The original video interview is available here: Robert Hogan on Management TV: True leadership is not a matter of politicking or charisma.
What percentage of people that have ever come through your tests, according to the data, have been able to succeed in all the four leadership factors? Is there any …
[RH laughs]
You mentioned some per cent of the top managers who shouldn’t be in their positions. So my question is: Is there any potential … is there any percentage of people who can replace them?
I mean, the thing about personal psychologists is ... we call it individual differences, everything of importance is a normal distribution and so you talk about integrity, then you talk about competence, and then you talk about decision-making and then you talk about vision. If you just take the top 10% out of each of those, that’s not very many people.
Because it’s not only the individual factors; it’s a combination of all four. So, for example, on one video you mentioned Steve Jobs hadn’t good personal integrity because he wasn’t much trustworthy because people couldn’t trust him. He wasn’t consistent in his ways – that’s what I understand. Yet he was a leader. So is there any compromise?
It depends on the level at which people are in an organisation. So it’s usual you make the distinction between entry managers, middle-level managers and top managers. Every level managers need those four things. The entry-level managers have to be able to create engagement: they have to get the work force on board and go for it and then they implement decisions that come down from up here. So for entry-level managers those four factors are absolutely essential and so is social skill. For middle managers, the job is basically a political job. They have to take ideas from up here and sell them down here. And they have to deal with pushback from down here. So they have to ... they’re just constantly negotiating. People at the top ... what’s most important at the top is good judgment and a good strategy. Jobs, Gates – Bill Gates, er … Bezos, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon guy ... they all started their own business; they came to the business from the top. All they needed was good judgment and a vision. They didn’t need social skill. If you come into the organisation at the bottom and you want to go from the bottom to the top, you need social skill. If you come in from the top and just start the organisation, you just need vision and strategy.
Which is something Jobs …
Yes, the Facebook guy and the Amazon guy, they were good at that but they were unpleasant people. They were people who could not come in at the bottom and make it to the top. They would never make it because they lack those characteristics. They parachuted in from the top point and then they can do what they want. Nonetheless, 90% of those guys are going to fail. Most of those people are going to fail. It’s only the 10%. 90% of all new businesses fail.
I think this is something very natural because when a small company is acquired by some bigger one, the top managers from the smaller company usually …
Get shot.
Or they just concentrate on the product. They are not top managers any more. They are just product guys because they like creating the products and they don’t necessarily need to …
And they’ll never have a great career in the organisation that acquired them
What is the field for improvement? Is coaching – or the ability of coaching or development of the individual?
There’s an old joke in psychology. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is one ... but the bulb has to really want to change. So, can people change? Sure, but they have to really want to change. It’s usually because they realise that they’ve failed and they’re about to lose their career. Unless they see they’ve failed and are going to lose their career, they won’t change.
And what is the greatest motivator?
I would hope it’s fear.
Level of fear within the organisation so that you are not fired as a manager and you still keep people motivated and willing to change?
You know, the guy to talk to would be Jose Mourinho. No, I’m serious. I mean that’s what he does well. Look: we’re going to fail ... we’re going to lose unless we do the following things. So there’s a healthy kind of fear and then there’s just fear and intimidation. The healthy fear is fear of those guys out there; unhealthy fear is fear of the guys in here. You know, fear of the police, fear of the ... you need to be afraid of the competition – I mean, you really do, but you need to think that the people inside the organisation are the ones you can trust to help you get past it. You should be afraid of those guys, not these guys. If you’re afraid of these guys, you’re afraid of the wrong people. Enjoy your work and be afraid of going out of business.
As I understood, in the past you were in the military. Is there a big difference between the military organisation of warfare and the business unit? Is there such a big difference in the behaviour, in motivating people or the fears? Of course, there’s the immediate, instant death if you do something wrong in warfare but …
Well, I think there’s not as much difference as you might imagine because most of the time militaries are at peace and when a military’s at peace they just look like a government department of agriculture. And most big businesses are so big that there’s no such emergency and they look like a department of agriculture. Rebeka was telling me she used to work for an agency. There’s a large military base where we live and when we heard ... she was a recruiter ... and they would get a lot of retired military officers, who would want ... in the military you can retire age 42, 45, something like that, which is relatively young ... and okay, I’ve had thirty years in the military and I’m now about 50 years old and I’m ready to put all my leadership experience in the military … I’m ready for a great executive ... and she said they just failed because to have a successful career in the military you just have to do what you’re told and you’d better and you should ... you’ll be punished if you try to innovate ... Seriously, you know, it’s just a hierarchy and you just do what you’re told. So there’s no opportunity for innovation or creativity. And when those guys move into the private sector, when they move into business, they just sit around waiting to be told what to do. They won’t take initiative. So I would say that’s the only real difference I could tell you, yeah.
Also in your work you mention a lot about the dark side of personality. Can you explain what it means?
Well, there was a very smart guy who’s a friend of mine. His name is John Benz. He was vice-president of human resources at Sears, which at that time was a very successful wholesaler, retailer, big retail stores everywhere in the United States and he was in charge – he was the head of HR so he was in charge of hiring new managers and they used an IQ test and a measure of normal personality to hire all their new managers. So all the new managers at Sears were smart and had a good, bright side; they interviewed well. 65% of them failed. That’s two-thirds of them failed. And he said how can it be that they failed since we hired them on their behaving well and being smart. So he then catalogued the reasons – and he had several thousands of them available, and he just catalogued them and said this guy failed for this reason and this guy failed for this reason, this guy failed for this reason and he catalogued them and came up with eleven reasons why they were fired. So, I mean, if you get fail, you going to fail for one of the following eleven reasons: being arrogant, being too emotional, being a micro-manager, being a liar, being a show-off, attention seeker – you know, not being a team player. Well, I read those and I said: “Those sound like the eleven TSM3 Axis II personality disorders.” They were right there in the psychiatric handbook and so I wrote that and tried to capture items and that worked out really, really well. There are these eleven reasons why managers fail and that’s it ... and they do it reliably and you can identify that upfront. And those derailing tendencies, those reasons they fail are masked, are hidden by a good, bright side. So the bright side is what you see during an interview; the dark side is what you see when they come to work, when they let down their guard. And the two exist simultaneously and you need to penetrate the bright side to get at the dark side.
Emotional leadership or emotional intelligence is a term that is used all the time. What is it good for and how can it be used for organisations to make larger profits or to do well?
Well, it turns out that emotional intelligence is a concept I think has been badly misunderstood. It’s part of popular psychology and anything which is part of popular psychology is useless. So the answer is it’s a normal distribution: high emotional intelligence and low emotional intelligence. There’s good news and bad news in both these. People who are high on emotional intelligence are calm, steady, pleasant, always in a good mood, handle problems calmly. It’s Obama –they call him “No Drama Obama”: very calm, steady, nothing upsets him. So that’s what you get. But what you don’t get is any sense of urgency, any drive to make something happen. So at the low end, where you get drive, synergy and push, you also get volatility. You can’t have them both. It you want calm, complacence, steadiness, you’re not going to get any sense of urgency. He never makes decisions, he [sticks tongue out]. So if you want something to happen in the organisation, you need someone with low emotional intelligence. If you want everyone to stay calm and happy – with no progress – then you need people with high emotional intelligence. It’s an idea which sounds intriguing but is kind of silly and poorly understood.
But we still come back to these four factors.
And emotional intelligence was not part of those four factors.
Is there a way to monitor the real personal reputation at work?
Well, that’s a really good question and I think there are three answers to that. This is you right here. You’ll have one reputation from your subordinates; you’ll have another reputation from your peers; and you’ll have another reputation from your bosses. And they’re very different. The subordinates want to know if they can trust you; your peers want to know ... yeah, yeah, yeah ... if you’re not going to outperform them; and the bosses want to know if you’re useful to them.
Because what you mentioned, that people – they hate you when you’re successful.
Yes, yes, they do. Your peers want to know if you’re going to outperform them and they ... and you need to pretend when you’re with them that you’re not going to outperform them. Then the bosses – the bosses want to know if you’re going to be good for their career ... if you’re going to make them look good.
I wonder what is the real reputation. Is it a mix of all of it? How can you prove it?
You have a real reputation with your subordinates and a real reputation with your peers and a real reputation with your boss.
So it depends on situations.
In a sense, yes. That’s true. Well, who you are depends on who’s evaluating you and those groups change.
