it. Krista, Nicole, welcome to the podcast. Is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before we get started? Hey, hey, so excited to be here. This is Krista.

2:25I've been at Hogan for, this is actually my 13th year at Hogan. I'm doing my PhD in organizational development and change, and I live in mainland China. And actually, I have lived outside of the US my entire adult life longer than I have lived in the US. Wow, that's a good fact, Krista. And I'm Nicole Dickey. Thanks so much for having us. A couple, I guess, additional facts. I'm based in Taipei, Taiwan. This is my third year with Hogan. I have a master's in IO psych from the University of

2:59Tulsa and have worked in corporate communications and organizational development. So excited to be here. Thanks for having us. Well, for our audience members, I just want to let them know that Krista and Nicole are two amazing rock stars of our Asia Pacific team. I know they mentioned where they're currently based and where they work out of, but they work throughout all the markets through the Asia region, region for us, including India and down through Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Korea,

3:31and many, many other places in Asia. And those markets are huge markets for Hogan. And we wouldn't be as successful as we were in those markets without the incredible work that Krista and Nicole do. And of course, today, we're super excited to have Krista and Nicole on because of their amazing work on this study, which quite frankly, goes beyond their typical call of duty. And so this is a huge study,

4:01and they were really two major drivers behind it. So super excited to have you on here with us today. So thanks, Nicole and Krista for joining us. Thanks, Ryan. Well, okay, let's get into this very special episode, episode 150, but also just talking about this massive undertaking that so many people, first off, I want to say so many people at Hogan were involved with this study. You know, Krista, Nicole, you all were kind of there, you know, at the very beginning, getting this thing off the ground. And then it goes through all these

4:34different facets of the organization, you know, especially like getting up to the marketing launch of this thing once everything was done. But really, so many people at Hogan were involved with this. So we just wanted to say a huge thank you to everybody who put a lot of really hard work and effort into this because it was a massive project. But it also yielded some really incredible results, which we're going to talk about today. You know, some of our listeners probably listened when Krista joined us for an episode on this topic when the study was underway or the mini PSYOP episode we did

5:10with Nicole to discuss some of those early findings that we saw about a year ago. But for those who aren't familiar with this, can you explain what you were trying to accomplish with this research? You know, what what was the what was the the rationale for getting this off the ground and really wanting to explore this? Yeah, absolutely, Blake. As anyone who's listened to the podcast really knows, Hogan is the thought leader on leadership around the world. And if you've ever listened to any of

5:41Ryan's talks, you have probably heard this distinction we like to make about effective leadership versus emergent leadership. And for those of you who are just joining us, what we say the difference is, is that effective leaders are really focused on their teams and supporting their teams to perform and compete against the competition and win against the competition. So it's more about the leadership as a resource for the team, whereas emergent leadership is about the leader themselves emerging as a leader or being able to get into positions of leadership. So it's

6:17more about that individual leader's career and being able to climb through the politics and get to the top. And so we differentiate these two, which is very important, because I think this is actually something quite unique to Hogan. A lot of people, when they think about leadership, they think about the position of leadership. But we kind of challenge people to think about what action leader needs to do to become effective. And so with this difference between leader emergence versus effectiveness,

6:51we have actually done quite a lot of research on this very topic. And around the world, we've collected so much data from hundreds of markets on emergent leaders. So we've actually written quite extensively on emergent leadership across the world in different countries. And we notice that there's differences in emergent leaders or who we promote as leaders around the world. So a leader in China looks very different from a leader in Denmark, and they look very different from a leader in the US. Different

7:26cultures and countries reward and punish different behaviors and different types of leaders get to be in positions of leadership. Well, when it comes to effective leadership, this is where Hogan is really obsessed with learning more about how we can help support and develop effective leaders. And so anyone who's heard either Ryan or Dr. Hogan talk about effective leadership knows that we oftentimes talk about really four, maybe five characteristics that make for a good leader. So an effective leader tends to cast a

8:00vision and get everyone rallied around that vision. They tend to have good judgment, show integrity, and are confident. Sometimes we add in humble humility, right? And so when we talk about effective leadership around the world, we oftentimes get the question from different markets, yeah, that's great, but does effective leadership from a personality perspective differ in my market? So for example, in Japan, a couple of years ago, Ryan came to speak and a few people asked him, well, Ryan,

8:34does effective leadership differ in Japan? We know emergent leadership is different in Japan. We know leaders in Japan are way different than leaders in almost any market in the world, but is effective leadership the same around the world? And before we did this study, really, we didn't have a good answer for that. We knew that it was important to have vision, judgment, integrity, competence, and humility, but what we really couldn't answer is if leaders around the world exhibit this in different ways. And so really,

9:07the goal of this study, when we first started thinking about this, was to understand if effective leadership is different around the world. And it was actually me, a really great talent from our data science team, Wei Wenya, and also Chase Winterberg, brilliant guy from our Hogan Research Institute. We were at a conference together, and we were talking about this conundrum of how we can actually measure effective

9:38leadership around the world, because we have so much data on emergent leaders, but we wanted to know more about effective leadership. And Chase was talking about a research project he did for police officers in the U.S. And anyone who knows about the U.S. knows that there's been some controversy there. And so what Chase did is he actually asked people what they wanted to see in effective police officers. And Wei Wen said, well, hey, why couldn't we do the same thing with effective leadership around the globe?

10:08And we just thought this was such a cool concept. And I'd also like to brag on Nicole just a little bit. Nicole, when she joined this project, she was barely three months at Hogan, and she just took off running with this project. And it's so amazing. So this is, like she mentioned, it's her third year at Hogan, but she has done so much work on this project, and it's been such an integral part about studying what makes effective leadership around the globe. So we are super excited to start talking

10:39about the results. And maybe one other point that I'd like to make is, previously, we called this the Global Leadership Effectiveness Study, but we have rebranded to calling it the Leadership Divide.

10:53Yeah, so Nicole, I didn't know if you had anything to add there as well, but I think one of the, you know, one of the exciting things about this study is that, to the point you were making earlier, Krista, we've been talking at Hogan about this distinction between leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness for a long time. There seemed to be some pretty clear evidence for it, but a lot of the empirical evidence for it was limited to some older studies that had been done quite some time ago, or is limited to just focused on managers, not really necessarily the highest level

11:25leaders, and often took, you know, a very different perspective from this study, which really focused on the perspective from followers, as opposed to the perspective of, say, HR leaders, or some other leaders in different parts of an organization. So, you know, for me, this is really an opportunity to demonstrate what we've been talking about at Hogan from an empirical standpoint to say, really, we think there is a distinction, a critical distinction between emergence and effectiveness. We think this has been overlooked for a long time. We've been telling people this. There's some past empirical literature

11:59supporting that, but this is really a standout global study, right, to your point, incorporating many, many cultures. Some of those original studies were just done in the United States, where we can look and see if this divide, to use the word, is consistent across the world, and if it really is consistent with our point of view. So, I guess for me, that was one of the exciting things about it, but I was really interested in sort of, Krista Nicole, your, you know,

12:35your perspective on the sort of the, if that was part of the rationale for it, was not just this global nature to it, but also the rationale was about, you know, trying to really put a flag in the ground, so to speak, to say, hey, this is really definitive now. And then for me, that was what was exciting, but I don't know to what extent that was part of the creation process.

13:05Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan. I think when we started off, it really started off quite organically. And we didn't know how big this would actually get. In fact, when we first pitched it, we were thinking about maybe starting in five different countries, maybe looking at some of the biggest economies. So, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, and we were talking about maybe Germany and the U.S., something like that. But it was really my boss, Jolt, who said, why don't we just do

13:36this around the world and see how much data we can get and how far we can take it? And it kind of spun from there. So, like Blake mentioned earlier, it was really wonderful to have this grassroots, like, group collaboration just sparked on from the curiosity of, does leadership look different around the globe? And I think with all of the contributions from across different departments at Hogan, it really became this kind of flagship project. I don't think I could have ever

14:07imagined that it would get this big and that we would have this much data to be able to just play around with and do so much with and gain some really solid insights on. So, I'm super excited to see it actually come out into the world and go from this, like, grassroots small project to something really meaningful and significant for global studies. Well, I'd like to chime in here before we get to the next question and just to give our listeners kind of an idea of what the magnitude of these

14:38results have generated as far as where my job's concerned in the PR and, you know, media outreach for this. And, you know, I think as of recording this, we are 13 days into the launch. Of course, it's going to come out, you know, later. But we already have coverage in Forbes, Forbes UK, the Times out of the UK. I mean, we're already seeing these top tier one outlets really kind of take a look at this and really they're seeing what we see. So, this isn't just something that we're,

15:13we think is cool. But, you know, in our media outreach, people are really grasping onto this. This, this, this means something to them. And we just continue to see, I think we've already hit about almost a half a billion UMV as far as our audience reach in just the first 13 days from a PR standpoint. So, this has been a huge win on that front as well. So, that just tells you the magnitude of this. So, moving on to my next question. Can you now give us a look behind the curtain and talk about the study design and methodology? So, I think that before we can get to the other

15:49parts, I think we really need to dig into that as well. Sure. This is Nicole. I'll jump in, Blake. So, we had two really key data sources that we were pulling from. So, you know, it's the leadership divide. So, we're comparing the leaders that we have with the leaders that we want. So, that first data source is dealing with the leaders that we have. And so, for, for that data, we actually used Hogan's global normative data set. So, that's a stratified representative sample of

16:21the global workforce. And of that, we grabbed and used the job level of executive to really represent and operationalize our emergent leader. Kind of, you know, the leaders that are in power. And I think Ryan could speak more to this, but our norm is tailored to represent the demographics of a global workforce. So, when we say that executives tend to behave this way or that way, we can really speak with a lot of authority. And you might see different numbers of respondents

16:52on the HPI or the HDS, the MVPI. And that's just because a different number of folks have taken those different particular inventories. So, then we get to the leaders that we want. And if I can kind of take a sidestep, a little meander here, to talk about a theoretical background. So, our background really comes from implicit leader theory. And that's helping us to understand who followers are going to follow. The idea here is

17:24that every person has this sort of unconscious, personal idea of what makes a leader. This comes from interacting with teachers and coaches and bosses in the workplace, from the media, all kinds of socialization experiences. Maybe, Ryan, you have like a specific person you think of when you think of a leader. Maybe Krista thinks of like a prototype. But we just really wanted to figure out a way to get at these perceptions of an ideal or effective leader. And kind of an easy

17:56way to think of this is if you look at a person and you unconsciously decide that this is a leader or not a leader. So, you're making an unconscious evaluation. And when you evaluate someone as a leader, you're willing to follow them. And this comes to like really good positive performance outcomes like employee engagement and team performance and organizational effectiveness. So, our goal was to use this information about respondents' perceptions of an ideal leader

18:27in order to help develop current and future leaders, to help them behave in ways that align with employees' needs, employees' expectations, so that we can see those positive performance outcomes like engagement, like org effectiveness. So, from like a nuts and bolts of the study perspective, we used Hogan's personality-based job analytic tool, and that was the foundation of the survey. So, usually if Hogan's data science team is going to be conducting a job analysis, it's going to have a

19:01specific referent job, like a flight attendant or an accountant. And our data science team would be asking subject matter experts and incumbents, those who are in the job, you know, what does it take to be successful in this role? And this would be sort of a first step in collecting data to then do more with the data, like to develop a success profile for selecting employees or training recommendations, development recommendations. There's a ton that you can do with job analysis data. But we took a

19:34different approach. So, instead of asking about a specific role, we just asked about ideal leader. And anyone and everyone who's ever worked for a boss, they were our subject matter experts. And we were asking people in a structured way, which is going to help us, you know, reduce that bias and really get to behaviors. So, we presented individuals with a behavioral statement, and then we asked them to rate that as very good or very bad, very good to very bad for ideal leadership. So, Blake and

20:07Ryan, I want to get your perspectives really quick. Here's an example item. Can see things from the perspectives of others. Okay, so would you rate that as very good, good, neutral, bad, or very bad for ideal leadership? Can see things from the perspective of others. Blake, I'll let you go first. Can you list the options again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, five point scale, very good, good, neutral, bad, or very bad for ideal leader

20:42performance. I would say very good. Yeah, I was gonna say very good as well. Yeah, not saying that I'm very good, just saying that's what I would expect out of a leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was more wanting to be clear. No, no, but that's a good point, Blake, because that is how the study is supposed to work. You're supposed to be thinking about, not yourself, but what you think the ideal leader should do. Yep, exactly. That's what I think is very good. And Blake and Ryan, your perspective aligns with what we see across the world. So, this item was actually our top endorsed item. So, you're

21:15aligned with our global respondents. So, at a really high level, we had this opportunity to partner with distributors around the world, clients around the world, for this data collection effort. And we have now over 10,000 respondents across almost 2,000 companies in over 120 different countries and territories. So, a really robust sample across the world.

21:40Well, I mean, thanks, Nicole, for going over that methodology for us. I should point out here, point of order. Usually, Blake and I get to ask the questions on this podcast. So, we get to look like the smart people, because we get to ask all the questions. Now, fortunately, we got the right answer there, so we could maintain our position at the top of the intellectual hierarchy, because we matched everybody else. But that was a real risk for us. So, we're going to have to be careful about

22:12that in the future, Blake, having our guests turn the tables on us and ask us questions. Yeah, well, I was buying time there, so I could pull up ChatGPT and get the right one. I'm kidding.

22:26Go ahead, Blake. No, you go ahead, Ryan. Well, no, Nicole, I was going to say that one of the questions that comes up here, thinking about this methodology, and I'm sort of interested in your take on this, is to what extent can we actually trust people's opinions? You know, your example there, you're asking me and Blake, and we ask other people these kinds of things. You know, why is it that we think we can trust other people's opinions? Should, you know, there's an argument to be made that people don't even know what they need as a leader, so how can you ask them what they want? What are your thoughts on that?

23:01I'm so happy you've teed us up for that, Ryan. And we'll get more into this as we share the findings, but I really think that across all the inventories and across the behavioral statements, what this shows to me is that people, respondents, employees really know what they need to be successful, and they genuinely want to work and want to be successful. So I'll share some examples moving forward, but I think

23:31more than anything, this has surprised, delighted me to see that people genuinely want to work, and they seem to know, you know, what they need in order to accomplish their goals, what they need from their leader in order to accomplish their goals. Krista, what do you think? Yeah, I think it's really funny, Ryan, because when we talk about effective leadership around the world, we always tell people, you know, effective leadership is about building and maintaining a high-performing team. It's not about the position of leadership. It's about the followers.

24:03And everyone says, yes, that's right. It should be about the followers. It shouldn't be about the leaders. But then this question that you've asked, whenever we've presented the results around the world, that's the first question we get is, do the followers really know what a leader needs to do to lead? Shouldn't the leaders know better? Shouldn't the leaders know better what the organization needs to perform? Which is kind of funny, right? Because we're so willing to say that, you know, leadership is for the followers. And yet, we're so mistrustful of actually the followers knowing

24:37what they need in order to be successful. But like Nicole said, kind of our research shows, you know, we're not just asking people, who do you want as a leader and letting them freeform, you know, tell us they want the most funny, charismatic leader. We're actually in this survey asking about specific behaviors that they want to see in their leaders. And so we can be very precise. And like Nicole said, the findings really show that people are really wanting a leader that

25:08can help them perform. Well, okay. You all mentioned we're going to take it, you know, we're going to do a deep dive into the findings a little later in this episode. But I'm going to point out, you know, spoiler alert, there was one common theme we saw in the results, which is that the leaders we have are not the leaders people want. And I think that gets to that leadership divide, you know, rebranding the study. And, you know, I alluded to that in the intro, but would you, you know, either of you mind elaborating on it a bit and tell us more about what this means?

25:41Yeah, absolutely. I think we see this the most starkly when we look at the competencies of the leaders that we have around the globe versus what people say they want in leader competencies. And so we actually took the top five highest ranking competencies of leaders around the globe, and they include inspiring others, competing with others, presenting to others, taking initiative, and driving innovation. So that's the top five competencies that global executives exhibit.

26:14And what's really surprising, or maybe it shouldn't be surprising, what's really stark to me is that these are all very performative behaviors. They're emergent leader behaviors. And so we see the leaders getting to the tops of these organizations, inspire others, they take initiative, they drive innovation, they're presenting to others, it's all about the leader and their capability to present and share their vision and perform. And so it really is more about the position of leadership

26:45and less focus on the teams. Whereas if you actually look at the competencies that people want to see in their leaders, we see that global respondents say they want effective communication, effective decision decision-making, accountability, integrity, and leadership ability, which is really the competency that we're looking at, or how we define that is leaders supporting teams to perform. So if you think about what respondents actually wanted their leaders, it's those effective leadership characteristics.

27:21It's about communicating to the team. It's about making good decisions and being willing to admit when they're wrong. It's about taking accountability for their decisions, having integrity, and supporting others to perform. Again, it's about, you see it very, very clearly. The leaders that we have are emergent leaders, and the leaders that people want are effective leaders. You know, Krista, as you described those results, and I remember the first time you shared those

27:54results. I don't know if it was just with me or the data science team. I don't remember exactly where it was, but I remember the first time you shared this initial set of results. And, you know, we were looking at these results going, huh, that's really interesting. Bob Hogan, for years and years, has talked about, you know, what do people want in leaders? And he's given this list of some of the things you listed off earlier, right? Integrity, good judgment, competence, right? How much overlap is there? How much overlap do you see between what we found in this study and the

28:27things that Dr. Hogan's been talking about for years? I mean, the competencies are right there. You can see it's pretty much nearly all overlapping. You know, if you're talking about effective communication, decision-making, that decision-making is kind of equivalent to judgment, right? We have accountability, which is, and integrity, which is saying what you're going to do and doing what you say. Leadership ability is about supporting the team to perform. I think the only things that

28:58aren't on this list are confidence, which is, could be argued is about, more about experience and maybe even cognitive ability. And then, but you could, you could say that there's some overlap with, you know, accountability, making sure that you know you're, you're being accountable for what you say. It overlaps with competence. So I think it's very much overlapping. It didn't surprise me at all that these are the characteristics that people around the globe really wanted their leaders.

29:28The only one I will say, and this is the one that you always say, Ryan, people over-index on is vision. Vision is clearly on the, what global leaders are really good at. Global leaders tend to be really good at casting that vision. So I'd say, you know, presenting to others, inspiring others, things like that. That's, that lands on that one aspect that Dr. Hogan says is also important, but that's more on the emergent leader side. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. That shows up

29:59on that. The leaders that we currently have tend to be really good at vision, but lacking in some of those other categories, whereas the leaders that we want have those other categories, but do you think that they might also be lacking in vision? Do you think maybe that's, uh, or, or that we don't, but maybe we don't want vision or do you think it's just that we get so much of that already that, that it's less in demand? Well, that's, that's a good question. I don't know. These are like the top ranking competencies. So maybe a little bit lower on the list, you know, vision could be one of the

30:34things that are important, but I think what people are most craving out of the leaders are these other aspects. And I think, you know, from a team perspective, from a wanting to perform, of course, people want a leader that communicates, that makes good decisions, that takes accountability and holds other people accountable for their results, um, and supports them to perform. And again, going back to that question of, do followers really know what they want? How can we trust them? I mean, it's pretty clear from these data right here that followers genuinely want to succeed. They genuinely want a

31:08leader that supports them to perform, which I think is a really good thing. And so we really should be starting to take the perspective of followers in order to engage them a little bit more.

31:21Okay. Now let's dig in a little bit deeper and we're going to start, uh, at the top of the global level, which includes responses from, you know, employees across 120 different countries, or more than 120 different countries. You know, first, I'm curious what people around the world are saying they want an effective leaders. Uh, so if you all could address that. And second, were there any findings that surprised you that stood out? Yeah. Um, I'll go ahead and take this one. I think a couple of clear themes were there across,

31:55um, what we found. Um, and first of all, when we're, we're looking at what people value around the world, what people want in their, want their leaders to value, um, really teamwork and relationships was the big theme. Um, executives, uh, around the world only score moderately on the scale, the Hogan scale of affiliation, but really people around the world wanted affiliation in their leaders. So they want a leader that can, um, drive that sense of belonging that can help people work together

32:27as a team, um, that can put an importance on relationships in organizations. So that was one big thing we saw. And, um, there was a little bit of a gap there between the leaders that we have and the leaders that we want. And so it's really an area for, um, leaders to consider. It's not just about your individual performance or you getting ahead as a leader. It's about making sure that you're building a team. Um, one of the second themes that we saw that was pretty clear, um, and, and really Nicole gave us a hint with that item, the top ranking item is that people want people

33:04first leadership. Um, and so we saw that people actually wanted leaders who were, uh, had energy and drives or high on ambition who were empathetic and cared about people. Um, so we're high in interpersonal sensitivity and who were curious and strategic. So high on inquisitive. Um, and so it's really interesting because, uh, actually leaders around the world tend to have these characteristics. So they tend to be higher in ambition, interpersonal sensitivity, and inquisitive,

33:37but that doesn't mean that there's no opportunities for development here because we know that leaders, um, who are high on these characteristics will have good behaviors associated with them and also have negative behaviors. So for example, someone who is high on interpersonal sensitivity is going to be tactful, empathetic, caring, but at times they may be afraid to confront others. And so another characteristic that I'll talk about in a minute is people didn't want, uh, their leaders to be high

34:10on leisurely. So they didn't want people who are passive aggressive or people who kind of avoided conflict and, and were outwardly agreeable, but inwardly kind of resentful. And so this actually tells us that there really still are opportunities to develop our leaders in their behaviors. So even though we may want someone who's high in interpersonal sensitivity, who's empathetic, who cares about others who can see things from others' perspective, we still need leaders who are willing to confront problems. So that's an area where we might want to develop them. Finally, um, when we're looking at

34:44the characteristics of leaders that we don't want, um, there was very clear consensus around the globe. People really didn't want leaders who are high on excitable, leisurely, bold, and cautious. And for those who are not so familiar with Hogan, excitable is about being emotionally volatile. So people wanted a leader who was pretty emotionally stable and followed through with things. They want a leader who is not passive aggressive or outwardly agreeable, but inwardly resentful. So they want someone who's

35:16willing to confront problems and share their agenda openly and, and really provide kind feedback and not just be nice. Um, they want leaders who are humble. Um, they don't want leaders who are entitled and arrogant. And finally, they want leaders who are willing to make mistakes, take some risks. Um, and, and so, uh, they don't want leaders who are just overly careful and afraid of public embarrassment and never making a decision because of that. And so I think what really stands out to me, um,

35:49um, Oh, and I I'd like to say that most leaders around the globe, um, they tend to be a little bit lower on excitable, leisurely, and cautious, but really where the gap in, in biggest opportunity, I think to no one's surprise is that bold because leaders around the globe tend to be higher on, on bold. They tend to be arrogant. Again, if we're thinking about emergent leaders, they tend to be willing to put themselves out there to make America great again, you know, to, to really, um, be overconfident here and say that they, they can be the superhero that will

36:23save the organization. But what really, what people are wanting are those leaders who can be humble and admit when they're wrong and listen to feedback. And so I think one thing that really stands out for me as I'm looking at all of these characteristics together is just a leader who is people first, um, who's willing to rise to the occasion, for example, with that high inquisitive to think about how we could be doing things better, um, with all of the new technologies, AI going on in the world. Um, they, they have to be able to be meeting those challenges, but even more

36:59importantly, um, I think it's significant that people are wanting that sense of belonging, affiliation, and the people focus in their leader. So with all of the fear that AI is going to take our jobs and no one's going to have jobs anymore, I think leaders can rest assured that people are really wanting someone, uh, they're wanting leaders who can actually guide them through this new technology to help build the team, to help them have that sense of belonging, which is something that, you know, AI really can't do. I mean, they can pretend to do it on a superficial level, but it

37:34really takes a human to be able to be people first, people centric, and really care about the team and create that sense of belonging. So I think the message here is that we'll still need leaders and leadership, even with AI, even with the rise of AI. You know, Krista, in that description, uh, about, you know, what we see in terms of what followers say, the most effective leaders do behaviorally, uh, around the world. There was a lot in that description that struck me as sort of

38:06about emotional control. And then I started thinking about, you know, you know, the item that Nicole read off a moment ago about sort of perspective taking. And that made me think, well, is a lot of this, a lot of it sounds like EQ a lot. That's what, you know, and of course, EQ has been a huge topic and lots of people have talked about EQ and leadership. So I just wondered just to, to, you know, I have sort of two questions here. The first question concerns, you know, to what extent do you think that the pattern here, a lot of it is captured by EQ? I don't think all of it, but quite a bit of it is. And then I also wonder about, you know, this

38:41interesting, uh, pattern, what, where leaders said they, or where the followers said they don't want leaders who are high cautious. They also don't want leaders who are high bold. And that's somewhat interesting because those are actually the opposite of each other to some extent. I mean, they're not, they're not totally opposite. Right. But there is a small negative correlation between cautious and bold. So it's almost like they want leaders who are comfortable and willing to take, um, you know, a certain amount of risk. They're comfortable in the public light. They're

39:13comfortable making a decision without perfect information. They're comfortable making a mistake, but they're also comfortable owning up to those mistakes when they make them. Right. So one of the things that's great about really high bold leaders is they're very comfortable making mistakes. They just won't admit that there's their, those are their mistakes. Whereas the high cautious leaders are uncomfortable making those mistakes in the first place. And so I thought that was a really interesting combination of those two. And I wonder sort of how do you, how do you square those two

39:43results? So the first part is about EQ to what extent is a lot of this about emotional control and EQ. And what about that interesting pattern between cautious and bold and things that we don't want in our leaders? Yeah, those are great questions, Ryan. I think on the EQ part, one thing, you know, Blake asked what I found surprising. I think the result that surprised me the most is we didn't actually see adjustment on here, which is also about, you know, being emotionally controlled, you know, being calm and cool and collected versus being emotion, more emotional

40:21and pessimistic. And I, but it was very interesting because people didn't have a strong feeling about whether or not it was important that their leaders have high adjustment. So I don't know about that EQ piece. I think it's about the people focus about having someone that's empathetic and people are okay with, you know, displays of emotion on a day-to-day basis, but what they don't want is that volatility that comes with the fightable. So it's about the negative, you know, getting really excited

40:53about something, dropping it, maybe getting, you know, emotionally volatile, yelling, things like that. But on a day-to-day basis, I think showing emotion seems to be okay in what people accept in leaders, as long as they're empathetic and as long as they're, you know, supporting really strong goals. So I did find that surprising because in a lot of research, adjustment or neuroticism is, is really important for, for leadership. So that was one finding that surprised me. I don't know if

41:24you have another. Chris, can I jump in too? Yeah, please do. Yeah, I think the other element of, I agree with everything, everything you shared. I think there's also on the excitable piece, there's this, you know, desire for consistency and follow-through. I think that's kind of through the excitable leisurely. So this like dependability, reliability, emotion and task. I think there's, I think the overall ideal leader trends seem to be bigger than EQ. Like there is still this focus on work,

41:58focus on tasks, focus on ideas and curiosity that kind of spans something larger than EQ. But Ryan, I think your observation on cautious and bold is really, really interesting. It reminds me of the importance of decision-making when we look back at the competencies. But the items that were really, really disliked is entitlement. So the, the facet of, of bold where leaders are entitled, that was really, really disliked by respondents. I think maybe one other thing to point out with the

42:34bold versus cautious is also openness to feedback, openness to hearing others' opinions. Like with cautious too, people get embarrassed, you know, publicly embarrassed when making a mistake and it, it leads to not being willing to, you know, listen to others or make that mistake. Whereas with bold as well, you know, if you're, if you're always right and never admitting what you're wrong, there's no room for others' input. And that's something we see with like that high IS and that low leisurely is people want, and even with the competencies, people want communication from their leaders. They want

43:09openness, they want honesty and they want, you know, feedback. And so that's also another theme that we're seeing throughout. Well, I wonder if that has anything to do with the observation you shared around adjustment is that high adjusted people aren't necessarily that great at, with feedback, or maybe they just let it go in one area and out the other. I mean, speaking as someone with a pretty high adjustment score, I can acknowledge that I have difficulties with that as well. So maybe, maybe that ties into what you saw or didn't see as far as the adjustment side of things. I don't know.

43:44Absolutely. Okay. Well, that was the global, the look at from a global level. Now let's dig into the regional and country specific results. And okay, forgive me, this is going to be a bit of a loaded one here, but you know, bear with me. I've got a kind of a multifaceted question here. First off, did you see any consistent patterns? Secondly, were there, did people in different countries around the world generally agree about what makes leaders effective? Or were there any results in countries

44:16that stood out to you? Like, you know, just kind of give us a breakdown. What were you seeing at the regional and country specific level? Sure. I'm going to hop in. Like, this is such a fun, this has been such a fun bunch of questions to explore. So I hope I can answer this really in depth, but also not too in depth. So I would say one of the biggest takeaways for me is dealing with MVPI science. Okay. So we didn't focus on that in that global report, but I'd say across the world, we see that

44:52database decisions, database decision-making is sort of now a baseline expectation for employees. Now in the current executives, personality data, the leaders that we have, we see that many leaders still rely on intuition and experience. There's sort of a moderate low on science, but employees really expect evidence-based decisions, clear logic behind choices, staying up to date with technology, and just like a general curiosity about how things work.

45:24And we saw this demand for data-driven leadership really strong across Latin America. So Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, across Europe, Spain, Lithuania, Romania, Czech, Greece, and in Asia, in mainland China and India in particular. And so kind of what this meant, the way that we're thinking about this is that there was a consensus amongst respondents. So 50% or more of respondents in all those countries are saying, yes, these high science behaviors are good to very good for ideal

45:57leadership. And a particular market, for example, an example of this divide is in Australia. So Australian leaders are low on science, but we saw that 39% of respondents wanted a leader who was high science. So I know that 39% isn't reaching that consensus threshold, but this was one of Australian respondents' highest endorsed values. It's kind of interesting to sort of stay there. We saw across Europe,

46:28particularly France, Germany, the UK, Hungary, and Denmark, all had relatively weak endorsement of all values. So in all those countries, there were no MVPI scales that had consensus about 50% or more of respondents endorsing any value. And then on the flip side, we had three countries who had a really strong consensus amongst values. 65% of respondents endorsing as good to very good or greater. And that

46:59was Vietnam, Egypt, and the UAE. So values was like a pretty interesting similarities and differences there. We also saw that there were markets around the world who were fans of prudence, HPI prudence fans. And they wanted leaders to organize work, plan works, you know, strive for really high quality work, initiate structure, be organized. And those countries were in the Middle East was the UAE.

47:31In Asia, it was Vietnam and greater China. In Europe, it was France and Spain. And in Latin America, it was Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, and Mexico. So again, these countries' respondents are wanting their leaders to adhere to rules, initiate structure, provide that organization and support.

47:52And then I guess kind of finally, we see that the most universally rejected behavior is that emotional volatility. It's excitable. We see that 60 to 90% of respondents in most markets are saying that this is bad to very bad for leadership. Apart from that excitable piece, we really do see that it's like kind of a combination of bold, leisurely, and cautious. Sometimes we see skeptical and reserved in there.

48:25But in general, those kind of are the top four, like most disliked scales, most disliked behaviors from leaders. And we see some gaps on these. So for example, in India, Indian leaders tend to be high excitable, high leisurely, high bold, and moderate cautious. And again, we see this this alignment that 82% of respondents, they don't want excitable, followed by leisurely, bold, and cautious. So a misalignment on the dark side for India. But really all over the world,

49:03we've seen some interesting findings.

49:08Yeah, Nicole, I want to just follow up on a couple of things here. First, you know, these regional differences really, I think, highlight, first of all, the global nature of the dataset, which again, highlights something that we pointed out at the top, or Krista, or one of you, I think it was Krista, pointed out at the top of this, which is that this was really a massive team effort, which includes so many of our distributors around the world who encouraged people to participate in the study in their local markets, because without them, we wouldn't have that this kind of

49:43region, this kind of impact. So I think that's, you know, a huge part of the study, I think, kind of goes overlooked, just how many people were involved. And I mean, we know so many people from the from directly inside Hogan were involved. But without the participation and enthusiasm, so many people in these markets, we wouldn't have been able to collect this data as well. But I think the main question I have for some of these regional differences, and I think it's going to be the really hard one, is why? Why do you think it is, for example, we see high science being a bigger,

50:18seen as more important in certain regions, certain markets around the world? Why is it that we see high prudence being seen as, as more important in certain markets around the world? And I realized that, you know, we don't have necessarily the data to answer some of this, but I don't know if you've all brainstormed or speculated as to what what some of those reasons might be?

50:43Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan. I mean, obviously, culture probably has a lot to do with it. And this is something I, I say culture very lightly, because we know that culture is very difficult to measure. But I would like to point out that, like, each individual country is quite different. Even within a region, we're seeing very individualized results within each country.

51:13And I would suspect that the reasons why could be different for each country. And let me give you an example. There were two markets around the globe that did not prioritize ambition. Any guesses for, I bet you can guess what one of the markets are. Right? Well, I would guess that one is Japan. That's correct. You're right. Can you guess what the other one is?

51:39Oh, geez. Another one that did not prioritize ambition. No, I don't want to guess. Yes. I might reveal my own bias. You might not get it right. It's actually Denmark. Is that right, Nicole? That's right. That's right. Yep. So and it's very interesting, because actually, we see that Danish executives are score very highly on ambition, whereas Japanese executives score very lowly on ambition. And so it's possible that even though they're the people in those markets are coming to the

52:14same conclusions, it's for different reasons. So for example, in Japan, the priority is less on accomplishing things on individual drive and on leadership and more on group consensus or harmony or getting things done together. You know, getting along in Japan is much more important than getting ahead. So for Japan, that's it. But with in Denmark, where you're seeing that executives have this super high ambition, it could be that because the executives there already exhibit that people

52:47are saying, hey, we don't really like that. We don't need that. We want something else in our leaders. We want leaders who actually prioritize, you know, getting along because we have leaders that are so focused on getting ahead. So very interesting. We're finding different results in each country, but I think the local specialties of each market are quite different and probably add to it. Well, that's such a good breakdown. It's also really fascinating because I mean, whenever for my job and what I have to do from a PR standpoint, I get this at the end of the cycle

53:22of this entire thing. I didn't have time to dig into all of these different like little nuances and these interesting results that you see in these, you know, that stand out. So this is really cool for me because I'm getting more up to speed on what these results are instead of just me having to look at it from a 10,000 foot view and get it out there. But I guess my next question is kind of, we're going to transition a little bit here. So for organizations that take developing leaders seriously, how should

53:56these results change their approach to leadership development? Like, what are your recommendations? What do you think these organizations should do? Well, I think one thing to consider is that most organizations develop leaders to what they assume the leader should be competent at. And it's either their own competency model that they made up or it's something that the HR finds important. And oftentimes, they tend to completely neglect the perspectives of the followers and what the followers need to perform

54:28better from their leaders, what they need from their leaders to perform better. And so we really hope that this research gives a voice to the followers and helps organizations really consider the needs of the followers as a very important part of engaging the followers to perform better. And really, if you've recently, or even in the past like 20 years, read an engagement survey, almost all of the global engagement surveys say that about 70% of the workforce is disengaged. And it really costs organizations

55:03billions in losses every year. And so we really hope that the results of this report can inspire organizations to really think about how leadership development programs can help better support the needs of the followers that are following the leaders. Which again, around the world, everyone seems to agree that leadership should be about supporting followers to perform and win. But no one really thinks about how we can actually do that. They're thinking if we do a better competency model, or if we

55:34align better to the goals of the organization, then people will perform better. But I think it's really important that we're thinking about what type of leadership behaviors does my team need in order to support them to perform better. And really, this report, the leadership divide, offers you a very clear roadmap to see that. And again, like we mentioned earlier, one of the biggest comments we've gotten on the project is that followers don't really know what they need. Leaders know better. But actually, even though

56:08we acknowledge that there may be different needs that the organization has at different stages, and you can select whatever leaders you feel is best, but try to still develop them on what leader, what followers are saying they need from their leaders. And we think that this will organically increase engagement.

56:30Yeah, Krista, I think the point there about leadership development is a really interesting one. I mean, there's a certain logic to saying, hey, look, we know people with these emergent qualities are going to stand out. They're more likely to show up on your high potential list. But once they're there, how are we going to take them to the next level? How are we going to make these leaders be more effective for these people who show that high potential? How can we take them from high potential to highly effective? And maybe the results of this study are something that points that maybe

57:04this suggests that leadership development ought to be about developing some of those behaviors for those skills that you and Nicole have talked about thus far on this podcast. But I also wonder about from the selection side, to what extent do you think the results of this study should inform how organizations go about identifying their high potentials or go about hiring or selecting new leaders? Should they take these results into account or should they say, eh, let's keep doing what we're going to

57:35keep doing? Or to what extent should it change the way organizations operate today? Yeah, great question, Ryan. One thing maybe to make clear is that we never intended this to be a selection profile. And so you shouldn't take the results and just start selecting leaders based on this profile. However, I think it's worth considering these characteristics when we are creating programs that support selection or when we're creating

58:08programs that have internal selection capabilities. We should think beyond just like, hey, we want a leader that can drive profitability and think about we need leaders that can actually support the team members. So while I'm saying that absolutely take these results in consideration and maybe even replicate a selection research at your organization if you want to select leaders. But this can also be useful for long-term talent strategy and thinking about your talent, who you need as future leaders.

58:43I mean, one of the stark results for me is that people want a leader that can create that sense of belonging, be very people-focused. And the characteristics that people are rejecting the most are the moving away from scales. So this all shows that people want someone that can engage and communicate and really support the team. And I think that's worthwhile considering as part of your thinking about selecting the future leaders. But especially as we are developing our current

59:16leaders as well. If I can just jump in, Krista. Yes. I think in general, just broadening our horizons to allow employees to have a voice in the leadership development process as well as other kind of HR processes, like whether that's employee value propositions, employee engagement, organizational culture. I think this is an interesting opportunity to hear from employees and to tailor HR processes to align to

59:48employee needs. Well, I have something else I want to point out here because first off, this is around executive coaching because we have a lot of executive coaches who listen to this podcast. My next question was actually submitted by a coach who attended the webinar hosted on the study findings a few weeks back. And for our listeners who are interested in that, I will put a link in the show description to where you can go access that. It did shatter any previous webinar record that we've ever had. And Ryan, I believe

1:00:22you were the key figure in that webinar. But the question that was submitted, and I forget the individual's name, but what are the key implications of this report for executive coaching and leadership development? Yeah, this is a great question. And I'd say from an executive coach, from a leadership development perspective, really focusing on the global gaps are probably going to give you the most bang for your buck, if you will. And maybe if you're coaching a CEO or a senior leader, you might have their Hogan profile,

1:00:56their flash report. And so you can sort of do this gap analysis yourself. But I'll just call attention to the three biggest gaps that I viewed. The first is on affiliation. So we know that leaders are going to be operating independently, preferring that, maybe prioritizing tasks over relationship building. And so my encouragement would be that these things like networking, informal check-ins, being deliberate in connecting with the team. While these can be deprioritized, you know,

1:01:30in favor of really specific work tasks, employees are going to see this as emotional distance, a lack of care. And to reiterate Krista, you know, that those moving away scales are really disliked. So my encouragement would be having these executive coaches encourage leaders to remember that connection is a performance driver. So building affiliation, building the team intentionally, not accidentally. So like some specific things could be one-on-ones that are not agenda-driven,

1:02:06having visible cross-team collaborations, really inclusive decision-making processes that help people get involved early rather than after decisions are made, and just creating shared team rituals, like celebrations or kind of informal connections. And again, I know Krista said this, but this really shows that relationships are core leadership work. So like, in the world of AI, this should be encouraging and positive for leaders to take away. The second development area, I know this wasn't

1:02:38explicitly called out in the leadership divide main report, but I'd like to call attention to science, to MBPI science. So we've seen that leaders can rely on intuition and past experience and sort of this, the way we've done it or what's worked in the past. And we know that senior leaders' experience is valuable, but employees are wanting this clear decision-making, this openness to technology, this genuine curiosity. So it's sort of moving these leaders from certainty to curiosity, slowing down

1:03:12thinking, thinking, testing assumptions, and helping make their reasoning really visible to teams. So I think executive coaches could work with senior leaders on, you know, asking better questions, using data as an input rather than an afterthought, explicitly explaining the why to their teams, just in general, that this openness and curiosity. And then finally, the last development area would be

1:03:44on HDS bold. So, okay, we've already said this, leaders are rising to positions of power because they're confident and decisive and have these opinions. But this can be overused. And we see in the data from respondents that they really don't want to be steamrolled. They want their leaders to be open, to feedback. They want their leaders to be more humble. So I'd say that leadership development in this area should help leaders remember and understand that confidence isn't going to build trust, right? We see

1:04:21those key competencies as what's going to be building trust with teams. So, honestly, helping to create self-awareness. Strategic self-awareness is a really good place to start, particularly on the HDS and on bold. So that could be using that 360 degree feedback. It could be encouraging coaching conversations between obviously the executive coach and senior leader, but senior leader and their teams. So creating more feedback loops and an openness for coaching conversations. And just building that credibility

1:04:58through humility, like a willingness to listen, like pause, listen, adjust, and be willing to say, you know, I could be wrong. I could be wrong on this. So I think leaning in, finally leaning into that curiosity, which we're already trying to develop on that science side, can balance that confidence with openness. So I think, Blake, those are my three that I'd recommend.

1:05:25Well, I'm really glad you asked this question, Blake, because in my inbox right before we got on this recording, I have a very similar question from an executive coach as well. So I'm like, oh, okay, great. I'm taking notes here on what Nicole's saying. Okay, great. This is what I will say to this executive coach. But I think between this question and, you know, the previous question, you know, we've learned quite a bit about how these results can actually lead to action, can actually lead to particularly on the development side of things. And I'm glad Krista made a good

1:05:58point there that the study wasn't designed, it's not what we would call in the IO world, a criterion study where we looked at some performance outcome. We said, this is the profile that predicts that specific performance outcome, partly because getting a performance outcome for leaders is incredibly difficult. You know, you know, we talk about it as a high performing team, but, but defining and quantifying what exactly is a high performing team is tricky. And so that's, that's one of the beauties of the studies is it simplifies the question of leadership to say,

1:06:29hey, let's just ask people what they want in a leader. And I think it does create really clear developmental guidelines. To your point here, Nicole, for executive coaches, these are the things that uh, our executive coaches can work with people to work on, or, or I can imagine looking at someone's profile and comparing it to the profile of, um, uh, that, that we see from, from this leadership divide study and saying, Hey, here might be an area where you might want to work a little more,

1:07:00right? Here's an area where you might be falling short, um, in terms of expectations for you as a leader. What do you think about that? Nicole, do you think that's a reasonable strategy for executive coaches to do to say, Hey, like again, it's not a selection profile, but using it to sort of guide those coaching development sessions? Definitely. Yeah. And I think if you know the market or the country territory that your senior leaders based in, you can really tailor that with the country specific findings. There's 25 different countries, but if, if that country's not there,

1:07:33then the global findings are going to give, as I shared kind of like the best overarching guidance. And I do, I Ryan, I think that's a great way to use it is that comparison between that leader's flash report or their general, you know, personality trends against what global respondents are saying they want in a leader. And again, we can highlight the alignments because that's great. Those are those strengths to lean on, but then highlighting those gaps where, Hey, your employees might not be identifying you as a leader. So we might not be seeing these positive performance outcomes, but Hey,

1:08:09let's, let's tweak these behaviors. Let's adjust, um, to be more, whether it's team oriented, whether it's data-based, whether it's humble and open to feedback. I think maybe one thing to point out here too, is, is that Hogan really doesn't recommend one size fits all leadership programs because individualized leadership development tends to be more effective. And so this actually gives you not only the personality data, but it also gives you data on what leaders around the world wants and

1:08:43matching the two makes individualized leadership development even more effective. Because if you know that just like what you said, Ryan, um, if you know that someone tends to be, uh, for example, um, lower in science, but we know that people around the world are wanting leaders that use data to, to back up their decisions. Um, and if we know that teams want greater communication as the competency for leaders, then a coach clearly knows how to develop, um, an individual that lacks

1:09:17those characteristics or even like Nicole said, even when there's overlap. So for example, you have a leader that's high on ambition and we know that people around the world generally want high ambition leaders. However, uh, they still want leaders who are people focused. So the coaching would be like, yeah, use that energy and drive to really, um, cast a vision for your team, but don't forget to bring your team along with you would be the development piece there. So there's really a lot you can do. It's pretty cool. Well, Chris and Nicole, this has been an awesome conversation. Uh, I do have

1:09:52one last question before we let you all go. And that is if you can highlight one key takeaway from this study to emphasize for our listeners, what would it be? Uh, I think we've, we've said it, but I'll say it once more. I think when we look at the findings and aggregate, we do see that employees know what they need to be successful. So global endorsement, people want leaders who are emotionally intelligent and people oriented, who are driven for excellence and quality, who are thoughtful and

1:10:27structured considering the consequences and who are confident and goal directed. So to me, I think we can, we can, we can take a breath, rest easy, um, that respondents, the employees around the world, you know, really know what they want from leaders. And as we've talked about, as Ryan's talked about so many times, kind of at a high level, it's structure and consideration. Um, so I think let's, let's listen to employees and, and see if we can, um, align to meet their expectations to better engage them.

1:10:59Yeah. I think that is excellently put, Nicole. I think the only other thing that I'll add here is to let you know that if you're interested in replicating this very study at your own organization, um, we are offering that availability. So if you have an organization, you could do it at the organizational level, you could do it at either the department or business unit level, or even the team level. Um, we just require 10 or more respondents. Um, but you can definitely, um, do

1:11:32this study to learn what your people at your organization, what the followers at your organization are needing from their leadership. So that's also a cool thing. Uh, we don't just do this at the global level. We can do this for your own organization. So just contact us and we'll set you up. Well, I want to say thanks to both Krista and Nicole for joining us today. This is, uh, you know, uh, a great breakdown or at least overview of a tremendous number of insights that we have inside

1:12:06the leadership divide report. And of course we wouldn't be at this stage, you know, uh, more than a year, almost two years in the making without, uh, this brainchild that came from Krista, Nicole, and, and some of our other colleagues at Hogan and putting this into action and so many people who worked around the world to, to make it all happen, um, and producing that all for us here. And so, so thanks Krista, Nicole, not only, uh, for, for joining us on the podcast today, but for your amazing work on this global leadership effectiveness study, the leadership divide,

1:12:37the reports out there for everyone to check out. And we would encourage people to check that out. So again, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Ryan. And thank you for all of your support. Yep. Thank you both. And, uh, look forward to seeing what you all come up with next.

1:12:57And that does it for the science of personality podcast, episode 150. Be sure to join us in two weeks for another fun and informative episode. Cheers, everybody. This has been the science of personality podcast brought to you by Hogan assessments. You can access all episodes on our website, the science of personality.com or on the streaming service of your choice. See you next time.

1:13:35Bye.