I have always been interested in what makes people tick and have been fortunate enough to have a career that allowed to learn more and more about personality and behavior through my work as an HR professional and a Hogan practitioner. Taking a deep dive into my own personality through the Hogan Assessments though was instrumental in helping me make the connection between identity and reputation – our beliefs about ourselves and our actual behaviors – and how changing one or the other can enable us to make positive changes in our outcomes!
My own Hogan story is about how I continue to practice “turning the volume up (and down)” on some of my scales of low Adjustment and high Interpersonal Sensitivity while remaining aware of the biases that play out with high Affiliation in both my personal and professional life. As someone who is motivated by building connection with others and values networking and relationships (high Affiliation), having a reputation for being warm, perceptive and diplomatic (high Interpersonal Sensitivity) certainly helped a great deal to build rapport and create long-lasting associations with people. This also comes in handy in building trust in coaching engagements.
However, the downside of having high Interpersonal Sensitivity is that I really don’t like to engage in conflict. And when I add low Adjustment to the mix, if I do have to engage in conflict or confrontation, it does tend to increase my internal churn and perhaps push me into some undesirable under-stress behaviors. This tendency has come in the way several times of taking a little too much time to surface issues that needed to be addressed. At times, conflict can also result in people needing space and time to deal with the issues, which would impact my motivation for connection and community. The result – not being able to engage in healthy conflict, speak my mind without worrying about the negative consequences, and make tough decisions without feeling a high degree of stress … What a crazy spiral to deal with!
I was able to recognize that I was putting myself voluntarily into the tough space of a binary choice between getting ahead and getting along – two of the basic master motives that drive all humans according to the socio analytic theory of personality (FYI, the third master motive is ‘making meaning of the world around us’). With patience, practice and a LOT of help from the wonderful coaching community I am fortunate to be a part of, I continue to work towards concrete behavior changes.
The strengths of my scales – deep relationships, connecting with empathy, being diplomatic, being motivated by creating community – continue to drive my success as a coach, consultant, friend and parent. However, I strive to become slightly better each day at communicating more assertively, making tough decisions, providing candid feedback and stressing about it a little less than I did yesterday.
