The Franklin Whybrow blog didn’t plan to take a six week Summer holiday – but the lure of windswept British beaches and sodden cliff-top campsites proved too much. Perhaps post-Apprentice fatigue played its part, too.
Despite this hiatus, however, my ‘site stats’ indicate a healthy level of views over the past few weeks – boosted since Saturday by a sudden surge in searches for the MBTI type of Doctor Who. I somehow doubt that the return of Santa Claus in December will have a similar affect with regard to last year’s seasonal post dissecting his MBTI type, but we shall see.
The negligible impact of my blogging inactivity is a little disconcerting but rather less so than the sudden change of scale names within the Hogan Development Survey (HDS) psychometric. In fairness, the change probably wasn’t so sudden – PCL, who hold the UK licences for the Hogan suite of assessment tools, had endeavoured to provide fair warning – but the nature of these pending changes had somehow passed me by.
And so it was, a couple of weeks ago, that I ordered a single HDS data report for the one participant in a team session I ran last week who had not completed the questionnaire with her colleagues in April. On opening the document my immediate reaction was to think that I must have been sent a rogue report – but on closer inspection I realised that the double-barrelled labels for the eleven HDS scales had each been replaced by a single word.
This is not, to my mind, a change for the better.
My understanding is that PCL were required to bring the UK version of the HDS into line with the ‘Global’ scale names for the Hogan instruments. And the resulting changes to the ‘light side’ tool, the Hogan Personality Instrument (HPI) are more welcome. I always had my doubts whether ‘Intellectance’ was even a real word so I’m happy to see that label, along with ‘Scholarship’ and ‘Agreeability’, replaced by ‘Inquisitive’, ‘Interpersonal Sensitivity’ and ‘Learning Approach’ (although for consistency the pedant within me believes it should be ‘Inquisitiveness’). However, the HDS does lose something in the switch to single-word scale names.
The HDS (for anyone not au fait with the instrument and/or new to my blog) identifies where the day-to-day strengths of leaders can become dysfunctional, and potentially de-rail us, when we are under unusual stress or pressure (or simply let our guard down). It is often referred to as the Dark Side psychometric and as such the double-barrelled labels neatly conveyed the concept that the dysfunctional behaviour described by a particular scale is the potential flip-side of a strength (e.g. Shrewd-Mistrustful or Confident-Arrogant).
Although some of the Dark Side labels, such as ‘Volatile’, ‘Manipulative’ and ‘Passive Aggressive’, created a degree of discomfort for a number of those with whom I have used the HDS, the concept that one couldn’t have this potential dark side without the equivalent day-to-day strength tended to make most people more receptive to the tool.
Last Summer – during the 2010 World Cup – I posted a blog entitled ‘The Dark Side of Fabio Capello and Other, Lesser, Football Managers’. Within that piece I speculated on the possible HDS high scores of the beleaguered England boss as well as other high profile football managers past and present. With Capello again in the spotlight ahead of Euro 2012 qualifiers on Friday and next Wednesday, I thought it might be interesting to revisit that analysis and see how well the new HDS scale names sit alongside those characters.
I assessed Fabio Capello as Independent-Detached, Focused-Passive Aggressive and (in keeping with the job description for any football manager) Confident-Arrogant. At the end of this post I shall provide a link for those who wish to view my original analysis, however I believe the words ‘Detached’, ‘Passive-Aggressive’ and ‘Arrogant’ all convey a sense of the ‘dark side’ I detected in Capello under pressure. By contrast the new Global scale names, ‘Reserved’, ‘Leisurely’ and ‘Bold‘, simply don’t do that for me (‘Reserved‘, perhaps, but there has been precious little about Capello’s approach that I would consider ‘Bold’).
I also speculated, amongst others, on Lord Ferguson (or is he still plain Sir Alex and I’m confusing him with Alan Sugar?) and came up with Shrewd-Mistrustful – which is now labelled ‘Sceptical‘ – as well as Confident-Arrogant. Again, ‘Sceptical‘ doesn’t for me quite convey the essence of one of Fergie’s greatest strengths as a leader as well as the darker flip-side.
For those with a longer memory, I also considered Brian Clough and his arch nemesis Don Revie.
For Clough I concluded Vivacious-Dramatic (now ‘Colourful’) and Charming-Manipulative (‘Mischievous‘ in new money) as well as Shrewd-Mistrustful and Confident-Arrogant. Again I’m not sure about ‘Sceptical’ but in fairness ‘Bold’, ‘Colourful’ and ‘Mischievous’ are all adjectives which fit Old Big ‘Ead pretty well.
By contrast Revie, based on my assessment, would now be labelled ‘Reserved‘ and ‘Diligent‘ in HDS terms whereas I believe Independent-Detached and Diligent-Perfectionistic better convey the strengths which brought him success at Dirty Leeds and the dark side that de-railed him as England boss.
Enthusiastic-Volatile (cue Keven Keegan’s famous Ferguson-fuelled rant at Newcastle) is now ‘Excitable’. Careful-Cautious (Sven as England boss?) is now ‘Cautious’ (this is the only Global scale name which retains the darker half of the double-barrelled label). Imaginative-Eccentric (Ian Holloway) is now simply ‘Imaginative’ (I would hate to think of Olly losing his eccentric side). And Dutiful-Dependent (Phil Neal’s nodding dog to Graham Taylor’s hapless England boss) is now plain ‘Dutiful’.
So all in all, as I say, the switch to ‘Global Scale Names’ for the HDS is not a change I wholly welcome.
And that is even before I contemplate similarly revisiting my HDS analyses of every episode from the last three seasons of The Apprentice.
The original post from last June is here: https://franklinwhybrow.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/the-dark-side-of-fabio-capello-and-other-lesser-football-managers/
And for all those MBTI/Doctor Who fans: https://franklinwhybrow.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/doctor-who-and-the-myers-briggs-type-indicator-colin-baker-was-number-six/
Could not agree more Tony, the new names are gonna be an issue and I can see me subtitling them with… The old pairing!
I can only imagine this is the work of an INTJ!
I can see what you are getting at here, the two words were far more descriptive as they appeared to sum up the motivations in the character you were describing as I used your analysis when watching the Apprentice when not cringing behind the journal