Cognipsy - Blog , Talent ManagementCognipsy - Blog , Talent Managementhttps://www.cognipsy.com/blogs/talent-managementSun, 02 Nov 2025 16:00:27 -0800http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Understanding Anatagonism]]>https://www.cognipsy.com/blogs/post/Understanding-AntagonismAntagonism is a very critical risk that often impedes the performance and growth of high achievers in organisations. In this post we examine what Antagonism cluster includes and what to do about it.]]>

Think of a new leader, a high performer and a great project manager. Chances are you would have heard of at least a dozen instances where they would have roughed up people, been impolite to a stakeholder, lost temper at their reportees, burnt bridges with peers or simply gone overboard with an argument. Common issues of not being able to get along with others are often underpinned by Antagonism cluster of risks. 

                                            From Big Five standpoint Antagonism is a complex mish mash of traits. It is largely concerned with low agreeableness, high neuroticism and often low emotionality. Individuals prone to Antagonism often have trouble getting along with people and while they can survive most interpersonal transactions, it is difficult for others to cope with them in interpersonal situations. Chances are many individuals with Antagonism proneness may not be aware of how rude or callous they come across to others. This is tricky because Antagonism prone individuals are often scary to give feedback to. When in position of power, people adapt to Antagonism prone individuals by treading carefully around them, not getting involved into arguments with them and in general assuming a meek stance when interacting with them. This often wins them a 'toxic' adjective. 


Antagonism within the purview of  SPS Scan is based on 6 key commonly overlapping challenges:


 Risk Description Impact on others
 Indifference Indifferent to others' needs Others may not share their emotions with them and may not reach out for help
 Arrogance Considers self to be better than others Others may feel insulted, judged or humiliated by them
 Provocation Argues frequently Others may not speak their mind and may not share feedback with them
 Aggression Loses composure, easily angered Others may try and not anger them, handle them with kid-gloves or avoid them altogether
 Fickle Subjective morals, double standards Others may not trust them and may find them deceptive
 Criticism Critical without consideration Others may lose motivation and feel inhibited around them

                                                    It is rare to find individuals with all 6 as high risk 7 in 1000 are likely to exhibit all 6 risks. But even 3 of 6 risks indicate antagonism related challenges for individuals in professional and personal life.

]]>Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:53:00 +0530<![CDATA[What we know about predicting leadership]]>https://www.cognipsy.com/blogs/post/what-we-know-about-predicting-leadershipWe review the current scientific consensus on how to predict leadership potential. This review demonstrates how different constructs predict different aspects and abilities that go into leadership. But which one of them is more important than others?]]>
Leadership, as you may already in know, is a rather complex phenomenon. But what you should also know is that great amount of money is spent by companies to hire leaders, train/develop them and deal with them should they not perform. Of all costs the latter is the greatest and is seldom accurately reported.


In this summary of research we briefly discuss the science of predicting leadership emergence and effectiveness. An emergent leadership is a very different from effectiveness model of leadership. However, this difference is not the scope of the article.


Intelligence


Better described as general cognitive ability, intelligence is a great predictor of leadership. In fact of all psychological factors g can predict leadership emergence the best (r=0.4). Ability to work with complexity, think about future, build scenarios, learning things quickly and solving problems on the fly are all much needed competence in a leader and g predicts just that. Needless to say g alone is not a mark of a good leader, but from statistical point of view, g predictss leadership the best.


Personality


Personality is a good predictor of job performance. Leadership requires different behaviours at different instances. The ability to exercise one's traits is a mark of good leadership. However, a great deal of research has proven that conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to idea are all good predictors of leadership emergence. Extraversion and agreeableness have mixed results. Surprisingly, agreeableness has been found to have negative correlations with leadership emergence and positive correlations with effectiveness.


Handling Stress


Leaders are less impacted by stress. And the proof is irrefutable. Biological evidence from cortisol level (stress causing hormone) suggest that the basal levels of cortisol in leaders are higher. Which entails that leaders are used to high stress and their cortisol levels do not increase much with stress. Emotional stability factor from personality also has positive correlations with leadership emergence. Hence, ability to not be perturbed  by stress is also a sound predictor of leadership capability.


Emotional Intelligence/Ability


While studies show that EI predicts leadership effectiveness, EI itself is highly correlated with g and big 5 factors. Hence , from psychometric standpoint it doesn't offer any additional insights into leadership capability. Alarmingly, some studies have shown that high EI leads to lower leadership effectiveness.


Creativity


Creativity both in terms of a trait as well as ability is a strong predictor of leadership effectiveness and not emergence. Surprisingly this is true across industries and sectors. This could be a reflection of the fact that strategizing and exploring new avenues of growth do require creativity.


In all, psychology has enough insights into what would make a great leader. Furthermore, definitions of what effective leadership looks like across cultures is similar. This doesn't mean that culture has no impact on leadership. Adequate evidence exists to suggest that socially acceptable leadership behaviours differ from culture to culture. E.g. in US a good leader is expected to be an extrovert while in Japan a good leader is culturally perceived to be introverted. That said, a great amount of leadership can be scientifically predicted with analytical models which are customised to an organization, industry and culture.
]]>Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:33:10 +0530<![CDATA[Why do talent reviews fail?]]>https://www.cognipsy.com/blogs/post/why-do-talent-reviews-failWe explore common causes of talent review failures. How does your talent review fare?]]>
In a tightly packed conference room executives debate who the next line of leaders are going to be. A number of stories are narrated and a number of documents are churned. What's evident is the process, the discussion and the intense reflection. At the end of the review some decisions are arrived at and the review comes to a close.

While the talent review is a common process and there is little room for diversity of creativity there, success of talent reviews as a part of the talent management process itself is rare. Completion of talent review however is construed as success. That rarely is the case.

So what makes the talent reviews fail? Let's look at the most common derailers of the talent reviews in the corporate:

Conjecture

No matter how many documents are presented in the review, if all of them are manager's estimate or if they are all subjective speculation, talent review is bound to fail. Objective data however difficult must be collected. Common practices are to use a psychometric assessment, 360 degree feedback,  behvaioural interview assessment, and performance data depending on roles/KRAs.

In absence of objective data, bias takes over and managers and executives alike tend to favour successful candidates or safe candidates. A clone effect also takes over where in managers who are most like the executives present in the review are favoured and receive positive hearing. A well known fact is that managers are poor judges of individual potential.

Poor Facilitation

All said and done, no culture or company for that matter is perfect and there is always some room for politics and biases. There is little on can do beyond a point. Therefore your best bet is to have an executive or better still an expert process facilitator do the job of facilitation for you. Granted that it may seem costly and depending on culture, a little paranoid, but it has great advantages as well.

The facilitator adds to the trust which is counter intuitive but true. This works well because facilitator is seemed impartial and can ask questions that internal participants may shy away from due to power equations. An external facilitator if chosen well, can have many benefits.

Unclear Strategy

Its common to have talent management programmes but very few have the returns one hopes for. And the major problem is the absence of talent strategy as well as alignment, thereof. A well thought of strategy will articulate, why talent review needs to be done, what need will it meet in a particular organization and how will it be done to deliver that advantage.  Strategy must take into account considerations like  attrition, talent availability in market, talent availability in house, risk in critical roles, engagement levels, readiness levels, talent mobility and diversity.

A clear strategy will not only help observe and ensure returns but will also save a lot of money and time. In absence, organization struggles to identify the real talent, retain high potential employees and eventually money spent on them goes waste.

There are many other things to watch out for, but in my conversations with talent managers, these three have come across as the biggest problems of talent reviews. For the review to work these three problem areas must be fixed without doubt.
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