Can 360 Feedback Help Executives Develop Charisma?

The following is excerpted from an address given by Dr. Connolly at a

convention of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
(SIOP). This excerpt addresses the question of whether the components
of charisma can be isolated through measurement, with the goals of
providing coaching to develop weak areas. He shows how two
instruments, the Survey of Executive Leadership™ from Clark Wilson
Group and Hogan Personality Inventory, were used to answer the
question.

Some years ago I was working with a customer who I’d jokingly classify
as difficult, but seriously describe as one of the brightest, most competent
HR practitioners I’ve ever met. We were working on behavioral measures
to support his plans for developing high-potential leadership candidates.

Our discussions often led to a topic almost as inscrutable as nature vs.

nurture. It’s the topic of personality vs. behavior as the source of one of
the most highly effective leadership traits: charisma.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool behaviorist, I insisted that while personality is

important, it is – in a training and development context –irrelevant.
Personality factors cannot be taught. In fact, most personality factors are
generally well established by adolescence. They change with difficulty,
through traumatic life events or concentrated psychotherapy.

Leadership, I further insisted, consists of actions, the things people do. In

other words, the sum of a person’s leadership is equal to the parts of his
or her behaviors.

Being the highly experienced practitioner that he is, my customer wouldn’t

let me escape that easily. Many of the candidates in the high potential
group we were working with had, in fact, been selected because they
exhibited charisma. "Your education," he told me, "will continue."

Charisma is the hard-to-define, rare characteristic in a person that causes

others to want to listen, to follow, and to perform. It is a magnetic,
"pulling toward" characteristic. It is motivating. It is extremely valuable in
a leader.

Is charisma the inborn talent that makes the difference between a good
manager and a great executive? Or is it a series of behaviors that, when
present in subtle juxtaposition, simply appear to produce a result greater
than the sum of parts?
Furthermore, is charisma a personality factor or a behavior factor? It is
probably both. Our challenge became clear: Could we develop a
measurement that was true to the meaning of charisma and was also true
to the principles of good developmental feedback? This question was of
such interest to my client that we engaged in special research in an
attempt to find out.

Research Program: Measurement of Charisma

We surveyed 135 managers in the company’s high-potential program.

They were selected through various means: Some were nominated by
their immediate management, some were nominated by other
management, and a handful were self-nominated (a temporary process
whereby an individual has a chance to "prove her/himself" in spite of
"management blockage"). The group went through various processes and
assessments, including the two measures we are discussing today, the
Clark Wilson Group's Executive Leadership
Survey™ and the Hogan Personality Exhibit A
Inventory.
Demographics of Study Sample
It’s important to mention here that the
sample exhibited a level of ambition higher Average Age: 41 (SD=5.8)
than 85% of the general population of
working adults, as measured by the Hogan   Males Female
Personality Inventory (HPI). In other words, Caucasian: 101 20
they came to the high potential program with
an intrinsic desire to succeed. The purpose of Minority 12 2
our research was to provide them with tools Total Sample 135
that would give them a unique insight into
how to enhance their success by emphasizing
certain behaviors and skills.

Whatever measures we developed had to meet the three criteria of well

designed developmental feedback. This means that every questionnaire
item must do the following:

1. It asks for data that is observable by others. This leads to

rating consistency and reliability.
2. It asks for observations that relate to the role of an executive.
This is one aspect of assuring validity.
3. It addresses a behavior that is under the control of an
individual to change. In other words, it is a behavior that can
respond to training if the individual is willing.

The third criterion is very important because behavioral feedback is most

suitable for improving performance, not simply understanding
performance.
From a developmental feedback perspective, charisma is a problem
variable. It doesn't meet the third of the key criteria for good feedback
items: Responsiveness to Training.

Looking at the history of research on charisma, however, we made an

interesting discovery. The behavioral descriptions of the characteristic all
center on enthusiasm, speed of motion, running, jumping, vocal
projection, eye contact. In other words, the observable actions center on
the individual’s apparent energy level.

Measuring Executive Energy

For years I have worked with the Task Cycle Model, developed by Clark
Wilson, Ph.D., as the research platform for 360-degree behavioral
feedback to executives and leaders. We selected this as the behavioral
instrument for our study. The model incorporates the behavioral
dimensions shown in the Task Cycle exhibit below.

We decided to add an Energy dimension to our behavior-focused

Leadership survey. We incorporated it as a subscale under Drive. It
contained seven items.

When we administered the survey to our sample of 135, I expected the

Energy dimension to fail as an experiment. I believed it would not factor
"cleanly." In other words, I thought that it would be too closely related to
other dimensions, such as Vision. I thought it would provide no new,
independent information.

I was wrong. Our seven items factored cleanly, more highly related to one
another than to anything else in the survey. We had indeed improved our
survey. We were now receiving a more complete picture of a high
potential’s behavior profile.

This completed one leg of the journey.

Personality Measures

We wanted to see whether high Energy scores correlated with charisma-

related scores on a personality instrument. We felt that if a person was
already scoring high on the charisma scales, they would benefit from
becoming conscious of how others perceive their energy. They could, for
instance, learn to project more energy in key situations to improve their
effectiveness.

We chose the Hogan Assessment Systems series of instruments for this

part of the study. The Hogan instruments are mathematically similar to
Wilson instruments. Hogan also uses the concept of independent factors.
The structural similarity between the two instruments simplifies the search
for common touch-points.

Hogan Personality Inventory looks at charisma through three subscales:

No Social Anxiety (gregariousness), Leadership (wanting to be in charge),
and Self-confidence (having the wherewithal to move forward).

Comparing scores for the study group, we found the correlation moderate
but significant. They generally ranged from .2 to .3. While this may sound
low to those familiar with statistical measurement, we were very excited!
It is rare for any personality measure to correlate with a behavior
measure at more than a .4 level. This is commonly called the Personality
Trait Ceiling among psychometricians. They theorize that it is due to self-
perception errors.

Our two selected instruments produced the following results on the three
charisma-related items:

Exhibit B

Correlation between HPI Charisma Measures

and Leadership Survey Energy Measure

Energy Scale
Hogan HPI Subscale (Executive Leadership
Survey)
No Social Anxiety (gregariousness) .32
Leadership (wanting to be in charge) .32
Self-confidence (having the wherewithal to move
.10
forward)

The moderate correlation between lack of social anxiety and the desire to
be in charge showed that the energy-related behaviors can be related to
personality factors. For the individual who comes to management with
these personality assets in place, we could help them see which behaviors
might improve their effectiveness.

So, my client was correct. My education was continuing. There is a portion

of the phenomenon called charisma that can be quantified, studied,
reported and, most importantly, developed.

Paul M. Connolly, Ph.D., is president and founder of Performance

Programs, Inc., a company specializing in human capital measurement
since 1987. He can be reached at 1-800-565-4223. View the Web site at
http://www.performanceprograms.com/