A Story of Assessments, Aha Moments, and the Occasional Awkward Silence

In the world of HR and leadership development, tools have a way of arriving at your door with the confidence of someone who believes they are the first person ever to have had a good idea. There’s always a new framework, a fresh model, a “revolutionary” inventory that promises to decode human behaviour in seventeen dimensions and a colour-coded report. So, when Hogan came knocking, I did what any HR does- I raised an eyebrow, crossed my arms, and said, “Alright then. Impress me.” Reader, it did. 
 
Becoming a Hogan Advanced Assessor wasn’t a snap decision. It came after years of sitting across from leaders in coaching and consulting conversations, nodding along to their self-assessments, and quietly noticing that the version of themselves they described and the version their teams experienced were… let’s say, creatively different. I needed a tool that could bridge that gap without me having to be the one to say, “With respect, your colleagues might not fully share that view of you.” Hogan, bless it, does that job with far more grace than I ever could. 
 
The first time I debriefed a leader on their full Hogan profile, I watched something happen that I’ve since come to recognise as the signature Hogan moment — a long pause, followed by a slow nod, followed by the words, “Oh. So that’s what that is.” Not distress, not denial, just quiet recognition. The data had named something the person had always half-sensed but never quite had words for. That pause is worth everything. It’s the moment where real development actually becomes possible, because you can’t change what you haven’t seen. 
 
From there, I began building leadership development plans that were rooted in each person’s actual profile – their natural strengths, the tendencies that emerge under pressure (what Hogan elegantly calls “derailers,” and what I have come to think of as “the version of you that shows up uninvited when you’re stressed”), and the underlying values that shape what motivates them day to day. These plans stopped being generic and started being personal, which meant coaching conversations stopped being polite check-ins and started being genuinely useful. I take no small amount of satisfaction in that. 
 
Despite doing many de-briefs by now, doing it for the Excitable ones, still need some learning. They enter the debrief practically evangelising Hogan before we’ve even opened the report. “This is fascinating, I’ve always believed in the science of personality, I think every leader in my organisation should do this.” Wonderful. Thirty minutes later, when the HDS results are on the table and a few uncomfortable truths are staring back at them, the temperature in the room shifts. Suddenly, Hogan is “a bit reductive,” the analysis is questionable, and perhaps they were just tired the day they filled it in. The same person who arrived as Hogan’s biggest champion has, in the space of half an hour, become its sternest critic. Excitable, as it turns out, works in both directions. 
 
This is where my High Interpersonal Sensitivity quietly does its work. I catch the shift before it fully surfaces- a slight change in posture, a clipped response, the tell-tale over-casual “I mean, it’s interesting, but…”,and I adjust. I soften the tone, slow down, make the space feel less like a verdict and more like a conversation. I’m not here to defend the instrument; I’m here to stay with the person. Because here’s what I’ve learnt: the resistance is never really about the tool. It’s about the reflection. And the people who push back hardest in that moment are usually the ones who, six months later, will know that the debrief changed something for them. 
 
As a consultant, Hogan turned out to be extremely transformative for me in a completely different arena: hiring. I had always believed, in theory, that interviews were a flawed way to make high-stakes decisions- too much room for first impressions, for people performing their best selves, for interviewers projecting what they hope to see. But it wasn’t until I started bringing Hogan reports into selection conversations that I could offer my client organisations something more than that theory. Suddenly, hiring panels had data-driven insights to complement their gut instincts. Costly mis-hires were avoided. Strong candidates who might have interviewed nervously got a fairer hearing. I’ve sat in rooms where a Hogan report has quietly, calmly changed a hiring decision; and watched that decision turn out to be the right one. 
 
If there’s one thing this journey has taught me (other than the fact that I, too, have a Hogan profile and should perhaps reflect on it more often) it’s that self-awareness is not a soft skill. It is the skill. Everything else in leadership is downstream of it. Hogan just happens to be a remarkably good map for the territory.