
news
LEADERS ARE PERSUASIVE
RULE-BREAKERS
Psychometrics Canada, an assessment
publisher and consultant for the develop-ment
and selection of people in business,
government and education, announced
new research on how specific personality
traits characterize leaders and differenti-ate
them from other occupational groups.
As part of the norming study for the new
version of the Work Personality Index®
assessment, over 2,000 managers and ex-ecutives
reported that the personality
traits that best characterize them are lead-ership,
multi-tasking, energy, persuasion,
social confidence and teamwork.
“The traits that best discriminate
leaders from non-leaders indicate that
managers and leaders like to take control,
do many tasks at once and are very ener-getic,”
said Dr. Donald Macnab, director
of research at Psychometrics Canada and
author of the Work Personality Index as-sessment.
“In contrast to earlier studies,
where conscientiousness tends to be one
of the best predictors of job performance,
Singkham/Shutterstock
managers and leaders show a lower lev-el
of rule-following (a conscientiousness
trait) than other groups. In fact, the higher
the level of leader (manager, executive or
top executive), the lower the level of rule-
following – with top executives being low-est
of all groups in rule-following.”
Managers and leaders perhaps char-acterize
themselves as rule-breakers as
opposed to rule-followers, and are more
interested in considering new approach-es
than following standard operating
procedures.
“The research indicates that personal-ity
does distinguish leaders from other
groups,” said Macnab.
HIRING MANAGERS ARE ONE
OF HR’S BIGGEST CHALLENGES
When it comes to the job of finding and
acquiring talent, hiring managers are one
of the biggest challenges facing HR pro-fessionals
today, according to a survey
conducted by The McQuaig Institute.
In fact, 53 per cent of HR profession-als
surveyed identified issues with hiring
managers as one of the top three challeng-es
they face in recruiting talent.
Nearly half of respondents said their
hiring managers are not strong interview-ers.
That number climbed to 65 per cent
for large companies.
“HR professionals are frustrated,” said
Ian Cameron, managing director of The
McQuaig Institute. “They’re focused on
bringing the right talent into their orga-nizations
and the single biggest obstacle
is not skills shortages, candidate supply or
qualifications; it’s their internal partners.”
Getting those candidates in the door
is just the beginning, though. Those sur-veyed
said they expect 10 per cent of new
hires to be gone before the end of the first
year and a whopping 61 per cent said lack
of skills are not to blame when someone
doesn’t work out.
Half of HR professionals surveyed said
it’s hard to find a good cultural fit. New
employees are also getting unhappy earlier,
10 ❚ OCTOBER 2014 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL