People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 12

perspectives - counterpoint
Too many things drive performance; I prefer
the idea that leaders drive disengagement.
This is a bit like the Herzberg two-factor
theory, in which the factors that drive satisfaction are not simply the opposite of those
that drive dissatisfaction. Similarly, the opposite of engagement is not disengagement.
They are different processes. We observe that
leaders can quickly and dramatically cause
staff disengagement on their own. The drivers
of sustained engagement, however, are broader than the pull, presence, actions, or any
leader just on his or her own.
Adrian Furnham, Ph.D., is a professor of
psychology at University College, London, and the author of more than 1,000
scientific papers and 75 books. He can
be reached at a.furnham@ucl.ac.uk.

Leveraging
Personality to
Develop Leaders
and the Organization
Allan H. Church, Ph.D.
We are all obsessed with leadership. As talent
management (TM) professionals, our mandate is to ensure our organizations have a
holistic talent development strategy and set
of supporting processes, practices, and tools
to achieve the company's business objectives.
One of the most critical components of this
mandate is to identify and secure (whether
through a buy or build model) the right level
of leadership to effectively run the business
today and meet the succession goals for the
future. Thus, for many of us in TM, the key
distinction we need to make with respect to
leadership competencies is, "do they reflect
the success profile of today or those capabilities required for the future?"

Balancing Leadership Development
with Organization Development
One of the most effective ways to achieve
these goals is by blending the best-of-the-best

PEOPLE & STRATEGY

theories, frameworks, and interventions from
different professional disciplines, including
industrial-organizational psychology and
organization development. Organizations
need to ground their talent and leadership
succession efforts in:
* Understanding leaders in the pipeline and
differentiating them around their individual skills and capabilities, which includes
personality
* Enhancing self-awareness and knowledge
of the cultural impact of personality characteristics and leadership behaviors on employee outcomes such as engagement, commitment, and performance
The first leads us to enhance the talent
management agenda via formal assessment
and the identification of high-potentials. The
second leads us to support an organization
development agenda via feedback and coaching
interventions. Achieving this dual emphasis
and balance on differentiation and development is critical to having an effective and holistic approach to leadership development.

What Works at PepsiCo
At PepsiCo, our approach to talent management and employee development reinforces
this dual emphasis. In general, it is aligned
with Bob Hogan's observations, and we
have fully integrated both the bright and
dark sides of personality along with values
orientation within our formal multi-tier
assessment and development efforts. Developed and launched in 2010, the Leadership
Assessment & Development program
(LeAD) provides increasingly intensive integrated assessment and development efforts
that are linked to key leadership transitions
and targeted at individuals in certain career
stages or levels in the organization. The system leverages a multi-trait, multi-method
model beginning at lower levels in the organization, with "Checkpoint-0" designed to
assess early indicators of potential. This is
followed by higher checkpoints (1, 2, 3)
which go successively deeper in the assessment process and are supported by higher
levels of development "touch" and individual planning support from internal I-O psychologists with expertise in this area.

One of the most critical aspects of the LeAD
framework is that it is rooted in the Leadership Potential BluePrint (Church & Silzer,
2014), which includes personality as one of
the two key foundational aspects of defining
a high-potential leader. Based on the model,
we integrate personality measures at every
level of our assessment and development
efforts (from early identification to senior
levels). This step is critical when giving oneon-one feedback to participants because it
helps us ensure our leaders have a complete
picture of their personality characteristics
and how these influence their behaviors as
measured through 360-degree feedback (i.e.,
ratings from their direct reports, peers, and
managers).
Interestingly enough, we have found that the
participants' personality dispositions are
reflected in other aspects of the program,
including areas such as attention to detail on
our custom simulations, executive presence
in critical incident interviews, and even compliance with timelines and various deliverables related to the process in general.
As a consequence, when delivering feedback,
our internal team in the assessment and development Center of Excellence almost always
starts with the personality tool, given that so
many other aspects are influenced by how
leaders perceive their world. In sum, we
would argue that personality is a foundational component of both effective leadership-and future leadership potential-and
that enhancing managerial self-awareness is
a key means to achieving one's potential.

References
Church, A., and Silzer, R. Going behind the corporate
curtain with a blueprint for leadership potential: An integrated framework for identifying high-potential talent.
People & Strategy. Volume 36, Issue 4. 2014.

Allan H. Church, Ph.D., is vice president, OD Global Groups and Executive Assessment at PepsiCo. He can be
reached at Allan.Church@pepsico.
com.

People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1