My first question is, "What makes some teams more effective than others and what is the key to their success?"
This is a really key question because almost everything we do as humans is done in a collaborative way. Most of what humanity has accomplished has been done through mutual cooperation. From flying into space, landing on the moon, or building the pyramids, a team of people is always needed. At the same time, you have to have a team that is really coordinated and communicates well with each other and externally what they are doing, divides roles and has an overview of what is happening around the project.
All of this takes a really big effort and that's actually what we humans as a species are really good at. It is exactly the same in modern business.
So the question should be: „What actually makes a successful team a successful team?“ We reviewed the available professional literature and team performance studies that looked at high-performing teams. We looked at a number of functional models from consulting firms. We then tried to identify the common success factors of the teams from these sources. We've narrowed it down to essentially five dimensions of truly effective team performance. Let me introduce them to you.
The first factor of a successful team is trust. It appears everywhere, in every team. The successful team model says that trust is really the most important thing. If you and I are in a partnership or business relationship and we don't trust each other, we have no chance of success, so this is a key factor.
If the team doesn't trust each other, you can't as a manager simply say, ``Trust each other and you'll work well together.'' we depend on each other to know that we can count on each other.
So building that trust takes time, that's a crucial dimension.
Michal Kankrlik interviewing Ryne Sherman
The second key is team norms that we all agree on. Everyone needs to be clear about who is doing what, how things should be done and how we communicate with each other.
There's a little more depth to it than meets the eye. It is primarily about who is actually part of the team. But it's also about how we communicate with each other and who makes which decisions.
The third is the awareness of the team's role and the team's mission. Do we all know what we are doing here and where we want to go? Does anyone remember what the point of this team is? If we all know what we're doing and everyone agrees, we're on the right track.
The fourth is a focus on results. Each team member is responsible for getting things done the way they are done. Setting goals and taking responsibility for achieving them is everyone's business.
The fifth one that we've found is really exclusive to the top-level, so-called C-suite teams, is strategic adaptability, which is the ability to say what we're doing is wrong. We all need to be able to change our ideas and attitudes, be willing to take risks, experiment, try new things and even fail at times. All of this is really critical for teams at the highest level.
What is the role of a leader anyway? In the ideal model, you have a team and you have a leader who has absolute decision-making authority. However, the real situation is usually more complex, even more so when the leader is not a top manager, but "just" a middle manager. He has superiors above him and a team or group of subordinates below him. His ability to make decisions is limited, he has determined limits on how far he can go. Maybe he can improvise, do things his way, but then he takes risks. How should a leader behave in this situation if he is to succeed at the medium level?
Yes, you're absolutely right, that's a good question, because of course a leader is essential, and the way we think about things in the Hogan Team effectiveness equals management effectiveness.
How do we know you are an effective leader? Because your team is really efficient. So the position of the leader is absolutely critical in this whole process. A good leader must be aware of all the pitfalls of his position.
In the example you give, leadership support is absolutely key. As a middle manager, you need to have the support of the people above you. Even if you are the CEO, you need to have the support of the board. They must support you and your team or your team will fail. And if you are a mid-level manager, you must have the support of your senior manager.
Mid-level leaders have a difficult task in many ways, because they have to coordinate efforts with people at the top, but they also have to participate in the work of the team. We've found that many leaders focus on driving their own results and less on the performance of their team.
The view of these leaders is relatively egocentric. They want to move up in the organization themselves and are less interested in making their team truly successful. So it doesn't matter so much whether the team has the right operational structure or the required level of individual members. However, they are more interested in how I can get higher myself and that's when all the problems really start.
You're a senior science officer and you have explained to me that this actually means you're sitting on a lot of data. Robert Hogan once mentioned that your company has the most business data collected in the US, perhaps in the world, about people's personality and behavior. When you look closely at the data, what are the top factors that cause leaders to fail, teams to fail, and organizations to fail?
This is absolutely true, we have millions of tested individuals in our database. We evaluate at least one million people worldwide every year. Another thing I like to brag about as Chief Scientist is what we call our global standard. It means that we have a very broad relevant group against which to compare the individuals we evaluate with us. We have the broadest representative sample tested by gender, race, ethnicity, country, language, just about anything you want to consider in the world's working population.
Give me a sample of the working population and I can tell you what a typical representative looks like, because we have the best data on them. When we give people feedback, we have a very strong group to compare their profile to.
But the question is where do we see the key invoices leading to the failure of organizations. Where do we see these failures occur? As a company dealing with personality assessment of individuals, we believe that the main reason for organizational or team failure is the behavior of its leader.
We believe that these are often failures that can be described by typical patterns of behavior that lead to failure - when a leader is derailed, when a leader becomes narcissistic, when a leader takes too much credit, when a leader micromanages and says no, do it in this way, when the leader becomes an obstacle to progress, because everything has to be solved and decided by himself. It's an attitude of the type, I won't delegate anything, I don't want someone else to handle it, I can handle everything myself...
There are a number of behaviors that leaders practice that completely derail their teams and damage their organization. We see the position of the leader and his personality as a decisive factor in the success or failure of the entire organization.
Is there a process to review the leader's behavior or give him feedback that his behavior no longer supports the success of the team or the entire organization? Or even that the leader has reached the point that he is more interested in his own career than the benefit of the team or the company?
Yes, of course you can and it's the whole point of our evaluation process. When I think about where the main added value of our testing is, it is precisely in the fact that we provide insight into people's behavior.
Of course, we provide feedback to the tested person who will gain better insight into himself. If we talk about personality assessment according to Hogan's methodology, we can say that we are primarily measuring personal reputation.
You might be wondering how is it possible that someone can gauge my personal reputation just by answering questions on a questionnaire. But, as I mentioned before, we collect a lot of data, and a lot of the data we collect is not just about you, but also from people who may know you well.
The moment you find out how people around you perceive you and what they think about your behavior can be a really crucial moment for you to get a real perspective on your behavior and actions. This is the "eye-opening" moment for many leaders, they ask themselves: "Is this really me?" Is this how I behave?”.
When we then look at your profile, we can compare it to similar profiles of other candidates and say, yes, candidates with a similar profile can exhibit these behavioral patterns. It is the perspective of other people that allows you to get a real view of your personality. We then see better why other people around us behave the way they do when they react to the way we are.
Companies usually use this 360 feedback. Do you have even more sophisticated methods to recognize even faster that a leader is on the wrong track?
360 feedback is great, it's one of the best evaluation methods, we use it ourselves. This is one of the best ways to really evaluate a leader. Here we get a great picture of what people across the organizational structure think of you. However, the problem with 360 is that it is a time- and cost-intensive way of testing.
In a situation where we have a really bad leader who makes bad decisions and we want to apply 360 degree feedback to him, that leader has to spend some time in the organization before we can even test him. At best, we will find out that he is really inefficient and has already messed up many things...
The benefit of the Hogan assessment is that it only takes about 45 minutes, requires only you, and provides feedback before you even enter the position. And in those 45 minutes we are able to get most of the information as from 360 degree feedback.
Of course, we will gradually get much more information from the 360, but as I already mentioned from the point of view of efficiency and cost, our evaluation methods are absolutely sufficient.
Ryne, why do you like your job and why do you look forward to going to the office every day if that's the case?
I make a living as a personality psychologist. The work of a personality psychologist is not one you normally know. It's not like saying I'm a fireman, we all know why he's here and what we need him for. Few people know why we actually need personality psychologists.
When I got the offer to work for Hogan Assessment Systems, probably the best company in the world to work for as a personality psychologist, I didn't hesitate for a second. I love my job mainly because of the impact we have on people and their lives and the fact that we work not only with the most famous organizations around the world, but also with small entities. Do you know that more people in the world work for small organizations than for large ones?
We work with practically all organizations of all sizes and help them make better decisions in the field of leadership and how they can have much more effective leaders, and this has a huge impact on whether these organizations succeed and whether the individuals in them really have a quality life.
For example, we know that the main cause of stress in an individual's work life is their immediate supervisor. A bad supervisor means stress number one. The cause of illness is stress, so a bad supervisor can ultimately contribute to more frequent illness in his subordinates.
I'm not trying to take myself too seriously, but in a way it really is what I'm describing here. If we do a good job, the organization will get effective leaders and managers, people will feel good here, the quality of their lives will improve, sickness will decrease and everyone will be happier and more successful.
Ryne, one last question. People usually don't think of psychologists as technically advanced people or an industry. Today, however, technology is going into all industries, all businesses. How are new technologies affecting your business?
New technologies are constantly coming into our business. So the latest trends and news we hear about include, for example, automated candidate assessment using artificial intelligence. Imagine looking at your phone, it takes a picture of your face, and we use AI and a picture of your face to decide whether you get that position or not.
New technologies are increasingly being used by companies, although there are also many concerns associated with these types of technologies, especially regarding potential bias, truth or accuracy of candidate assessment results. Our entire business is about how to get the right candidates for the given positions, and new technologies appear in our business practically all the time.
We ourselves are still experimenting, trying to implement new and new procedures, but we gradually find out that many of them do not work. It is indeed very difficult to beat the basic 45 minute grading system in terms of accuracy, bias, cost and time efficiency.
Yes, there are brand new technologies, some of which we have implemented into our processes, such as the new assessment format, which we have had very good feedback on, to make it a bit more user-friendly,
So we are always testing new technologies and trying to deploy those that have proven themselves. However, the bottom line remains whether our work model is functional, fair and efficient for users.
Ryne, thank you for the interview, it was a pleasure to have you here on HRtv and in the Czech Republic. I wish you good luck and satisfaction with your work.
Thank you.