Live from SIOP 2026: Part Two

Hello, everybody. This is Blake with the Science of Personality podcast, and the following episode is a collection of live, in-person interviews that Ryan and I conducted on April 30th and May 1st at the 2026 Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology Annual Conference in New Orleans. We hope you enjoy this special episode of the podcast. And as always, cheers, everybody. People are the most consequential and dangerous forces on Earth. Well, 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 and resident storyteller, Blake Lepp, this podcast explores the impact of personality on life, leadership, and the nature of human nature. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Science of Personality podcast, live from PSYOP 2026 in New Orleans.

Our guest for this special mini-episode of the podcast is Jillian Hyde, Managing Director and Chief Psychologist at Psychological Consultancy Limited out of the UK, also a longtime Hogan distributor, to talk about her PSYOP session on the leaders we have versus the leaders we want and the expectations for effectiveness. So, Jillian, welcome to the podcast. Did you hitch a ride with King Charles? Oh, I wish I had. That would have been cool, wouldn't it? Yeah. I thought he did very well, actually. Yeah, I guess it was just a coincidence you're here at the same time. I just thought maybe you rode together. Yeah, yeah.

I'd like to think it was something wrong, but sadly, no. Well, Jillian, tell us about this session that you're doing tomorrow at PSYOP. Okay, so the session tomorrow comes out of some research that Hogan have been doing globally in terms of they have a global leader effectiveness survey. And Hogan themselves and distributors around the globe have been reaching out to their clients and their customers and asking them to complete this survey that looks at, well, what are the qualities that followers want from their leaders? What are the qualities that followers think are going to make the difference between a leader being more or less effective?

And so I'm going to be talking from the UK perspective and describing, well, what are the leaders we've got in the UK? How might they be different? And also, what is it that followers in the UK want from their leaders? And are there aspects to that that are specific to the UK or that are pan-global? And then talking about the implications for that in terms of future development or future coaching focuses or what might be some issues long term for organizations in terms of leaders maybe not doing the things that their followers want them to?

Well, I mean, obviously, this is an extension or a subset of this larger global leadership effectiveness study, and we've talked about that. I think we'll have an episode coming out relatively soon. It'll be after this recording comes out. It'll be coming out soon. But why don't you tell us a little bit more specifically about what kind of results you're seeing in the UK? Sure.

So firstly, in terms of looking at the archival data that Hogan have on leaders in the UK, when we look at that, the things that stand out from the profile are that, not dissimilar to many other countries, UK leaders are higher on things like ambition. So you've got the achievement orientation piece. They're also higher on inquisitive, so the more curious, analytical piece. But they're also, in the UK, higher on interpersonal sensitivity, so the more caring, prioritizing people approach. And interestingly, also quite a drop of low prudence. We are lower on prudence in the UK than global leaders are.

So in fact, actually, if you look at that and you put those themes together, three of them point to the classic creative profile that Robert Hogan described in the original HPI manual many, many years ago of high ambition, high inquisitive, and low prudence. So it seems like UK leaders have got that creative profile theme coming through with the interpersonal sensitivity piece as well. Is that what people say they want in their leaders in the UK? Not necessarily, no. So in terms of the things that people want, actually, the number one thing that is the interpersonal sensitivity piece.

And in fact, that's higher for UK followers than any other country. It seems that that caring, empathetic, warm, approachable theme is something that the UK followers specifically, particularly, want to see in their leaders. Very interesting. So, I mean, so that's the HPI results. I assume you've got other results, other interesting findings, the HDS and VPI you want to share. Absolutely. So, in terms of the HDS, what we see in terms of the leaders we have is that we tend not to score high on the first five scales, the moving away scales, except for leisurely. So that's a higher point.

So there's something there around UK leaders really wanting to pursue their own agenda, not being constrained by what others want them to do. We also, though, tend to be lower on bold. So that's a very interesting finding. Yeah, because typically leaders score higher on bold. So you're saying this is lower than what we see in the global average for leaders. Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's to the lower end. And, in fact, though, in terms of that aligning with what followers want, that is a positive alignment. So for HDS, followers don't want, in the UK, they don't want their leaders to be high on bold.

And that is a similar pattern. You do see that in other countries. But I think it's a higher result. I think 72% of UK followers don't want their leaders to be high on bold. But looking at other aspects of the HDS that are quite interesting, just in terms of significant differences between UK leaders and global leaders, is that we tend to score higher on mischievous and lower on dutiful.

So you'll see, and if you add that to that lower prudence from HPI, you can start to see a bit of a theme coming out here in terms of us being a bit more unconventional, non-conforming, risk-taking, autonomous. And especially if you add on that HDS leisurely piece as well, that adds a bit of spice to that. But interestingly, it seems like that whole risk-taking, autonomous piece is something that maybe UK followers tolerate because they're not picking that out as things they don't want. I see. They're not picking out mischievous as being something that they don't want to see in their leaders.

So that sort of raises a few interesting questions in terms of, are we simply tolerating it, or are we rewarding it? Is it something we actually see as being more effective for our leaders? I don't know that we do see it as more effective, because we're not picking out something we desire strongly, but we also kind of condone it. So it's okay. Yeah, because on the HDS, the big gap is that UK followers really don't want their leaders to be high on leisurely, but we do tend to be higher on that. So that's the real kind of red flag for the UK group.

That's where the critical gap is, the critical misalignment between what leaders we have and what leaders we want is that higher score on leisurely. Do you think you can use that to inform coaching engagements then when you're working with these leaders? Say, hey, followers really have a problem with this and you're high on it, right? Is that a good target for this kind of work? It feels like, you know, if you were to take one general theme from this research, and obviously when you're working with individuals and coaching, you are looking at the individual profile most of the time.

However, if we look at this research and we look at what's one big theme, yeah, that leisurely piece does come out as a really strong theme. So that does suggest that in a lot of organisations, there could be some work to be done around just general coaching for leaders, or general development even for leaders around, okay, you know, your agenda isn't necessarily the most important one. And how can we enable leaders to flex on that, how can we enable them to not immediately feel constrained?

You know, I love some of the descriptions around leisurely are so wonderful in terms of, you know, they, they, we all have the same constraints, but the people who are high on leisurely, see them, feel them in such a more kind of emotional way. And, uh, feel like, you know, just don't tell me what to do, um, I mean, we all have to do tax returns, or a lot of us have to do tax returns, and we all hate doing them, but the leisurely person feels like the world is against them, and how could somebody possibly do this to me?

You are burdening me, nobody else in the world has ever had as much to do as I've had to do, nor is it as important as the work that I have to do. So there's, obviously, what we want to try and help the leisurely person to do is re-re-evaluate their view of the work that they're doing, and the importance of the work that others around them are doing.

And I think what's really interesting with leisurely, and the fact that we're high on leisurely, but we're also high on interpersonal sensitivity, and interpersonal sensitivity is something that our followers want, and low leisurely is something they also want, is that you can have somebody who's high on interpersonal sensitivity, who thinks that they're lovely, and gorgeous, and warm, and cuddly, and friendly, and all of those kinds of things, and they really prioritize people's issues. But if they're high on leisurely, all of that goes to pot. Right. In the time when they are in their leisurely mode, they do not look like a team player. Right.

At all. So I think there are coaching initiatives that one could do around that, around, because they will think of themselves as this lovely, positive person, and don't ever realize that the next time they say, yeah, I'm going to do that, but they just put it to one side, that the impact on the team and everybody else around them. So yeah, I think there's definitely a big coaching focus around that.

Well, Jillian, I want to jump in here, because I want to just say thank you to you and the team over at PCL, because the response that we got in the UK from this survey helps me do my job a lot better. So, and I'm not sure if you've seen it, we'll, you know, we'll, I can show you after we get done with this, but, you know, we had a small little write-up in The Times a week or two ago, after we launched it. I can show you that. Okay. I actually have, like, the print edition, like, snippet.

Like, I can, you can see it in the, in print. We also had a coverage in Forbes UK. So that wouldn't be possible without the outreach that you all did to get the amount of respondents that we got that makes this data look a lot more compelling to a journalist. And so it just, it really helped us try to accomplish our mission as far as the launch is concerned. And we hope to see more come out of it in the UK, but that was already a smashing success that we saw in the first six days of the launch.

So tell your team, whatever they're doing, keep it up next time we do this, because it was fantastic. Okay. Well, you are very welcome. And for us, I think we have connections with our clients where we're interested in this kind of research, and quite a lot of our clients are, too. So it just, you know, it was a mutually beneficial process, definitely. Well, we really appreciate it, because it, like I said, helped my job, made it a lot easier. So thank you. Okay. Ryan, any closing thoughts? Well, no, I just, same for me.

I mean, we have so many people around the globe who helped make this study happen, you know. And so we're super grateful for you and your team, Jillian, and what you did to make this all to come together. Obviously, for the report in the UK, so we can understand UK leaders, but also just leaders globally, too. So, and obviously, thanks also for being here today and sharing this with us. You are very welcome. It is great to be here. And that does it for this special episode from PSYOP 2026 in New Orleans. Cheers, everybody.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Science of Personality podcast live from PSYOP 2026 in New Orleans. Our guest for this special mini episode of the podcast is Janine Wachloski, co-founder and managing partner at Maestro Consulting, to talk about the PSYOP session she literally just finished a few minutes ago on rethinking talent management and challenging conventional assumptions. So, Janine, welcome to the podcast. Hey, you know, it's great to be here. I feel like I'm on ESPN right now doing, like, a live debrief of the game, the tennis match I just played. So this is great. Love the energy here. Well, good, good. Okay.

So let's dive into this first. Tell us about the session you just finished on rethinking talent management. What did you cover? What was? Yeah, it was a great session. You know, we had a really good panel, right? So it was myself, Alan Church, the other half of Maestro. I know you guys have done some podcasts with him. Seymour Adler, also, you know, somebody who does a great job pulling people. And Gina Seton at Symbotic. And then Steven Rogelberg, you know, who's written many books on the science of meetings, a past president. So we had a really kind of good blend of academic practitioner.

And what we wanted to talk to the audience about today in an interactive kind of way was just challenging some of the assumptions that we have in the work that we do that maybe we don't always think about. And we, you know, work against them or put into practice. And so the session was really about things like, you know, is technology the answer to everything, which is a big assumption that, you know, many companies have now, right? Or things like, you know, HR people don't need to be the ones responsible for making sure that our meeting culture is one that works for the company.

And so we kind of went through with the panel, discussed these various things, got a lot of inter-panel interaction, and then with the audience. So it was a good, lively session. I think, you know, some people in the room got pretty animated, both on the presenting and the questions, which is always good. And that was really what we wanted the session to be, stimulating thinking. Well, what was one of the best questions you got then from the audience? Yeah. If they were sort of fired up? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it wouldn't be a PSYOP session if we didn't have a conversation around performance management.

And so pretty early on into the session, you know, we started talking about, and this was really Alan, you know, this false idea that changing the rating scales is going to somehow make your performance management process better. And the question, you know, that we got from the audience is, you know, what do you do in that situation? How do you deal with that? How do you diffuse that? What is the better way?

You know, and we talked a little bit about it's really what you're trying to accomplish with that performance management process and the quality of the conversations that you're having with people about how they're performing that's really more important than the points on the scale. Yeah. Well, I mean, it does seem like every few years companies go back and forth between sometimes there's broader movements, but sometimes it's just within one company, right? Where we have five-point rating scale. Nope, now just a two-point rating scale. Nope, now no rating scale at all. And it's just, you know, written comments. Now it's just self-evaluations.

And it feels like companies bounce around on these things and there's no real settled answer. So I suppose your answer would be really depends on what your goals are and what you're trying to do. But what might be some of the advantages of either of those approaches? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great point, Ryan. You know, to me, and, you know, I've been at this a long time, right? So I think I'm now like in my 35th year of sort of doing org psychology in some way, shape, or form. A lot of what we do, you know, is not rocket science, right?

And part of it is just the continuity of approach alone can have more impact than sort of changing things this scale, that scale, have it, don't have it. So behaviorally based versus liker type scale, whatever you want to pick. You know, my sort of thinking as somebody who spent many years as an HR business partner, right? So not on the design side, but on the implementation side working with leaders is let's pick something that gets us 80% of the way there and stick with that.

But that's a hard proposition nowadays in organizations where the idea of disrupting things and changing things has a lot more cachet than continuity and keeping things the same. And so, you know, we then got into a conversation on performance management with somebody else in the audience about, you know, how his organization is trying to change the scale to something completely different that he kind of feels might not be in the best service of the organization. And how do you influence then to get away from that?

You know, I think for us in IO psychology, performance management is a bread and butter topic, always has been, always will be. You know, we just need to be mindful, you know, to your point of what is the overarching goal we're trying to achieve with the system and not get so swayed by the flavor of the day kind of things that come in and out of our sort of line of sight.

Yeah, I kind of want to dovetail off this performance management desk to sort of an off-the-wall question because I just saw a study about this a couple of weeks ago that showed that with some of these AI tools, companies have Microsoft Office built in, the tracking, all kinds of things that they're doing. They found that this one study found that performance reviews that were generated by an AI were viewed by the recipient as more helpful, more accurate until they learned that it was an AI that had generated the performance review. I just wonder what, I mean, what do you think about that?

What's the sort of the psychology of that? And now, should organizations use these AI tools? Should they reveal that they're using these AI tools if they're doing so? I have so many thoughts on this. And we did touch on this a little bit in the session. I guess the first thing I would say is, you know, and this was a point I made in the group. So, I'm very conscious of the idea that many organizations seem to be trying to push work off of people and onto machines.

And so, if your manager is not coaching you and developing you and working with you on your performance, then the work of managers is now being outsourced to robots. And is that what we really want? And at a transactional level, right, I think about your research, probably the blocking and tackling of a performance management review can be done relatively effectively by some versions of AI. But then there's the human connection. And that's probably why when people learn that it was put together by, you know, a chatbot, it leaves a negative taste in their mouth because they're not working to please the chatbot, right?

I mean, we all need approval as human beings and a sense of belonging and worth that comes from our work. And then when you learn that all these great laudatory things that you just heard or these developmental coaching points are coming from a non-human source and that your own manager either couldn't or didn't take the time to provide that feedback. I mean, just thinking of myself as somebody who's been an employee, that would feel quite disheartening to me, right? And, you know, we're social animals.

And as psychologists, we know this, that human connection is something that I think as IO psychologists, as HR people, we should fight tooth and nail to keep that and not outsource. Now, lower level work, you know, some routinized things within the staffing process or even developmental training, you know, things that could be put into a brochure or an FYI book. Sure, those things can be done by AI or done by robots. I think the other things that are higher order, that have an emotional component, we should not let go of those.

Because if I'm being performance managed by AI, you know, what's my level of connection to the company going to be over time? I think it's a slippery slope that can lead to many things. Cost savings are great in the short term, but what's the real cost of that in the long term to the organization? I think it's going to show up in engagement, commitment, all sorts of things. And then lastly, and then I'll stop on this, you know, then you've got an organization full of people who don't know how to people manage. And is that what we really want?

Do we really want to be outsourcing that stuff, you know, to our phones? Like we do a lot of things in our day-to-day life. I don't think so. Yeah. Well, Janine, you mentioned earlier also, you know, you're in your 35th year of doing this. And you also mentioned that you were an HR business partner, but not just at any XYZ organization. You were an HR business partner at PepsiCo. So you want to go into that and tell us a little bit about that and your work there? Yeah. I mean, I love doing that.

You know, the thing that was great about PepsiCo when I was hired was I had never been an HR business partner before. You know, I worked for Warner Burke for many years as a consultant, you know, PhD in org psychology. And I went to PepsiCo and within about 16 months they said, would you like to be an HR business partner working with, at that time, Pepsi Marketing, which was sort of the jewel and the crown of the organization. So I always tell people, like, my immediate reaction was I wanted to go throw up in a bucket.

So I decided that that meant I should take the job because I knew it was going to be stretch and it was going to push me. And what I really liked about it, though, at the time was, you know, it gave me a chance to kind of think about how I wanted to be an HR business partner and how I could take what I knew from consulting and from psychology and apply that, right?

And so, you know, one of the things that I said to, you know, Blake before the session is, you know, I use my understanding of personality tools like the Hogan when I try to connect with my clients. And so I knew, like, on multiple levels, you know, how to sort of build rapport based on maybe thinking about what their profile might be, maybe actually finding out what it was, and then maybe using that versus maybe how some of the people on their team might be. And it kind of enabled me to be an HR business partner with a very strong social organizational psychology flair.

And that was always a point of differentiation for me as an HR business partner, right? I could bring that psychology side. I could bring the human side, which is what I think, you know, we really offer as IO psychologists to people in the workplace. You know, it's this middle space between what the science and the data say and then the human being on the other ends. And so what was great about PepsiCo was, you know, they let me do that. They let me kind of do the role the way I wanted to do the role.

And I guess it worked out because they kept giving me bigger jobs with bigger client groups and bigger problems. And, you know, I always loved using the Hogan tools throughout that because it was also something that people could immediately understand and feel like they were being understood. And so that brings me back to that performance management point, right, which is the human connection is what makes the workplace special and motivational. And you don't want to lose that. And any tool that you have that can kind of uncover those things, maybe in an environment where that's not what people are there to do, right?

They're there to do work is a great connection tool with them. Well, very cool. And especially since you were working with the marketing team, because with a PR and marketing background like I have, it's so nice to meet an IO who kind of gets what's going on in heart. In your head? Yeah. Well, you know, I have a favorite expression that I used to use with the marketers because, you know, they would line up outside my door every night to, like, come in for therapy. But, you know, I love the guys. But basically my expression for them was enough about me.

What do you think about me? Right. So there was never, like, a lack of interest on their part of, like, talking about you and what makes you tick, right, and how do we motivate you, what kind of climate you might be creating for your organization based on how you are. So it was a great client group just for some of the tools that you guys provide because there was a deep interest in introspection and self-understanding. And some of their client groups don't have as much of that, right? With the sales folks, it was always more, how do I get better?

How do I use this to be better, sell more, be better with the customer? You know, different flavors for different functions. But, yeah, a lot of fun in those roles that I did. Well, cool. Ryan just looked at me. Basically, I could see the question in your head saying, Blake, how can you get better? Well, Janine, thank you so much for joining us. It's been my pleasure. It's great seeing you guys. And that does it for this special episode from PSYOP 2026 in New Orleans. Cheers, everybody. There's a lot of stuff like that.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Science of Personality podcast live from PSYOP 2026 in New Orleans. Our guest for this special mini episode of the podcast is Nikita Mikhailov, Chief Neuroticism Officer at Goodness of Psychology Limited, who is here with us today to talk with us about all things psychometrics. More specifically, he's interested in picking Ryan's brain about everything that's been happening with psychometrics in the past year. So, with that, Nikita, welcome to New Orleans, and welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Blake. Always a pleasure to be here. So, Ryan, not to put you on the spot, but I am.

So, what stands out for you from the whole psychometric market shenanigans that goes on in the last year? Well, yeah, definitely did put me on the spot because this is not what I was expecting us to talk about. But, yeah, glad to have you here. Good to see you, Nikita. Look, I think for me, some of the biggest things we're seeing in psychometrics are the automation of psychometrics, right? So, I think tools that are grabbing people's or trying to capture someone's personality from, say, your cell phone, from interviews, right?

I think that's the place we're really seeing the most in the workplace is maybe we don't need to give you a personality assessment. Maybe we just give you an interview. We take all the words you say. We use AI to maybe take the assessment for you. That's one of the things we're seeing is some companies are, or not even companies, some researchers are having people generate a bunch of text through some conversation, like a conversation like we're having now.

And then they say, okay, pretend you, like, we can have this conversation here, and I can tell an AI, pretend you're Nikita, AI, and take this assessment, as if Nikita would take it. There's a lot of questions around how accurate those are, how much they are really capturing someone's personality. Is that a more efficient method for capturing personality? I think that's the biggest sort of groundbreaking area we're seeing.

Right now, I don't see it as having a direct impact on traditional assessments, but that's sort of the threat, is that this can up in traditional true-false or four-point response scale kind of assessments with sort of automated kind of assessments instead. What do you think? No, I can see, but data scraping has been around for at least 10 to 12 years. I think just AI allows us to synthesize from more data and triangulate it quicker than necessarily we could do before. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, so we did a lot of work at Hogan on the data scraping stuff going back, you know, like you said, 10, 12 years. We've been looking at, you know, the linguistic inquiry word count, which you're probably familiar with, the loop system and all those kinds of things. So we've done a lot of work with that, and basically you couldn't really grab a whole lot of a person's personality, even from lots of text with those kind of methods. But it does seem like AI has more potential to grab that kind of information.

You know, Nikita, I'm curious, you, earlier this year, you interviewed Dr. Bob Hogan. Yes. I'm curious, what was your, you know, for our audience who maybe hadn't seen that or haven't had a chance to dig into that a little bit, what would be your overview or your recap of that interview that you had with Dr. Hogan? Hmm. So, yes, just as a plug, anybody who wants to see it is on our YouTube channel, Psychometric Market. So I absolutely enjoy conversations with RT.

He is a brilliant man, and I don't think there's a lot of people in this world who devoted their whole lives to personality and research and popularizing it. To me, what's really impressive is that how much he fundamentally cares about the field still, that it's just like he is just committed to the field and promoting personality and understanding, but explaining it in a very kind of relatable way. So breaking out really complex constructs and something that's really applicable has been part of his career by the looks of it the whole time. And I just love the rebellious twinkle in his eye, which is still there.

Right. So it's one of the key motivators. And I just want to say, if I'm so passionate, committed to the field in my 80s, I would have had a good life. So, from my perspective. Yeah. Well, and you're absolutely right about that, compassion and commitment to the field. I mean, I think partly it's because he understands that personality can help us understand some of these big questions, the big questions about leadership, the big questions about life and what the goals of life are. I mean, he really sees personality as connected to your own well-being, your outcomes for your careers, your interpersonal relationships.

And he's right about all those things, but I think a lot of people don't see those. And I think that's what creates that passion is that he says, no, no, this is hugely impactful on these kinds of things. And most people just go by thinking, oh, personality is kind of an interesting, fun little game to play. But it's really serious business. And talking about this, I'm really enjoying currently reading his new book, Personality and Secret Life of Organizations. Yes. And this is what's really cool that now we have get along, get ahead, and also find meaning.

And the way that he can break down complex human motivations into just really applicable language, it's just like, it's a no-nonsense approach. And it's actionable, what's really key, that it's not something to play with. And I totally agree with this, because often people say, well, personality doesn't matter. But often people say, well, I married them for their personality. Right. So, or my boss has a strong personality, or I really, we met and we just clicked, or the chemistry between us. And how often is what they refer to as click is personality. It actually plays a much bigger role.

And I still love how he kind of takes a little bit of more of a, how can I put it, a critical view on Michelle from the 60s and 70s. It's still there. So, yeah. Well, I want to bring up something that I was just thinking about while you all were talking. It was, look at what he's seen from an assessment standpoint.

I mean, first off, he's, I mean, personality wasn't really a thing that people measure, or at least not to the extent that he was able to, up until, you know, he created the first assessment that we had at Hogan, which the HPI, well, or Ryan, I don't know. You might know the history on that a little better. Well, I mean, certainly personality assessment was put in a corner. That's the way I would describe it. It was sort of like, ah, nah, this isn't a real field for quite a while. And he was able to, one of the key players in reviving that.

But then think about, okay, so all of that, that was delivered through, like, handwritten assessments. Right. So, he's seen it go from that. And then he sees the age of the internet come through. Right. And then the delivery of them are online, and now he's seeing AI. So, what he's seen from the beginning of his career to where, you know, he's now in his 80s, that's an incredible run that maybe a lot of people here around us haven't experienced that type of transition. And I think what's very unique about RT's and Joyce's work, they created three assessments, not one. Right.

Because quite often when we talk about psychometrics, it's an author per assessment and an assessment per author. Right. But here, there are three assessments which have been created, not to mention Hogan360, which is coming up as well next door. But the key thing is that HDS, MBPI, and HPI is such a wonderful combination. And, Ryan, I'm just really curious. A lot of my colleagues, when I talk about Hogan, their favorite thing to geek out on is, like, how the scales combine across the three and, like, favorite questions to discuss in coaching. What's your kind of favorite combinations between the three assessments?

Yeah, I mean, I have to say, for me, the things that I tend to look at when I'm looking at personality profiles, I tend to look at your main scale scores, but also the sub-scale scores in combination. So, one of my favorite little patterns to look for is people who have moderately high scores on ambition, moderate scores on adjustment. And particularly, if I then go look at those ambition sub-scales, people who score low on accomplishment. So, otherwise, they max out ambition. So, they score really high on competitive. They score really high on identity. Right. They really know what they want. They're really hard driving.

They're really pushing for results, but they don't feel like they've accomplished very much. And that shows up a little bit in that adjustment score as well. They feel like they still have something to prove. They still are unhappy with the way the world has worked out. Those people, I find, to be incredibly hardworking, incredibly talented. They tend to perform really well, particularly among, we talk a lot about athletes on our podcast, particularly among athletic profiles. They tend to be really, really powerful, really, really good, successful athletes because they have this constant drive. They're constantly dissatisfied with their performance, and they want to do better.

And so, for me, that little combination is a pretty interesting one to see. Excellent. And what sort of questions would you like to explore with such a population? Yeah. I mean, part of it is you kind of want to understand what is it that keeps them so hungry, right? Because that's what they look like to you. They look like they're always hungry. So, what is it that's making them stay hungry, making them want to continue to push for more? And I think for each person, it's probably going to be something a little bit different.

But I think that would be really good to know, like, or where does that come from? What's the root cause of this? Is it caused by training? Is it caused from parenting? Or is it just that this is how they are genetically? They're just sort of genetically wired in this way? For me, those would be the really interesting things to discover. Exactly. What meaning do they glean from it, of this constant striving? Nice. Well, Nikita, last question. What's the session you're looking forward to the most here at PSYOP this year? And you don't have to say a Hogan session. I'm being quite neurotic.

And this is my last year as chair of the engagement subcommittee for PSYOP. It's the events we're responsible for. So, later we have PSYOP in space. So, this is about careers in IO in the space sector. And then we always have the talent show on a Friday night, which will have, let's say, multiple talents, which are statistically significant in many ways. So, we'll have stand-up, music, dance, you name it. Because we're IOs, we love to geek out, but some of us also have a creative streak.

So, it's nice to give them a space to show their more hedonistic personalities, maybe, let's say, on the Hogan scale, and the creatives. But before we... Yes. No, no, go ahead. Go on, Ryan. Well, I was going to say, those sound like amazing sessions. Really, so, but can you say more about the first session, what you're going to see in this one, about IOs in space? So, it's a session where we have three speakers who work in the space sector, sharing on their careers. It's during lunch, so from 12 to 1, in room 207. Okay, amazing. And it's hosted by my wonderful colleague, Peter. Amazing.

Excellent. So, yeah. Perfect. Well, Nikita, thanks so much for joining us. Pleasure, gents, as always. And that does it for this special episode from PSYOP 2026 in New Orleans. Cheers, everybody. Thank you. This has been the Science of Personality podcast, brought to you by Hogan Assessments. You can access all episodes on our website, thescienceofpersonality.com, or on the streaming service of your choice. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.